Private Edition 16

I S S U E 1 6 R E T R O A C T I V E

COOL RUNNINGSPISTE OF MIND IN

SWITZERLAND’S ZERMATT

NIGERIA RULESSUIT UP FOR BUSINESS

IN NUBILE NAIJA

SHOCK TACTICSDOES ELECTROSHOCK

THERAPY WORK?

WHITE DESERT THE ULTIMATE

ECO-ADVENTURE

Montblanc Star World –Time GMT Automatic WINNER of the “Grand Prix

d’Horlogerie de Genève 2011” category “Petite Aiguille”. The world is at

your fingertips with the Montblanc Star World-Time GMT. All functions of this

timepiece can be easily regulated through the crown by a new patent-protected

mechanism. Automatic movement, home time, the world s 24 time zones. Guilloché

dial with rhodium-plated hands. Sapphire crystal glass with double anti-reflective

coating. Alligator-skin strap, triple-folding clasp. 42 mm stainless steel case. Crafted in

the Montblanc Manufacture in Le Locle, Switzerland.

AWA R D W I N N E R

AVAILABLE AT MONTBLANC BOUTIQUES IN SANDTON, V&A WATERFRONT, GATEWAY DURBAN AND SELECTED OUTLETS.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CALL 011 317 2600 OR VISIT WWW. MONTBLANC.COM

www.montblanc.com

IntriguingSome homes arouse curiosity. A sense of wonder overcomes one

to know what lies beyond lit doors and windows. It captivates with its fascinating and compelling qualities

and draws you into a world that is at once vibrant and comforting.

Search for your own “InTrIGuInG” aTsothebysrealty.co.za

® MMXII Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. All Rights Reserved. Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated. Sotheby’s International Realty and the

Sotheby’s International Realty logo are registered (or unregistered) service marks licensed to Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliate LLC.Kamala, Thailand

www.sothebysrealty.co.za

10 ED’S LETTER From carefully deconstructing the singular appeal of luxury brands to an ancient table, Art-Deco jewellery, a right royal Rolls Royce and inimitable vintages.

12 THE CONFIDENCE FACTOR What difference does it make in inspiring investment decisions?

14 PSST The latest trends for home interiors, fashion accessories, haute horlogerie watches and wintry indulgences.

24 PARADISE FOUND The Westcliff Hotel is

perfectly poised on the edge of Johannesburg’s urban sprawl.

26 FRAMED All eyes are on these high-fashion finds–photo-boothstyle.

32 THE GEO-GRAFIK MISS GOSS Handcrafted jewellery

tocovet–fromsemi-precious stone creations to 18kt-gold collections.

34 SUPERIOR PENMANSHIP Montblanc’s genius includes

signature nibs for your personal writing style.

36 INGRAINED A centuries-old craft brings bespoke wooden pieces to life.

38 EVEN STEVENS Tackling counterfeit tipples and

automatic chronograph watches.

40 SHOCK TREATMENT Electric shock therapy may be drastic for some, but for others, it’s their last hope.

0 4 P R I V A T E E D I T I O N ISSUE 16

CONTENTS

Cover shot by Warren Rasmussen. Styling: Suzannah Garland. Samual Reichmuth is represented by Boss Models. Jersey R1 999, Diesel; scarf R7 050, Louis Vuitton; glasses R1 252, Diesel from Moscon Optics. Hair and make-up: Merle Titus, represented by Infidels

The spa pool at Vigilius Mountain Resort in the Italian Dolomites (p 70)

Ranked #1 by PricewaterhouseCoopers in Wealth Management

Ranked #1 in the Business Day Investors Monthly Stockbroker Awards for Sophisticated Investors

Our #1 rankings are testament to our select investment services for discerning clients. Backed by

our seamless global investment offering, we cater for your individual investment objectives.

www.investec.co.za/wi

Contact us: 011 291 3747

Ranked #1 By Business Day/Investors MonthlyStockbroker Awards for Sophisticated Investors.

Ranked #1 In the 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers Banking Survey in Wealth Management.

Wea l th & Inves tment

Cape Town 021 416 3000 Durban 031 575 4000 Pietermaritzburg 033 264 5800 Port Elizabeth 041 396 6700 Pretoria 012 427 8300 Sandton 011 286 4500Investec Securities Limited Reg. No 1972/008905/06. A member of the Investec Group. A member of the JSE Limited South Africa. An authorised financial service provider. A registered credit provider Reg. No. NCRCP262.

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44 DECODANCE Rare Art-Deco jewels grow in

value through historical allure and spectacular beauty.

48 REPORT BACK The 2012 SALA Wealth Summit

takes an in-depth look at luxury.

52 NIGERIA RULES New-business opportunities abound, butdoyourhomeworkfirst.

58 WHITE WILDERNESS Words don’t come easily when

describing an adventure in Antarctica. The pictures do it all.

68 EUROSTYLE TOUR BMW’s racy ActiveHybrid5 was a

fittingbackdropforanadventurethat included sky-high ski jumps and cutting-edge architecture.

74 AN MTN INITIATIVE Technophobes and modern business are a contradiction in terms. MTN makes it easier with

itsmobileconnectivityoffering.

78 TRAVELLER BUCKET LIST Ifyou’rethinkingofskiing

inZermatt,flydirectorgoby train – cars are banned there.

82 PLAYGROUND When the super-rich want to play,

theyheadforIbiza.Theydemandthe best and they get it – at a price.


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CONTENTSCONTENTS

Luxury brands, like Paul Smith Jeans, were at the heart of the 2012

SALA Wealth Summit’s discussions

‘The growth in SA’s luxury market is driven partly by investors’ penchantforinnovationand custom design and partly by their appreciationofart.’(p48)

www.landrover.co.za/freelander2

CONTRIBUTORS


Patrick Woodhead has been professionally exploring and writing for the last 10 years. Starting with the translocation of rhino in Namibia, Patrick then completed two polar expeditions, breaking the record for the fastest and youngest team to reach the South Pole. He went on to kayak down an unchartered river in the Amazon jungle and summit seven unclimbed mountains in Tibet and Kyrgyzstan. He has published three books for Random House. The latest, The Secret Chamber, is a thriller novel based in the Congo, which has been translated into 10 languages. When not writing, Patrick runs White Desert (www.white-desert.com), dividing his time between SA and England.

Ettagale Blauer is well known to lo-cal readers as the author of African Elegance (Struik), which focuses on the crafts and cultures of sub-Saha-ran Africa. She and co-author/pho-tographer Jason Lauré have written 30 books, including titles on Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Morocco, Mozam-bique, Namibia and Swaziland. Joi Bangla was nominated for a National Book award and South Africa, Coming of Age Under Apartheid was a best-selling work in its category. They’re currently working on a book on scho-lastic publishing in SA.

Blauer is also the author of Con-temporary American Jewellery Design, American Wristwatches, Five Decades of Style and Design as well as hundreds of articles. She specialises in writing about all as-pects of diamonds and jewellery, including diamond cutting, fancy col-oured diamonds, diamond mining, jewellery, gold and platinum. She’s also

written about major jewellery retail-ers and jewellery makers, including Cartier, Tiffany and Van Cleef & Arpels, and is a contributing correspondent of Rapaport magazine, the leading dia-mond magazine covering the industry.

She’s received numerous awards for her writing, including the 1998 Benne Award from the American Jewelry Design Council.

PATRICK WOODHEAD

ETTAGALE BLAUER

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Kathy Malherbe has been a free-lance writer for 20 years specialis-ing in investigative, medical, travel and motoring features. She’s been a regular contributor to Private Edition for the last four years. Her investiga-tive medical feature on the history of apartheid in medicine was a finalist in the Discovery Health Investigative Journalism Awards. She says, ‘Writ-ing for Private Edition has been a wonderful journey – from driving on the F1 track in Abu Dhabi, taking the Bentley Continental GTC through its paces in Croatia, cruising in Tahiti, sledding with huskies in Italy, taking to the ski slopes in Zermatt and inter-viewing the top medical minds for a variety of physical and mental health features. It’s an adrenaline-driven ride, in a vehicle built on rigorous research, intensive and absorbing interviews and unforgettable experi-ences – lightly but firmly steered by an inspiring and mentoring editor.’

KATHY MALHERBE

www.sbacher.co.za

www.panerai.com

OPINION


WHILE RECENT DATA points to a recovery in confidence in some economies, but more muted recoveries in others, concerns about the Eurozone continue to weigh on markets. Against this backdrop, we ask the question: ‘What difference does confidence make?’

Robert Shiller and George Akerlof make the argument in their book Animal Spirits that to understand how economies work, we need to pay attention to the thought patterns that animate people’s ideas and feelings. Consider a confident US employer who has recently seen sales improving and margins widening. He or she is likely to take on more employees. The newly employed then feel more confident to buy a car or house.

Or consider the amateur investor who has recently seen his or her portfolio improve and on the back of this buys more stocks leading to further improvement. This type of cycle can gain its own momentum, leading to improvements in employment, consumer spending, GDP and asset prices. It should be no surprise that US Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is happy to keep rates at close to zero in the hope that asset prices will increase, entrepreneurs will borrow and take on additional risk and large corporates will use

cash to fund capital expenditure programmes.George Soros, in his description of reflexivity,

also alludes to this effect as he argues against the assumption of a stable market equilibrium. And as Paul Volcker puts it in the foreword to The Alchemy of Finance: ‘The thinking and therefore the actions of market participants will affect market behaviour. The market will in turn influence the “fundamentals” and shape new expectations in a continuing reflexive process.’

Can we get to a point where the fundamentals for developed markets can be improved by the actions of market participants?

There are a number of questions that need to be considered when assessing this probability:• What will it take to get to that point of terminal

velocity where the economy and market can run on its own without intervention aimed at improving confidence?

• Can we say with confidence that US culture is different from Japanese culture and that US consumers will regain their previous confidence?

• Has enough time passed since the 2008 crises, the NASDAQ crises and the continuing European debt crisis for investors to forget and ascribe higher valuations to assets?

The US consumer is showing signs of improvement, but it’s not clear how much of this is sustainable without the current interest rate policy. Investor confidence remains fragile and the probability of a bull market driven by PE expansions remains remote.

Confidence isn’t yet at levels that might materially affect the fundamentals, but neither is it at the depths of 2008. It’s likely that government and IMF intervention will continue to be felt in the markets.

Assuming this to be true, high-quality companies paying sustainable dividends should be considered as a part of one’s portfolio as interest rates are likely to remain low and real returns will be hard to achieve out of cash assets.

Wealth manager at Investec Wealth &Investment Neil Urmson reflects on market expectations.

The Confidence FactorWords NEIL URMSON

B R O U G H T T O Y O U B Y I N V E S T E C W E A L T H & I N V E S T M E N T W W W . I N V E S T E C . C O . Z A / W I

Neil Urmson is a wealth manager at Investec Wealth & Investment. For more information, go to investec.co.za/wi.

investec.co.za/wi


Delaire Graff Estate Helshoogte Pass Stellenbosch South Africawww.100x100capri.it ~ www.delaire.co.za

D E L A I R E

E S T A T E

www.delaire.co.za


PsstUTTERLY RANDOM AND

OCCASIONALLY TACTICAL

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SKIN DEEPBags that redefine craftsmanship

When leather craftsman Lothar Schäfer and German businessman Walter Schoch founded Cape Cobra Leathercraft, their goal was to create leather goods from the finest exotic materials that would be prized worldwide. And that signalled the death knell for mass production and shoddy craftsmanship. Schäfer’s perfectionistic streak is synonymous with the kind of quality brand that soon found its way into the hands of members of the British and Monégasque royal families; and Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lopez, Ann Hathaway and Debra Messing, among others who wear North America’s biggest fashion houses’ brand of choice. It’s more than innovative design and immaculate finishing. Leading the way in exotic leather manufacture, Cape Cobra Leathercraft is fastidious about sourcing its materials. Nile crocodile, python, ostrich, lizard and whip-snake skins are procured under the strictest guidelines set down by the Conference on International Trade of Endangered Species. The new Ensemble Collection shows off the best classic styles and features beautifully crafted clasps that add a flourish to the strong lines, softened by subtle organic shapes of the flap and gusset. For further information, visit capecobra.co.za or call 021 415 3440.

Superior finishes –

such as these on the

Bree bag from Cape

Cobra’s Ensemble

Collection – are par for

the course when you

acquire a piece by this

icon of leather goods

www.capecobra.co.za

www.chateaudax.co.za

Skincare is big business. Big enough to spawn its own hybrid terminology: cosmeceuticals – skin products that incorporate scientific and pharmaceutical technology. The value placed on a beautiful skin is summed up by this anonymous quote: ‘I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want – an adorable pancreas?’ Elizabeth Arden has always been at the forefront of technological advances in skincare and a collection of new products in the Prevage and Ceramide ranges is no exception. The active ingredient in Prevage, Idebenone – first identified for its preservation and rejuvenation

effects in organ transplants – has high antioxidant properties and a 95 percent Environmental Protection Factor against free radicals. Despite the active ingredients, Prevage isn't a drug or medicine, but is subject to cosmetic regulations. All Elizabeth Arden brands that have been categorised as cosmeceuticals have been registered with the Food and Drug Administration Authority (FDA) based in the US. In line with the prescribed tests, the new Prevage Day Intensive Anti-Ageing Moisture Cream, Prevage Night Anti-Ageing Restorative Cream and Prevage Hydrating Fluid have proved to have an 80-90 percent efficacy rate when it comes to anti-ageing. The new range of Ceramide Premiere products will also help replace the ceramides and protein in your skin that decrease every year as you get older. The range includes an Intensive Moisture and Renewal Activation Cream SPF 30, an Overnight Regeneration Cream and an Eye Cream. For more information, go to elizabetharden.co.za..

SOME LIKE IT HOTCape Town’s Pepperclub smartens up the city and throws in a few dashing extras

The Pepperclub Hotel & Spa has a few things up its trendy sleeve that make the stay there out of the ordinary – and rather accessible in this winter season. They shuttle you to their ‘off campus’ beach club restaurant and cocktail bar in Camps Bay (a first for SA), thereby cheekily owning a slice of beach and inner-city smarts. The drive to Pepperclub on the Beach is in four-wheel heaven – a plush and very grand Rolls Royce Phantom – and, by request, the chauffeur will take you up Signal Hill at night to give you a ‘landing aircraft’ view of the city lights that spread out rather like that iconic scene of Los Angeles from the movie E.T. And speaking of Hollywood, another clever feature is their private cinema. Book out the Odeon if you will, choose from their selection of DVDs and play a swanky director for the night. For more Pepperclub secrets, call 021 812 8888.

HEALTH SPRINGS ETERNALUnlimited indulgence

Since prehistoric times, people have travelled to hot and cold springs for spiritual and physical purification, but it was the Greeks’ bathing regimens that formed the foundation of modern spa procedures. Today, spas are all about time-out and self-indulgence. There's no better place to cocoon yourself this winter than the Delaire Graff Spa in Stellenbosch, which is offering a winter escape until 31 August. Enjoy hours of pampering and emerge rejuvenated. Most treatments start with a tea ritual, so you can unwind and be receptive to the detoxing and pampering. Apart from the first 100 percent organic and green treatment, the spa also offers a full-body facial and massage, Aromatherapy Associates facials and the Omega-specialised hand-and-feet treatment. There's a 22-metre infinity pool, a Jacuzzi and a Technogym and Pilates studio. For more details, contact 021 885 8160 or visit delaire.co.za.

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PSST NEWS

EMBRACING COSMECEUTICALSAnti-ageing strategies comes of age

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Sheer Driving Pleasure

BMWActiveHybrid 5

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Experience uncompromised power coupled with exemplary fuel effi ciency and lowered emissions in the BMW ActiveHybrid 5.This forward-thinking business sedan, complete with Intelligent Energy Management technology, allows driving on electric power innear silence at up to 60 km/h. It provides sheer excitement: combining next-generation hybrid technology with a powerful BMW inline six-cylinder engine. Consequently, it’s a car that unites aesthetic appeal with dramatic elegance - built to lower your emissions.Not your pulse rate. For more information go to www.bmw.co.za/activehybrid5

BMW ActiveHybrid 5 fuel consumption, combined: 6.7 l/100 km. CO₂ emissions 149 g/km.

6.7l/100 km 225 kWActiveHybrid 5

BMW ACTIVE HYBRID. FULLY CHARGED.

THE NEW BMW ACTIVE HYBRID 5.

BMW. Offi cial vehicle partner to the Springboks.

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PSST WATCHES

SUPERNOVA Franck Muller’s Giga Tourbillon

A small universe of impossibly small components (240 in this timepiece) – such is the technical precision of this Franck Muller Giga Tourbillon that the research and development teams behind it are spoken of in hushed tones. The Giga Tourbillion, set in 18kt rose gold, is the largest to be incorporated into a wristwatch and occupies half the piece – forming a striking focal point in the composition of the face. The watch's mechanical movement with manual winding has been fitted with four barrels (mainsprings) instead of the usual one, ensuring a 10-day power reserve.For further information, call 011 372 6000.

