Egyptian entrepreneur Samih Sawiris

Mass automation will mean the majority of human beings will have little prospect of being in employment. It is essential both to provide for them with financial support, and to create a sense of purpose

The transition to the era where the vast majority of people will not be able to be employed will require governments to start seriously thinking about de-demonising not working. Right now, the world is full of Calvinists who believe that God made us here to work, and even if others are not as extreme, there is this subtle belief that if you don’t work you’re no good. And this will have to change as we move into an era where machines will do a lot of the work that people are doing now and where it becomes impossible to create enough jobs. So, de facto, come 2050 a lot of people will be born and live and die without ever really working because the world doesn’t need them as a workforce.

If governments don’t soon start to prepare people for this event, we will have a lot of angry and unhappy people who just don’t understand why some are working and they’re not.

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The second thing that has to happen is to create an association between all these machines and the ex-employees that were replaced by them, and the best scenario would be to start contriving a sense of ownership. Let’s let’s say you used to assemble cars in a factory and now it’s all computerised with robots. Under this system, you would actually own the robot, so your robot is working instead of you, doing the job that you used to do manually. You go in at the end of the month, tap it, pat it and then collect your salary. And basically governments are giving you your tax money back, the factories are not paying salaries any longer but they are paying higher taxes, and that gives the ex-employee more or less the same income, because the productivity has become better. You keep this improvement in productivity for yourself as the factory owner, you pass some of it to the employee, and the government starts giving the people some of the taxes directly, not as unemployment payments but rather as employment, or, specifically, loans to buy their robot. A factory may have a thousand robots, so a thousand employees are given a loan to buy them and they lease them to the manufacturer. The worker feels he owns the robot and the robot’s working instead of him.

Once you have addressed the bulk of the employment problem, you think about other elements. A former Uber driver would become an owner of an Uber car, and he would lease it, and he gets the delta between what the driverless car brings in versus what he would have brought, because a driverless car can drive 24 hours a day, which he cannot. So effectively there are 16 hours more work done that wouldn’t have otherwise been done.

So, with cars, trucks, assembly line workers and other manual jobs, there is a long list of functions that could be addressed in this way. New ideas will ultimately come up to address other sectors, such as accountants, for example, who will be replaced by machines.

I am not saying you’re going to totally eradicate the problem overnight, but governments have to start thinking about this. We have to start preparing children when they go to school that they shouldn’t think they are going to become a surgeon – because even operations today can be done by machines. For example, there is an experiment in which a perfect copy of a liver, including a tumour, is produced. The replica is operated on by a machine until it’s done right, and then back in the operating theatre the robot does the whole job so there is no risk of tearing an artery or other mistakes. Doctors will still have to exist for the training, and they will become much more efficient because they will be present for the first part of the process and in the second part the robot and the computer will do it alone.

Read more: Masseto unveils a new underground wine cellar

It is also empowering. If people who were formerly employees believe they own the tools, whether in a factory or in a hospital, they are being paid for the tools they own, and instead of having employees in the billions and owners in the thousands or hundreds of thousands, it becomes the other way round. There will be billions of entrepreneur/owners: the guy who owns the robot, the doctor who owns the tools. And they will get paid for the use of their tools.

At the end of the day we are only replacing people with machines because machines are going to do a better and cheaper job. So there is a delta, a benefit that’s going to be created – don’t try and keep it in your pocket, give it to the people so that they feel some kind of empowerment. They may not get paid more than they are now, maybe they even get paid less. But such is life: you stay at home, you are paid 70% of your salary from when you worked like an idiot nine hours a day. You are still better off and you have time for your family.

There will be a lot of new industries created. The entertainment industry will triple or quadruple in size to take care of all this new leisure time, and this industry will require manual labour. So the excess surplus time that people will have will by itself reignite job creation for those who just need to work.

At the end of the day we know now that jobs will disappear and the current solution of unemployment money paid to people is socially unacceptable. Society should start thinking seriously about this issue. We need to demand from governments that they be proactive in preparing citizens worldwide for this impending era.

Samih Sawiris is an Egyptian entrepreneur who built the desert city of El Gouna and is the developer of Andermatt Swiss Alps in Switzerland and Luštica Bay in Montenegro

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

The Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire

The Michelin-starred Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons restaurant, run by chef Raymond Blanc, is at the forefront of the culinary arts with its cookery school and Gaggenau kitchen, as Mark C O’Flaherty discovers

Few things attach a date to drama on film like a scene set in a character’s kitchen. It might be a can of the 1970s diet cola TaB on the counter, or a style of cereal box with typography that hasn’t been seen for decades. It’s also the hardware – is it a faux country kitchen in the suburbs, or is it someone pulling out a ready meal from a panel of flashing lights in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Our kitchens tell the story of our lives, and the way we live today. No space in the home has changed more in the past 20 years.

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“More than ever before, we see the dinner table as the most important medium of communication,” says Raymond Blanc, the French chef behind the two Michelin star Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire, incorporating a restaurant which has, for the past 35 years, been one of the top special-occasion destinations in the UK. “The media has helped change our connection with food and our health and the environment. It was all separate before. Now we know it is linked, and a home-cooked meal made from scratch is so much more important – a way to bond with your clan, your family, your loved one. We are more emotional about food today. And what we are eating is changing, too. We eat seasonally because it tastes better, and we are eating less meat, because we know about climate change.”

The Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons hotel and restaurant (above) was opened in 1984 by Raymond Blanc who also established the forward-thinking cookery school

Blanc’s comment about food being more emotional can’t be overstated. While our interest in fashion has cooled somewhat, with a glut of identikit global brands and crass merchandising, food has become something of an obsession. It fuels social media, with information about chefs and niche new restaurant openings shared like precious insider intel. We have taken that obsession home with us, buying up cookbooks by some of the world’s most avant-garde chefs, full of the most ambitious techniques. We have upgraded our kitchens to match those ambitions. “What we have done now is to domesticate the professional kitchen tool,” says Sven Baacke, head of design at Gaggenau, the German manufacturer of some of the most advanced and design-conscious kitchen hardware in the world. “It is something I call ‘traditional avant-garde’.” Sitting in his studio in Munich, with a panoramic view out to the snow-capped mountains of Bavaria, Baacke talks through some of the objects on his desk – pieces that inspire him to create the modern kitchen: “Designers are collectors,” he says, “so here in our studio I have a lot of different things to take ideas from.” One of the most unusual objects is a mouse trap. “I collect them,” he explains. “I am inspired by how many ways there are to catch a mouse, and the ingenuity in each different design of trap. I also collect pocket torches, because I am fascinated by all the different solutions people have come up with to carry a light around with them, and to fashion that particular tool.”

