When the photographer ANNA SKLADMANN returned to her parents’ homeland, Russia, she discovered a generation of privileged, sophisticated children. She thought of them as little adults, and has devoted a book to shooting what will become the next generation of Russia’s economic rulers. We publish some of her images from “Little Adults” on these pages, and Skladmann speaks about her experiences to LUX below

LUX Why did you decide to shoot these very privileged children?

AS I was born in Germany to Russian parents. The first time I came to Russia was for the millennium where I accompanied my parents to a masquerade ball. At that event there was a table with children who held themselves, talked and behaved in the manner of Little Adults. Even though I was very young, these images never left my memory.

LUX Did anything strike you about them in general?

AS I started working on the project while graduating from university (Parsons School Of Design in New York) and finished the project two years later. I, as a visual artist and photographer, grew up and shaped myself with these children. They taught me many things and motivated me. My plan is to rephotograph them 10 years from the time the project was finished.

LUX Who was the most interesting?

AS All of them had their interesting facets and stories but there were a couple of striking surprises. For example with Jakob (‘Jakob Shooting at Ballerinas’, Moscow, 2009) I had a planned photoshoot with his sister who was fourteen at that time. She was very ahead of her age and I started to realise that she was actually “too mature” for my project. After the shoot we sat down for tea and she started to show me around the house and in one of the rooms sat Jakob, her younger brother. He was sitting on his bed casually shooting at ballerinas on the TV screen with a Kalashnikov. The Cultural Channel was playing on TV because his grandmother turned it on a few minutes before.

What was the most compelling part of this project?

AS Again, every part of the project had its own appeal. Starting from the simple act of photographing Nastia, my muse for this project, to generating the idea and up to its realisation. Every single chapter and story has shaped my critical and creative thinking. It was the nature of these children which evoked such a desire to create, perfect, and bring this project to life.

annaskladmann.com

Roof Terrace – A state-of-the-art stage boasts elaborate pyrotechnics and laser shows

The new Ushuaia Tower brings a whole new dimension of rave to Ibiza’s party scene, observes DARIUS SANAI on a flying visit to his favourite summertime island

It’s midnight on a July Friday night in Ibiza – the night is just getting going – and a thousand people are waving their arms and tanned bodies in front of uber-DJ David Guetta, who is on stage playing Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child”. The crowd has shaped itself around an enormous swimming pool, which is cordoned off for the night; beyond them, another crowd of onlookers is swarming on the beach; in the distance are the lights of Ibiza Town.

I can see all this because I am at a party of my own, on the roof terrace of the just-opened Ushuaia Tower Beach Hotel, where a competing DJ plays equally vibrant music. The crowd downstairs, where I have just come up from, is young, Hoxton-chic boys and girls delighted to get into the pool party, dressed in a mix of designer and carefully picked fast fashion: it feels like being in the moving heart of a particularly snappy Instagram feed: #gowildbaby.

Upstairs on the roof, it’s a little cooler, in every way. Brands have been pushed together with foresight. Partiers are a little older, a little more restrained: their wild days, you feel, are either behind them, or a couple of hours ahead. The moon reflected in the smooth Mediterranean would be almost romantic, if the DJ weren’t pumping out Avicii at the highest octane.

Welcome to the Ushuaia Tower. I have been invited as a guest to see the opening of the party island’s coolest new club, which sits atop a new luxury hotel tower between Ibiza Town and the airport, built for a new generation of highenergy, high-tolerance, new-gen guests-cum-ravers.

Pool Party – The Tower hosts renowned, exclusive daytime parties featuring top-notch live performances

Room categories sum it up: there’s the Anything Can Happen Suite, the Anything Can Happen Suite with Stage View (offering the same view I was catching), the Fashion Victim Suite, and the I’m on Top of the World Suite.

I was slumming it in a mere luxury double, with views of sea, beach, and mountains, a suggestive minibar, and a minimal-chic bathroom. Unlike some hotels, the room is just an accessory to your experience: a place to spend the morning and early afternoon recovering from everything you have come to Ibiza to do.

You don’t necessarily need to venture outside the hotel’s boundaries to do so, either.

The amorphous giant pool which is a backdrop to the likes of David Guetta at night is the pool terrace of the Ushuaia Beach Hotel – part of the same complex, and already in existence before last summer. The brand new Tower next door has a pool of its own; step onto the beach from either and you are greeted with an array of sun loungers and a beach bar belonging to the hotels. Here they serve an excellent club sandwich made with Jamon Iberico, as I discovered the next morning when indulging in my recovery brunch.