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TIME TRAVELBaume & Mercier

Since 1830, Baume & Mercier has adhered to its design creed – creating affordable luxury. The watches released in 2012 are no different and include the new Hampton line inspired by relaxed seaside living. Just like the halls of Baume & Mercier d’Horlogerie, where the watches are created, the revamped series is a blend of heritage and modernity; authenticity and creativity. It’s hardly surprising when the design team travels the world for inspiration exploring changing lifestyles and colours, shapes, sizes and functions. This contemporary look is epitomised in the new Hampton series first inspired by a museum piece from the 1940s. To make it a duo offer of his and hers and to complement the women’s Hampton metal bracelet watch, Baume & Mercier also developed a stainless steel bracelet for the two automatic timepieces making up the Hampton’s Men’s line. For more details, visit baume-et-mercier.com.

HIGH PERFORMANCE Rolex Oyster Perpetual Sky-Dweller

The new Rolex Oyster Perpetual Sky-Dweller – as intuitive to read as it's simple to use – is the traveller’s dream. The innovation allows jetsetters to read the reference time – via a rotating off-centre disc visible on the dial, indicating whether it's an appropriate time to contact someone on the other side of the world. The Sky-Dweller contains a Calibre 9001, a certified chronometer with a new self-winding mechanism, developed and manufactured in-house by Rolex. A pure distillation of Rolex technology, precision, robustness and reliability, the Sky-Dweller is the perfect symbiosis of aesthetics and technology. For further information, visit rolex.com.

DOWNTIMELimited edition: Omega Seamaster

Omega celebrates its seventh performance in a supporting role in a 007 movie and 50 years of James Bond films with its new Skyfall watch – which the world’s favourite suave, sophisticated agent will be wearing. The new Seamaster Planet Ocean 600M Skyfall Limited edition is perfect for underwater adventure, and equipped with an unidirectional rotation diving bezel and helium escape valve. Water resistant to 60 bar/600 metres/2 000 feet, the timepiece boasts a minute hand that emits a green light, so that in the likely event that Bond needs to know the time while he's 40 metres below the surface, grappling with the enemy, he can. Then, at the 7 o’ clock position, there's a 007 logo, of course. The watch is so stable and reliable that not even Bond’s outrageous shenanigans will leave it shaken – or, for that matter, stirred. Available from August. For more information, visit omegawatches.com.

www.baume-et-mercier.com

www.rolex.com

www.omegawatches.com

Hummingbirds have the unique ability to fl y forwards, backwards, up, down, sideways and hover in mid-air… just like the acrobatics you perform to let your family pursue their passions.

At Aon we realise that worldly possessions do not offer comfort. It’s what you do with them that does: like curling up on the couch to watch your favourite movie. We use our unique skills to design Household and Motor Insurance that takes care of your material success, allowing you the freedom to focus on the important things in life.

Contact us on 0860 100 404 or [email protected]. Alternatively, SMS “Home” to 31762 and we will call you back.

Put our years of experience, specialist capabilities and passion to the test.

Aon South Africa (Pty) Ltd is an Authorised Financial Services Provider (FSP #20555).Aon is the Principal Sponsor of Manchester United.

underwritten by

While you drive your passions, let us take care of your ride

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PSST DESIGN

FROM WORK TO HOMEWell wooded

International design brand Dauphin HumanDesign Group recently launched Dauphin Home. Already a favourite among design cognoscenti for its stylish office furniture, Dauphin now brings this new range of chic furnishings for contemporary homes and modern workplaces onto the stage of timelessness, elegance and style. The Home collection epitomises the brand’s sleek and considered design and features a selection of wood, high gloss, colour and metal finishes on occasional chairs, tables and modular living-room furniture. Contact Dauphin HumanDesign on 011 447 9888 or 021 448 3682 or visit dauphin.co.za.

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SEAT OF POWERTailormade homewearYou don’t have to be an Italian furniture aficionado to know that Chateau d’Ax has been at the cutting edge of elegance and technology since 1948. If you're a dedicated fan, you'd have been singing hallelujahs when they opened their flagship store in Johannesburg last year. Chateau d’Ax has a long history, starting as a family business in Brianza in the Lombardy region where the production of furniture is a pivotal industry. It's considered the genesis of the ‘Made in Italy’ label incorporating craftsmanship by true virtuosos, where attention to detail and design set new trends. Chateau d’Ax can interpret the style of living anywhere, listing versatility and quality as unique selling points. And you're spoilt for choice from the range of more than 300 exclusive models, from basic linear to more trendy pieces. All can be customised in terms of upholstery with a choice of 1 500 fabrics, 300 shades of leather and a wide variety of microfibres. Bellissimo! Call 011 463 7993 or visit chateau-dax.co.za to find out more.

LOYAL ROYALEye-catching trend

The eyes, they say, are the window to the soul, so your eyewear should frame them perfectly. In the case of Silhouette, their eyewear is literally fit for royalty. Some 30 years ago, Queen Elizabeth II – who recently celebrated her Diamond Jubilee – wore Silhouette for the first time. Since then, the brand – which is largely made by hand in Austria from a special polymer composition – has accompanied the Queen everywhere. It's not just nobility, but also beauty that’s at the centre of the new trendy Silhouette Titan Sensazione. Elegance and subtle glamour emanate from the temple design, crafted by hand using soft, brilliant titanium wire. What's more, the pearl-like decorative elements of Sensazione will make you feel enviably regal. For more information, visit moscon.co.za.

GOOD-LOOKING COOKIN'Miele's magic touch

Miele’s been around for more than 100 years and, since the development of the Meteor butter churn in 1901, the company’s consistently designed gadgets and equipment in an effort to remain ‘forever better’. Their latest innovation is the new KM 3054 G gas-on-glass hob. Until recently, ceramic glass could only be used on electric hobs, but now Miele's amalgamated the beauty and practicality of ceramic glass with the functionality and environmental friendliness associated with cooking with gas. Features include a spacious surface with five cooking areas and the glossy, yet scratch-resistant ceramic glass top is offset against cast-iron pot rests (which are dishwasher proof). The Gas Stop functionality – a thermo-electric ignition safety device – ensures that the gas supply is interrupted if the flame is extinguished. Visit miele.co.za for more information.

http://www.chateaudax.it

http://www.moscon.co.za

http://www.miele.co.za

www.dauphin.co.za

www.capecobra.co.za

IS THERE A HOTEL with a better city view than The Westcliff? When the wind blows in the right direction, the sounds of lion grunting drifts up to the pool terrace – a thrilling experience for foreign visitors, even though it’s Johannesburg Zoo sound effects and not the wild. The distinctive terracotta pink

hotel (one of the Orient Express group stars) remains one of the best places to experience the city’s reputation for being one of the greenest in the world. In November, it turns into a tapestry of lilac when the jacaranda trees bloom. The suites are all discrete luxury, with even the décor challenge of where to put a mod con like a television set (that spoils the plushness) solved by having it rise like an electronic Prometheus from a cabinet at the base of the bed. Touch-button convenience while you have breakfast in bed is a small but compelling reason to spend a lazy weekend there. Don’t miss dining at La Belle Terrasse though. Chef Klaus Beckmann serves up a glorious array of quite rich, but palate-teasing food which, for Private Edition, he matched with wines from the impressive cellar. Can

you teach great service? It always comes over a little canned, but at The Westcliff it takes the form of genuine warmth right from the blokes who shuttle guests from reception to their suites, to the bar staff. When we stayed there earlier this year, the only slight inconvenience was a cluster of luxury minibuses at the top of the drive. They were on stand-by for (and here The Westcliff driver lowers his voice to a reverent whisper) a ‘very famous rap artist’ who was staying there. Rap and the Westcliff’s undeniable traditional-world glam may seem odd bedfellows, but when you’re top class, private and perfectly positioned, then you’re bound to be the choice of anyone from pop stars to princes.

For more information, visit westcliff.co.za.

The Westcliff Hotel hides a few delicious secrets behind her walls.

Pink on the Green

Words LES AUPIAIS

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Exuding a rural air despite its urban setting, The Westcliff Hotel is a Johannesburg landmark

www.westcliff.co.za

SA's leading wine importer specialising in Bordeaux Grand Crus and the finest wines from around the world.

For more information and our full investment portfolio, email [email protected] or visit www.internationalwines.co.za 58 Bompas Road Dunkeld Johannesburg +27 11 447 6427

International Wine Co.Your guarantee of authenticity and impeccable provenance!

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Sam’s top R1 100, Ben Sherman; leather jacket R8 599, Diesel; glasses R3 880 and watch R63 100, both Cartier

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PSST FASHION

Sam’s jersey R1 999, Diesel; scarf R7 050, Louis Vuitton; glasses R1 252, Diesel from Moscon Optics

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Push the fashion button with these spectac(u)le-r looks.

Framed

Photography WARREN RASMUSSEN

Styling SUZANNAH GARLAND

PSST FASHION

Sam’s shirt R1 195, Gant; leather jacket R8 500, Replay; glasses R2 700, Oliver Peoples from Extreme Eyewear; cap R700, Ben Sherman

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PSST FASHION

[Left] Sam’s jersey shirt R849, Ben Sherman; jersey R1 395, Gant; peacoat R4 500, Replay, glasses R2 100, William Morris at Extreme

Eyewear. [Right] Djavan’s shirt R280, Cignal from Markhams; jacket R11 999, Diesel 2 9

PSST FASHION

3 0

Djavan’s top R2 450 and trench R15 995, both Burberry; scarf R995, Gant; glasses R2 170, Emporio Armani from Extreme Eyewear

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[Strip 1] Djavan’s denim shirt R1 500 and jacket R8 000, both Edwin at the Edwin Store; leather bag R3 900, Bleu de Chauffe at the Edwin Store; hat

R549, Ben Sherman; glasses R2 170, Emporio Armani at Extreme Eyewear. [Strip 2] Djavan’s jersey R1 495, Gant; knitted jersey R1 399, Ben Sherman;

jacket R799 and faux-fur collared coat R999, both Markham; glasses R2100, William Morris from Extreme Eyewear. Sam’s jersey R1 899 and corduroy

jacket R2 800 both from Ben Sherman; glasses R1 498, Diesel at Moscon Optics; watch R110 000, Cartier. [Strip 3] Sam’s shirt R349, Trenery; trench

R15 995, Burberry; skinny tie R65, Cignal from Markham; glasses R2 750, Georgio Armani from Extreme Eyewear; watch R47 000, Porsche Design.

[Strip 4] Sam’s jersey R450, Markham; jacket R37 500, Porsche Design; glasses R4 750, Louis Vuitton; scarf R3 995, Burberry

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THERE’S AN ARRESTING QUALITY to a Kirsten Goss adornment that makes you stop, stare and reach for at least two of three things: the piece that grabbed your attention, another that distracts you from the currently coveted item, and your wallet.

That’s if you’re in-store at Kirsten Goss London, Durban, Johannesburg or the soon-to-be-opened Cape Town store – or at a pop-up store somewhere else in the world.

If you’re tuned in to Mother Nature’s bounty, you’ll be drawn to the Durban-based designer’s intricately woven sterling silver earrings or perhaps a multi-strand neckpiece, both featuring semi-precious stones. Her signature lily-pad ring of polished, textured 18kt gold vermeil wrapped around a faceted briolette was recently named ‘Most Beautiful Object in South Africa’ at Design Indaba 2012.

For a more modern appeal, the geo-grafik range is the first of four new collections to be launched this year. Heavily inspired by Goss’s Scandinavian maternal line, this comprises a ‘series of clean, geometric lines, with an emphasis on the transaction between positive and negative space’.

The remaining three collections for the year are equally directional and different from the other, she says. ‘Animalion, Tough Luxe and Tribal Chic are inspired by bigger trends internationally and then translated into our own style.’ And it’s that style that’s allowed Goss to grow from being ‘a fresh-faced 26-year-old just off the boat’ − trying to persuade a landlord that leasing their Kensington store in London 10 years ago was low-risk − to an international brand with kudos for exquisitely handcrafted pieces. Studying economics at university, Goss switched to a major of fine arts in jewellery design. ‘After a couple of years of asset management, I’d cut my teeth in business, but really had no comprehension of the challenges that lay ahead. I started out in a shared space at Westbourne Studios in London, learning about building a brand’s identity, client base,

relationships with the press and managing finances. Opening the Kensington store was something else entirely. We virtually had to sign our lives away to get the lease pushed through.’

In 2011, Kirsten set up a live video system connecting her London store and the Durban studio – after she’d moved back home in 2008. ‘For the London team, it’s exciting to see designs unfold and to get a sense of the buzz in the studio. For Durban, it’s great for the staff to see what’s afoot in-store, and to see clients trying on and wearing the jewellery they’ve handcrafted on the other side of the world.’

Kirsten has surrounded herself with master craftsmen like goldsmith Mike Finch, who’s worked with big-name designers in SA on very refined and classic settings for 20 years. His input has been key in the development of her solid gold ‘precious’ collection. Meanwhile, Chantal Mayer joined the team as head of product development earlier this year. ‘Chantal actually tutored me at Stellenbosch. She has an eye for exceptional, traditional craft as well as a natural quirk and irreverence that are beautifully suited to my style.’

While her website provides a new channel for sales, Kirsten knows the value of clients being able to touch and try the product at the source and engage with her staff. ‘This helps maintain the personality that is so often lost in department stores or online. A gallery-style store in key cities internationally is where I see the brand headed.’

International trends forecast the new collections and seasonal colours along with various personal inspirations. ‘This year I’ve made a real departure with the designs; the collections are definitive and strong and the response has been fantastic. I think it’s key for a brand to push boundaries, but also to consider who’s going to wear those pieces; it’s like a sliding scale from everyday wear to maximum statement!’

For more information, visit kirstengoss.com.

Kirsten Goss’s eye-catching creations are completely handcrafted. The result? Imperfect perfection.

The Geo-grafik Miss GossWords DEBBIE HATHWAY

AT YOUR SERVICE AT YOUR SERVICE


Goss’s signature lily-pad ring, R6 100,

features a faceted green amethyst

and was made in 18kt gold vermeil and

sterling silver. It was recently named

‘Most Beautiful Object in South Africa’

at Design Indaba 2012

Pyrite, feldspar, carnelian,

dalmation jasper, golden

citrine, smoky quartz, R3 550

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AT YOUR SERVICE AT YOUR SERVICE

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THE URBANE AND VERY CHARMING Carlo Giordanetti, creative director at Montblanc, tells Private Edition that just before Prince Albert of Monaco married South African swimmer Charlene Wittstock, he was summoned to the palace for an important meeting.

It seems the Grimaldi family have been Montblanc fans forever, but this time, the tricky question of ink – not a new writing instrument – was the issue. Charlene fancied the blue; protocol demanded black and never the twain would meet. Stalemate. Luckily, Montblanc has a special blue-black made by a combination of pigments designed to last 50 years. It was a done deal.

Montblanc also has a ‘DNA’ ink created from plant matter to protect you from counterfeiting. Very useful for presidential peace signings and general territory ceding after a war, no doubt.

But the most desirable ‘app’ – if you will – is a bespoke nib that’s designed after you’ve taken a test to determine your writing style. Your acceleration, pressure, spread, angle and inclination is measured and then a nib is designed to allow you to write effortlessly and precisely. Of course, these are very clever add-ons for the brand that’s become synonymous with a range of extraordinary signature pens designed to capture the essence of great artists and authors – from a Frida Kahlo and John Lennon to one of Giordanetti’s all-time favourites, the Charlie Chaplin.

The Collection Princess Grace de Monaco is the latest in the line-up and the delicate colour and diamonds are fitting tributes to her style and glamour. Giordanetti is ‘passionate about passions’, something he gets from his Italian blood. ‘I find in contemporary arts and culture as well as in classic expressions of man’s genius, the nourishment for my soul – and my job.’

And it’s a job that’s as good as it gets if you’re designing the writing instruments that officially sign historic pacts and seal royal romances; each pen not only a masterpiece of design but one that, when passed down for generations, carries its own secret history.

For more information, visit montblanc.com.

Montblanc takes personal signature to a new level and pays homage to artistic genius.

Ultimate PenmanshipWords LES AUPIAIS

AT YOUR SERVICE

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[Above] A to-do list written by John Lennon,

on display at the GOTTA HAVE IT! Rock &

Roll Pop Culture Auction Press Preview in

New York City. [Below] A John Lennon 1940

limited-edition Montblanc pen in sterling silver

www.montblanc.com

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www.bidvestbank.co.za

BY COMMISSION ONLY


ROGER YOUNG’S WEATHERED HANDS roll the smooth black pebble gently and evenly across the sunken belly of the fish, bringing a brilliant sheen to its dulled contours. ‘It’s the perfect tool for the job,’ he says, cradling the shiny stone in his palm, its simplicity incongruous among the thousands of rands worth of premier-quality chisels, saws, planes and clamps that line the walls of his light-flooded studio.