Read more: Masseto unveils a new underground wine cellar

A lot of what Baacke has developed in Munich has ended up in Blanc’s hands in Oxfordshire, and Blanc – as a chef who cooks the way we now also want to cook at home – can predict where the domestic kitchen is going, and how it will look. He is the kind of chef who Baacke is designing for, and the influence trickles down to the home. “If you looked at a domestic kitchen in the 1970s,” says Blanc, “you’d find a microwave and a nasty little cooker with a twin gas range, and a tin opener close by. That was it. It was sad, it was grey, it was barren. And if you were wealthy, you would have an AGA, which warms the house but is impossible to cook with. Today, our kitchens are beautiful and polished, in stainless steel and Corian. They look exciting.”

The Raymond Blanc cookery school

Blanc’s dream kitchens – which include what he has at home, in his cookery school in Oxfordshire and, of course, at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in the same building – are defined by hardware that offers performance along with technology. “I want the same thing at home as I do at work,” he explains, “durability and precision and immediate power. And modern cuisine needs an environment conducive to cooking, with all the gadgets possible. I want multi-functions, I want to steam, use dry heat, wet heat, and a mix. I want to cook sous-vide.”

If home kitchens have been transformed by our appetite for dining out and by chefs’ ravenous hunger for adventure, then the arrival of the vacuum drawer in the home – which can be used for marinating, storage and of course sous-vide cooking – is a quintessentially 21st- century moment. Just as we saw the pressure cooker and the deep-fat fryer dominate the landscape in the 1970s, today’s more food- literate consumer wants protein that has been cooked to retain moisture, and to have all its flavour quite literally sealed in. Essentially it is futurist poaching, cooking with vacuum-packed ingredients, but the results, even with a simple carrot, have been revelatory in the restaurant. Now we want that at home. “Cooking this way is extraordinary – you seal the ingredients without any air, so there is no cross contamination as you’d get when you marinate in the fridge. You have such succulence, and you lose no flavour at all in the cooking.” It is part of the legacy of molecular gastronomy, which Blanc sees as a low point for restaurant culture, but which he also believes has left us with a radical and exploratory approach to cooking which is a positive thing. “It’s like nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s,” he explains, “which was great, but which was ruined by the media and the way they portrayed it. We still learned a lot from it.”

Read more: Massimo Bottura on his Michelin-starred restaurant and Food for Soul project

Induction cooking has been another revolution in the domestic and professional kitchen – something which Blanc has only recently shifted to at his restaurant. “When we had the open gas ranges, it was torture to stand in front of them because of the heat. Now with induction cooking, there’s none of that waste of heat, or all those flames literally roasting you while you work.” Unlike previous electric hobs, induction gives the immediate power and precision that a chef needs, so it’s a viable alternative, and overall improvement, on gas.

Students making pasta

Another change in how we use our kitchens is coming from social trends. The meat-and- two-veg way of cooking looks set to disappear from our lives in the near future. Veganism has long ceased being a fad. “When I opened my restaurant 35 years ago, I had a five- and seven- course vegetarian menu,” says Blanc. “No one wanted it. That’s totally different today. And the situation is irreversible. It takes 16,000 litres of water to provide 1kg of beef. Eating meat contributes so much to greenhouse gases. I have no problem in cooking vegetarian food – when I was growing up, we only had meat maybe four times a week – including steak frites on Saturday and rabbit on Sunday – and everything else was vegetarian. My mother made wonderful, delicious food from vegetables.”

How will this movement manifest itself in the kitchen of the future? Sven Baacke at Gaggenau believes that it will be about our ability to access and keep, as much as prepare, food. “When you buy more fresh fruit and veg, you want to store it in a better way,” he says. “Will we be having things delivered weekly? Will meat become something just for special occasions? I think it could be that being able to eat a really fresh apple will become as special as taking a bottle of fine wine out of the chiller. Digitalisation will see supply become something that happens at a very high level – a very luxurious level. The supply chain will become much better than it is today.”

And what of the technology that isn’t available yet? What will the kitchen of the 2030s have? Trends will continue to come from the way chefs are cooking professionally, for sure. “Methods such as teriyaki, and cooking with steam, those are now high-end domestic but come from restaurant culture,” says Baacke. “I think the social aspect of cooking will develop. I think appliances will become less visible, and we will want to cook together but remotely. We will be able to be in the kitchen together, even if you are in LA and I am in New York.”

As for the actual preparation of food, Blanc has one wish, something that chefs who wear glasses when they work will empathise with the world over: “I would love to be able to open an oven door after roasting something, and not be blasted with the heat from inside. And you know what? Kitchen technology is moving so fast, it’s probably just around the corner.”

Raymond Blanc Cookery School at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons

In an age when we are valuing experiences over objects, a cookery class voucher is a welcome gift. Raymond Blanc’s cookery school in Oxfordshire is just across the hall from his bustling kitchen that serves Le Manoir’s restaurant, but the ambience is markedly different. Here is the kitchen of your dreams, fully equipped with state-of-the-art Gaggenau hardware in fine wood cabinets. The school channels Blanc’s culinary DNA through its director, Mark Peregrine, who is Blanc’s right hand at Le Manoir, with bakery courses taught by Benoit Blin. “We have been so ahead of the curve with the school,” says Blanc. “We were the first to offer courses for children, and we have always taught vegetarian cooking.” A full day’s cookery class here has become a popular bolt-on to an anniversary stay with dinner at the hotel, offering a fully immersive foodie experience along with an afternoon spent among the artfully plotted crops in the garden (which now offers its own school too). “This is such a great time for British cooking,” says Blanc. “It has developed such a new and unique style, and doesn’t come with the same baggage as Italian and French cuisine. When we first opened, it wasn’t really anywhere, but now look at what Benoit is doing at the school. This country is number five in the world for patisserie.”

Find out more: belmond.com or gaggenau.com/gb

This article originally appeared in the Summer 19 Issue.

Swedish model and CEO of wellness brand Bodyism, Nathalie Schyllert. Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

LUX contributing editor and model at Models 1, Charlie Newman continues her online exclusive series, interviewing her peers about their creative pursuits, passions and politics

Charlie Newman

THIS MONTH: Swedish model Nathalie Schyllert has been modelling for twenty years. She joined international wellness brand Bodyism over a decade ago and is now the brand’s CEO. Here she talks to Charlie about training to be a ballerina, myths of the wellness industry and being a successful woman in business.