It would, however, have been a little coarse not to drop in on other favourite spots in Ibiza, and here the hotel also came into its own. The cool will tour Ibiza on a 1960s Moto Guzzi motorbike, raven-haired brunette hanging on, vintage Hermès headscarf pulled tight over vintage Cartier, shouting directions and admonishments from behind. I had no such option and opted for what must be the next best thing: a two-seater micro-Smart car, dressed in the hotel’s colours. I headed off for lunch to Cala Jondal, a hidden beach only accessible by a more or less unmarked side road, just two cliffsides away from the nearby airport but a different, secluded world of Ibiza.

The Ushuaia Tower Hotel with its poolside stage is a new concept on Ibiza’s Playa d’en Bossa beach

At Blue Marlin on Cala Jondal, I ate grilled local sea bream with a glass of Ibizan rosé. A supermodel I can’t name was having a discreet birthday lunch with some mutual friends at the next table, and I spent a relaxing afternoon with them before tearing myself away back to the hotel, where a symphony of DJs was warming up for the evening. I slipped into some light Margiela and Lanvin for the evening and made my way over to Lio across town – now an established joint but, with its live Cirque du Soleil shows, still the most glamorous restaurant on the island. The friend I dined with had a family engagement afterwards – only in Ibiza can someone go to their aristo mother’s 60th birthday party in a club, something I just didn’t have the mental range for – and I headed back to the Ushuaia.

Hotels as self-consciously cool as the Ushuaia Tower need to employ striking looking staff to keep themselves on brand. And it’s no secret that striking staff tend not to be excellent staff, as they are naturally en route to a career in modeling, acting, or headlining at the O2 in London, and have limited patience for the day job. It’s been a problem since Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell first opened the Morgans in New York and eye-candy staff of both sexes became the equivalent of contemporary art for a hotel.

Maybe I just caught them on a good day, but the Ushuaia Tower’s staff had plainly been drawn from a different modeling agency. The ravishing (male) concierge had almost burst out of his designer uniform in trying to get me a good table for two at almost no notice at Lio; the (female) receptionist was patience and efficiency personified in dealing with various airline bookings and IT tasks; even the housekeeping staff were fluent and efficient.

There is one proviso for anyone wishing to have the ultimate urban-Ibiza-clubbing experience at the thrilling Ushuaia Tower; no, two. First, while the views are striking, don’t expect gentle romance or trad luxury: this is the hotel equivalent of a Shoreditch superclub. And, if you expect peace and quiet after midnight, or indeed, more or less anytime, then you should probably be getting yourself to another part of the island: or, better, to another island altogether. Otherwise, get there while it’s hot – and while you are, honey.

ushuaiabeachhotel synthroid tablets 100mg.com/en/thetower

They may have begun by bejewelling Bavarian royalty, but Hemmerle is far from being a throwback. CAROLINE DAVIES speaks to the family-owned German jeweller about breaking the rules 

It is October in Munich. I am nestled in a wooden booth in a “traditional” Bavarian inn, erected 15 days previously. Oktoberfest songs blare from painted speakers, echoed by the swaying crowd. Our table is laden with sausages, roasts, apple sauce and several half-finished litre glasses of fine German beer.

“First time at Oktoberfest?” Seated to my right is my host, Christian Hemmerle. He also happens to be the next generation of fine jewellers. Hemmerle jewellers is a Munich dynasty. Founded in 1893 by Joseph Hemmerle, Christian’s great-grandfather, the company has been decorating Europe since they won the warrant to produce medals for the Royal Bavarian court. They even occupy the same spot on Munich’s Maximilianstrasse as they did in 1904. Yet there is nothing staid about Hemmerle.

Today the company is renowned as one of the most innovative jewellery houses in the world, setting rare precious stones into copper, iron, steel, bronze and even wood. The end result is elegant, but minimal. The textures and colours, simply but smoothly arranged, make for tactile and unique pieces. Their one store, an understated glass façade on a street crammed with designer labels, is a favourite for art world impresarios including New Yorker Beth Dewoody.

“We definitely have a tendency towards art more than other manufacturers,” says Christian, shouting over the trombone. “We are just not afraid of doing something unusual.

“My father realised that there was a strong need for understatement. People in the 1980s had very grand jewels. They were getting them out once a year for a gala event, but the jewels were not incorporated in their daily lives.”

In 1995, Christian’s father, Stefan, tried something that would send a shiver down some fine jewellers’ spines. He set a diamond in iron. “My father realised that with these new materials and new possibilities you can make something much more wearable,” says Christian.

Christian Hemmerle and his wife Yasmin

Hemmerle remains a family company. Stefan and wife, Sylveli, continue to manage the business alongside the dapper couple, Christian and his wife Yasmin. Perched neatly at the table, dressed in a traditional Bavarian dress, white blouse and green corseted top, Yasmin has been fully enveloped in the fold. Originally from Egypt, she once worked at a diamond dealer in Paris, long before she met Christian.

