Above magazine summer 2009

It all started with the jellyfish - millions of them swamping the bay of Saint Tropez in June of last year.

I began to notice them as I was embarking to go visit American artist and photographer Peter Beard, in Cassis, near Marseilles. I had never seen so many. It looked like the omen of an approaching apoca-lypse, like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. The entire bay, from the harbor to the outskirts of the

peninsula, was dark and threatening, carpeted with jel-lyfish. Soon thereafter I learned that the disappearance from the Mediterranean of tuna, sharks and turtles – all species that feed on jellyfish – was, along with global warming, a cause of this largely unprecedented, terrify-ing phenomenon.

Then it occurred to me how many fewer fish I had seen recently. While cruising the Mediterranean, it occurred to me that I wasn’t seeing dolphins as often as I used to, whales even less frequently. Tuna and marlin were no longer jumping around the boat the way they used to during my often solitary crossings from one end of my beloved Mediterranean to the other. It seemed as though the marvelous sea, that of The Iliad and the Odyssey, Greece, Italy, Egypt, France, Spain and Turkey, the mythi-cal kingdom of Neptune – without which there would be no Capri, no Portofino, Saint Tropez, Villefranche, Mo-naco, Aeolian islands, Cyclades, Ionians, Naples, Genoa, Barcelona, Nice, Athens, Caesarea, Beirut, Alexandria, Baleares – that beautiful big blue sea, was dying before my very eyes. And that thought devastated me.

But at the same time, as we were smoothly cruising to-ward Cassis on the most placid, gentle, silver-colored wa-ters I had seen in years, an idea came to me. I decided to turn the fashion magazine I had just acquired into a publication entirely dedicated to the beauty of the world and to the absolute, vital need to preserve it. A magazine devoted to the environment, but without the self-righ-teous, preachy clichés that are such easy, ample fodder for a “green” publication. It would all be about saving the beauty of the world through hard, factual reporting, of course, but also about art, fashion, architecture, travel, lifestyle and all the usual topics we enjoy reading about in magazines, but with a clear, unequivocal sustainable angle. Some might call it presumptuous, or even utopian.

Could such a magazine make a difference? After all, ecol-ogy and the environment are now the “in” things. Most corporations across economic sectors are coming up with “green” products. “Green” is on everyone’s lips to the extent where one worries that it might prove just another fad, a new gimmick for turning the survival of our planet, which is undeniably at stake, into a huge business op-portunity. Then again, to quote Andy Warhol, “so what”?

What if it works and makes things better for our planet? Doesn’t the end justify the means? In this case, the end means survival for all.

Our goal is to become the destination publication for in-formation and, hopefully, inspiration, about how to save beauty and preserve the environment on both collective and individual levels. Since I made that decision, many wonderful contributors have rallied to the project with admirable and heartwarming enthusiasm.

The encouragement and primary source of inspiration for creating this magazine came from the great Peter Beard. During my visit to Cassis last June, I told him about the jel-lyfish in Saint Tropez. He half-jokingly compared that oc-currence to human overpopulation, which, if unchecked, would make the planet inhabitable. “That is what your magazine should be all about”, Peter said when I told him of my project for a publication about the environment that would also include fashion. The concept somehow seemed so obvious that it instantly appealed to a host of remarkable contributors who joined forces with the hand-ful of extraordinarily devoted individuals that helped me make this project a reality. I want to thank them all in my name and that of Above’s team.

But upon reflection, the wheels were really set in mo-tion over 35 years ago, when I first saw the 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green, in which the irreplaceable Edward G. Robinson, the sole surviving witness of our once (and still) magnificent planet, decides out of despair for what the world has become, to go end his life in a se-cret “termination center”. As he lay on the table of death, with his only friend Charlton Heston watching in tears, magnificent images of a disappeared world pass before his old, desperate eyes on a giant panoramic screen, im-ages of clean oceans, ponies galloping in green pastures, breeze-swept wheat fields, and multicolored flowers, by now all but gone and living only in his dying memory and as a digital reminder of what our destroyed world once was: a paradise lost.