Charlie Newman: You’ve established yourself successfully within both the fashion and wellness industries. Were you passionate about clothes and food growing up?
Nathalie Schyllert: I grew up in Sweden as an only child with a single mum. Even if we didn’t have a lot of money the most important thing for my mum was to provide us with really good, healthy food. I think in Sweden it’s very easy to have a healthy diet as our traditional dishes always have fish and vegetables in them. I did a lot of exercise from a young age as I was a ballerina in the Swedish Royal Ballet, so it was very important for me to have balanced meals else I would have really physically struggled, especially when you are growing. To do 4 hours of punishing rehearsals a day as well as school you really need nutritious food to sustain you. I was very fortunate to be practising ballet in Sweden because compared to other traditional ballet schools across the world, Swedish schools have a much more positive approach to food, encouraging us to eat fat in our diets. It was a very good life lesson to be instilled in me from such a young age. My mum always wanted the best for me so we moved around so I could go to a better school, a much easier task in Sweden than here in London! Private schools in Sweden are extremely rare, so as long as you live in a good area you are guaranteed a good school too.

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Fashion only really came into my life when I was 15. In the summer holidays I went to either London or Milan for a month or two. At the beginning my mother would come with me or my Swedish booker to help me get settled. I’ve been with Models 1 in London since I was 17, so it’s 20 years now that I’ve been with the same agency! Modelling was such a good opportunity and career path obviously because I started travelling more. I think my discipline from ballet taught me to see modelling as a career, not just as a good time which so many girls fall into the trap of doing. From the start I tried to be very professional.

At around 15 I had an injury in my foot which I could have probably got surgery on but I think at
that age I’d sort of had enough. To be a prima ballerina and really go for it, you have to have the
exact body and I didn’t have the right arch. I realised that I wasn’t made for it. Looking back now, I can see it was the perfect timing because at that age if I continued with the dancing I wouldn’t have had as much time to study. So instead at 15 I focused more on studying science and maths and got a really good education from it which I still appreciate and utilise to this day. It was meant to be.

Charlie Newman: When were you first scouted?
Nathalie Schyllert: I was first scouted in Gothenburg when I was 14. My mum was very strict at the beginning with my agency, making sure they never said anything about body image. If you go with a really good agency they will look after you and guide you to have a healthy, balanced body – a good agency would never tell you to crash diet. When I was a child I didn’t think of modelling at all, but even as a child I always loved performing so modelling didn’t feel too out of my comfort zone when I got round to actually doing it.

Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Charlie Newman: What’s been a career highlight for you so far?
Nathalie Schyllert: I did the first Stella McCartney Adidas campaign which was a really big deal at the time because no other designers had collaborated with sports designers like that. It felt so special because Stella was there and her sister Mary shot it. From that job I got so many more activewear jobs and it opened the industry’s eyes to see that you can do really cool campaigns with activewear. It seems so obvious now but sportswear was viewed very differently back then.

Charlie Newman:  What’s the best and worst part about modelling for you?
Nathalie Schyllert: The best part is definitely the travelling because unlike other people who just go to holiday destinations, you actually get to live there and meet the locals, really get a feel for the place. It’s extremely rare to live in various cities in one year, if you’re lucky enough to travel with work, in most careers you’d stay in one city for a year, whereas I got to move around all the time!

But simultaneously the travel is also the hardest part about modelling. I appreciate now having my family and friends around me all the time and to actually have a base. It first dawned on me to maybe step away from modelling was when I was in Miami for two months having just broken up with my boyfriend and losing my mum. I felt so lonely and knew then that I needed a more stable job. I called my booker at Models 1 and asked for advice and they suggested personal training as they knew how I was always training not just myself but some of my friends. I came back to London and had a meeting with James Duigan at Bodyism 12 years ago, which back then was based in a tiny mews studio in South Kensington. I’d read a few online articles about him because he was Elle Macpherson’s trainer at the time, so I was really excited to get on board! I started the next day as an intern and doing my courses at the same time. I was busy form day one, pretty much working for free for the first 4 years, doing everything from membership to PR and so much more. After three months I’d already built up enough interest and had my own clients. You really have to put your all into it when it’s a start up. It was the perfect timing for everything.

Read more: Curator Zoe Whitley on the art of collaboration

Charlie Newman:  What drew you to Bodyism?
Nathalie Schyllert: It was a very unique thing at the time. We talked, and still do, about nutrition and sleep, not just training. We look at the whole 360 approach to lifestyle which was something I had always believed in and lived by. That was why it worked so well for me personally because I didn’t have to change who I was at all, my diet and training routine stayed the same, it was a natural fit for me. I was also the first woman on board so I got to have a voice on what women want out of the wellness industry too.

Charlie Newman:  What’s the biggest difference between working for someone and yourself?
Nathalie Schyllert: The only difference is that I’m now doing more PR and interviews, becoming the face of the brand, but apart form that my role hasn’t changed much. It’s funny to compare what James used to get asked and now what I do. Sometimes I get asked, being a female CEO, what my beauty regime is and being a working mum. As long as it benefits the brand, that’s all that matters to me.

Charlie Newman:  How has the wellness industry changed since you first started working in it?
Nathalie Schyllert: The whole wellness industry has changed drastically. Even supplements from when we first started – we created the first vegan supplement without bad sweeteners, and now everyones doing it! With activewear too, we were the first to make printed, colourful activewear, and now everyone else is doing that too! So in that way the industry has changed a lot.

There are so many different studios now for different types of exercise but what is still so genuine and unique about Bodyism is that we have everything. You can come to one place and do all the treatments, boxing, yoga, PT, breakfast, lunch, eat our supplements and wear our clothes. People always ask us who our competitor is but we genuinely don’t have one, we’re doing our own thing, people can see that we’re not copying anyone. Of course we have to look at new fitness and nutrition trends, like oat milk for example, but at the core of it we stick to what we believe in and what works. If we were entirely devoted to following the trends our food menu and exercise schedule would change every day! And then in a few months time we’d find out it’s not good for you at all!

At Bodyism, we do what works for ourselves and our members. Our clients are the best people to get feedback from because they are always here with their trainers, we’re not a massive company where you have to speak to so many people at different levels to get your voice heard. Our relationship with our members is so important because we learn so much about our products and their results.

Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Charlie Newman: If you could bust one wellness myth, what would it be?
Nathalie Schyllert: I think everyone has now finally realised that the zero carb diet doesn’t work, because then you couldn’t even eat a carrot because it has carbs in it! For me, it’s so important to have a colourful plate and if it has carbs in their that’s fine. Low fat diets too are terrible because the fat just gets replaced with loads of sugar. These were trends from the 80s and 90s and people have more of an education now on what a healthy diet and lifestyle actually is.

Charlie Newman: Did you ever come across any negativity as a female trainer in quite a masculine world when you first started?
Nathalie Schyllert: At the beginning I mainly trained men but I found it to be an advantage because they’d want to maybe show off more and train harder! Our clients aren’t here to bulk up, so it doesn’t matter who is training who because it’s a very similar workout whether you’re a man or a woman.

Charlie Newman: What advice would you give to any aspiring business women?
Nathalie Schyllert: Apart from working hard, also always continue to learn. I never assume that just because I’m at this position I know everything. I’m learning every single day, not only from people within the company but from mentors outside. Having people you can discuss finance matters and new business ideas with is so important, it gives you perspective and keeps you humble.

Charlie Newman: What exciting projects have you got coming up?
Nathalie Schyllert: We’ve collaborated with Heidi Klein for their first activewear range which is really exciting. We now also offer a lot more perks for our members, for example priority reservations at Zuma, room upgrades in hotels etc. The platinum members especially get amazing perks, free holidays in Turkey for example. So a lot more trips and events are coming up. We have just started doing catering too with brands. We’re very lucky that we don’t have to push ourselves to create corporate wellness contracts, rather it travels by word of mouth from our clients to other brands. It’s been an organic journey.

Charlie Newman: Lastly, who is your role model of the month?
Nathalie Schyllert: It has got to be my mother. She worked so hard as a single mum, sometimes with two jobs, and that has always been an inspiration for me from day one.

Follow Nathalie Scyhllert on Instagram: @nathalieschyllert

Philip and Charlotte Colbert in their fried-egg suits designed by Philip

In a warehouse in east London, Philip and Charlotte Colbert are creating a world of Pop art and sculpture that is putting them on the global map. Darius Sanai speaks to the dynamic enfants terribles of the London art scene while Maryam Eisler photographs them

At the back of a warehouse in east London, Philip Colbert sticks his head out of a doorway. “Come in,” he says, smiling, while simultaneously holding a conversation with his phone on one ear. “No, it needs to be there tonight. Right,” he says, into the phone. His tone is soft, firm, a gentle Scottish accent is present but inconspicuous, almost shy.

Inside, workers are cutting and daubing in an area full of canvasses and paint, and behind a rail of pop-coloured clothes, four more people are on their phones, sitting at desks. Through a space in the wall is another artist’s studio, this one tidier, less colourful, more precise, hung with sculptures of curved forms and creatures.

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Welcome to the world of Philip and Charlotte (through in the other studio) Colbert, the enfants terribles of the London art scene. Philip has been called all sorts of things, including a worthy successor to Andy Warhol; in his zany coloured suits he is a mainstay of the party (and social media) scene and with his classical education (philosophy, St Andrew’s University) combined with his cheeky-to-outrageous art he is one of the capital’s most desirable dinner party guests.

Colbert has created everything from lobsters sold in his (now closed) Paris namesake store to partnerships with Peanuts and Rolex; he has bucket loads of celebrity followers (Cara, Sienna, Gaga) and he’s big in China.

Charlotte with some of her flocked ceramics

But as his latest works show, he is also a proper artist. His ‘Hunt’ paintings, shown recently by the Saatchi Galleries in both London and LA, around each city’s Frieze art fair, are a kind of Raft of the Medusa for contemporary society, riffing on themes around social media’s banal power, swatches from his favoured artists [Dalí, Lichtenstein, Hockney], and providing a poignant commentary on the chaos of contemporary society. They are also vibrant, colourful (as pop art should be) and, frankly, rather beautiful. He thinks of himself as a “neo-pop surrealist”, though a case could be made for him being more pop-impressionist: out of the microcosms of his creations there emerges a whole image of something quite different.

Read more: 6 artists creating new experiential spaces

His wife Charlotte, meanwhile, has created her own artistic world, one which shocks and smiles at the same time. Youthful, photogenic, and with enough wit not to take themselves entirely seriously, the Colberts may just be among the most interesting artists to emerge from Britain in the last decade. And you feel their whole future may just be ahead of them.

Philip Colbert

LUX: How would you describe yourself ?
Philip Colbert: I’m someone who’s trying to create a world. I started out creating a sort of art brand, with artworks and furniture and was, in a way, trying to expand what the idea of art was beyond painting. But recently I’ve come back to painting in a big way and I think fundamentally my journey is about just trying to make my own sort of artistic world. The lobster alter-ego is really an articulation of my artistic persona.

LUX: Why a lobster?
Philip Colbert: I’ve always been into symbols. The lobster was a symbol of surrealism for a lot of surrealist poets and Dalí as well. I like the idea of bringing it to life and taking it on a journey.

Philip Colbert with his iconic lobster alter-ego

LUX: What is art about, for you?
Philip Colbert: The simple essence of art is human freedom, and pushing the creativity that we have. And if you push freedom forward and create more, you push reality and create more freedom for art. There’s something I like about taking the idea of art and trying to inject it with new energy and a new sense of possibility.

LUX: Should artworks be beautiful?
Philip Colbert: It’s an important part of communicating, to understand visual language. A cornerstone of my art is to try and be very positive and use primary colours and really radiate a sort of energy from my works. Even though they may still have a sort of darker undertone, I still like to give them the essence of a sunflower.

‘Untitled II’ (2018) from Philip Colbert’s ‘Hunt Paintings’ series

LUX: Can you talk about ‘The Hunt’ series and how your work has developed?
Philip Colbert: ‘The Hunt’ paintings are important for me. I have been engaging with the idea of contemporary culture and the mass saturation of images and the internet. At the same time I’m still having a conversation with painting. The Old Masters are such a powerful part of art history and I like the idea of making my contemporary Pop culture paintings to be informed by and in conversation with them.

Read more: 6 questions with art collector Kelly Ying

LUX: Symbols from painters – how do you choose them?
Philip Colbert: Well, I was really drawn to elevated images, such as in history painting, with heroic battle depictions by artists such as Rubens. I wanted to underpin the violence of contemporary culture and use the analogy of a more traditional battle scene, to structure it like an Instagram feed. We consume so much today, and we see so much, we’re aware of so many amazingly escapist ideas juxtaposed with a lot of darker elements, like global warming or political instability. A lot of artists have been exploring abstraction or exploring obsession, but I wanted to capture more of this play of light and dark. I thought that the analogy of the battle scene was a good way to explore these tensions.