“I always knew I had a passion for jewellery,” she says. “But I never knew why. I think it was meant to be.”

The creative process is a collaboration.

“We start with a stone,” says Christian. “There is a momentum, having these two generations together. We bring out the maximum creativity in one another. We sit around a table and criticise it until, by the end, it is a perfect thing.” It wasn’t always destined to be like this. Raised surrounded by jewels, Christian was uninterested.

“After school I wanted to get involved with real estate,” he says. “I couldn’t have imagined starting to work for the family business at that time.

“It was a very sudden change. I wanted to go to New York and my studies required me to find a work place for six months. I called my father, because it was short notice. He said, ‘I can help, but the bitter pill is that it has to be in my industry because those are the people I can call on.’

“I worked for a very small diamond dealer’s firm and I really fell in love with it on the first day. It was doing something natural. Working with precious jewels felt so normal.”

None of the Hemmerle team are nervous around priceless stones. It is unlikely many of their designs would have made it past the first sketch if they were.

“I like to think of myself as someone who pushes boundaries,” says Christian. “A lot of people only do things that have been done before because that is the way it has always been. I like to be innovative and try something new, to try to optimise.”

Creating something new requires an understanding of the old. Hemmerle’s workshop is particularly unusual for its glass beading technique, the 200-year-old skill of ‘sorting and knitting’. The work is so detailed, stones appear as though they are woven together, without a visible binding “

I want you to realise there is engineering behind it but you don’t need to see it,” says Christian. “I want to see the beauty of the piece. It should be beautiful at first sight. Love at first sight.”

Particularly popular with the art world, Hemmerle’s understated pieces are a collector cult.

“I’ve heard stories of people bonding over it at dinner parties,” says Yasmin. “They recognise a brooch or a bracelet from across the room. It’s a good conversation point because many of our clients are very passionate about it.”

“Some people would call it daring,” says Christian. “Others would say we are crazy.

“But there are other people who think the same way as we do and are very supportive of our work. We make so few pieces that we want to attract people that feel the same way about beauty as we do.”

hemmerle.com

Glassblower – Meticulously shapes glass using heat and air

How do you lend form to light? With glass, as glassmakers and bespoke light fittings expert Lasvit demonstrates. Yuen Lin Koh investigates

The gentle vibrancy of the day’s first light, seen on the sparkle of a morning dew. The liveliness of sunrays scattered into a dance by the ripples of a stream. The calm of a shaft of luminosity, soundlessly pouring through the oculus of the Pantheon.

For what is essentially electromagnetic radiation — if we are to break it down by physical science — light possesses magic. It’s magic that can be seen, and certainly can be felt, yet has no form. Or does it have to be that way?

Translating to “Love and Light” in Czech, Czech Republic-based glassmaker the Lasvit Group lends physical form to light with every piece created. The medium is perfect in the dualities it presents. Crystalline clear, it is visible — yet invisible in its see-through quality. An amorphous substance, its atomic structure resembles that of supercooled liquid, yet displays all the mechanical properties of a solid — like fluidity frozen in time.

The company founded in 2007 might be young, but the craft is one that has been perfected through centuries. By combining the traditional artistry of North Bohemian glassmaking with the innovative creativity of world class designers, architects, engineers and lighting technology, Lasvit brings Bohemian glassmaking and designing to a new level. Well-known for its high profile collaborations with cutting-edge design leaders including the likes of Ross Lovegrove, Oki Sato of Nendo and Michael Young, and well-loved by consumers for their iconic collections such as ‘Bubbles in Space’, Lasvit is also revered for its bespoke services that have lit many private and public spaces around the world with their magic.

The shimmering lattice of 250,000 crystal pieces and 12,800 artistic hand-blown glass components, stretching like a web across a diameter of 16 metres on the ceilings of the Jumeirah hotel at Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi. Giant textured bent glass structures connected to a cascade of hand-blown, hollow glass drops, lit by LED and optical fibre to become whimsical “jelly fish” that float atop the futuristic Dubai Metro Stations. The “Diamond Sea” of handblown glass — some dazzling clear, some in amber tones, some twisted, some curved — creating waves that shimmer above the patrons of The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong.

The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong
Lasvit created six pieces for the hotel, including the ‘Diamond Sea’

Majestic in proportions and intricate in detail, each is a shining example of excellence in craftsmanship. Yet each is also an artistic expression — not just of Lasvit’s designers, but also their patrons. Certainly, given carte blanche, their stable of 14 in-house designers can dream up the perfect piece for any space — be it the lobby of a hotel or the dining room of a private home; but more importantly, they have the ability to translate your desires into designs that articulate your message.

‘liquidkristal’ – Developed in collaboration with Ross Lovegrove, the panels explore the innovative use of the material.