Nicolas Rachline

Edito�'s LEttEr

Portrait by Sabine Van Vlanderen

Orchid by Ron Agam

6 SummeR 2009 7SummeR 2009

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p.54 – Roberto Saviano talkS life afteR GomoRRah, livinG in exile and waSte

(miS)manaGement with the mafia. By Beatrice Borromeo — p.62 – antonio Zambardino

photoGRaphS the SmouldeRinG, moB-made mountainS of tRaSh in Campania —

p.72 – Bobby kennedy, Jr.’s planS to put ameRiCa’S eneRGy poliCieS BaCk on tRaCk.

By Jill Brooke. photography by Gilles Bensimon — p.80 – how Can we deSiRe SuStainaBly?

five leadinG aRChiteCtS ReSpond. By Jesse Seegers — p.92 – hans feurer’s

photoGRaphS of the GReat BaRRieR Reef — p.100 – hans ulrich obrist inteRviewS

the late, GReat philoSopheR and foundeR of deep eColoGy theoRy, arne naess —

p.108 – Six enviRonmentally enliGhtened aRtiStS to look out foR at the veniCe

Biennale. By Skye Sherwin — p.116 – philippe parreno pReSentS a poSt-apoCalyptiC

ShoRt StoRy exCluSively foR Above — p.124 – massimo vitali’s photoGRaphS

of a RiotouS SummeR in Rimini — p.130 – how the diamond induStRy finally Cleaned up

itS aCt. By elizabeth upper — p.134 – Stella mcCartney diSCuSSeS faShion, ethiCS

and fake fuR with Charlotte Casiraghi. photography by tim Barber — p.142 – emeRGenCe

iS a life lived in ten ChapteRS. photography by norbert Schoerner. Styling by Charlotte Stockdale —

p.162 – Jean pigozzi, Stefano pilati, Claire nouvian and nicolas Rachline diSCoveR

the miSSinG link Between faShion and fiSh. photoGRaphy By tierney Gearon —

p.176 – welCome to limoland, tierney Gearon photoGRaphS the kidS of loS

anGeleS — p.184 – angela lindvall pReSentS heR favouRite Beauty pRoduCtS. photography

by david mushegain

8 SummeR 2009

SurfaCe

StratoSphere

The greener house of the future is already built.

You’re living in it.

ΔThe EcoRenew product range is only available for properties in the United Kingdom. †Based on generation figures provided by the Energy Saving Trust, using a standard 2.08kWp installation generating 1,768kWh per year and a typical average household energy consumption of 3,300kWh per year. Actual outputs may vary. *Saving information provided by the Energy Saving Trust. Savings are approximate figures derived from an average of savings made by 4m2 flat plate and 4m2 evacuated tube Solar Thermal installations, using hot water heated by the installation in place of water heated by gas, and based on the average water heating requirements of a gas-heated, three bedroom semi-detached house with three occupants. Actual outputs may vary. **Calls may be monitored and recorded as part of our customer care programme. Calls to this number are free from BT landlines; other network operators may charge.

EDF Energy is a trading name used by EDF Energy Customers plc, Reg. No. 02228297, whose Registered Office is at 40 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7EN, incorporated in England and Wales. The responsibility for performance of the supply obligations for all EDF Energy supply contracts rests with EDF Energy Customers plc.

The house of the future doesn’t have to look futuristic. It can look like your current home. Fit solar panels from

EDF Energy’s EcoRenewΔ range, and you could generate up to 40% of the electricity† or heat up to a third of the

hot water you need*. And with the help of our Green Energy Team, it’s easier than you think.