Philip at work on ‘Screw Hunt II’ (2018)

LUX: Have you felt pushed back by contemporary art establishments?
Philip Colbert: I think of myself as an outsider in a way, because I studied philosophy and really just developed my own practice. I’m not looking for validation from anyone. I feel that in the art world, people are sometimes groomed to want to please, but I’m much more interested in just connecting to people on a real and direct level.

LUX: Are you here to sell art or create art?
Philip Colbert: One hundred per cent to create art. The sales side of it is obviously an essential part of being able to grow because it allows one to do more, but I’m not deliberately engineering my works to be purely reflective of the market, which is not necessarily a bad thing either – Warhol was very good at mirroring what he felt the system wanted. My paintings are complex and intense and highly saturated, so are not the easiest to sell via Instagram, for example.

LUX: Talk about your use of social media.
Philip Colbert: If I think of my paintings as a reflection of my interaction with contemporary culture, social media are a significant element within that. There are some different strands of my work. I’m really developing a lot of these big history paintings, but also I’ve developed ‘Lobster Land’, a virtual reality world, which is the digital world where my lobster character lives. And in Lobster Land there’s a Lobster Bank, Lobster Coin, there’s a museum. I’m building my own reality there, which is one way of engaging with contemporary technology.

‘Hunt Triptych’ (2018) from the ‘Hunt Paintings’ series

LUX: How did you get started in China?
Philip Colbert: It happened very organically. When I had my first exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, curators from China came along and they featured some of my paintings in a group show in China. That was maybe June last year. It was amazing – I saw a crazy energy in China when I was there. So many people came to the show. It has simply evolved from there.

LUX: What are your influences?
Philip Colbert: There’s very much a ‘celebration of appropriation’ in these paintings. I was putting myself at the centre of the piece –you get the idea, it’s like my character is the narrator of the painting but then there’s art history effectively having a sort of ‘battle dialogue’ with this voice. This sort of dialogue is present in an artist’s mind when they’re creating an artwork. There’s the idea of place and time in the relationships to other philosophies and ideas within art, so by putting them into a battle sequence, it represents my own philosophy battling with other ideas and also being able to present a much bigger holistic idea, to create an orchestrated, ‘multi-philosophied’ painting. I’ve referenced loads of things deliberately. Léger was, for me, a very important proto-Pop thinker/painter, and his work was influential on people like Lichtenstein, who often even referred to Léger in the bottom corners of his paintings. My paintings are an evolution of Pop art – I have those references while I’m still playing with abstraction and different varieties of painting styles within a single painting.

LUX: This sounds more like it’s from inside someone’s mind rather than culture?
Philip Colbert: Yeah, I think of the paintings as like mind-maps in a way. I was really interested in ideas of art, so that’s why I like to use preconceived ideas because for me they are language. I could create my own characters but I wanted to use branded ideas that people could understand. So, when people look at the paintings, they will immediately understand ‘That’s Van Gogh’, or ‘that’s a Gucci handbag’. It’s using things that are already loaded with meaning.

Philip and Charlotte Colbert

LUX: Is it strange not coming from a family of artists?
Philip Colbert: No, I don’t think so. Some people’s parents are artists and they follow suit and are inspired by a world they’ve already been presented with. For me, I was always just connected with art and so it was always the language I was immediately connected with. As you know, I went into making clothing first, but I wasn’t making clothing to be a fashion designer, I was making clothing and thinking about artwork. I was more interested in this idea of ‘wearable art’ and trying to use the idea of a brand as a vehicle for art.

Read more: Maryam Eisler in conversation with Kenny Scharf

LUX: What plans do you have for the future?
Philip Colbert: Well, I have an exhibition in Shanghai at the end of June, then I have two shows in Hong Kong, a show in a museum in South Korea, and then another in Moscow in September in a multi-media art museum.

LUX: Do you and Charlotte collaborate?
Philip Colbert: Well, we’re married, so we inevitably interact and have an influence on each other’s work. We have quite a different aesthetic and even though we’re both interested in a lot of the same things, our end picture is very different, which is nice. But I think we both understand each other’s DNA, so we can help each other.

Charlotte Colbert with ‘Self Portrait in Lucian Freud’s studio’ (2018) from her ‘Screen Portrait’ series

Charlotte Colbert

LUX: Tell us about your photography.
Charlotte Colbert: I have done a couple of series. I started in 2013 with ‘A Day at Home’. It correlated the madness of the writer and the madness of the housewife in this domestic space that was both a prison and open to the landscapes of the imagination. It sort of chronicled the porousness of the world around the woman in a decrepit house in East London. We kept shooting as the place was being demolished, so we were getting layers of that story-telling within the building itself. Then I worked on ‘Ordinary Madness’ [2016], which was about our relationship to the digital age. The idea was that we expected aliens to come from outer space and somehow conquer us. But, little by little, we are becoming the cyborg, and technology is being absorbed into our bodies and changing the fabric of our being until we’ve become a new sort of human.

LUX: The video sculptures, ‘Screen Portraits’, are they bronzes?
Charlotte Colbert: No, they’re made of Corten steel. The first one was done for the Korea Institute. I came across this beautiful but heart-breaking story of a South Korean woman, Lee Soon-Kyu, who was 79 when I met her. She was pregnant when the Korean War started in 1950, but was separated from her husband who ended up in the north. She was able to meet him many years later, and went to North Korea with her son, who was then 65, to see him for the last time. It seemed fitting to do her portrait at this moment in her life, after she’d been in this Cold War kind of narrative for decades. She had to stay very still with just one light on her face. The filming of the sculpture was an extraordinary moment.

LUX: The one with a nuclear explosion, tell us about that.
Charlotte Colbert: That’s a piece called Disassociation. It’s a self-portrait. The eyes and the face are very much at peace and the head contains the nuclear explosion. I made it when I was seven months pregnant, at a time when you feel disconnected from the world around you. But I feel that in some ways it’s like an extreme version of everyone’s relationship to the world.

LUX: Neighbouring studios with Philip – how does that work?
Charlotte Colbert: Funnily enough, we’ve done loads of stuff together and I think in some way, we do look at each other’s works and comment on them, but our worlds definitely haven’t fused. I feel like both of us have pushed the identities really as defined against each other.