Fine-tuned through rounds of revisions with the client, the designs are then detailed through construction drawings and crafting. Each piece of handmade glass is created at the Lasvit facilities in Novy Bor at the Northern part of the Czech Republic — a pine-forested region steeped in glassmaking traditions since the 13th century. There, master glassblowers from families who have been making glass for generations, and who have honed their personal skills over decades, create what is known as Bohemian glass, known best for its inimitable sparkle.

The creation of every handmade piece remains a very basic process. The glass is made as how grandmothers cook: by feel, rather than by following recipes or formulas. In six ovens roaring at 1600°C almost 365 days of the year, glass is kept at a molten state, waiting to be blown, fused, flameworked, sandblasted, engraved or even hand-painted on — waiting to be transformed into wondrous forms.

The craftsmen labour in the glass studios, sipping on beer — it is the supplied drink preferred for its nutritional value and cooling abilities given that the studios burn at about 40°C all the time. They might look a little rough on the edges, and seem a little brusque in their mannerisms, but they work with glass with the tenderness of fathers cradling their newborn. The organic nature of the medium gives it a temperament that is not to be learnt from books, but to be understood from interaction — just as a child is to be known.

Yet this human element is apparent even in technical glass — machine-made pieces ranging from dainty crystal-cut glass beads to Liquidkristal from Lasvit’s Glass Architecture Division — transparent, undulating crystal walls that lend a mesmerisingly dynamic dimension to still structures. The human expression manifests itself in the creativity and artistry of applying these pieces, of transforming cold, hard components into works of art. “Glass is one of the most interesting materials that a designer can work with,” shares Táňa Dvořáková — a veteran designer who has been with Lasvit for six years, and also the creative mind behind masterpieces showcased at the likes of The Ritz Carlton DIFC Dubai, Shangri-La Tokyo, and now The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Singapore. Even for the seasoned designer, every piece holds a new surprise. “There is always a certain excitement — because when I finally illuminate the sculpture and see it installed, a new and more beautiful surprise is always revealed to me, often one I didn’t even expect,” she enthuses. For the piece at The Ritz-Carlton Residences, she took her inspiration from flowers, “particularly poppies and wild flowers: their freely growing petals have always fascinated me”. With childlike wonder, she expressed the delicateness of the subject in the form of a light sculpture composed of petals formed from a lattice of crystal-cut glass beads — “as if, unable to deal with the ephemeral beauty of this wild flower, someone had transformed it into an eternal diamond”.

The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Singapore, Cairnhill
A Lasvit piece hangs as the centrepiece in the dining area

Indeed the process is really as artistic as it is technical. The designers are often at the factories during the crafting of a piece, because it is one thing to follow technical specifications, and another to realise an artistic expression. Lasvit’s expertise is not just in the production of glass pieces — they also know exactly what it takes to mount an installation for safety and your peace of mind, and they even produce all the components, from metal structures to hanging materials. They also know just how to light a piece to bring it to life. Because when you love light as much as they do, you don’t just produce light — you capture the soul of it.

Thomas Wong – ‘Shi Fu” has been in the tailoring business for 56 years

Master tailors are not confined to the town houses of Savile Row or the ateliers of Italy; with the boom in Asian prosperity has come a boom in Asian style. Erica Wong speaks to a Singapore-based tailoring maestro about his unique style

Shi Fu, or master, as Thomas Wong is commonly referred to, asks if I’d like a cup of tea as I take a seat next to him at a quaint coffee shop along Orchard Road. His tone is calm and certain, almost Mr. Miyagi-like. Chairman of the Master Tailor Association Singapore for the last two terms, lecturer at the LASALLE College of the Arts, and owner of one of the oldest tailor shops on the island, Wong has been making suits for the regions’ elite for well over four decades. The industry has changed much but the fundamentals remain the same, as Wong explains…

EW You’ve seen the industry through thick and thin…

TW I started in this line of work when I was 16. I was an apprentice and at that time shops in Singapore were in shophouses. Each shop housed their entire ‘production line’ from start to finish. Tailors trained their teams to do everything from scratch in their own character using their unique methods. As a result every shop has their own style, their own ideas about how to make a suit. The team would discuss the orders or any problems that arose, work out solutions together, which would reflect the philosophies of the brand. If a customer finds that ‘chemistry’ with Tailor A or B or C, they would consistently return to them. There was no competition between A, B or C because they each had their unique cut, style, quality and fit which was very different from one another. Without intentionally doing so, each tailor was a ‘brand’.