Make your home greener. Call the Green Energy Team on 0800 404 7436** or visit www.savetodaysavetomorrow.com/ecorenew5

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p.16 – Jacques Cousteau’s underwater house — p.18 – yann-arthus Bertrand’s

home — p.20 – Bike polo in the big city — p.23 – Zineb’s Sedira’s boats and birds —

p.24 – weCycle with karta and Colette — p.26 – Giselle Bunchen and the rain forest —

p.30 – a 6,000km wall in the Sahara — p.32 – katherine hamnett’s drive to Save the Seas —

p.34 – maison martin margiela’s memorable furniture — p.38 – the Campana

Brothers’ vision of sustainable design — p.42 – francois Roche’s decomposing homes —

p.46 – david de Rothschild’s anti-plastic pacific adventure — p.50 – and two heavyweights

debate whether going green is just a fad.

p.192 – an exposé into the bluefin tuna’s demise by Claire nouvian — p.198 – frederic

fekkai’s organic hair care — p.200 – testing the tesla sportscar — p.202 – Cross-cultural

communication in the 21st century — p.206 – a geek’s guide to environmentally friendly technology

— p.208 – the denim dirt — p.210, a guide to recycling for those who can’t be bothered —

p.212 – how raw food keeps you fit and full — p.216 – Shopping for vintage — p. 219 – the

Bamford hay Barn spa — p.220 – are designers as green as their designs? — p.222 – audrey

marney’s secret garden — p.224 – Ron agam's redemptive flowers — p.234 – must-reads

— p.235 – Summer, sorted.

p.236 – Glossaryinside back cover – page Blanche – francesco Clemente

10 SummeR 2009

HilArio isolA and MAtteo Norzi ’S undeRwateR homaGe to JaCQueS CouSteau’S StaRfiSh houSe

In 1963, Jacques Yves Cousteau pio-neered an astonishing experiment to explore the possibilities for human life underwater. Just off the coast of the Port Sudan, in the Red Sea, the celebrated aquatic explorer installed Starfish House, a submerged structure 10 metres tall and 15 in diameter, and inside it his wife and three other col-laborators filmed themselves cook-ing, eating, smoking, listening to music and playing chess. The results were a feature film called A World without the Sun, international ac-claim, an Academy Award and a first foray into man’s colonization of a strange new continent – the sea.

Forty-five years later, Italian artists Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi plan to revisit the now coral, seaweed and anemone-covered structure to film themselves repeating Cousteau’s experiment. The Starfish House functions with similar physics to a diving bell – “like an upside down glass, with the air pressure keeping the water out,” Norzi explains – ne-gating the need for a physical bar-rier between the two environments. In its place is a “liquid door”, which holds particular meaning for Isola and Norzi, whose past projects have explored the “prints that man leaves behind”, and relationship between

Text by Xerxes Cook

Isola & Norzi are the resident artists of the Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco, September 3- December 3

Isola and Norzi LIQUID DOOR, 2009 Charcoal pencil on photo print, Courtesy of the artists [email protected]

carpets and dust, windows and cur-tains. On today’s manifestation of modernity, they comment, “we gen-erally have an artificial point of view, and we are losing this pure view on nature with the arrival of an artificial tourist environment just along the coast in Sharm El-Sheik.”

Of Starfish House’s “liquid door”, Isola elaborates, “It’s a limbo space be-tween the inside and the outside, between nature and the domestic – a pause, a comma between two dif-ferent worlds”. Their performance inside the house, due to take place in 2010, will last only a couple of hours

and is intended as “an ephemeral act against restoration theory, against the idea of putting a rock in a museum.” Before that time, however, they plan to curate an underwater exhibition at the Coney Island aquarium in New York, turning the attraction into an “a museum for underwater art”. Nor-zi considers the exhibition “a dem-onstration against the white cube. In both galleries and collectors’ houses, the white cube is the new baroque. Where the rich once ornately decorat-ed the rooms in which they showed off their art collections, now they just paint everything white.” He contin-ues, “We are interested in how man

represents himself through nature. An aquarium is actually a diorama and how we present nature, the under-water, actually says a lot about our-selves. It’s clean, it’s dry and there’s no danger. Art shares the same dy-namic; it’s an artificiality that repre-sents something about ourselves.”