It’s an odd place to witness the creation of a fish. Beyond the studio walls the midday sun bakes the dusty scrubland of the Klein Karoo; we’re hundreds of kilometres from the nearest ocean. ‘I suppose my fascination with the prows of Viking boats leads me back to the sea,’ Roger muses, ‘their craftsmanship was unbelievable.’ Mermaids slither up his table legs, waves curl magically along the edges of fireplace surrounds and here and there, a bare-breasted maiden strikes a bold pose. The sea has seeped into every corner of Roger’s work, and so have the stars, influenced by the enormous skies above his rural home. But there are also leopards, lizards, crucifixes and even an otter carved into the cherry wood, rare imbuia, oak, rosewood and yellowwood that he’s crafted for clients.

It was the work he did for First Rand’s GT Ferreira that catapulted Roger from artist to superior bespoke craftsman. Tokara, Ferreira’s estate on Franschhoek’s Helshoogte pass,

boasts a 6m x 4m mantelpiece carved from cherry wood. The detail is exquisite. ‘I took inspiration from the farm, using elements from it to create the design… the otters, the bloukoppe (chameleons), the vineyards. And after that my career flew,’ he says.

His is the kind of big break artists dream about. A Durban-born surfer dude, Roger studied fine art and metal sculpture at the universities of Johannesburg and Cape Town but struggled to find post-graduation employment. ‘I built swimming pools, taught at a Waldorf school, sold wooden bowls door-to-door… anything to survive.’ Then a friend asked him to build a bed and a cupboard and that led to a hand-cut dining-room table. Roger’s work eventually caught the eye of fifth generation art dealer Trent Read, who commissioned a table for the Everard Read gallery in Johannesburg. ‘I got a lot of commissions after that.’ It was interior designer Marilyn McDowell who matched Roger’s talent with Tokara’s décor needs and today his client list reads like Forbes magazine’s eagerly-anticipated World’s Richest issue – Rothschild, Slack, Paul Harris...

Marc Chagall’s granddaughter, Meret Gruber-Meyer, has two splendid framed mirrors carved by Roger in her three-storeyed home on Ile de Cite in Paris. Again the incongruity – across an ocean, Roger’s work lies in the shadow

of Notre Dame; here in his studio it is the shadows of the majestic Swartberg mountains that steal the light. His studio is one end of a 100-year-old schoolhouse that he discovered while taking photographic stills of the landscape for filmmaker Manie van Rensburg. There was no electricity, no water and precious little archictectural distinction about the derelict building, but like the raw wooden planks he works with, Roger saw its inner beauty.

An adjoining photographic gallery (he’s also a professional photographer) is dwarfed by an imbuia armoire, handcrafted by Roger using traditional joinery techniques. ‘It’s very difficult to find imbuia now. This is probably the only one of these I’ll ever make,’ he says, opening its huge doors to reveal a multitude of drawers and shelves. It’s the kind of piece you imagine being passed down through generations − breathtaking in both size and workmanship.

Artisanal crafts are trending on every level right now and there are thousands of entrepreneurs producing bespoke goods. Roger’s intricate carving puts him a head above the rest. ‘As I work, it takes on a life of its own,’ he says, running his hands through the ‘hair’ of a mermaid. ‘Wood is a very giving medium.’

For more information, call 044 213 3100 or email [email protected].

Roger Young breathes new life into the centuries-old craft of wood carving.

Master Carver

Words TONI YOUNGHUSBAND

Photography HANS VAN DER VEEN

BY COMMISSION ONLY There’s a sensuality in

the way Roger Young

handles a piece of

wood, in the gentleness

of his touch and the

way his fingers work

with its natural curves

ISSUE 16 P R I V A T E E D I T I O N 3 7

‘HOW MANY PEOPLE out there truly know what a bottle of Mouton ’45 should really taste like?’ This was the question recently posed to me by a friend. Had you enjoyed such a bottle yesterday, the answer to that question would quite simply be: ‘None.’

An exquisitely elegant bottle of Palmer ’61 from the Margaux appellation in Bordeaux − famed for being one of the top five wines ever produced in Europe’s long and colourful history − is a living product changing constantly in the bottle, and which today may have different characteristics to those displayed yesterday. This is part of a great wine’s character and, with so much personality jam-packed into one bottle, a second is always called for.

Google Château Mouton Rothschild 1945 and you’ll find it for sale from merchants the world over ranging in price from $500 to €30 000 per bottle. Well, why pay €30 000 a bottle for this treasure when you can have a bottle or six – or a case, or thirty thousand – for a mere $500?

The answer lies on William Nicol Drive in Johannesburg, where you can shop until you drop for all the Louis Vuitton, Breitling or

Montblanc your heart desires − and find better craftsmanship and quality in your new Vuitton bag for the bargain price of R300 than you’ll find in a bottle of Mouton ’45 purchased for $500. Of course, you pay for what you get and what passes for fake on the Nicol strip has a counterpart in fine wine.

A scrupulous printer in Canada was once asked to recreate the famous label for Mouton Rothschild 1973 designed by Picasso. Finding this request to be dubious at best, he alerted the authorities, who raided the warehouse of the distributor in question only to find 30 000 cases of counterfeit Mouton Rothschild. In addition, from a supermarket’s warehouse in China, 200 000 bottles of counterfeit Mouton Cadet were seized, so even at the $5 per bottle mark, a market for counterfeit wines exists.

Château Latour has pioneered the practice of microchipping every bottle in every case and every pallet shipped around the world. Château Ducru-Beaucaillou has placed a hologram on the label in their efforts to protect the true identity and authenticity of their wines. The French government has 20 dedicated officials, spending approximately €20 million annually

to combat the problem. The problem knows no borders. Thousands of counterfeit cases of one of Australia’s three greatest wines, Penfolds Grange, were discovered in the US and identified as such after the word ‘poured’ was misspelt on the back labels as ‘poored’.

Moreover, the drinkability of these very old vintage wines rests solely and exclusively on the quality of their cellaring over time. Distributors the world over may purchase rare and old vintage wines wherever they find them. Bottles of Bordeaux’s greatest may find a torturous way home, but none of them travelling first class.

A bottle of Lafite Rothschild ’29, Margaux ’83 or Sassicaia ’85, with all their potential greatness, will fail the travel test after spending 10 years on the wine rack right next to a pizza oven in Brooklyn, New York.

The only question to ask when buying wine for thousands of rands is: ‘Where did it come from, and before that, and before that?’ If you can’t trace it back to its humble beginnings at the château or estate, then don’t buy it. Provenance and traceability are the key elements. Know who you’re buying your wine from, and always know who they, in turn, are buying from. Santé.

Steven Lack issues a warning about legendary wine bought on the cheap.

Too Good to be TrueWords STEVEN LACK

Photography FIONA ROYDS/INFIDELS

EVEN STEVENS: INVESTMENT


Do you know your

wines’ labels

well enough to

identify possible

counterfeits? If you

don’t see this neck

label on a bottle of

Bordeaux Grand Cru

Classe, don’t buy it!

MAN HAS THRIVED TO MASTER THE MEASUREMENT OF TIME. First with sundials, then with the flow of water and with mechanical movements used first in clock towers. Early clocks were operated by weights and had limited accuracy. Scientific curiosity drove mankind to divide time into smaller fractions.

Galileo Galilei’s observations on the motion of the pendulum led to the pendulum clock in 1656, made by Christiaan Huygens. Using the pendulum as the oscillator allowed time to be divided accurately and transmitted via an ‘escapement’ as an impulse to a train of wheels, which in turn moved the hour and minute hands. But because a pendulum clock was set in a fixed position, its usage was limited.

John Harrison took timekeeping to the next level. In 1714, following the recommendation of Isaac Newton to the British parliament, scientists were challenged with a reward of £20 000 to find a method to calculate the longitude with an accuracy of half a degree. By 1761, Harrison had built a marine chronometer to reach this goal. It looked like a large pocket watch and had a spring and balance wheel escapement replacing the pendulum as the

oscillator. This oscillator ‘swung’ at a higher frequency than the pendulum and functioned in any position, allowing accurate timekeeping on the move. Today, all mechanical watches work with such oscillators, although more inventions were needed to achieve today’s quality.

Until the early 20th century, all watches were pocket watches that needed to be wound manually using a key and later the crown. An industrial drive to standardise the size of the movement parts resulted in wristwatches becoming the norm in the 1920s. In 1928, John Harwood, in collaboration with Swiss brand Fortis, sold the first watch with a new device enabling the watch to wind itself by means of the arm movement of the wearer. Harwood used a weight swinging back and forth – winding the mainspring. The automatic watch was born.

Several reputable watch manufacturers used this concept, but the great breakthrough of automatic watches was pioneered by Rolex. Instead of a rotor moving back and forth, Rolex’s version rotated a full 360 degrees creating the Rolex Oyster Perpetual. In the late 1950s and 1960s, automatic winding became standard in quality mechanical watches. As the weight rotor

needed space and increased the thickness of the watch, some high-end companies continued to design manually wound watches and, today, high-level manual movements are used in ultra-flat or highly complicated watches.

Before 1957, automatic watches were more than 5,5mm high. In 1958, Buren launched the Super Slender with a height of 4,2 mm – the flattest automatic watch in the world at its launch date. The construction was based on an eccentric rotor being sunk into the movement, rather than being centrally mounted on the back of the movement.

This invention still allows haute horlogerie watchmakers to construct complicated movements as automatic timepieces.

By 1969, a research and development venture between Buren Watch Co, Breitling, Heuer-Leonidas and Dubois-Deparaz resulted in the first automatic chronograph, the Chronomatic – using this very same invention.

It is difficult to imagine today’s luxury watch business without an automatic chronograph. It took curiosity, inventiveness, competitive spirit and technology to create time as we experience it today.

4 9

Since the first clock towers and pendulum clocks, the world of watches has constantly been evolving.

Mastering TimeWords STEVE KOCHER

Photography FIONA ROYDS/INFIDELS

EVEN STEVENS: INVESTMENT


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transparent back to reveal

the automatic movement

with its 18kt rotor

ELECTRIC SHOCK TREATMENT of any nature has an image issue – courtesy of Josef Mengele’s horrific experiments in the holocaust where high-voltage electric shocks were administered under the guise of testing endurance; the SANDF 1970s aversion therapy to ‘cure’ homosexuals and death-row prisoners being led to the electric chair, strapped down and then fried in front of an audience. Then came the early attempts at electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), also known as shock therapy. Medications, like insulin, were first used to induce seizures in 1938. Insulin causes a sudden drop in glucose, which causes the brain to develop seizures as a sign of distress. That’s because blood glucose is the only ‘fuel’ the brain can use for its energy needs, if deprived of glucose.

A year later, electric currents were used to induce seizures. It was a barbaric procedure, with patients suffering unsurprisingly huge amounts of anticipatory anxiety – not to mention frequent bone fractures from arching and thrashing in response to the current.

The equally brutal practice of psychosurgery, in the form of lobotomies, was another popular ‘cure’ for mental illness at the time.

ECT was abandoned in the 1950s when psychoactive medicines were introduced and re-emerged in the 1970s – despite its stigma – to help the mentally ill who were unresponsive to psychoactive medications and psychotherapies.

ECT, for the treatment of severe depression, has seen another resurgence in the last 10 years largely due to refinement of the procedure – making it safer and less traumatic. It involves electric currents being passed through the brain.

These currents trigger a generalised cerebral seizure, which in turn causes changes in brain chemistry that can immediately reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses. It’s a last-ditch attempt to reboot the brain’s operating system, which gives hope to those who are not responding to any other methods of treatment for mental illness.

Dr Gerhard Grobler, President-Elect of the South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP) says, ‘Without ECT, at worst, these patients would not survive; at best, lead tragic lives.’

But has ECT entirely overcome its bad reputation? ‘To a certain degree,’ says Dr Grobler, ‘but there are still detractors – some vociferous.’ He says one of the reasons for the stigma is that, until 2002, ‘unmodified ECT treatment’ was still legal. In this procedure, high doses of electricity were administered without anaesthesia or muscle relaxants. However, stringent regulations in the Mental Health Care Act have made it illegal and unmodified treatment hasn’t been practised for the last 15 to 20 years. However, despite a call by WHO for the worldwide banning of unmodified treatment, it is still practised in countries like Japan, India and Nigeria.

So what happens during ECT? This account by one patient vividly describes the experience: ‘The doctor presses a button. Electric current shoots through my brain for an instant, causing a grand mal seizure for 20 seconds. My toes curl. It’s over. My brain has been “reset” like a wind-up toy. I wake up 30 minutes later and think I’m in a hotel room in Acapulco. My head feels as if I’ve just downed a frozen margarita too quickly. My jaw and limbs ache. But I feel elated. On the

anniversary of my first electroshock treatment, I was clearheaded and even-keeled. Two and a half years later, my medication keeps my illness in check, and I’m saner than I’ve ever been. If I could only remember the capital of Chile.’

To the observer, it may initially feel like watching a scene from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest but it is in fact a medical procedure, meticulous in its preparation and execution by an anaesthesiologist, psychiatrist and nurses. An IV is inserted, sensors or electrode pads (each about the size of a 50c coin) are attached on the sides of the head, and an electroencephalogram or EEG measures the electrical activity in the brain.

A pulse oximeter allows them to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood. An anaesthetic is injected into the IV and the patient drifts off for five to 10 minutes – all it takes, say fans of ECT, to ‘shock a broken mind into recovery’. A muscle relaxant is injected to help prevent convulsions during the seizure and a mouth guard is sometimes placed between the teeth.

The button is pressed and the electrical current passes with a force of from 70 to a maximum of 450 volts (the electric chair uses 2 000 and a wall socket around 250). The current induces a seizure that lasts between 45 and 60 seconds.

Doctors monitor the seizure by placing a blood pressure cuff around the forearm or ankle area, preventing the muscle relaxant from paralysing those muscles. Uncontrolled jerking movements of the limb are the only indication the doctor will have that there is a seizure.

It’s all over in about 15 minutes. A few minutes later the effects of the short-acting anaesthetic

Electroconvulsive therapy has a dark past. But by using modern methods and tighter control in the process, psychiatrists are returning to it for the treatment of severe depression.

Shock Tactics

Words KATHY MALHERBE

BRAINPOWER



BRAINPOWER

and muscle relaxant begin to wear off and the patient is taken to recovery. Patients say they wake up confused, their memory blank, but hopefully with a brain that’s been shocked into healing.

Although the exact mechanism is little understood, psychiatrists agree that it’s all about hormones. Dr Grobler says it has to do with rewiring the brain.

‘The magnetic stimulation and convulsion is a wake-up call for the brain to release massive amounts of neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, norepinephrine and acetylcholine. All natural feel-good neurochemicals. It’s the chemistry,’ says Dr Pierre Cilliers, a psychiatrist specialising in ECT in Cape Town. ‘Hormones are activated, which play a huge role in mental illness – postpartum blues, menopause depression. Their proper functioning is essential to a healthy mind as much as to a healthy body. Hormones are released by the brain’s endocrine glands, the hypothalamus and the pituitary. These master glands, which lie deep in the middle of the brain, are directly stimulated when seizures are induced by electricity or by medicine. Such stimulation re-establishes the proper glandular functions of the brain, bringing all the other glands into line, including those that affect mood, thought and motor functions.’

Dr Grobler says that having an electric current pass through your brain for 45 to 60 seconds is not a panacea for all mental illness, but it has had excellent results in patients with treatment-resistant illness. ‘Not all conditions respond to ECT and, for those that do, it is almost always their only hope.’

Anti-ECT activists see it differently, saying it damages the brain. They believe the patient is dazed, confused and disorientated and therefore cannot remember or appreciate current problems. Patients just ‘pack up their troubles in a vacuous or fuzzy kit bag,’ they say, and add that ‘the greater the brain damage, the more likely that certain abilities and memories will never return. It is the way in which psychiatrists sometimes choose to deal with troubled and troublesome minds. Rather like the now unpopular lobotomy, we question this dubious method of obliterating rather than dealing with emotional distress.’

A 45-year-old woman, who had 18 ECT treatments over six to eight weeks for intractable, dangerous depression appears to back this up. ‘I’ve been asked over and over again whether

undergoing electroconvulsive therapy was a good decision. And whether I would have ECT again under the same circumstances. The only honest answer I can give is that I have no idea. To say whether ECT was the right treatment for me, I would have to compare my life before ECT to my life now. And I simply cannot remember life before ECT. In particular, I cannot remember much about the two years leading up to my ECT treatments. That period, along with much of the preceding years, is memory that I lost in exchange for the hoped-for benefits of ECT.’

Detractors have an ally in the form of Scientologists who are vociferously against the practice, saying it is brutally cruel and should be outlawed. They do, however, have a penchant for slamming all psychiatrists who they believe are ‘the sole cause of decline in this universe’ and ‘reincarnated evil’.

Scientologists disagree with what thousands of scientific research studies in reputable, peer-reviewed journals have shown: that most, if

not all, brain disorders are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.

Neither Dr Grobler nor Dr Cilliers are cavalier about the use of ECT in treating depression. They say that ECT isn’t taken lightly and is not the first line of treatment.

‘In fact, it is the third or fourth. We only treat patients who are very, very ill and whose quality of life is limited, where severe depression is accompanied by detachment from reality (psychosis), a desire to commit suicide, hurt someone else, refusal to eat, schizophrenia, severe mania as part of a bipolar disorder, impaired decision-making, life-threatening impulsive behaviour, substance abuse and catatonia,’ says Dr Cilliers.