Today, the shophouse ‘all under one roof’ concept is gone. Tailors outsource the different parts of the job to independent workers who at times sub-outsource out, since there are only a handful of craftsmen who know how to do each job. Most of these independent workers accept jobs from a number of tailors so you can imagine how the original set up of the tailor ‘brand’ has been lost, the traditional collaborative production lines severed and the uniqueness of each brand has been diluted. The tailor’s role has become that of a coordinator who charges a middle-man fee. In my mind, that’s not a tailor. To be a bespoke tailor, you need to make a particular garment per a customer’s particular request. Instead, tailors are now middle-men who take the request and pass the garment around to various parties who make it in whichever way they know best. This isn’t a very responsible way of offering the bespoke tailoring service.

EW What is at the core of your design ethos?

TW I’ve always been interested in illustration and so naturally in [Chinese] calligraphy. I believe that when people are interested in the visual arts they have sensitivities towards the minute details. Whether that dark green is the right tone or the stripe is slightly too wide, the demand for perfection is innate. When it comes to designing or making patterns or cutting fabric, I apply that same temperament and attitude. Throughout every step of the process I keep thinking about how the suit will fit on the client. Should this cut, length or even shadow appear on his frame? Will the suit look forced or natural on him? Wearing clothes need to be a comfortable affair. If the suit isn’t comfortable or doesn’t make its owner feel better about himself, he winds up as a hangar for the clothes. Then he might as well not wear it at all. The person cannot be a mannequin for the suit, the suit must highlight the man’s strongest features. Of course as a bespoke tailor I need to adhere to the client’s requests so I also need to fit my design into the parameters of his request. This is the challenge.

For example if a larger man wants a double-breasted suit even though most tailors might think it a bad idea, I try to figure out how to not only defy the theories against it but to make him look slim in the cutting of his choice. How should I do the cutting? What kind of fabric should I recommend? What fabric patterns will be the better option? The quality of the fabric also makes a difference. So, in-depth knowledge about all these factors is imperative for a bespoke tailor. Even before you take the job, you need to offer your professional opinions. If you don’t have the fundamental basis and you deliver exactly what the client asks for, then you’ve escaped your responsibilities.

Every aspect — the cut, darts, seams, fabric and accents — plays an important role in the final product

EW With 40 years of accumulated knowledge, what are the main lessons that you relay to your students?

TW Firstly, never take short cuts. Not in any step of the process.

Equally important is to work with integrity. Other players in the field have asked why suppliers provide me with top quality work and lesser quality to them. The answer is very simple. An analogy I often give is a woman who sees her friend’s perfect glowing skin after leaving the spa and requests to achieve the same results. But if she’s not willing to pay for the same top quality skin care products or use the same top aesthetician, how can she expect the same results? It’s just not possible. The same applies for my craftsmen. Everyone may share the same pool of talent but if I pay top prices for top quality and others aren’t willing to do the same, who do you think will be given priority? It’s a simple formula. I always tell my students that we can’t deliver anything sub-par because the dollar notes customers give us are not partial dollars. The $1,000 they give us is $1,000, no less. So if you charge $1,000 you can’t provide a $100 product.

EW There seems to be less and less people who fit into your traditional sense of a tailor. Where do you see the industry heading?

TW Last year, the Asia Tailor’s Congress was held in Singapore and it was Loro Piana who noted that Singapore’s tailors aren’t charging enough. Times have changed and yet we continue to charge low prices so our pricing strategy benefits the end customer, and we don’t pay our workers enough. That’s why less and less people are entering the field and those who are skilled have turned to other lines of work such as driving taxis, which is more lucrative.

What’s more, there’s an interesting phenomenon at play today. Technically the more affluent the country, the better their know-how ought to be and the more demanding the customer, and yet they try to take shortcuts. On the flip side, the poorer the country, the more traditionally trained craftsmen they have, and yet the market generally can’t afford the good fabrics and infrastructure to produce the suits. Over the long run, I hope to see a revival of the traditional crafts and skills, applied in modern contexts. That’s why I teach, in hope that my students will pick up some of the things I learnt many years ago, and apply them in their future careers.

An expert team of make-up artists and beauticians make every request happen

Does make-up all look the same to you? Are you tired of telling your Revlon from your Lancôme? If that’s the case, you might want to pay a visit to a small boutique where every foundation or eye-shadow is bespoke, says Caroline Davies

Near the coffee shops and restaurants of Motcomb Street, in a quiet corner of London’s Knightsbridge, sits Cosmetics à la Carte, small and unobtrusive. Cream carpeted with soft furnishings, make-up displayed plainly on the small table in the centre, it has the reassuring feel of a store that has no need to shout; the people who know about it, know it well.

Cosmetics à La Carte began in 1973, founded by Christina Stewart and Lynne Sanders. The two originally met in the lab, working for Unilever Research and moved together to Yardley where they formulated Marks and Spencer’s first make-up range and various Vidal Sasson hair products. Bored of the mass production line, they left to start their own make-up revolution — tailor-made make-up. Need a lipstick to match your dress, an eye-shadow to suit your floral arrangements or a foundation that, well, matches you? Stewart and Sanders had the know-how to whip one up.