LUX: The studio, it seems very serene.
Charlotte Colbert: It’s amazing but there’s a lot of interesting characters around, and the building’s quite fun and it’s got all these layers of history. I think at one point it was a kennels, so there were dogs, now there’s more little mice. It’s a really amazing location – we’re so lucky.

Find out more: philipcolbert.com and charlottecolbert.com

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

‘Seriera’ 2019 by MTArt represented artist David Aiu Servan-Schreiber

Marine Tanguy is the founder of arts talent agency MTArt, which represents the likes of Sarah Maple, Alexandra Lethbridge and Adelaide Damoah.  We put her in the hot seat for our 6 Questions slot.

Marine Tanguy

1. Have you always been passionate about art?

Yes – I have always loved making my world more visually inspiring and artists are the perfect people to do this with. I am still a five years old at heart and equally, my five years old inside me is very happy with I get up to everyday. That’s the secret isn’t? Listening to your inner child. My 5 years old self wanted art everywhere around her.

2. Why did you decide to set up MTArt?

An advocate for artists since a young age, I managed my first gallery at age 21, opened my first art gallery in Los Angeles at age 23 and finally created my current business in 2015, MTArt Agency, breaking from the gallery model to promote better the artists I believed in across the globe. MTArt is the first artist agency promoting influential visual artists and specialising in talent management: building, growing and accelerating careers. The artists of my generation don’t just wish to hang their works on walls, they want digital rights for their images, be in the press all the time and the top partnerships. This is much more the job of a talent manager than a gallery, who is first and foremost, a retail shop.

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3. Do the artists you represent come to you or do you find them?

As we open up doors and give financial support to artists, we receive over 200 applications a month!

MTArt represented artist Adelaide Damoah

4. Which contemporary artists should we be keeping our eye on right now?

Definitely the artist Adelaide Damoah! She was recently spotted on the recent campaign for the Nomade Perfume of Chloé, has started working with the top museums in the world like Tate and collectors adore her! Her art encourages all women to be stronger, bolder and more ambitious. After that, I would say Saype, Leo Caillard, David Aiu Servan-Schreiber, Phoebe Boswell, Nate Lewis…

Read more: Trevor Hernandez’s surreal urban photography

5. What frustrates you the most about the art world?

The art world could be a much bigger industry if it decided to be more progressivist, it’s a waste of opportunities and I hate wasting opportunities!

6. Which artists would you invite to your dream dinner party?

So many! Can it be a very big party? Louise Bourgeois, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Géricault, Ana Mendieta, Adelaide Damoah, Saype, Paul Verlaine, Ayn Rand, Leo Caillard, David Aiu Servan-Schreiber, Chopin, Akala, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé etc…

Find out more about MTArt: mtart.agency

Exterior render of the new One Monte-Carlo residences in Monaco

The new One Monte-Carlo development could just be the swankiest place in the world for you to hang out with your money, your trophy spouse, and your Ferrari

Wander to your living room window, glass of Cristal in hand, open the balcony door and step out into a view of the Casino de Monte-Carlo, and beyond it, the Mediterranean. Feel the need for an emergency handbag? No problem, a flagship Louis Vuitton is just downstairs.

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Welcome to One Monte-Carlo. To call the development, created by Richard Rogers, the celebrated British architect, and Bruno Moinard, ‘interior architect’ to the stars, lavish would be a dramatic understatement. Built next to the Hôtel de Paris on Casino Square, and opened amid much champagne this spring, One M-C bring new heights of extravagance to a principality not exactly unknown for its swanky places for you and your money to live.

Render of One M-C residences and public space

Designed by Richard Rogers, One Monte Carlo houses 37 luxury apartments and dozens of retail stores

Moinard, responsible for the contemporary yet warm interiors of luxury temples such as the Plaza Athénée and Château Latour, tells LUX that, “in line with the vision of Monaco’s future, we used materials that give life and humanity to this exceptional project”. Combined with Rogers’ curvaceous forms, this gives One M-C a sense of the mountains overlooking the city. Some of the principality’s bland 1960s apartment blocks must now be feeling ashamed of themselves.

The catch? You can never own in One M-C: the apartments are available for long-term rental only, and most have already been snapped up. Worth selling your LaFerrari for a year’s rental? We would.

Find out more: montecarlosbm.com/en/hotel-monaco/residences

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue

LCB’s anniversary show of ‘Ballet Shoes’ will take place this summer at the Peacock Theatre, London.

This year, London Children’s Ballet is celebrating their 25th anniversary with a summer production of Ballet Shoes. LUX gets a sneak peak inside the rehearsal room

Photography by Tina Frances Photography

The ballet world is notoriously cut-throat. To make it to the top you’ve got to start young and have the “correct” physical proportions, which traditionally means trim shoulders, long legs and the “right” feet. Lucille Briance’s ballet-mad daughter was turned away because of her feet and knees. Her response was to set up London Children’s Ballet, a charitable ballet school which does not discriminate on grounds of height, shape or income; the children are judged solely on their ability. Despite the charity’s name, children (aged between nine and sixteen) from anywhere in the country may audition to join the troop.

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This year the charity is celebrating their 25th anniversary with an adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s novel Ballet Shoes featuring original choreography by Ruth Brill.

LCB’s production of ‘Ballet Shoes’ will to be performed at The Peacock Theatre from 4 to 7 July 2019. For more information visit: londonchildrensballet.com.

Designed by ZitoMori Studio, Masseto’s new cellar lies deep beneath the Tuscan soil

Italy’s most celebrated wine producer, Masseto, recently opened a stunning new underground wine cellar. Irene Belluci discovers

Masseto’s new wine cellar has been designed to blend, or rather sink seamlessly into the curves of the Tuscan landscape. Designed by Milan-based architecture practise ZitoMori Studio, the space expands deep underground in a vast concrete chamber that feels like a sacred tomb.

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‘To represent the effort made to produce the wine made here, we created a series of spaces – not by construction, but by extraction from the hill’s monolithic mass,’ explains Hikaru Mori. ‘The different internal volumes, heights and levels are reminiscent of a gold mine as it follows seams of precious metal to the core.’ Inside, the clean lines of glass and steel balance with rows of oak barrels and textured surfaces, whilst cut-outs in the walls, frame the vineyard’s famed blue clay soil.

Find out more: masseto.com

Blue Palace sprawls up a rugged hillside with spectacular views over the ocean

Why should I go now?