‘In such conditions, electroshock may be

life-saving. ECT is also not the end of the line for patients. After six to 12 treatments, they usually need to continue with medication. More often, it includes antidepressants or other medications or psychological counselling (psychotherapy). It needs to be said that no scientific, valid research proves the alleged brain damage caused by ECT, but some evidence exists indicating that untreated mental illness leads to brain atrophy.’

ECT was the last resort for another two patients. One received a medication for treatment-resistant depression and anxiety after they had ECT. ‘That particular medication saved my life and gave me precious recovery. But I might not have been alive to try it if I had not been given ECT first.’

The other adds, ‘Friends and family say that I’m less gloomy than I was; cheerful and less brash. They say I’ve softened a bit, though my basic personality has indeed returned.In part, I attribute my gentler attitude to the truly humbling experience of having myself disappear. I attribute my change to a renewed desire for peace in my life.

‘I’m now dedicated to managing my depression and living a satisfying life day by day. I feel that if I can make the best of the moment, then the future will take care of itself.’

As in all medical procedures, the benefits come with a risk and a price. The most distressing side-effect of ECT is memory loss, which doctors say is a transient result. ECT can affect memory in several ways. Patients have trouble remembering events that occurred before treatment began, a condition known as retrograde amnesia. It may be hard to remember things in the weeks or months leading up to treatment, although some people do have problems with memories from years back as well. The period of treatment may pass in a haze, as one patient recalled. ‘I felt like a zombie and couldn’t recall events that occurred during the weeks of treatment.’

Some people have trouble with remembering events that occur even after ECT has stopped. These memory problems usually improve within a couple of months, but some patients have complained of permanent memory loss. For many, ECT is the only hope − and the loss of memory is a trade-off for quality of life and often survival. ECT can’t cure personality disorders or take away trauma. It can buy precious time to find treatments that do work for them, prevent the tragedy of suicide and help patients live − and like − their lives a little more. P

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‘I simply cannot remember life before ECT. In particular,

I cannot remember much about the two years leading up

to my ECT treatments. That period, along with much of the

preceding years, is memory that I lost in exchange for the hoped-

for benefits of ECT.’

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Rarity, technical wizardry and the finest materials are the hallmarks of any collectable. Art-Deco jewels have all that and much more.

DecodanceWords ETTAGALE BLAUER

INVESTMENT


FOR A WORLD THAT HAD BARELY EMERGED from the First World War, the 1920s were an explosive celebration of freedom. Women were bobbing their hair and wearing short skirts, dancing the Charleston with abandon and driving in open cars. Art Deco was part of a new era in design that encompassed architecture, automobiles, clothes, hairstyles, fine art and, of course, jewellery.

Coming on the heels of Art Nouveau, the ethereal and dreamy period that preceded it, Art Deco was revolutionary. Rather than defining a single design concept, it is a series of design mini-periods, morphing and merging from the beginning of the 1920s through to the end of the 1930s.

The standout firm of the period was the House of Cartier – headed by the three brothers, Louis, Pierre and Jacques. The two European branches in Paris and London received a huge boost from the American operation, which exposed Cartier to a new kind of clientele, not tied to the past and thus more inclined to adopt new fashions and styles.

Two events helped shape the look of the jewellery: the coronation of George V and the opening of King Tut’s tomb in 1922.

MAHARAJAHS AND KING TUT

The jewellery Cartier created grew out of the firm’s personal connections with Indian royalty. Nicolas Luchsinger, vice president of retail operations in the Americas for Van Cleef & Arpels, says, ‘It really started when the English were in India in 1910 and invited all the maharajahs to attend the coronation of George V in 1911.

‘The Indian nobility was struck by the beautifully made jewellery worn by European royalty. The maharajahs had all the beautiful gems and jewels; now they wanted their jewellery remounted in the European style by major jewellers like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Mauboussin. Each royal Indian family had their own European jeweller.’

From the fabulous treasuries of the maharajahs, Cartier had access to basketsful of engraved gemstones. Cartier, and others, began to put together the multicoloured, multi-gem work that came to be known as ‘tutti frutti’, or fruit salad. These small rubies and emeralds, with their tops carved to resemble fruits, were ideal for use in jewellery, especially bracelets where they were set along black enamelled ‘vines’. Combined with sapphires and woven

[Above] An emerald and diamond

bracelet by Cartier [Below] An

exquisite diamond double-clip

brooch, also by Cartier

INVESTMENT

together with small diamonds, the gems were precision-set in finely made hand-pierced platinum mountings.

In 1922, Egyptologist Howard Carter made his way into the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The resulting frenzy over the objects found in the tomb, dating back some 3 000 years, created a demand for everything Egyptian. For the Art-Deco jewellers, the flat, stylised Egyptian symbols were an ideal inspiration. Combined with the coloured gemstones, they evolved into a new kind of jewellery that was stunningly modern and wearable.

It was the influential 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris that gave the style its name, Art Deco. The event introduced motifs, colour combinations and the architectural style that epitomised Art-Deco jewellery.

Like other haute joaillieres, Van Cleef & Arpels made jewellery to suit the contemporary taste of the day. The firm’s exquisite Art- Deco designs featured hieroglyphic motifs in diamond-set platinum mounts, portrayed in buff-top, calibré-cut, coloured gemstones. The clean, crisp settings combined the skills of the gem cutter, setter, mounting maker and designer, showing how the true ateliers of the period produced fine jewellery.

In addition to the Indian and Egyptian influences, Cartier absorbed not only ideas but entire artefacts from other cultures, countries and eras. Along with carved gemstones, both opaque and transparent, the firm used exquisite carved jades and engraved plaques from China. They added enamel, Chinese-style motifs, fine fittings and gemstones to turn these into Cartier jewels and objects.

Egypt provided scarabs and small pieces of faïence that were combined with diamonds or replicated wholly in new materials. Egyptian plaques were also combined with red coral, enamel, lapis lazuli and transparent gemstones.

NAMING NAMES

Lesser known (but wonderful) designs were made during this period by many smaller jewellery firms. Jewellery specialist John Block, formerly head of Sotheby’s New York’s jewellery department, and now partnered with Alexander Guest, adds Boucheron, Chaumet, Fouquet, Raymond Yard, Charlton & Co. and Oscar Heyman to the list.

Eric Valdieu, formerly with Christie’s and now dealing privately as Valdieu Fine Arts in Geneva, says, ‘There is another group, more avant-garde, more adventurous, more creative.

They made things which are stronger.’ In this group, he names Gérard Sandoz, Jean Dunand, Raymond Templier and, to a lesser extent, Boivin. He advises those who love the period and want to make a collection to go for the lesser-known names.

‘These could be jewels without stones, in steel and gold, with enamel. They have very strong shapes, forms and designs.’

Camilla Dietz Bergeron, who sells from an upstairs salon on New York’s Madison Avenue, says of the period, ‘It’s all desirable and everything is harder to find. The hardest thing to find are earrings; really pretty.’ She notes that bestsellers across the board are all-diamond. ‘Diamond and sapphire come next. Rubies and emeralds are not as popular,’ she adds, because they don’t go with everything.

THE REALITY CHECK

Is it the real thing, or merely the mock, as Cole Porter wrote? When a period of jewellery becomes as desirable as Art Deco, inevitably reproductions follow. Experts admit that it takes a practised eye to discern the real from the fake and even the best of the best are fooled from time to time. Experience is the best teacher, but there are certain clues to authenticity – or the lack thereof.

First and foremost, does it seem right? Does the entire piece show the little marks indicating wear or is it very bright and shiny? Authentic mounts are virtually always platinum, while reproductions are usually made of 18k white gold − although the copyists have begun to use platinum as well. Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and other firms still in business have excellent archives and can usually authenticate jewellery with their signatures.

For this reason, copyists often turn to firms that are out of business. Some have forged signatures from a long-gone firm that can’t be contacted anymore, such as Lacloche Frères and Ostertag. Some jewellers are making

reproductions that even copy the original maker’s hallmarks.

Always look at the back of a jewel. When you turn a piece over, you should see gems and very little metal.

Luchsinger says, ‘You can find machine-made pieces. In poorly made pieces, you see lots of metal. They may be from the period, but they are not as good; not as valuable.’ That’s a reminder that not everything from 1925 is wonderful; it may just be old. Luchsinger adds, ‘We see copies of our current Van Cleef & Arpels pieces, our new designs. Sometimes someone will take a clasp with the signature and attach it to a different necklace.’

Rahul Kadakia, head of Christie’s jewellery department in New York says, ‘I think a great jewel, no matter who makes it, will shout out to you. This has to do with the way it feels. Is it stiff or does it sit nicely on the wrist or the neck? Are the stones appropriate for the design? Do the colours of the stones, the enamel, the lacquer match and compliment the overall look of the jewel? You could also find something really special that might even be unsigned, but which screams quality and Deco.’

For Lisa Hubbard, head of jewellery for Sotheby’s North and South America, ‘It’s looking at how the stones are set; looking at the millegraining. In the reproductions, they don’t take the time to do the work. It looks newer to us. We look at how the links are hinged, the cut-outs for the stones. Is it too shiny and does it have too much metal? There is an elegance to the real thing, but it’s hard to translate.’

INVESTING IN ART DECO

Art-Deco jewellery is rare and getting rarer, and pricier. Occasionally, a piece sold at auction will reappear years later, revealing how it has increased in value. For example, Christie’s Geneva sold a woman’s Art-Deco wristwatch by Cartier, circa 1920, at its November 17, 1998 sale in Geneva for $21 270. The same piece was sold at a Christie’s London sale on December 7, 2005, for $58 460. The lovely onyx and diamond piece more than doubled in value in just seven years.

The allure of Art-Deco jewellery is magnified when the work comes with glamourous provenance. An Art-Deco brooch by Van Cleef & Arpels that was owned by Elizabeth Taylor sold for $662 500, ten times the estimate at the December 2011 sale at Christie’s New York.

But it’s supply and demand that usually drives the market.

INVESTMENT


An Art-Deco diamond, emerald and onyx wristwatch by

Van Cleef & Arpels, estimated to bring $15 000−20 000, was

sold for $116 500.


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Luchsinger says, ‘The demand for Art Deco is as strong, but the work is more difficult to find.’ While most areas of jewellery are seeing strong interest from newly rich Chinese and Russian buyers, he notes that the demand for Art Deco, particularly the pieces with used Indian gems and motifs, comes from India.

‘They are more interested in their past,’ he notes. The prices are absolutely crazy.’ As an example, he cites a Van Cleef & Arpels Art- Deco bracelet with a rose motif set with rubies, emeralds, and white and yellow diamonds. The price was sold privately for $3 million.

Two ‘tutti frutti’ Art-Deco bracelets by Cartier also turned up at two Christie’s sales, both in Geneva, with stunning results.

In May 1995, one such bracelet brought $540 000, already a stunning price. Then in November 2005, also at a Christie’s Geneva auction, a nearly identical bracelet was sold for a world-record price of $1,093 million.

Prices continue to escalate. More than a

dozen Art-Deco pieces were sold at Christie’s New York in April 2012, at breathtakingly high prices. An Art-Deco diamond bracelet by Cartier, with the geometric patterning typical of the period, was sold for $578 500. After a prolonged bidding battle, an Art-Deco diamond, emerald and onyx wristwatch by Van Cleef & Arpels, estimated to bring $15 000− 20 000, was sold for $116 500. And a pair of Art-Deco diamond and onyx clip brooches by Cartier, in their original fitted box, soared to $146 500, more than double the high estimate.

So, look at as much jewellery as possible, hone your taste, and get expert advice. Then put that piece on and enjoy it. It’s a privilege to be able to wear a piece of history.

For those lucky enough to find themselves in Paris in the coming months, a 400-piece exhibition of Van Cleef & Arpels period jewellery will be on display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs from September 20, 2012 to February 10, 2013.

[Above] Designed as an undulating circular-

cut diamond vine, this Cartier bracelet is

mounted with carved emerald leaves and

clusters of ruby berries [Below] Pair of

diamond and onyx clip brooches, by Cartier

‘I think a great jewel, no matter who makes it, will shout out to you. This has to do with the way it feels.’

What is luxury? Private Edition reports on some of the key issues raised by thought leaders at the inaugural 2012 SALA Wealth Summit.

Illusive Luxury

Words HANNAH MOORE

REPORT BACK REPORT BACK

The growth in SA’s luxury market

is driven partly by investors’

penchant for innovation and

custom design and partly by their

appreciation of art. Louis Vuitton

– and the brand’s Neverfull bag

in trademark monogram canvas

– is a case in point


REPORT BACK REPORT BACK


‘PEEL ME A GRAPE, CRUSH ME SOME ICE; skin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillow.’ Canadian jazz singer/songwriter Diana Krall was on the right track with her take on luxury, but can we really define it down to the senses?

Sure, for some it’s that beautiful villa in Monaco reserved for annual holidays with the family, or that bespoke Bentley you keep safely tucked away until Sunday afternoon when it’s time for a glide about the countryside for a little fresh air.

As a market, luxury has got to be one of the most difficult to analyse or address successfully, despite its six percent growth rate per annum, according to Bain & Company consulting guru Andrew Tymms. Thanks to the Sunday Times Rich List, we know, at least, that the stats are in our favour. The country’s wealthiest 20 individuals are worth over R110 billion and they’ve seen their wealth jump by nearly 60 percent in the past two years.

But the luxury market is so illusive, so tricky to understand precisely because ‘liquid moderns’ – a description of a sector of society living in constant uncertainty coined by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman – seek intrinsic value: breathing space, a moment of solitary splendour, the unforgettable experience of trekking through the Antarctic or the thrill of lapping a McLaren at 260km/h around your private racetrack.

The top echelons of the liquid modern sector anchor themselves this way, often seeking out the

meaning to wealth in these extreme experiences.The 2012 Euromonitor Luxury Goods

Research reported value sales of R5,6 billion (US$684 million) in 2010, and Credit Suisse is expecting the degree of affluence to rise with 71 000 dollar millionaires in SA.

That number is expected to triple to 242 000 in the next five years.

Silvana Bottega, founding director of the Southern Africa Luxury Association (SALA), recognised the disparity between the growth of this industry in SA and the lack of shared knowledge among its entrepreneurs. And so, with blood, sweat, tears and a few bottles of fine wine from her family vineyards in Stellenbosch, she masterminded the inaugural SALA Wealth Summit in March this year.

Chaired by award-winning editors Marc Ashton of Finweek and Les Aupiais of Private Edition, the summit was successful beyond Bottega’s wildest expectations, she later said. The two-day event was a platform from which to share new insights into the growth of luxury in SA. ‘Talking about luxury isn’t PC in SA,’ said Samuel Seeff, chairman of the international property company Seeff, and one of the conference’s first speakers. ‘But we have to begin understanding this market we’re playing in.’

It’s one that plays in the rarefied air of innovation and custom design.

Seeff knows luxury when he sees it, although, for him, it can come in many different shapes and

sizes: an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool; a centralised electronic brain that coordinates everything from your electricity consumption to your entertainment system; a gentleman’s lounge; a climate-controlled wine cellar; a temperature-controlled cupboard; vineyards and orchards. And perhaps multi-car garaging, fit for, oh, let’s make it 16 collector’s cars.

Bag a property with even two or three of these amenities and you’ll have yourself a pretty little investment package.

Should you already be the owner of such a property gem, Seeff’s advice is to hang onto it while the market is still in your favour.

Leaving the number-crunching behind, Marc van Olst, a partner in a venture capital fund that supports local enterprises delved, rather bravely some might say, into the topic of corporate philanthropy. He noted the Barclays Wealth research that calculates that we are the second most generous nation in the world when it comes to using our money for a good cause.

Before we begin patting ourselves on the back though, perhaps we should look at why there is such a desperate need for social investment in SA in the first place.

‘Our social security system should resemble that of Brazil, where the cost of education, health and infrastructure is simultaneously brought down.’ Van Olst had his audience nodding in sober agreement at that.

‘When you do decide to do good with our

Silvana BottegaFounding Director of SALA

‘Having spent large spans of my life in China and South Africa, I’ve always been intrigued by the speed of take-up of luxury in emerging markets and the role that it plays inspiring a nation to reach higher and to move forward. Many view the very notion of luxury with disdain when thinking about the critical issues of unemployment and poverty in our country. However, as an association, we believe the sector holds latent opportunity that just needs to be realised. In terms of producing our own luxury goods, South Africa is

host to exceptional artisans and a wealth of resources. Capturing the full value of our resources through the creation of our own international luxury marques has only just begun. With the rise in wealth and a firmly established financial services sector to service the flourishing new elite, South Africa is well placed to be a safe regional hub for businesses that service affluent clients across Africa. The true potential of South Africa, worthy of its place among the BRICS, needed a stage for luxury and wealth management. The SALA Wealth Summit is the confluence

point between two spheres: those who manage wealth and those at the helm of luxury businesses urging their clients to invest in la dolce vita by buying a repertoire of brands that appeal to their discerning taste. We were proud to have orchestrated a line-up of 30 speakers, including CEOs from Sanlam Private Investments, Old Mutual Wealth and FNB through to the established marques of Aston Martin, Execujet and the like. We don’t focus purely on international brands, but also highlight the wonderful success stories of local provenance, such as Singita, Malée and Okapi.’

wealth, bear in mind the danger of market failure,’ the social entrepreneur was quick to add. ‘Find a reputable fund manager, favour self-sustaining projects and always invest with your head, not your heart.’