16 SuRFACe SummeR 20 09 17

hydRoponiC houSeS and evolvinG BuildinGS aRe FrANÇois roCHe ’S RaiSon d’ÊtRe

“At the moment we are working on a building that will die,” says François Roche, pausing slightly for effect be-fore elaborating. “I mean, really. We want it to decay, necrose, disappear.”

Roche, one half of Parisian avant-garde architecture studio R&Sie(n) talks fervently about the possibilities of buildings that are not static but as evolving and undefined as their en-vironment. In many of their works, it is impossible to discern between the two. The pavilion he mentions, Things Which Necrose, will biode-grade over time thanks to a sugar-

based plastic that reacts to humidity, and will be on show in the summer of 2010 at the Louisiana art gallery in Denmark. The studio is also re-sponsible for houses awash in ferns, apartments that grow vegetal skins, tree labyrinths and offices that col-lect dust from the air.

Roche and his partner, Stephanie Lavaux, have been working together for 15 years. They aren’t principally interested in ecology, but more often than not their investigations and the-orizing lead them to nature. Roche, a trained mathematician, likens the

evolving process of their buildings to the algorithm of trees. “You can pre-dict the equilibrium of the tree, but you cannot predict the trajectory of its branches. It’s not directly the imi-tation of nature, but rather the abil-ity to permit something which is not entirely controlled and not entirely forecast.”

The writing may be on the wall for the dying pavilion, but elsewhere, at the centre of a courtyard in a quiet Parisian suburb, an unruly mass of vegetation appears to be in the pro-cess of suffocating a small apartment

called I’m Lost In Paris. Every inch of the building’s exterior walls are cov-ered in hydroponic ferns that feed from hundreds of hand-blown glass beakers that are strung like Christ-mas decorations throughout the fa-çade. The rest of the building and its environment is a sprawling palette of chlorophyll shades. “We nicknamed it the Blair Witch Project,” laughs Roche. “This is pre-Romantic move-ment landscaping and the neighbour-hood is very afraid about it.”

Its aesthetic is an acquired taste, but in many ways this is a conventional

apartment. Inside, it’s cool and light with slick concrete floors, designer chairs and floor-to-ceiling glass win-dows. But the building changes with every glance, a new chapter unfolds every time a new bit of information is interpreted and with every story told. That’s exactly how R&Sie(n) likes it. Roche associates their work with science fiction writers and theorists of the Sixties and Seventies. Cedric Price and Archigram were also inter-ested in the idea of non-determinate design. R&Sie(n)'s house in Nimes, Spider in the Woods was the subject of a short story by author Bruce Ster-

I'm Lost in Paris by R&Sie(n), Paris, 2008 Detail: 300 glass beakers "blowing" the components for a bacterial culture and extra light through refraction.

Text by Beatrice Galilee

42 SuRFACe 43SummeR 2009

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED.

If you were to condense David de Rothschild’s life, endeavors and sense of humour into three words, these would be quite appropriate. His mind, like his life, wanders off the beaten track. Not occasionally, like most of us, but constantly: off the beaten track is his default set-ting. When de Rothschild says some-thing common, you’re grateful, but it doesn’t happen very often. So once you’ve reformatted your disk, you’re ready to follow him where he takes you. Where is that? A plastic boat. Big deal, most boats are made of plastic, but his boat is made out of reclaimed plastic bottles. Real ones that he’s kept whole so people can visually pick up on the message that his Plastiki expedition is about.

Now do you, like me, expect that the aim of sailing a boat called the Plastiki out through the giant plas-tic gyre in the Pacific is to tell the world to stop using so much plastic? If so, you’re missing the point com-pletely. The “green baron” – as the Italian press nicknamed him – has a different plan: beat waste by giving it value.