Most people go to the Greek islands in summer, but springtime is a far more pleasant time to visit. It’s breezy and warm, rather than insufferably hot (right now, for example, temperatures are in the low to mid twenties) and much less crowded. Plus, Crete is at its most beautiful and fragrant with the wild flowers in full bloom.

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What’s the lowdown?

Blue Palace sits tucked away in the Gulf of Elounda, roughly an hour’s drive from Heraklion Airport. It’s a big resort, with hundreds of rooms sprawling up the side of rugged slope, but since its built entirely from local stone, it blends beautifully into the landscape and has the appearance of a pretty hillside village. Guests are driven up a private road to the impressive open-air lobby, with huge arches framing the ocean and a long pool that comes halfway inside. This is just one of the many pools at the hotel, many of the rooms have their own infinity pools and there are several down on the beach. As you wander through the grounds you have the impression of being surrounded by soothing blue – the pools, sky and ocean.

Blue Palace’s grand lobby area and one of the resort’s many swimming pools. Photography by James Houston

In the distance, lies the historic Spinalonga Island, an ex-leper colony and UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s close enough to swim to (or so we’re told), but we take a speed boat accompanied by a wonderfully passionate guide, who tells us that she escorted Lady Gaga on the same trip not so long ago. Other activities include water-sports and various cultural trips. The wine tasting on-board a traditional wooden caïque was one of our highlights, where we got to sample local wines and cheese whilst floating on the azure waters of a secluded cove. On the private beach, suite guests are granted access to the VIP area where they given baskets containing fluffy towels, magazines and refreshing wipes. There’s also a spa with a hammam, sauna, indoor swimming pool and treatment rooms.

Read more: 6 artists creating experiential art

True to Greek culture, the resort is hugely passionate about food with five excellent restaurants to choose from. Anthós is the most romantic (reserve a table on the terrace to dine alfresco and for the best views), but Blue Door is the most fun. Housed inside an old fisherman’s cottage right on the edge of the sea, its in the style of a traditional Greek taverna and serves delicious, authentic Greek cuisine. On the feast nights, there’s live music and dancing. The food comes in vast quantities with an array of delicious dips, breads, fresh fish and “antikristo” lamb, which is slowly cooked for five hours above a bonfire. Be warned: entrance to the restaurant is granted after a large shot of ouzo and guests tend to be coerced into dancing later in the night. This is all part of the wonderful Greek hospitality that makes the resort’s staff some of the warmest, most genuine that we’ve encountered.

The resort’s private pebble beach with views of Spinalonga island (to the left) in the distance. Photography by James Houston

Getting horizontal

Our suite, named Santorini after the blue and white isle, followed the same theme of nautical colours with elegant, contemporary furnishings, a separate living room, bedroom and a secluded courtyard with a private pool. It was the perfect balance of luxurious and homely.

Flipside

The only thing that felt inconsistent with the resort’s relaxed vibe was the VIP area at breakfast, where suite guests are led to tables on a roped-off platform. It felt a little too exhibitionist for our tastes, and if necessary, it could have been arranged more subtly as it was on the beach.

Millie Walton

Rates: From 235 EUR for a Superior Bungalow Sea View room incl. taxes & breakfast (approx. £200 / $250)

Book your stay: bluepalace.gr

The Mille Miglia endurance race winds its way through Italy’s most beautiful landscapes

The Mille Miglia is one of the world’s most prestigious motor-racing events. Founded in 1927 as a speed race, today it sees classic-car lovers from all over the world congregate in the northern Italian town of Brescia for a regularity race to Rome and back, taking them through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. As it celebrates over a century of racing, the Mille Miglia is going from strength to strength – most recently by welcoming a new major sponsor in the form of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management. Ahead of this year’s edition, Anna Wallace-Thompson speaks to Chopard co-president and regular participant Karl-Friedrich Scheufele about Chopard’s three decade-long partnership with the event

It’s a balmy spring day in May, the kind where it’s warm in the sun and cool in the shade. We’re in the north of Italy, and hundreds of thousands of people are milling around in narrow, medieval streets, congregating around classic cars in bright racing colours of red, yellow, blue, silver and dark green. Cars are parked side by side in piazzas, or nose to tail in between buildings, wherever there is space. Suddenly, amongst the all-pervasive rattling and purring of some 400 engines, a sonic boom marks the whirring, whining rush of fighter jets soaring overhead, trailing streams of red, white and green smoke. It’s a heady mix.

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This is the starting day of the Mille Miglia, the world’s most celebrated classic car regularity race. Every year, it starts in Brescia and attracts car lovers and celebrities alike. Participants have included Rowan Atkinson, Jay Leno, Jeremy Irons, the ‘Flying Finn’ and F1 legend Mika Häkkinen, and, back in its earlier days, legends such as Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss. Originally an open-road endurance race looping from Brescia to Rome and back again, it was established by two young counts (as all such events deserve to be), Aymo Maggi and Franco Mazzotti. Together with sports manager Renzo Castagneto and the motoring journalist Giovanni Canestrini, they envisaged the Mille Miglia as Brescia’s answer to the Italian Grand Prix (purloined after just one year from Brescia in 1922 and moved to Monza, which remains its home today).

Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Jacky Ickx waiting for the departure of the 1989 Mille Miglia

The original Mille Miglia (literally ‘a thousand miles’) was founded in 1927 and named after the Roman mile (not the American imperial system, as Mussolini suspected, or, at least, so the story goes) and ran in fits and starts until 1957. It was paused after a fatal crash in 1937, and again during the second world war, before a second fatal crash in 1957 saw it permanently closed. This was not, however, before Moss made racing history in 1955 when he not only left Fangio in second place to win the Mille Miglia, but beat the Italian by a staggering 30 minutes, becoming the first British driver in the event’s history to win. The secret to his still unbroken record of 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds (that translates to an average of 98.53 mph) lay in the detailed track notes he and co-driver Denis Jenkinson devised – common practice today, but not so much in the mid 50s.

Read more: Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar discusses Iranian art at artmonte-carlo

Fast forward two decades, and the race was revived in its current form in 1977 as a regularity race around an annually changing route through some of Italy’s most beautiful landscapes. Racers no longer hurtle through the Italian countryside at breakneck speed. The challenge now is no longer on who can reach the finishing line first, but in the maintenance, precision and control of handling vintage cars that took part in the original races.

Mille Miglia 2017 © Alexandra Pauli for Chopard

Another challenge is being allowed to take part. The Mille Miglia is one of the world’s most exclusive races and entry is either by invitation, or through a stringent application process where entry per car (yes, per car) is €7,000 (plus VAT) and dependent on a complex array of certification and documentation.