When Andrew Bradley of Old Mutual Wealth stepped to the floor not long after, he, too, asked some pointed questions: Is more money a curse? Is anything in life, let alone our wealth, guaranteed? According to Bradley these are some of the issues plaguing the high-net-worth individual, whose need to control their anxieties is now more pressing than ever. Fittingly, the greatest value that financial analysts of this industry might add is to assist this very particular kind of customer in managing his often unpredictable behaviour and in not destroying his wealth.

If adding a dent to your finances comes in the form of a Rolls Royce from Daytona, Justin Divaris might be quick to help you look on the bright side. Brimming with energy and passion for what he does, Divaris had the delegates’ full attention as he spoke of his rise to the position of Daytona Group CEO.

‘Where many salespeople go wrong in this industry is to pre-judge their customers and make their brand entirely unattainable to the apparently unlikely customer,’ he explained, reminding us that it’s not always about the hard sale and that spotting the well-heeled often takes more gut feel than reading the obvious and clichéd signs that point to a moneyed individual.

Dr Michael Jordaan of FNB, one of SA’s most dynamic leaders in the financial industry, closed the first day. One might have expected a CEO with 28 years’ experience in the financial industry to talk moolah and not much else, but with his characteristic (and somewhat disarming) sense of charm, Dr Jordaan spoke less about the means

and more about the end – a state of happiness and contentment.

‘Some people have all the attributes required to attain wealth – they’re married to their work and they’re stingy. But once they arrive, they have no idea how to enjoy what they’ve spent their lives working for.’

Delegates were reminded that to truly enjoy wealth is to understand an art, that the best way to be happy is to care for others, and that compassion and wellbeing can be enhanced through training and through a state of gratefulness.

Day two was kicked off by Aupiais. Knowledgeable about the multiple facets of talking the language of luxury, she pointed out that several publications that dabbled in the luxury end of the market adopted the ‘marksman’ approach – firing a high-velocity luxury bullet at them without taking into account all the vagaries of trajectory, gravity and a moving target, with the result that you miss by a mile. The trick it seemed was patience, instinct, knowledge of territory and luck – a bit like the art of fly-fishing.

As contradictory as it may seem, nature plays a powerful role in the luxury market. Many top local designers, including the likes of Trevyn McGowan, Stefan Antoni and Haldane Martin – all speakers at the summit – have recognised ecologically viable concepts of art as one of the most powerful tools in reaching top-spending consumers. Also touching on the creative heartbeat of South Africans, Haldane quipped, ‘The French might have style, the Germans may be technologically advanced and the Italians might fetch the highest prices, but SA has an uncapped creativity that can’t be replicated anywhere on earth.’

That extended to the art of investing in fine wine. One of SA’s leading wine authorities, Michael Fridjhon, spoke right to the hearts and

minds of those wishing to own (or already in ownership of) ‘a piece of grape-growing dirt’.

The per-litre price of Bordeaux wine may not have increased in 15 years, and you might be one in 1 000 if you turned your wine farm into a profitable business, but a bottle of vintage wine or French Champagne is, and will remain, a quintessential statement of wealth.

Heed a word from the wise, though: If you want to make it in the luxury wine industry, you should spread your product thinly and never discount in the tough times. This is a market that doesn’t respect weakness.

The market also reveres integrity. Hanneli Rupert, founder of the accessories line Okapi and Merchants on Long, an African concept store in Cape Town, believes that luxury goods should tell a story, a parable of African beauty. She believes they should speak a tailored language – that of the New African.

A prime example of African beauty herself, the summit’s final speaker was Zeze Oriaikhi. The creator of the high-end cosmetic brand Malée, she shared the heartfelt story about how the African woman has inspired her to get where she is today. Leaving the room quiet and emotionally charged by her talk, Nigerian-born Oriaikhi is an example of what we’ve already achieved and of what we might still hope to achieve, as the thought leaders of the luxury market in SA.

In the words of Lucia van der Post, founder of the Financial Times’ How to Spend It, we celebrate the uniqueness of African luxury because ‘there is nothing tired or overworked about it... It has something entirely new and refreshing to offer to a world that is perhaps jaded from many years of superfluous consumption.’

For more information on SALA and the annual Wealth Summit, visit sa-la.org. P

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Haldane Martin

makes SA’s

uncapped creativity

point (left) while the

Paul Smith Jeans

Spring Summer

2012 collection

speak to the

standard of luxury

brands (right)


http://www.sa-la.org

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Waves of South African businesses have converged on Nigeria in recent years. Bravehearts or foolhardy? Either way, it seems that anyone venturing in needs to grow a pair.

Mzanzi Eyes Out Nubile Naija

Words ANDRÉ WIESNER

INVESTMENT



INVESTMENT

THIRTY-THREE COMMA SEVEN BILLION RAND. That’s the personal wealth of Nigeria’s second-richest man. A former cab driver in America, Mike Adenuga started out his business career as a trader flogging lace and Coca-Cola; by age 26 he had made his first million. Today his cellphone company reaches more than 15 million subscribers, his oil exploration company – the largest in Nigeria – pumps out 100 000 barrels per day, and he’s Forbes-listed as the third-richest black billionaire in the world.

It’s not a bad showing, but here is the thing: Even if Adenuga pulled up his socks and doubled his $4,3-billion fortune, it would not make him Nigeria’s numero uno.

Nor would it do to call on the mining magnate Patrice Motsepe, who is hardly a casino deadbeat himself.

With a net worth of $2,7 billion, Motsepe is the richest person in South Africa and currently neck-on-neck with Oprah Winfrey as the world’s fourth-richest black billionaire. You could merge the Adenuga and Motsepe fortunes, throw in Oprah’s for laughs, and still have to queue for the Lotto if you wanted to get star billing.

Aliko Dongate, the world’s second-wealthiest black billionaire, is the richest person not only in Nigeria but on the continent at large. He is, financially, the king of Africa – the head of an industrial conglomerate producing everything from flour and salt to sugar and cement, a trim, clean-shaven distance-runner in his fifties whose 12-hour shifts begin every day at 5am; and the owner of a balance sheet worth R89 billion ($11,2 billion).

How in God’s name did he do it all? When journalists interview him, this is the central, subtextual question they ask, and Dongate, relaxed in his leisure-wear, just shrugs and smiles. Well, you know, he wants to create jobs, build an African success story, that sort of thing – show others what they could also get by doing what he does and using the opportunities at hand. And those opportunities are many. Nigeria, he says, sitting forward a little bit, is a good place to invest, do business and make lots of money. ‘It’s the world’s best-kept investment secret, actually.’

Adenuga and Dongate are powerful advertisements of Nigeria’s economic potential, but for many outsiders, the prospect of going in there to tap it is as daunting as it is enthralling.

Legions of South African businesses, from household-name corporates to small enterprises hawking calculators, have converged on Nigeria in recent years, and barely a week passes without an announcement that a new braveheart is setting out to join the others or a resident one increasing its infrastructure spend in the country.

Shoprite Checkers supermarkets are now a standard anchor for Nigerian malls and, going by its 2011 report, MTN has almost twice as many subscribers in Nigeria as in South Africa.

On the other hand, the technology company, Altech, is packing up and leaving. After several winning seasons in the mobile recharge-voucher game, its Nigerian operation took an abrupt bruising when a ‘pioneer-status’ tax concession expired at the same time that the government lifted a prohibition on imports of the product and the competition increased. ‘Recent competition has come from mobile operators offering cheaper alternatives,’ a spokesperson said, and the company was ‘looking to sell its investment in West Africa’.

Nigeria’s tough. The business landscape can change quickly, bureaucracy is onerously slow and the struggle for market share is fierce. In February this year, the aggression took a more literal turn when a militant group active in the oil-rich Niger Delta threatened to bomb MTN and other South African investments in the country. The same group has raided oil rigs and taken crew hostage. Elsewhere, sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians is on the rise. On Christmas Day 2011, scores of people were killed in terrorist attacks on churches across the country. Since then, many more lives have been lost in a spate of suicide bombings.

If Nigeria is an investment secret, as Dangote says, it’s a very special one – a teeming, shape-shifting enigma going dramatically public and wrapped up in red tape, terrorism, corruption, stardust and bulldust, a myriad reputational problems that are all packaged and delivered daily to every email user on earth in the form of the country’s most well-known export, the 419 scam.

Named after a Nigerian law that prohibits ‘advance-fee fraud’, the scam offers its targets huge, but bogus, rewards in return for their cash and banking information. It has certainly fuelled the fears that many foreign investors will have about the country as a whole – that, lured by fool’s gold, they’ll wind up in some murky, bamboozling entanglement and lose their money, if not their hides as well.

The place seems compelling; abundant with opportunities. But what are the catches, the challenges – real or perceived? Is it too good to be true? Because, in a sense, Nigeria itself reads like a pitch that begins: ‘My noble associates and I have $5 million in a suitcase and seek your help…’

Along with Kenya and South Africa, it’s a driver of the sub-Saharan economy as well as West Africa’s regional powerhouse. A federal republic, Nigeria contains three climatic zones (the equatorial south, tropical centre and arid north), 36 states, more than 250 different ethnic groups, over 500 indigenous languages and about 170 million people, making it the most populous country in Africa. It is the eighth-biggest producer of crude oil, the fourth-fastest growing economy in the world, and – according to the firm Ernst & Young – in the last decade it’s been the largest recipient of direct foreign investment in Africa.

The superlatives don’t stop there. Indeed, the Nigerian bonanza could prove to be greater than previously realised. ‘The statistical services in Nigeria are this year catching up with the growth of the economy,’ says economist Dr Adrian Saville. ‘They are essentially re-basing their measure of the economy, and what it’s likely to demonstrate is that the Nigerian economy is substantially bigger than old statistics show. By one estimate, it could be as much as 40 percent bigger.’

Not only is Nigeria a boisterously emergent market, but for South Africa in particular, it’s one that demands attention no matter how edgy its reputation. The predictions are that it will overtake South Africa within the current decade as the continent’s dominant economy. As Saville observes, ‘If South African businesses want to keep their positions of leadership, it goes without saying they have to look at this large, very fast-growing economy.’

‘You ignore Nigeria at your peril,’ says Henry Hollingdrake, president of the South Africa-Nigeria Chamber of Commerce.


‘Greater Africa is a natural place in which to expand if your business is growing, and though in globally comparative terms it’s a high-risk continent, with high risks come high returns.’ A galvanisation of interest in Africa as a whole has sparked engagement with specific countries, and Nigeria is hot-buttoned on the corporate dashboard for its ‘massive latent consumer demand as well as its huge untapped opportunities in other spheres’. Aside from the fact that its population is almost four times the size of South Africa’s, Nigeria is infused with a ‘can-do and want-to-do business ethos’.

Nowhere is this entrepreneurial spirit better illustrated than in Nollywood, the rambunctious home-grown film industry. It would be a mistake to say that it produces high volumes of thrills-and-spills entertainment with assembly-line rapidity, because there’s little to no infrastructure that could qualify as an ‘assembly line’. This is strictly fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants stuff.

Movies are shot on location with digital cameras and on drinking-money budgets, wrapped up on average in 10 days, burned to DVD and then distributed in shops and marketplaces alongside dozens of other new weekly releases, before being relentlessly pirated by millions of fans. Some of the films tackle socio-political themes, but most have a didactic, religious bent and, according to The Christian Science Monitor, ‘A “Hallelujah” sub-genre involves timely interventions by Jesus Christ in daily affairs.’

Though the movies tend to be over-acted, under-acted or not acted at all, their trailers look pretty cool and, in addition to providing employment to thousands of people, they’re increasingly being syndicated on international television. So much has the industry grown since the 1990s that a United Nations study found that Nollywood had outstripped Hollywood in terms of output and was champing hard at the heels of Bollywood, the world’s largest

producer of films.Nollywood is illustrative in other ways, too. High oil production

and increased oil prices can account for much of the country’s growth, but as Saville points out, it would be wrong to conclude that Nigeria is ‘a one-trick pony’. With its knack for improvisation and money-making, Nollywood is indicative of widening economic diversification, a trend that is evident as well in burgeoning sectors like banking, financial services and telecommunications.

For Joseph Hundah, CEO of the media company Modern Time Group Africa, it’s precisely this historic over-concentration on oil and gas that is leaving so many gaps for a fresh wave of entrepreneurs to fill.

The blessing of huge oil resources has been Nigeria’s ‘curse’ too, he says, engendering a quick-buck mentality that has left mining, for example, as an underdeveloped sector. Other new frontiers include retail, agriculture and infrastructural development.

As a former executive at M-Net and Multichoice, Hundah was instrumental in introducing a plethora of big-name reality TV shows to the region, and he speaks warmly of its people, customs, recreations, nightlife, tasty cuisine and sweltering atmosphere. ‘There is a buzz here that one can’t truly explain. I get a similar feeling being in New York. You get the sense that people are busy doing something and working on something. A wonderful entrepreneurial spirit that knows no limit.’

Stephen Paddy, sales and marketing director of Execujet Africa talks about Nigeria as a great place to do business, but cautions an open-minded approach. Reading between the lines, he means that as with doing business in any new territory, you have to have your wits about you. The company is yet to open a full charter operation in Nigeria, but does offer a full maintenance and management

A man walks past a billboard for MTN, Africa’s leading cellular telecommunication company – and one of the first SA companies

that courageously entered the Nigerian market in 2001


INVESTMENT

service for charter flights and handles the sales of aircraft. It’s a smart move. Frequent, safe and reliable flights should be the lifeblood of cities like Lagos, where there seems to be a new business opportunity around every corner.

Nevertheless, Nigeria is not all about Pina Coladas, disco dances and cavorting in fountains of dollar bills. ‘It’s an extremely challenging and difficult place,’ Hundah says, ‘and most expatriates will tell you that if you can work here, you can work anywhere in the world.’ Newcomers, therefore, should brace themselves for an assortment of pitfalls on the road ahead.

The cost of doing business is high, while ‘a local partner is absolutely crucial, especially one politically well-connected’; in a similar vein, ‘regime change can impact opportunities and contracts gained’. And, from Hundah’s remarks, one has the impression that for outsiders on the inside, it’s hard to fathom exactly what the hell’s going down at any given moment. ‘There is generally a lack of information,’ he says, ‘and if obtained, it’s often inaccurate or difficult to verify.’ In particular, he cautions against ‘the assumption that every opportunity is an MTN waiting to happen’.

Gary van Staden, a political risk analyst, would agree. It’s foolhardy to adopt the stance that ‘there are millions of Nigerians, so obviously there’ll be a market for this or that product. You have to ensure you’re targeting a need. There is no guarantee that whatever gizmos you’ve got are going to sell just because there are so many people.’

In other words, he says, the biggest risk lies in ‘a misunderstanding of what is required and needed, and not doing enough research… Nigeria is the kind of place where, if you go blundering in without doing your homework, you’re going to get your fingers badly burned.’

What would ‘homework’ cover? ‘It would be to make sure you’re talking to the right people and connections, to businesses and officials that have some real input in terms of what happens… You have to be extremely careful about with whom you’re doing business. Do your research, don’t try to take shortcuts, and hire proper legal teams.’

The latter are essential for dealing with Nigerian laws and regulations governing the start-up and operation of local firms that represent foreign interests. These frameworks can be burdensome – the World Bank ranks countries in terms of the ease of doing business with them and, while South Africa comes in at number 35, Nigeria trails behind at position 133. However, as Hollingdrake explains, moves are afoot to streamline the admin via the so-called one-stop-shop mechanism, ‘a government-driven initiative to promote easy access to the Nigerian market’.

He adds that ‘a major impediment, one which large retailers struggle with, is clearing goods to or from the port. Trust me, this is not a small issue. It can make or break an economy and you as a client.’ Ships queue, import regulations chop and change, and often goods are either denied entry or caused to perish during long waits for clearance. Again, remedial measures are being taken, and though port access remains an issue. ‘There is evidence some goods are arriving and being cleared in seven working days. It will make South Africans’ heads spin to see that happen.’

If you shouldn’t go into Nigeria clownishly underprepared and

starry-eyed with greed, the flipside to this is not to be paranoid, either. ‘The perception,’ Van Staden says, ‘is that Nigeria is a very corrupt, dangerous place to do business. It is not – but it is a corrupt, dangerous place. So there are places where you have to be careful. If you want to walk around somewhere at 3am and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”, you’ll be mugged, and don’t complain about it.’ Learn to understand the economic, political and cultural environment, he says. ‘Understand what the people’s likes and dislikes are, what’s a red rag to them and what’s not.’

As for the sectarian violence, it’s a ‘very old conflict’ rooted in strife first recorded 200 years ago. ‘It takes on a new dimension when you get sophisticated weapons, bomb-makers coming from the Middle East, and links with Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda and others,’ says Van Staden. Settlement will require large-scale political and economic measures, but ‘essentially you’re dealing with a northern Nigerian conflict’ isolated from the country’s economic mainstream in the south.