In the company’s laboratory in Battersea, two large white rooms are piled high with carefully marker-penned cardboard boxes, neatly sealed bags of multi-coloured powders and Bunsen burners. I find Sanders, dressed in a white lab coat, bent over the hob. It isn’t a hob of course, but to my untrained eye, this is the closest I can come to describing the black heated pad where she is carefully melting a blood red waxy chunk.

In her 60s, the founder still works in the lab

Now the sole proprietor since Stewart retired in 2009, Sanders is still in the laboratory although she is in her 60s. Her lab coat flaps around her neat skirt as she swirls across the room and I am surprised to notice only a touch of makeup, a slight line of carefully applied blue eyeliner over her wide eyes. She greets me with a broad smile and a brisk, perfect Received Pronounciation ‘hello’ before energetically enlightening me on the contents of the bottles on her worktop. She is currently melting me a lipstick, a mixture of ‘Santa’ (“we used to call it ‘blood’ but that proved an unpopular name”) and ‘Tulip’, combined together to make the colour of a red hat I brought into the shop a few days before. My eyes wander along the surface to the small glass beakers, filled with varying shades of beige to brown liquid and marked in black pen with household names; foundations in progress for famous faces.

“She requires a thick layer to cover the marks on her skin,” says Sanders, pointing to one such pot. “You would never know though.” She is right, you wouldn’t.

Cosmetics à La Carte did not meet with immediate success. When the revolution proved rather slow to pick up, Stewart and Sanders found themselves without much income and without a team. Undeterred, Sanders found a job in a wine bar to pay for the bills and keep the business afloat.

“Can you imagine?” she says. “Well, it all seemed rather jolly at the time.”

Bizarrely, it does sound it, although perhaps because Sanders’ bright, matter-of-fact manner, not dissimilar to a retired old-school Montessori teacher, means most things sound enjoyable. The grand tour continues into the other laboratory where she pops open tubs of brightly coloured pastes and gels, rubbing them on the back of her hand to show the colour and the consistency before explaining the science. She speaks about polymers with much the same interest and passion as a new parent talks about their child. Jumping from science to backstage anecdotes at fashion week and film sets, Sanders’ enthusiasm for her profession is infectious if occasionally over my head.

Cosmetics à La Carte’s luck started to change and gradually the pair began to gain recognition. Make-up artists hunting for an exact historical shade, ravaged screen sirens looking to replicate the dewy complexion of their youth, trendsetters pushing beyond the palette; the drip feed of visitors to the little shop grew. Sanders still remembers the late afternoon in the 80s when Princess Diana dropped by.

“She wanted a nude lipstick, a very particular colour that would suit her,” she says. “We tried out a few selections, made them up and put it together. We still sell her shade today.”

Picking up on the popularity of bespoke make-up, other companies began to try to mimic Cosmetic à La Carte’s model, but none of the large make-up brands have sustained it. The company’s size has fuelled its success — small, but precise.

While most tailored services rely on remixing pre-existing colours, chopping a little more crimson with peach to roughly suit, Cosmetics à La Carte goes a step further. Arrive in store with the remnants of an old lipstick, blusher, foundation or eye powder and they will remake it, from scratch, to suit. Allergies, sensitive skin, thicker consistency; they can accommodate it. Perhaps this is why they are such a success with pedantic period dramas; I am told the Downton Abbey girls adore it.

As she rummages into another corner, Sanders suddenly stops. A look of horror creeps across her face and with a small gasp, she runs from the room. “Oh no, no, stupid.” Bemused, I follow to find her sighing over the hob.

“Singed. That was not the shade we were going for.”

Apparently, the bloody red wax has now gone past the point of return. She throws it away with an air of sadness. Despite spending over 40 years in the laboratory, Sanders’ attachment to her work and her creations is touching. I watch her carefully dissect the wax again, keeping a suspicious eye on it as it melts into a dark red liquid. She pours it into a mould, cuts it out and fastens it into a gleaming new case, complete with a hand written label.

“I’ll keep this with the others,” Sanders says, slicing away a small section of the remainder of the lipstick still in the mould and sealing it in a bag marked with my name. “For when you come back.”