Participants should also have very good insurance. As any classic car collector will know, the combined total worth of the cars here soars into the hundreds of millions. While some are valued in the (relatively modest) hundreds of thousands, the upper end can be eye-watering. To give an idea, the 2016 Artcurial hammer price for the 1957 Ferrari 315 S that came second place in that year’s Mille Miglia was a cool US$35.7 million. Fangio’s 1956 Ferrari 290 MM, meanwhile, is valued at US$28 million. But this is the price one pays for being a part of history.

Chopard Mille Miglia 2018 Race Edition in Black

“We are dealing with the culture of the automobile, of course, but also the culture of an incredible country,” notes Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, co-president of Chopard, which is celebrating 30 years of partnership with Mille Miglia (manifested through sponsorship as well as an annual special edition watch). “I think the most beautiful landscape is in Tuscany,” he continues. “There are hills you have to go up and down, which is a challenge, and the views are breathtaking. There are times I have to remind myself that I must concentrate on the driving. It is such a privilege to drive through places like Siena, to find yourself crossing the Piazza del Campo – well, it’s like entering a live museum. The Mille Miglia takes you to historic places one might never otherwise visit.”

This is no exaggeration, for the Mille Miglia is indeed like a living, breathing open-air museum. The oldest cars taking part are more than 90 years old – this year’s race included an OM 665 S Superba 2000, a Bugatti T 35 Grand Prix and a Bentley 3 Litre, all from 1925, as well as a quirky torpedo-shaped Amilcar CGSS Siluro Corsa from 1926 (complete with leather strap to hold the bonnet shut).

Read more: Knight Frank’s Chairman Alistair Elliott on research and tech

That leather strap is indicative of the attention to detail the Mille Miglia fosters. The joy participants take is evident not just in the pristine condition of the cars themselves (often referred to as “better than new”), but in the smallest of details – from old-fashioned racing goggles and leather caps down to vintage suitcases placed in luggage racks. However, to label the Mille Miglia quaint would be misleading – these are serious car and racing aficionados and the appreciation for what goes on under the hood is just as important as the beautiful paint jobs that keep the cars gleaming.

Scheufele himself has taken part in the race 28 times in the 30 years that Chopard has been official partner and timekeeper. “What really caught my attention was the immense enthusiasm that the spectators and general public had for this event, and for the participants,” he says. “Back then, of course, the whole event was much smaller – but you could already sense that it was on the way to becoming something much larger and more international.” With this in mind, Scheufele set about convincing his father, Chopard owner Karl Scheufele, of the merits of sponsoring the event. His efforts were successful, and in 1988, Chopard came on board as historical partner and official timekeeper. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mille Miglia 2017 © Alexandra Pauli for Chopard

To watch the race get underway in Brescia’s Viale Venezia is to experience intense exhilaration. The anticipation in the air is palpable; it creates a rush of adrenalin that is contagious. One could argue any racing event would have a similar effect, but with the Mille Miglia, it is the added sense that one is taking part, somehow, in history, as past and present collide. The parade of cars is a colourful spectacle, of Ford Thunderbirds and other models long since relegated to the annals of history – cars by makers such as Austin-Healey, OM, Lancia, BNC, Riley, Siata and Sunbeam roll on by, alongside grand tourers by the likes of Maserati, Fiat, Renault, Saab, BMW, Alfa Romeo, and Jaguar. There’s even a Triumph TR3.

Scheufele himself has been driving a 1957 silver Porsche 550 Spyder A/1500 RS in recent years, with his regular navigator, none other than ‘Monsieur Le Mans’, the racing great, Belgian Jacky Ickx (this year followed closely in the lineup by German sports car racer Timo Bernhard and Hollywood actor-turned-artist Adrien Brody in a 1955 Porsche 356 1500). “That Porsche Spyder is not just an icon, I love to drive it,” says Scheufele. “It’s light, and nimble, it’s just a delight to drive.”

Karl-Friedrich Scheufele and Jacky Ickx preparing their Mille Miglia race in 1989

And delight is precisely the concept of this race. It has made the Mille Miglia such an enduring and significant event on the international racing calendar. As any classic car aficionado will tell you, the joy is in the handling of a purely mechanical engine, an analogue driving experience with electronics, no power steering, no ABS brakes (in fact, barely any brakes at all in the modern sense of the word), no traction control to help you out if you get a corner wrong, and in the pure physicality of driving in an age of ever-increasing automation. It is also quite something to see these cars out and ‘alive’, and not as static museum exhibits. “The experience here is a tangible one,” says Scheufele. “You can open the hood of these cars and understand what’s going on. In a modern car, often you simply have no idea, everything is managed by electronic equipment. I think the classic car is one of the last areas in which you can actually experience an element of freedom in taking it out on the road.” Imagine the sight of a gorgeous two-tone 1931 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS Aprile, a bright green supercharged MG C-Type from 1932 or a 1954 lemon-yellow Lincoln Capri (although the most popular car by far is the mid-1950s Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Gullwing’ Coupé, of Stirling Moss fame).

Read more: A journey to the Kimberley with Geoffrey Kent

Nobody seems to consider that the Mille Miglia could result in damage to some very expensive vintage machinery. “Back when the first enthusiasts came to the Mille Miglia, I don’t think they were really considering their cars as investments,” says Scheufele. “Even today, I personally consider my cars to be firstly objects for my passion, and then on a secondary level I think, OK, they have increased in value, but I would never buy a car for that reason alone, just as I would never buy a painting for that reason – but some people do!”

Looking to the future, however, Scheufele is keen to maintain quality over ambitious expansion plans. “Now, I think the challenge for the Mille Miglia is to maintain this standard, and in one sense, not to grow any further,” muses Scheufele. “There are many logistical challenges to getting this caravan around Italy while offering every participant a reasonable level of quality, and I think that can only be achieved by tightly reviewing the number of participants that take part.”

So, let’s go back to that balmy spring day. As the sun sets and the last of the cars have set off, the heavens open and rain pelts down on the Lombardy landscape. Those of us warm and safe indoors spare a thought for the many open-top cars and the drivers who are currently getting soaked – although for them, it’s all part of the authenticity of the experience. But when the next morning dawns warm and dry, and the sun shines over Italy and the wind is in your hair and your engine is purring, could there be anything more glorious?

The 2019 Mille Miglia runs from 15 – 18 May. For more information visit: 1000miglia.it