And corruption? ‘If Nigeria has higher levels of corruption than South Africa,’ he observes, ‘we’re closing the gap very fast. They come from a history of military rule, corruption, of having to bribe your way through everything, and they’re trying to address this. We’re moving in the opposite direction, becoming more corrupt by the minute rather than less.’

South Africans ‘have no room for complacency’, especially so in business dealings with their Nigerian counterparts. That complacency rests on an assumption of superiority, the biggest red rag of all. Don’t go into Nigeria with the attitude of, ‘Hi, the mighty South Africans have arrived,’ Van Staden says. ‘They get extremely pissed off. They’re looking for the respect they think they’ve earned as a leader of Africa for much longer than the 18 years South Africa has been around.’

Inasmuch as South Africans view Nigerians through 419-filtered lenses, Nigerians look back at us with equal suspicion. ‘They think South Africans want to take over, that they’re [self-styled] big boys on the block, and maybe not that trustworthy… That they’re after a quick buck and not really interested in any sustained development. Everybody has their own perception.’

‘It’s not the most ideal working condition,’ says Hundah, echoing Van Staden’s assessment, ‘but in a way both parties are stuck together by economic prosperity and the vast opportunities that exist between them. Both parties have to lose these attitudes towards each other.’ South Africa, he adds, should ‘be more open’, more ready to ‘take a chance with Nigeria’.

Indeed, set against the infamous number 419 is another conjuration, fleshier and more hopeful: 9ja. It’s shorthand for Naija, slang reviled by the government yet embraced among the country’s youth. ‘Nai’ refers to Nigeria and ‘ja’ supposedly means ‘disappear’. Hence, ‘Begone, Nigeria.’ However, it’s anything but unpatriotic. As a blogger remarks, ‘When we say Naija, it means that we, the youth, are determined to cleanse the country and show the world the true colours of this great nation.’

It’s a rallying call, meant to be uttered with attitude. It rejects the bad Nigeria and affirms new beginnings. With exasperation, it recognises the country’s problems; with spiritedness, it summons the future. P

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Kiteskiing is the newest way to

travel across the endless horizons of

Antarctica and in his 2006 expedition

to traverse the continent, Patrick

Woodhead and his team used kites

to travel more than 1 250km

PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

White WildernessAntarctica is one of the last frontiers for travellers in search of a rare and wonderful experience. It’s an encounter that often leaves them with no words to describe what they have seen and done. By Patrick Woodhead

5 9

IN A TINY TENT, we waited out the storm.The previous day, 10 hours of hauling our sleds had gained

us a pathetic six miles. We had a thousand still to go and already a month had gone by.

Dave looked across at me, a lopsided grin curling his lips.‘Trying is the first step towards failure,’ he quipped, quoting

Homer Simpson.I shook my head, trying not to focus on anything more

than the next day and, instead, let my thoughts turn to why I was back in Antarctica on yet another polar expedition. But I already knew the answer. Antarctica is a place that is impossible to resist. It’s so surreal, so totally unlike anything else on the planet, that you can’t help wanting to come back.

People usually associate Antarctica with two words – cold and white. It can be both, but there’s so much more. On this

expedition, we’d already seen ice crystals refract on the horizon, making it appear as though four separate suns shone in the sky. We had crossed titanic crevasses that were iridescent blue from compressed ice, while weaving in-between sheer walls of rock rising over a kilometre in height. The landscape was simply mesmeric.

As we waited out the storm, we decided that we’d set up a company. The purpose – to take tourists into the real Antarctica, and by this we meant the interior of the continent. For years, it had been the exclusive preserve of scientists and the odd polar explorer, but we wanted to change all that. We knew that not many people would be up for eating chunks of raw butter and skiing a double marathon a day, but what if there was an easier way? One that was infinitely more relaxed; an experience rather than a challenge.

PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

6 0

Two years later, we built the first ever luxury camp in the interior of Antarctica. The

camp was designed to be more in keeping with an African safari than a polar expedition,

with spacious tents, three-course dinners and a place to relax near the stove each night

with a gin and tonic in hand. For the client sleeping pods, we fused old-world style

with cutting-edge technology as the pods are made from specialist fibreglass sheets

that lock together like an armadillo shell. Inside are proper beds, fur rugs and blackout

blinds (an important way of preventing insomina in the 24-hour continuous sunshine).

Our business plan was more a case of ‘build it and they shall come’, as opposed

to any astute awareness of a gap in the market. But there was a gap and people came.

Jaded from having travelled to every other bit of the globe, or simply bored with the

latest offering of a seven-star resort, clients looked for a new kind of adventure. It had

to be genuine, and it had to be unique – but it also had to be accessible. Basically, polar

exploration without the hardship.

We seemed to attract a wonderfully eclectic mix of clients. They were from all

different nationalities, varied in culture and appearance, yet all sharing this common

thread of adventure. Antarctica is a great leveller like that. Social standing and wealth

become rather meaningless when you’re staring across a landscape that’s as close to

being ‘off planet’ as you can get without passing the stratosphere.

We’d watch them step off the private jet, crunching across the hardpack snow while

wearing their entire wardrobe of polar clothing as if expecting to be whisked off by

a blizzard at any given moment. In fact it was a balmy -5° C and some of them were

already starting to sweat.

I’d watch as their eyes widened behind their sunglasses, taking in the endless

horizons of ice glinting in the sunshine. Their lungs seemed to catch on the frozen,

pristine air as if truly breathing for the first time. The air is so pure that even from the

runway, you can see the smudge of icebergs on the coast over 120km away.

I’m often asked what Antarctica is like and the only way to contextualise it is to ask

[Above] After a five-hour flight across

the mighty Southern Ocean, a private

jet lands on the ice runway at Novo and

clients disembark to begin their trip with

White Desert. [Right] On the way to the

emperor penguin colony, the DC3 Basler

cruises over a line of spectacular peaks,

many of which remain unclimbed IMA

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PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

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Woodhead and Alastair Vere Nicol

cross one of many crevasses on

their way to the South Pole. That

day, Woodhead wrote in his diary:

‘The landscape is timeless and still.

It is so vast as to be terrifying –

already I wonder if we can make it’

someone to describe how they felt when they first saw the ocean. Some things are just too immense, too fundamental to put into words. Whether the clients were hardened mountaineers, CEOs of multinationals, Saudi princesses or even young children – all would arrive at camp and settle in with an air of bewilderment. It’s wonderful to see a place live up to a person’s imagination.

Some guests had very real goals to achieve, such as flying a hot air balloon or swimming a kilometre in the meltwater lakes. Others just wanted to experience Antarctica at a slow and steady pace. Each day, our guides would splinter the guests off into different groups depending on their pace and ability. And even now, after six years of operations, we’re still finding new areas to explore. Only a few kilometres from the camp are a series of incredible ice tunnels. The sun shines through the translucent blue walls making them glow almost purple.

Then, about two hours by plane away, is an immense emperor penguin colony of nearly 6 000 birds and their chicks. The emperors have never been hunted by humans and so are completely unafraid. They waddle right up to you, inquistive as to these brightly-clad newcomers to their icy land.

Whether clients wanted to summit an unclimbed mountain or visit the local science base to get the latest thoughts on climate change first-hand, we’d make it happen.

The reality is that Antarctica is often forgotten. It sits at the end of the earth, its fingertips only just visible on the map; so far from everyone’s day-to-day consciousness. Yet, the treaty that stops countries planting a flag and keeps mining corporations at bay is up for renewal in 2041. If it doesn’t get renewed – everything could change.

By bringing small numbers of clients to Antarctica and by doing it right, my hope is that they’ll be entralled by this wondrous continent and, in turn, support it.

They will talk about it and, through experience, have an opinion. And that’s a good thing. Antarctica needs friends.

For more information, visit white-desert.com

[Below] Exploring the ice tunnels, light

comes pouring through the ice, making

the whole tunnel shine bright blue

PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

www.white-desert.com

6 4

[Below] White Desert camp is exclusively run on solar and

wind power. All waste is removed from the site and it’s

designed to have a minimum impact on the surrounding

landscape. The inside of the main tent is inspired by the

likes of Scott and Shackleton, and the camp has an old-

world, exploring feel

[Opposite] Trekking beneath the 200-foot icefall directly in

front of the camp. Each day, guides take clients on activities

that range from being adrenalin-fuelled or totally relaxed

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My thanks go to all the staff, friends and business partners who helped make White Desert a reality. But most especially to Alexey Turchin. We miss you.

Adélie penguins dance on the ice. They have to

trek nearly 90km from the edge of the water

to their nesting sites near the camp. Although

little, these penguins are seriously tough!

PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY

There are many cancer treatments that make patients ill even as they seek to make them better. That’s why postgraduate students in our chemistry department have been searching for viable alternatives. And what they have developed are gold compounds that are so selective that they will kill seventy cancer cells before they will destroy a single healthy cell. This research could not only change the way cancer treatment is viewed, but the way potential cures are conceived.

Find out more about this and other fields of postgraduate study at www.uj.ac.za/postgrad

The University of Johannesburg, one of the largest, multi-campus, residential universities in South Africa, seeks to achieve the highest distinction in scholarship and research within the higher education context.

Scan for more info:

88866 UJ Gold Advert.indd 1 2012/06/19 2:16 PM

www.uj.ac.za/postgrad

DRIVE BY DESIGN


4 9

The 2012 BMW EuroStyle Tour joined design dots from the third interglacial period to some point in the future when fast, quiet electric cars will respond to their owners’ voices.

Back to the Future

Words LES AUPIAIS


DRIVE BY DESIGN

[Opposite] Bergisel

Ski Jump towers 250

metres above the city

of Innsbruck and is the

only sports venue in the

world that has hosted

the opening ceremonies

of three separate

Olympic Games

[This page] Bergisel’s

eastern elevation

FORTY-EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGO, the first green shoots of a Kauri tree pushed through the rich soil of a South Pacific island, which would in the distant future become ‘the land of the long white cloud’ − New Zealand. When the tree finally fell millennia later, its massive trunk left the island’s shores by ship in broad slabs of richly coloured wood destined for Italy and the hands of a craftsman.

In its new form, it would become a grand table top of 12 metres long and two wide, weighing 20 tons and large enough to seat 30 people. Men and women would dine around it or perhaps decide the future of nations with their elbows resting on material that had witnessed the dawn of modern man. The family that owns the Riva 1920 business are wood design masters who also turn le Briccole di Venezia – wooden oak poles that act as marine markers for boats navigating the lagoon – into bookcases, tables and stools. Embedded in the wood are the tracks left by marine organisms that leave distinct burrows giving the finely crafted furniture its texture and patina. But is it the Kauri that commands reverence simply for its survival and reinvention in modern times? The company also supports rehabilitated drug addicts working on wood to give them a reason to re-enter society with skill and some pride.

Recycled, reincarnated, repurposed, reinvented and reprised became the buzz words of the tour.Even our introduction to the new BMW ActiveHybrid 5 had a ‘retro’ angle. A little backward glance in

history turns up a flurry of mid 19th-century inventiveness with Hungarian Jedlik’s version of a battery driven vehicle, a Dutchman’s small-scale electric car and smart Scot’s ‘electric carriage’ in the 1830s. Mind you, you’d travel half the speed of a decent golf cart, but the glimmer of the concept was there.

BMW’s now come up with the requisite 21st-century combination of fuel economy and performance. The ActiveHybrid 5’s the ultimate ‘electro glide in blue’: The car comes in a distinctive sky-blue shade they’ve called ‘Bluewater metallic’, which is only available for the ActiveHybrid and not for other

DRIVE BY DESIGN DRIVE BY DESIGN

[Below] Woodstock table, CR&S Riva

1920, featuring a 9cm-thick solid

wooden top. Available in

American walnut, it has an oil

finish, legs in iron and a

characteristic pyramid shape

[Above] Vigilius Mountain Resort can only be reached by

cable car and is, in the words of architect Matteo Thun,

‘A wooden house of modern times’

[Below] Central to Vigilius’s design was its owner’s

fascination with the form a of giant fallen tree


DRIVE BY DESIGN

models in the 5 Series. The car offers a driving experience that allowed us to shake off our carbon footprint under 60 kilometres per hour on our trip from Munich to Lake Como.

We might’ve ramped up our speed to 160 kilometres per hour on the autobahn to test the ECO PRO mode that makes use of kinetic energy already generated while the combustion engine is off, but no-one was keen to test the mood and vigilence of the notoriously fierce German and Italian traffic cops who confiscate driver’s licences on the turn. So we played.

Dr Eckhard Steinmeier, head of BMW ConnectedDrive, had spent the best part of an hour explaining how we could transform our iPhones into a remote for some of the services in our cars. Apart from gliding almost silently from Innsbruck through the South Tyrolean landscape, we audio-streamed our favourite music. ConnectedDrive could also turn the car into an office, weather station, park you accurately in a tight bay, and in an accident − when air bags were deployed and you were unconscious − trigger an automatic call to a BMW call centre. The car ends up being a large smartphone with wheels. Cool doesn’t even begin to cover it. (Not all functions may be available in SA.)

You expect this of BMW though. Zaha Hadid’s Bergisel Ski Jump in Innsbruck on

the German-Italian border was unexpected however. The town is all medieval lanes and quaint hostelries, yet the ski station is like a landed spaceship of several thousand curved, glacier-coloured glass sections made in China, where they built a factory for the project. Even Europe sub-contracts when they stand to save half the bill. Master of construction Georg Malojer was the successful contractor, although reading between his rather dry, controlled Austrian lines, you sense a project from hell – heart-stopping timing, Chinese not-so-accurate final product, and one landowner who refused to let the Nordpark Cable Railway that linked the four ski stations to pass over his land so demanded a tunnel, adding a hideous extra cost to the project. €54 million euros later, Innsbruck had a design icon.

The Bergisel ski-jump project started out with closing eight lanes of major freeway traffic between the town and the site of the old jump in order to safely blow up the existing station one Sunday morning at low-peak times. Construction crew had to work through temperatures of -16°C to get it all done. A year later, Innsbruck’s latest icon pierced the sky in time for the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games. The next time you watch a televised Winter Olympics set here, spare a thought for the athlete who dives off what amounts to a skyscraper, with their body perfectly aligned to their skis, and plummets almost vertically down the ramp. Martin Nagiller, a 32-year-old veteran who trained for seven years for this version of sports insanity, has done it 3 000 times and for us, courtesy of Malojer’s company sponsorship, made it 3 001 and 3 002 on the summer astroturf in spectacular style.

Perfect form was evident everywhere on the EuroStyle Tour. We’d never dare do that jump and live to write it up, but there was no getting out of a breath-snatching, almost vertical climb to a point 1 500m above the small town of Lana in South Tyrol, Italy, for a night’s sleep.

Vigilius Mountain Resort, with a 200-kilometre view of the surrounding Dolomites, took form and function to exquisite lengths. Hotel owner Ulrich Ladurner comes

from money (the family fortune was founded on a drugstore business and producing specialised gluten-free products for the European market). He loves regatta sailing and flying himself around the Alps, but when he stood before the shabby and neglected Vigiljoch Mountain Hotel, it combined his desire to do something different with his life and the challenge – or folly – of turning the 1912 establishment into an eco-luxury lodge set among the Alpine larch.

Several firms pitched for the project, most of them with conventional designs – bar award-winning architect Matteo Thun, who believes that architecture means designing the soul of the place. ‘This implies an aesthetic, economic and technological sustainability. It means to create a synthesis of the existing, the purpose and the area.’

The Ladurner-Thun combination resulted in a design that had an uncanny link to the Riva 1920 Kauri. The design that inspired Laderner was based on the form of a giant fallen tree with the long slatted lines of larch forming powerful horizontal lines that not only broke the sunlight, but warmed up to insulate the building. Behind the larch lay triple-glazed glass with interior material – stone floors and clay – sourced from as near to the site as possible. From a short distance away, the lodge is barely visible on the skyline.

Eco-standards are high here, with the clay internal walls of the suites not only aesthetically pleasing and warm in colour to the eye, but able to absorb internal heating and retain it. In winter, the mercury drops to 20 below and the swimming pool remains at 27°C heated by a local fuel source. Felled wood collected by local residents supplies a steady stream of eco-material. Wood softly buffed with a layer of natural oil dominates the interior, while soft furnishing and leather-covered armchairs are a monochrome ox-blood red that teases the brain into thinking ‘warm’. That night, celebrated chef Mauro Buffo (who’s worked at Ferran Adriá’s El Bulli) dishes up his version of South Tyrolean cuisine and later we indulge in sleep that only high altitude and this level of luxury and natural splendour can bring.

Concorso d’Eleganza, held in the parkland of Villa d’Este and Villa Erba on Lake Como, is splendour of another kind. The competition is Ascot with wheels, a fabulous beauty pageant of 52 hand-picked ‘contestants’ from around the world that included stately dames such as a Ferrari 250 Europa (1954), a Lamborghini LP 400 Countach (1975) and a stunner of a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (1922). They’re all entered into the competition by their owners, who restore them to mint condition – some in a staggering 4 000 hours of work.