She opens a drawer under the cabinet and I glimpse a host of names and titles that would rival a royal wedding party guest list, all written in the same handwriting with fresh waxy off-cuts. It seems I’m not the only one expected to return to the little cream shop in Knightsbridge.

alacartelondon.com

The elite British education system has never been more in demand. Yet some wonder whether educating boys and girls separately is an anachronism in a 21st century environment where they will work together in their business lives. Our columnist outlines her views on why sending your child to a top single-sex school could still be the best move you ever make Helen Pike

A businessman told me recently that in his native China, two British luxury brands are well-known: Harrods and Eton. It seems that elite single-sex schools not only dominate the cultural landscape and the league tables in the UK, they are part of what makes Britain distinctive globally. Some elite single-sex schools have moved into international education, an export market which amounts to £17.5bn annually, by opening in Asia and the former Soviet Union, markets hungry for top-quality education. For parents of boys, Eton, Harrow and the like are brands with resonance around the world.

That said, elite single-sex schools are a minority, even in the UK. Only 7 per cent of UK pupils are educated in the private sector, of which 20.9 per cent comprises single-sex schools: just over 250 schools in total. So what gives them their resonance internationally — what drives ambitious parents to steer their children towards schools like the above (or the school I am fortunate enough to head)?

I have spent my professional life thus far in five highly academic single-sex schools, three of which are within spitting distance of the River Thames. (Not that any pupils of these schools would do anything so vulgar as to spit, of course.) If anything, single-sex education has become more controversial globally since I did my teaching practice in a single-sex girls’ inner London state school. Elite single-sex schools in the UK are indeed cosmopolitan, exciting places in which to work and learn, the envy of the world, as witnessed by the stiff competition for entry; but in 2013, can we justify that so many of the UK’s finest schools continue to segregate girls and boys?

The most obvious answer is history. The oldest and most famous schools were for boys only; schools for girls came centuries later. So we can contrast the foundation of Eton in 1440 and St Paul’s School in 1509 with that of The Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1853 or South Hampstead High School (full disclosure: my employer) in 1876. A serendipitous combination of grand tradition, location, favourable education policies since 1945, and dynamic school leadership has meant that some — but by no means all — of the oldest schools have remained at the top of an ever-growing pile and become vanguardists in education across the sector.

Elite single-sex education can provoke the glorious British cultural schizophrenia which defends tradition with a sword in one hand, while threatening to take a hatchet to it with the other. Surely the British should not continue to champion segregated hothouses, when all but those who join enclosed holy orders will live and work in a resolutely coeducational world?

Single-sex schools have responded to this in a number of ways. On one side, the Girls’ Schools Association in the UK has been more vociferous, in part because some of its members are defending a market share in the face of boys’ schools which have recently become fully or partly coeducational, and in part because girls’ schools have always been more focused on righting the inequalities which women can encounter — which was why they were founded in the first place.

Meanwhile the International Boys’ School Coalition does what its name suggests, and organises research and an annual conference which brings together schools from the UK, USA and Australia. It argues that it is single-sex boys’ schools which are the endangered species, while girls-only institutions are more numerous and surer of their niche.

And they are right to be: there is much evidence that boys and girls — and particularly girls — make greater progress in single-sex schools and have better life chances than their counterparts in coeducational schools.

I make this point when parents of both boys and girls ask me why they should choose single-sex education. High-achieving single-sex schools are the intellectual and emotional equivalent of elite training for athletes. Crucially, children are not adults. There is so much to be said for an education which, in preparing them for the world they will inherit, does more than simply allow boys to be boys and girls to be girls: it consciously plays to their strengths and needs. Some might regard the idea that children are being sexualised at an ever-younger age is a species of moral panic, but the commodification of girls in particular continues apace. To put it more simply, there is less fuss about dress in single-sex schools.

Single-sex schools also avoid helpmeet syndrome: in boys-only schools which admit girls, for example into the Sixth Form at 16, the girls can become the facilitators of the boys’ progress in the classroom, deferring to the boys rather than testing out ideas of their own. In single-sex schools, gender roles are less marked; there is no opportunity for boys to dominate the brass section of the orchestra while girls tootle fragrantly in woodwind.

If we take the 26 schools of the Girls’ Day School Trust, of which my school is one, we find that GDST girls are over twice more likely to study A-Level Physics or Chemistry than girls nationally, and overall nearly half the students in GDST Sixth Forms take at least one science A-Level (the highest level of school qualification in the UK). This carries forward into university choices, where again over 40 per cent of GDST students do Science, Medicine or Mathematics as part of their degrees. If girls in the UK as a whole sat as many Physics, Chemistry or Maths A-Levels as girls at these 26 GDST schools, there would be nearly 9,000 more school-leavers with A-Level Physics, 20,000 with A-Level Chemistry and 21,000 with A-Level Maths in the population every year. By way of comparison, a recent study by the Institute of Physics found that in nearly half of co-ed schools there were no girls studying A-Level Physics at all.