But it’s not only the coachwork that counts. It’s the car’s history that racks up the points. There’s a BMW 507 (1958) roadster, just like the one Elvis gave to Ursula Andress (whom he called Ooshie); a roadster that cost an outrageous $13 000 US at the time; a Ferrari


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DRIVE BY DESIGN

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that was raced 1 000 kilometres by an amateur owner who ended up finishing ninth overall where more than half the cars bit the dust, and a Ferrari that Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman took on their honeymoon and still had its original luggage rack. One car had never left its shipping crate and was ‘discovered’, a find that was much like stumbling over a Mona Lisa II. The cars filed by for judging and by entry number 40, you were dizzy from the sight of polished chrome and burnished paintwork. The winner was a glorious-looking Alfa Romeo 6C 2300 (1935), which made one Paolo Carlini a very happy man.

Richard Carter, director of global communications for Rolls Royce, invited us to sit in a new Phantom on display, a model in a shade of whipped vanilla with a white leather interior. Secreted in its front passenger door, it has a brolly that is air-dried after a shower while it’s in the tube. The boot has a well-designed bar that holds just enough crystal glassware to turn a picnic into a party. A man standing by muttered to himself that ‘he wished he hadn’t seen that’ as if the boot cache was the coup de grâce in terms of sales pitch. To hell with horsepower, it’s the frills that do the deal.

It was also a day for futuristic eye candy. BMW has recently introduced a Design Award for concept cars and prototypes. This year Chanel-lipstick red was the shade du jour and from a Toyota Lexus LF-LC and a Stile Bertone Jaguar B99 to a Ford Evos, the colour shouted sex on wheels. BMW showcased their i8 concept car, but their real showstopper – apart from the company’s head of design, Adrian van Hooydonk – was his Z4 Zagato Coupé, a glorious sleek-hooded model with muscular wheels and lines that go on and on like the legs of a supermodel... Will it go into production, we ask? Van Hooydonk smiles. ‘I hope so.’

He likes South Africans and that night at the Villa Erba, he folded his tall lean frame down among us, grabbed the only food he’d

get between a steam of repetitive interviews and casually chatted design for an hour. To hell with sophisticated cool, we were all riveted and like children who keep asking stuff beyond bedtime to distract an indulgent parent, we left only when our fleet of cars and chauffeurs had waited way too long. Cameramen came and went snapping pictures of us all, assuming that we had to be either important or famous to warrant such a long, relaxed audience with the man revered in design circles.

We were neither of course, but we would carry important messages. It’s hard reconciling green and eco-sensitivity with the automobile industry, but judging by the cars heading our way in the very near future, the divide between speed and earth-sensitivity is narrowing. That commuting condemns us to hours on the road is a given; that our cars have become a third space for many of us has resonated with design masters and the techno boffins. They’re safer, more intuitive and vastly better behaved when it comes to emissions. If walls and stone breathe and retain heat, if 48 000-year-old trees are reincarnated, if chefs source their raw ingredients from market gardens almost at their feet, then there are many designers and artists in the world who are determined to make it better. It will catch on. It must.

Next in Private Edition: The retro glamour and superb craftsmanship of Riva yachts and three Italian masterpieces – Palladian Villa Pisani Bonetti, L’Albereta Relais & Chateaux and Castadiva Resort & Spa on Lake Como; opera in architectural form.

USEFUL WEBSITESRiva 1920:riva1920.itVigilius Mountain Resort:vigilius.itMatteo Thun:matteothun.com

[Above] The inimitable

Concorso d’Eleganza on

Lake Como [Right] BMW’s

ActiveHybrid 5

[Far right] The coveted Z4

Zagato Coupé7 2 P R I V A T E E D I T I O N ISSUE 16

http://www.riva1920.it

http://www.virgilius.it

http://www.matteothun.com

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AN MTN INITIATIVE

Balancing work and play is

the modern challenge. The

faster you can complete

work, the more downtime

you can have. Mobile

connectivity is the answer


It’s All in the Balance Information technology is not determined by individual net worth. But it can be the crucial means to an end. Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s success makes the point.

THE ECONOMIST’S Schumpeter blog on March 8 this year lead with Neo-Luddism, a story encouraging readers to switch off their smartphones and ‘get a life’. The message is clear: Stop working long hours and spend more quality time with loved ones. The copy editor sent Schumpeter the edited version of his column to approve at 10pm on a Tuesday night. He replied at 11.02pm!

There’s no dispute. Modern business waits for no technophobe. Corné Botha, Senior Manager SME – Marketing for MTN Business quotes Dr Michelle Weil and Dr Larry Rosen who write in their book, TechnoStress, that only 15 percent of people completely adopt and embrace technology. ‘It’s about how much they allow technology to influence their lives. If 85 percent of people still resist the progress of new technologies in general, it’s scary,’ he says.

Technobabble aside, MTN Business is making the ever-advancing world of information technology more accessible to small- and medium-sized enterprise with its converged data offer, which combines fixed-line ADSL connectivity with mobile Internet access. ‘Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner or a board member, people share the same goal for their work environment. They want consistent connectivity, flexibility, convenience and cost control,’ Botha adds.

Targeting Department of Trade and Industry registered company classifications of micro, small and medium enterprises, MTN Business provides this solution to those that already have DSL functionality and an intensive technology requirement. ‘Now, more and more small businesses are relying on mobility. ADSL is still one of the most popular forms of broadband in SA, especially for

Words DEBBIE HATHWAY

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smaller businesses, but its reliability is affected by cable theft. As a result, businesses are moving to mobile broadband to reduce the risk of downtime. This is particularly evident in KwaZulu-Natal.’

MTN Business’s converged data package is a single solution for smaller businesses that ensures they get the best of both ADSL Internet access and mobile broadband data – at a fraction of the cost. How much a company spends on technology gives a clear indication of how sophisticated they are.

MTN Business looks at the ratio between staff and IT spend to rank their technology focus. For example, if a company with two employees is spending more than R50 000 per month on technology, they’re clearly heavy data users.

The converged data package entails the supply of a wireless router capable of handling ADSL, connecting a network and providing fax capability, and a 3G modem for mobile connectivity. ‘You can use your router and ADSL line as the primary connection in the office and use your mobile data modem with your laptop when you travel or use it to create a failover connection for your ADSL in the event of it going down. If your DSL line goes down, and you have connected the 3G modem to the router in order to provide redundancy, the mobile connection will automatically start up to ensure that the network remains connected to the Internet. That way, the office still has full Internet access.’

This is ideal for office-based executives who want the same connectivity advantages at their home office or on the road that they enjoy in a fixed-line environment. It’s also a platform for start-up business owners with their eye on the future – an Internet café, for example. ‘Many top executives use our converged data package at home or use it to run additional small businesses. It’s also well suited to teams of auditors, for example, who may be

sent to audit a firm without needing to request network access. They can use the wireless router to set up a mini network at their customer’s premises to optimise productivity and streamline the business process.’

Then there’s the other scenario where companies have a DSL line installed, but are unhappy with the speed of Internet access. They may have signed up with a company that has oversubscribed the line and made it available for use by other people. MTN Business’s converged data offering provides uncontended (one-to-one) Internet access, which means that usage can’t be compromised by sharing the connection with anyone else. ‘By its nature, ADSL is a best-effort technology. However, our converged data package provides a fairly consistent connection speed throughout the day and, from a consistency point of view, offers far better connectivity than if it was contended (shared with somebody else).’

Future communication trends will be driven at the very least by service providers increasing bandwidth capacity and moving to fibre-optic networks, which will change the way people go about their daily tasks – things like watching television, surfing the Internet and hiring DVDs will all be possible via one connection.

‘Beyond 3G for mobile communication, technologies like LTE (Long-Term Evolution) will be the next generation for data and speed once the challenges around spectrum license allocation are overcome,’ Botha concludes.

Meanwhile, MTN Business’s converged data offering is about as good as it gets.

For more information, please visit mtnbusiness.co.za/sme.

Office executives used to the speed of fixed-line data connections now demand the same 24/7

www.mtnbusiness.co.za/sme

Jozi’s “go to” place for everything hip and happening in the city of

gold has officially named the milkshakes at the protea Hotel Fire & ice!

Melrose arch the best in Joburg.

Joburg.co.za, an online publication that is emailed to 184 000

subscribers per week, recently established the Joburg’s choice

awards, which aims to find the very best that Joburg has to offer – from

croissants and cappuccinos to child-friendly venues and sundowners-

with-a-view. Readers were invited to nominate venues or products in a

specific category and the Joburg teaM ploughed through them all to

find those that stand out from the rest.

a very proud, but not terribly surprised protea Hotel Fire & ice!

Melrose arch gM anton gillis, said the hotel’s milkshake bar is one of

its most popular attractions.

“our shakes are different, inventive, interesting and have some

very funky flavour combinations like pumpkin and Marshmallow,” said

gillis. “they are thick, creamy and very, very more-ish.”

the hotel has two ranges of milkshakes – the “nice” ones that are

non-alcoholic, and the “naughty” ones that include, among others, the

caramel Dare (with caramel vodka), patronage (with a shot of patron)

and elephant’s trunk (with amarula).

the “nice” shakes include the Big Blue (blueberries and cream),

aero attack (with aero chocolate) and peanana Nutter (with peanuts

and banana butter).

Joburg.co.za had this to say about the hotel’s milkshakes: “as

predicted by so many of you, protea Hotel Fire & ice! Melrose arch was

the winner of our milkshake search! Not only did they have interesting

flavours like pumpkin and marshmallow and patron, but they were

creamy and delicious! if you go to them for your fix, it comes in a giant

bowl-like glass with the elaborate garnishing like whole Ferrero Rocher!

if you have a sweet tooth or need brownie points from someone who

does, you need to try these out.”

gillis said to celebrate the award, the hotel had a special offer on

its non-alcoholic milkshakes from 6 June, 2012, to 6 July, 2012.

“We will give two free non-alcoholic milkshakes (of the same size,

but different flavours) to anyone who buys two milkshakes over the

course of the month. it’s our way of saying thank you to the gUests

and clieNts who nominated our milkshakes for this award.”

But not to forget the milkshake magic in cape town, Urban edge

Magazine has also given protea Hotel Fire & ice! cape town the thumbs

up for having the best shakes in the Mother city. in celebration of both

awards, the hotel in cape town will be offering the same special as

protea Hotel Fire & ice! Melrose arch for the month.

Bottoms up!

For more information on Protea Hotel Fire & Ice!, visit proteahotels.com.

It’s Like an Espresso, with a Shot of Tequila

A PROTEA HOTELS RELEASE

www.proteahotels.com

Snow baths and hot tubs, ice palaces and warm hospitality in a blizzard. A Zermatt skiing holiday delivers on every level.

Cool Runnings

Words KATHY MALHERBE


ZERMATT’S WORLD-FAMOUS REPUTATION as a top ski resort began badly. From the late 1880s, driven by the spirit of adventure, mountain-conquering British lords and gentlemen felt the desire to discover the unknown − the untamed Alpine world − and pit their strength and skills against it. The 4 478-metre Matterhorn, which dominated the skyline of the town, was a tempting challenge.

British illustrator, climber and explorer Edward Whymper and six mountaineers attempted the treacherous climb in 1865. Undaunted by the Heath Robinson-style equipment, the team constituted the first climbers to conquer the Matterhorn (on July 14). Whymper said he decided to ‘besiege the mountain until one of them capitulated’.

It was not Whymper who the mountain would claim, but four of his team-mates. They died on the descent when a rope linking four of them together broke. The Matterhorn and Zermatt were firmly and notoriously on the map.

In an interactive museum in town, the sheared hemp rope is displayed prominently among the equipment and utensils of the climbers. Now, every summer season, two to three thousand people climb the peak in a ‘free for all’, but as Willy Hofstetter, president of the Alpine Museum, says, ‘This is not the Eiffel Tower. There have been over 400 casualties on the mountain since 1865.’

Today, Zermatt is one of the most sought-after ski resorts in the world with the highest concentration of mountains and glacial Alps. The journey there is the epitome of Swiss efficiency – a direct flight from Cape Town on Edelweiss Air deposits you in one of the most highly rated airports in the world: Zürich. The 26 cantons of Switzerland are connected by a spider’s web of rail − the best way to travel through the country.

Until the village of Visp, an hour out of Zermatt, the double-decker train barely makes a noise as it bullets through the countryside. Neither do the passengers. Our carriage is as quiet as a Buddhist mountain retreat and we soon find out why. We were chastised by a passenger while we chatted animatedly as she pointed to the Zono del Silenzi sign. A carriage designated as a ‘quiet zone’.

The journey became silent, but meditative and relaxing. The mountains have a smattering of snow, like frosted cakes, and the higher you go, the more generous the decoration. There are quaint villages, lakes and a river that flows in steps next to the train, alternating bubbling brooks and frozen perimeters − the snow trapped in sunless crevices. A waterfall is frozen in a cascade as if stopped in mid-thought and the snow is peppered with deer and rabbit prints. The train passes through the fairy-tale village of St Nicklaus where evidence of Santa Claus’s real origin is seen on rooftops, in gardens and in the streets.

If you’re not lured by the silenzi zones of the Swiss trains, fly direct by helicopter to Zermatt. There’s no point taking a car as cars are banned in the town, which is described as ‘a democracy of pedestrians enjoying equal rights’.

TRAVELLER BUCKET LIST

There are four peaks from

which to ski, all magnificent

and accessible by gondola,

train or funicular: Gornergrat,

Matterhorn Glacier Paradise,

Rothorn and Schwarzsee

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Here, no Roll Royces prance around, and no compact car has to feel ashamed to be itself – they all stay down in the valley. Your transport choice is an electric bus or taxi, or a carriage drawn by one of the six large, shaggy horses that pay their way taking tourists to and from the station.

Visitors might come to Zermatt in summer for a variety of reasons, but winter is for the serious skiers, most of them local. They want to take advantage of the 365 days of guaranteed snow on the glacier and are spoilt for choice on the 350 kilometres of prepared pistes, the longest 27 kilometres. Zermatt alone is a skiing Shangri-la but, for those wanting a little cross-culture, a gondola will take you to Italy to ski. Those who enjoy more adrenalin can try the off-piste areas marked in yellow on the slopes. Apart from sledding, snowshoeing, heliskiing (for the adrenalin junkies) and cross-country, there’s more than enough to fill your time in Zermatt.

There are four points from which to ski, all magnificent and accessible by gondola, train or funicular − Gornergrat, Matterhorn Glacier Paradise, Rothorn and Schwarzsee. From these peaks, Zermatt is Lilliputian in the valley below, even though it’s 1 800 metres above sea level. Matterhorn Glacier Paradise has Europe’s highest aerial cableway, which takes a rather gut-lurching trip up a cliff face to the viewing platform, ice palace and Europe’s highest restaurant at 3 883 metres.

You’re left breathless, literally and figuratively, at this altitude – a third of the height that a Boeing flies and beyond the maximum height you would be able to fly without oxygen. It’s also bitterly cold.

If spending a night in an extraodinary ice hotel is on your bucket list, you won’t get much better than the igloo just below Gornergrat, at 2 727 metres. You reach it by taking the 25-minute journey on the

Gornergrat train. It was the first electric-rack railway (built in 1898) and the highest cog-wheel railway in the open air (no tunnels to Gornergrat, at 3 089 metres). The train is quaint and it’s hard to believe that, as it steeply climbs the 1 500 metres, all that’s holding you from the pull of gravity and a slippery descent is a series of flimsy looking ratchets.

From there you can ski down to the Iglu-Dorf Hotel and Ice bar, which sleeps up to 40 guests. The hotel is built from scratch each year using a rather ingenious method of blowing up different-sized balloons and then piling snow on top of them. Once the snow freezes, the balloons are popped and you have the perfect igloo. It takes 15 people six weeks to build it and it’s themed, rather incongruously, along the Wild West.

The ice sculptures, painstakingly created by guest artists from America, are so lifelike that you feel you can almost touch the smoke being blown from the pipe of the Indian chief. It’s bone-chillingly cold, though, and even the Everest-proof sleeping bags and fur didn’t sell it for me.

Great for thawing out is the super-hot spa bath at the hotel. It’s built into the snow at 3 000 feet and, as I sat there with a glass of bubbly, the Matterhorn felt close enough to touch. It’s hard to believe you can overheat in an exterior temperature of -8°C, but the water is so hot that you have to leap out every now and then and roll about in the snow, like a husky cooling off after a long mush. Minus husky fur though, you’re driven back rapidly to the pool to defrost. This alternating torture, they say, is very good for your circulation. A couple of glasses of Glühwein and a Swiss fondue round off the igloo experience and it’s a short and warming walk or ski (in the dark) to the station and down the mountain to Zermatt.

The following day brought a blizzard, freezing temperatures and

About 80 percent of visitors to

Zermatt are Swiss. They come

to take advantage of the 365

days of guaranteed snow on

the glacier and are spoilt for

choice on the 350 kilometres

of creamy prepared pistes


27 centimetres of snow. Caught skiing in it, our party decided to seek shelter from the white-out in a tiny wooden restaurant high on the mountain. Bitterly cold and disorientated, I stood at the entrance to the kitchen and asked, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?’ – in very slow, precise, dumbed-down English, referring to the complicated piste map and the blizzard outside. In perfectly clipped English, our host replied, ‘In my kitchen…’

Maybe the owners were bored in the storm, but they could not have been more hospitable or entertaining with their repartee. They dried our clothes in front of the furnace, kept us supplied with soup, cheese, apfelstrudel and hot chocolate, and introduced us to ‘their’ deer feeding from the troughs in the heavy snow.

A break in the snowstorm saw us scurrying back to Zermatt, which encapsulates CEO of Swiss Tourism Jürg Schmid’s description of the country: ‘Switzerland is a powerful brand. We have the most beautiful mountains in the world… 48 peaks towering more than 4 000 metres is hard to compete with. The Swiss have made it their mission to capitalise on this by concentrating on class instead of mass’.

Class is played out perfectly at the four-star Schweizerhof Hotel in a combination of discrete luxury and service. The Schweizerhof was started by Alexander Seiler – a son of a poor Valais peasant family, but a visionary thinker. He was an enterprising entrepreneur and, undaunted, in 1855 started what is now one of Switzerland’s greatest hotel dynasties.

Why Zermatt? ‘The first sight of the Matterhorn sent shivers up and down my spine,’ he says.

Previously, there were neither hotels nor restaurants and visitors were

treated with wariness and outright hostility. The Seiler family’s burning enthusiasm for the hotel business has continued into the fourth generation. Apart from the Schweizerhof, Seiler hotels in Zermatt include the five-star Hotel Mont Cervin Palace and the four-star Hotel Monte Rosa.

Mountain cuisine is usually considered nothing more than a fuel stop, but the 56 mountain restaurants around Zermatt − many of them former farmhouses − serve magnificent food. A personal favourite tasted at one of the restaurants on the slopes was a bowl of hay soup with vodka, which tastes infinitely better than it sounds. It is here where you take a break, lounging on the large terraces soaking up the sun and letting the Matterhorn magic wash over you.

On your return to the hotel, muscles aching from an exhilarating day’s skiing, the sempervivum (wellness centre) offers power showers, a spa bath, a light-flooded relaxation area and an indoor pool. Going au naturel in the mixed sempervivum is standard and one needs to suppress any South African prudishness and go with the bubbles…

Zermatt is not like St Moritz or Gstaad – a fashionista or royalist playground. Visitors deliberately avoid superficial glamour and celebrities blend in with the other skiers. In fact, we’re told that the Queen of Sweden waiting for the funicular to the Matterhorn with a pair of skis over her shoulder is just as unlikely to cause a sensation as Sir Richard Branson sitting next to you. It’s a breathtaking Alpine world where you relax and recharge your batteries.

In Zermatt they say that everything dramatic, heavy-handed or pompous is out. ‘Casual elegance is in. And those who turn up over- or under-dressed are usually the first to realise it.’


Cars are banned in Zermatt and your

transport choices include an electric bus or

taxi, or the charm of a horse-drawn carriage

As the sun sets over the Matterhorn, Zermatt

becomes a twinkling haven of warmth and

hospitality. Tired, but exhilarated, skiiers relax

in front of blazing fires, enjoying traditional

cuisine and recharging their batteries for

another day of skiing

‘WE DON’T CALL OUR SERVICE HIGH END,’ laughs Charlie Chester. ‘We call it nice end.’

Semantic quibbles aside, there’s no denying that the Ibiza demographic has changed in recent years. Of course, the island’s seen several waves of settlers since the late ’60s. Throughout the ’70s, it was a laid-back hippie enclave. During the late ’80s, it was co-opted by the ecstasy generation, kids who came for a week’s unrestrained hedonism before returning to the grind of dead-end jobs in a recession-ravaged Britain. Twenty years on, it’s being colonised by the super-wealthy. Suddenly, there’s call for concierge services like Chester’s Icon Ibiza.

‘If you sit on the beach at Playa d’en Bossa and watch the amount of private jets coming in, it’s incredible,’ he says. ‘Ibiza’s brand is worldwide now. People are coming in from China, Russia, Australia, Kuwait. Two of our biggest clients are from Cape Town. The market’s ridiculous.’

Chester can count Sienna Miller, P Diddy, Kelis and Jade Jagger among his clients. Premiership footballers, rugby players, pop stars and city traders all call on his services; requests range from the simple (like hiring a Range Rover or BMW X5 to run them between clubs for €80 to R805 – an hour) to the sybaritic. It’s not unheard of for clients to give him a R1 million budget when planning a party. More often, he’s tasked with organising an itinerary, and it’s here that a little bit of inside knowledge comes in handy.

‘The island changes every year. It’s our job to tell clients where to be and where not to be.

We call it trip design. We plan it round how far they’ve travelled, whether they have jet lag, and just ease them into their holiday.’

This is the new breed of Ibiza hedonist – cash-rich individuals who jet in from every corner of the globe. And they’re changing the very fabric of the clubs. A table at Space can now cost anything from €3 000 to €6 000 (R30 213 to R60 426). Meanwhile, two thirds of the floor at Pacha has been given over to a cordoned-off VIP section. Even democratic DC10, whose missing velvet rope scared off Kevin Spacey some years back, has capitulated. Naomi Campbell was spotted at one of the five VIP tables there last moth.

All this is great news for the left-leaning government, which abhors mass tourism and has been making concerted efforts to pull in a richer, more mature clientele of late.

But if Ibiza starts catering to the serried ranks of the super-rich, doesn’t that run at counterpoint to the island’s original, egalitarian spirit?

Not really, says Chester. ‘In the past five years, people have started to call it “the new St Tropez”, which is a load of rubbish. It will never be. Its history is too strong – all the madness that goes with Ibiza.

‘But it has changed the island for the better. It’s had to get better to keep these people happy – they come, and they expect the best.’

Icon Ibiza concierge service starts at €300 (R3 021) a day. See iconibiza.com for details.

PARTY PLANNER CHARLIE CHESTER’S PICKS Atzaro Spa (Atzaro Agroturismo, Carreterra Sant Joan KM 15, tel. +34 971 338 838, atzaro.com) ‘It’s like an oasis in the middle of the island – featuring Asian-influenced interiors, brilliant service and so much character and history.’

Aguas de Ibiza (Salvador Camacho 9, Santa Eulalia del Rio, tel. +34 971 319 991, aguasdeibiza.com)‘A much-needed five-star hotel that’s really well run, with a great spa. Santa Eulalia is often overlooked, but it’s a great resort.’

The Giri Hotel (Carre Principal 5, Sant Joan de Labritja, tel. +34 971 333 345, thegiri.com) ‘This hotel only has five rooms, but so much care and passion has gone into it. It’s on the north of the island, 15 minutes from Ibiza Town. But you could be at the other end of the world.’

Sands Beach Restaurant (Playa d’en Bossa, tel. +34 971 396 849, sandsibiza.com)‘The food’s amazing and it’s very chilled out. The Argentine steak is the best on the island.’

Space (Playa d’en Bossa, tel. +34 971 396 793, spaceibiza.com) ‘One of the best clubs in the world. It’s got that clubland legend and it just delivers.’

Ibiza’s become a playground for the super-rich. How do they ensure their holiday runs smoothly? They throw money at it, of course, with the help of ‘fixers’ like Charlie Chester.

Our Man in Ibiza

Words TABITHA LASLEY



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AT YOUR SERVICE

The Giri Hotel flaunts

the ultimate boutique

hotel trimmings

– from bespoke

bathrooms to

exquisite sun spots

www.atzaro.com

www.aguasdeibiza.com

www.thegiri.com

www.sandsibiza.com

www.spaceibiza.com

Ultra modern architect designed home by Aurelio Cimato, perched on the

Linksfield Ridge with never ending views to the horizon! 3 Bedrooms en-suite

plus a guest suite with en-suite bathroom, 2 studies and a library, 2 TV

lounges/family room, a formal lounge, 3 entrance halls, state of the art kitchen,

separate scullery and laundry, walk-in pantry and walk-in fridge/ cold room. Large

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room level. Large wrap around balconies on living area and large covered patio

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Large wine cellar off patio with wine chiller and built in fridge. ±1200m² Under

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home in case of power failure. Nervi spray, landscaped garden, irrigation system,

vegetable garden. R30 million. House sold fully furnished. T&C�s apply. Contact:

Charlene Liebman 082 448 0440, Marina Konidaris 083 307 3882 Office: 011

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Page 1.qxp 6/19/2012 01:38 PM Page 1


CAMPS BAY, CAPE TOWN A development of distinction. Modern masterpiece amidst coastal splendour. Perfectly

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CLIFTON, CAPE TOWN Magnificent Clifton property! Amazing sea and mountain views from all angles.

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dise! Asking R18.5 million. Contact: Juliette Bryant 078 399 4323, Brendan Miller 082

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CAMPS BAY, CAPE TOWN Offers from R15 million. Stylish colonial villa in prestige Glen Address! 5 minute walk

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Asking R16 million. Contact: Thelma Sandeman 083 225 9360 Office: 021 438 5511

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WAVERLEY, JOHANNESBURG Set in a guarded enclave this contemporary 4 bedroom en-suite home has a work-

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SANDHURST, JOHANNESBURG Bidding from R9.95 million. Quintessential design of the Georgian period. A columned

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BRYANSTON, SANDTON New Release � Sensational architecture in Millionaires� row with the finest properties

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HURLINGHAM, JOHANNESBURG A modern farmhouse infused with bold modern design elements. Designed to provide

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Page 2-5.qxp 6/19/2012 01:41 PM Page 1


DAINFERN, GAUTENGA rare opportunity to own one of Dainfern�s finest home. Situated on a ±1600m²

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DAINFERN, GAUTENG A very special home. Finally on the market for sale. Elegant yet homely - this beautifully

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staff acc, garaging for 4 cars with automated doors. All set on ±11 000m². Furniture

optional. Asking R7 900 000. Contact: Rolo Armer 083 819 7881 Office: 011 469

4950. Web ref: 167916 Mobile site pics and info SMS 167916 to 38573*

FOURWAYS GARDENS, GAUTENGNew Release. Family home set in a magnificent treed garden. Entrance hall, lounge

with fireplace, formal dining room with a wood pub, family room, guest cloakroom

with a shower, eat-in kitchen, pantry, scullery, patio overlooking a sparkling pool,

jacuzzi and a truly gorgeous landscaped garden. 3 bedrooms (spacious master suite

upstairs), 2 bathrooms, upstairs study / nursery, double auto garage and staff suite.

Asking R3 999 000. Contact: Trish Walton 082 442 9112, Faith Stanbridge 082 659

1700 Office: 011 465 1187 Mobile site pics and info SMS 181015 to 38573*

DOUGLASDALE, SANDTONNegotiating from R 2 799 000. Home set match! Set in a quiet leafy lane in sought

after �Greenpark�. Beautifully renovated home for a relaxed and hassle free living.

3 Generous, sleek and beautifully tiled reception areas flowing gently onto covered

patio overlooking private garden and sparkling pool. Well appointed chef�s kitchen

with scullery. 4 Good sized sunny bedrooms. Guest cloakroom, 2 modern bathrooms.

Staff quarters, double garage, tennis court... and more. This home has a wonderful

atmosphere of light and space with the outdoors easily accessed through double

doors. Truly special. Contact: James Christelis 082 416 5343, Ryan Rodda 076 979

4330 Office: 011 465 1187 Web ref: 178835

DOUGLASDALE, SANDTONNegotiating from upper R2 millions. A home to be proud of. Top finishes throughout.

The gourmet kitchen is the heart of the home, open plan lounge and dining room with

separate family room and cloakroom. 3 Large bedrooms, study, 2 bathrooms. Shower

under the stars! Large covered patio overlooking sparkling pool. Double garage. Full

staff. Contact: James Christelis 082 416 5343, Ryan Rodda 076 979 4330 Office: 011

465 1187 Web ref: 181277

DOUGLASDALE, SANDTONNegotiating from R 1 999 000. Work live play in this low maintenance classic face brick

family home in sought after boomed area. This warm and inviting home offers

4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and study. Comfortable granite kitchen, separate dining

room, private lounge and family room ideal for family entertaining. Covered patio

overlooking sparkling pool and set in a amazing treed garden. Staff accommodation,

double garage. add value to this family home. Home sweet home. Contact: James

Christelis 082 416 5343, Ryan Rodda 076 979 4330 Office: 011 465 1187 Web ref:

183569

DOUGLASDALE, SANDTONNegotiating from R 1 999 000. Beautiful family home set in a secure complex.

3/4 Sunny bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, cloakroom. Granite kitchen. Open plan living area

on to large garden with fantastic entertainment area... Full staff, double garage. Contact:

James Christelis 082 416 5343, Ryan Rodda 076 979 4330 Office: 011 465 1187

Each office is independently owned and operated. *R1.50 / SMS. Free SMS� don�t apply. T&C�s apply Each office is independently owned and operated. *R1.50 / SMS. Free SMS� don�t apply. T&C�s apply

Page 2-5.qxp 6/19/2012 01:41 PM Page 2


WELLINGTON, WESTERN CAPEBoutique 14ha wine estate located in the beautiful Bovlei valley of Wellington. The

estate produces quality, award winning wines for the export market. The farm has a

fully equipped cellar, ample water, historic 5 bedroom manor house (circa 1799),

office, tasting room and store. The property is sold as an income-generating, going

concern. Implements and some stock will be included in the sale (details available on

request). Asking R16 750 000 Contact: Danie Hauptfleisch 083 6272148 Irene Spinks

0741 279280 Office: 021 870 1011

SOMERSET WEST, WESTERN CAPEExecutive Manor House. Watch the sun set over False Bay and the full moon rising

over the majestic Helderberg behind you. Close to the Stellenbosch vineyards and the

sun kissed beaches of the False Bay coastline. This is truly a magnificent

property with lots of potential, such as a guest house, Boutique hotel, big family

holiday home, corporate manor house for an overseas company or a recuperation

centre where people can relax in total privacy while they recover / recoup from

medical treatment etc. Asking R30 million. Contact: Louis Harding 083 257 7822

Office: 021 851 4450 Mobile site pics and info SMS 183897 to 38573*

WELLINGTON, WESTERN CAPEThe views of the mountains, Paarl Valley and surrounding areas are breathtakingly

beautiful. This property of 750m² has large entertainment areas which open up onto

the front veranda and magnificent pool. Nestled on 1716m² land in a well known

Wine Estate in the Boland and a mere 50 minutes drive to Cape Town. This Cape

Vernacular home has a gourmet farm style kitchen with scullery and pantry. The

spacious master bedroom with panoramic views of the mountains has an antique,

handcrafted bath for those tranquil escapes. Asking R6.5 million. Contact: Estelle

Denys 072 1414117 Mobile site pics and info SMS 98055 to 38573*

STELLENBOSCH, WESTERN CAPELuxury home on an exclusive Golf and Wine Estate outside Stellenbosch. Magnificent

views from this well appointed home. 5 Bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, study, state of the

art kitchen, swimming pool. Views over the golf course to Table Mountain in the

distance. 3 Garages and wine cellar. Asking R5.5 million. Contact Derek Cohen

082 776 8282 Office: 021 865 2199 Mobile site pics and info SMS 179829 to 38573*

Each office is independently owned and operated. *R1.50 / SMS. Free SMS� don�t apply. T&C�s apply

Page 6.qxp 6/19/2012 01:42 PM Page 1


PCGBPIES017.indd 1 2012/06/15 11:40 AM

www.eliesaab.com

cart

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rotonde de cartierANNUAL CALENDAR 9908 MC

TRUE TO ITS STATUS AS A FINE WATCHMAKER, CARTIER HAS RENEWED A MAJOR COMPLICATION: THE ANNUAL

CALENDAR. THE CARTIER AUTOMATIC CALIBRE 9908 MC DISPLAYS THE DATE, THE DAY AND THE MONTH.

THIS INGENIOUS SYSTEM ENABLES THE RESETTING OF ALL FUNCTIONS VIA THE WINDING CROWN JUST ONCE

A YEAR, IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY. THE ELEGANT 45MM ROTONDE DE CARTIER CASE SURROUNDS

A SINGLE DIAL UPON WHICH THE DAYS AND MONTHS ARE CREATIVELY AND INNOVATIVELY DISPLAYED,

AND OFFERS EXCEPTIONAL CLARITY OF THE LARGE DATE THROUGH A DOUBLE APERTURE.

18K PINK GOLD CASE, BEADED CROWN SET WITH A CABOCHON SAPPHIRE, MANUFACTURE MECHANICAL

MOVEMENT, SELF-WINDING, ANNUAL CALENDAR CALIBRE 9908 MC (32 JEWELS, 28,800 VIBRATIONS

PER HOUR, DOUBLE-BARREL, APPROXIMATELY 48 HOUR POWER RESERVE), DAYS AND MONTHS INDICATED

BY TWO HAMMER-SHAPED HANDS, LARGE DATE AT 12 O’CLOCK.

CARTIER BOUTIQUE, SHOP U13, UPPER LEVEL, SANDTON CITY - 011 666 2800

www.cartier.com

Private Edition 16

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