None of this comes cheap. Annual boarding fees at Eton are now over £32,000 (and Eton is by no means the most expensive), while more competitively-priced day schools charge between £10,000 and £15,000 per year. Is it worth it in a world where a woman can be Chancellor of Germany or head of the International Monetary Fund (although this is not to say workplace equality is with us)? My view is that parents and pupils recognise that it is precisely because the rest of the world is so overwhelmingly co-ed that a single-sex education has such value.

Helen Pike is Headmistress of South Hampstead High School, London, which is ranked among the top five girls’ schools in Britain by the Financial Times; shhs.gdst.net

Looking for a piece of design that absolutely nobody else has? You need to head to a busy Swiss motorway junction and visit the Stilhaus (style house), a gigantic new building bespoked for showing off the best designers of interior architecture, luxury products, furniture and just about anything else. The building itself is as cool as anything it shows, but it’s also the only thing you can’t take with you. This particular image is of the latest winner of the prestigious Red Dot Design Award, by Zurich-based design team Gessaga Hindermann, showcased at the Stilhaus recently. There’s always something on.

stilhaus.ch

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Brindisa in London’s Borough Market

It may not have the adrenaline rush of free falling from an airplane but for our columnist there is nothing quite as thrilling as making a new culinary discovery – Stacey Teo

Travellers today are given the choice of dozens of kinds of adventure holidays. For me though, instead of zip lining over a 300-foot gorge or swimming with great whites, I like my adventures served to me on a plate. There is a real excitement in trying a local dish for the first time or discovering a new flavour.

In my wanderings I’ve stumbled upon some excellent places. I will never forget, and still long to return to, a busy little stall in Bangkok’s Otoko Market for their perfectly grilled Mekong River prawns. I had another memorable experience many years ago on a trip to Hong Kong where I discovered some of the world’s best egg tarts at the Tai Cheong bakery.

Those were lucky moments. Really special finds like those have been rare. In between I’ve had my share of dreadful food experiences. I know I can limit the risk by picking up a guide, and there are a lot of good ones out there, but I have made it a personal rule to go by word of mouth instead. Of course this doesn’t included big name, award winning restaurants. I don’t need a guidebook for that. I normally reserve a Michelin star, or two or three, before ever packing my bags. No, what I’m interested in finding are the places that only the locals know. Finding these little gems is the kind of adventure I want in my travel.

Basically wherever I go, I am in search of the rustic fare that forms the base for that destination’s cuisine. As a chef, I know that in order to appreciate the flower one must understand the root. Ferrán Adrià’s brilliantly deconstructed tortilla means nothing to anyone who has never had a slice of the humble Spanish potato omelette.

One of the advantages to working for a company with a multinational staff is that, without leaving the office, I can get great insider tips on local restaurants that normal tourists would never find. Before I set out on any journey I ask around to get a few pointers and now that I have a pretty good idea of whose culinary instincts to trust, the system works like a charm.

This is how I ended up at Mak’s Noodles in Wellington Street, Hong Kong. I’d been in the city countless times but it was thanks 01 to a co-worker that I enjoyed one of the best plates of wonton noodles I’d ever had. Thanks to another recommendation I also had one of the best pizzas in my life at a place called L’Antica Pizzeria Da Michele in Naples where the Condurro family has been making pizza since 1870. Five generations later it is no longer a tightly held secret, especially since Julia Roberts in the film Eat, Pray, Love ate here, but the two types of pizza they serve (Neapolitana and Margherita, that’s it) are out of this world and the plainly decorated dining room still has a very local feel to it.

One sure sign of food globalisation I have noticed recently is that I am no longer being recommended just the fish and chips in England or the tacos in Mexico. Like my office, the food world has gone international and I am just as likely to hear about a good paella in Washington DC as a fantastic burger in Madrid. A recent trip to Paris was highlighted not by the French food of a famous chef, although there was plenty of that too, but by the falafel served at Chez Marianne followed by a sorbet at Maison Berthillon.

Spicey chorizo sandwich from Brindisa

Before my last trip to London a colleague steered me to a little place called Brindisa in the Borough Market where I had a chorizo roll served with rocket and roasted Navarrico Piquillo peppers. I had to wait out the 20-minute queue that snaked its way into the market (I had been warned) but the smoky intense flavour of the barbequed chorizo was well worth it and probably just as good as anything I could get in Spain.

Next up? A colleague from Montreal who insists there are two stops I simply must make if I’m ever in the city. One is to a humble little establishment called Patati Patata for an order of what she says are the very best fries in the world. The secret apparently is to use a little basil in the frier. The other is to Schwatz’s deli for a thin sliced pastrami sandwich. Normally I’d choose New York for my Jewish deli sandwiches but I’ve dined with this woman numerous times. I know her and trust her taste, so I’ve promised myself that if I ever make it to Montreal I will make time, and room, for both.