It’s simple. It’s smart. It’s pragmatic. And that’s what the Plastiki is really about.

The Pacific’s plastic garbage patch is only one stop on his route, an il-lustration among many of our abu-sive relationship with the oceans, which de Rothschild is on a crusade to denounce. This extremely chal-lenging expedition is about showing the world – industry, entrepreneurs, kids, parents, people, everyone – that plastic is an amazing, polymor-phic resource.

If you make the problem the solu-tion, you beat the problem at the source. That’s de Rothschild’s phi-

known aS the “GReen BaRon”, dAvid de rotHsCHild SetS Sail to the vaSt voRtex of plaStiC in the paCifiC

by Claire Nouvian

Tierney Gearon took David de Rothschild's portrait via Skype while he was working on the construction of the Plastiki in his San Francisco boatyard.

It’s estimated the world uses between 500 billion and 1.2 trillion plastic bags annually. Of the 100 million tons of plastic produced each year – of which only 3.5% is recycled – the united Nations’ environmental Program has revealed that 10% ends up in the sea, leading to an estimated average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris for every square mile of ocean. This is the reality of much of the North Pacific Ocean, but not only there - the phenomenon occurs wherever currents and winds create favorable conditions for a giant eddy, where water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral, causing debris to accumulate

4 6 SuRFACe 47SummeR 2009

dEad ManWaL�ing

post-Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano’s life became the stuff of legend. for Above, the man who dared demask

the modern mafia emerges from hiding to share his views on ethics, living as a marked man and the mafia’s

role in the naples garbage crisis.

By Beatrice Borromeo

few Italians have achieved fame like Roberto Saviano. He has captured the world’s at-tention because he talks about an unfortu-nate symbol of his country, the mafia. For many, the mafia is The Godfather, living off drug trafficking in the image of the Sicilian

Cupola (aka the Sicilian Mafia Commission). If you had to capture an image, it would be one of a man wearing a cap, smoking a cigarette and pointing his gun at a traitor.

But the mafia has grown – it has become an aseptic, productive and modern industry. There is nothing pic-turesque about it, except certain obsessions among its members for a Scarface kind of life and designer clothes. Roberto Saviano deserves credit for updating our idea of the mafia – it isn’t just a Sicilian problem, it doesn’t only deal in drugs and it isn’t a cliché. It’s a cancer in the world and it metastasizes by keeping abreast of current invents, investing in new technologies and infiltrating politics.

As an organisation, the mafia has the biggest turnover in Italy. It is estimated that the business of the three mafias amounts to €100 billion each year. Fiat generates half that worldwide. Saviano’s is a story of denunciation and fear, of years spent avoiding people who want to kill him. He never sleeps in the same room for more than two nights. The police escort has become his family. His own fam-ily has passed judgment on him for going against the Camorra. Friends have come to hate him for becoming the symbol of a struggle in which they themselves feel like victims but, unlike Saviano, are anonymous.

His situation is one of extreme solitude, of a gut-felt need for freedom. Saviano may be surrounded by millions of people, but the glass wall separating them is too thick. He cannot touch them, or mix with them. The Camorra want Saviano dead because he has cast the world’s spotlight on their doings. Yet wouldn’t killing him draw even more

bad press? Certainly, but now it has become a question of honor. There is also the question of the rise to power: a great number of arrests in Campania has put away the heads of many Camorra families, so there is a dearth of bosses. Kill Saviano and you become one.

A short time ago, an informer revealed that Saviano was to be killed with a bomb by Christmas. They intended to set TNT on the Naples-Rome motorway and blow him up together with his police escort, in a scenario reminiscent of the killing of Judge Falcone at the time of the Maxi-tri-al. This evocative image shows just how deep the rage of organized crime runs against Saviano, just how striking the revenge must be. When this danger was made public, Saviano broke through the walls for a few seconds and briefly returned to being a man more than a symbol. “I want a home,” he said. “I want to fall in love. Drink a beer in public. I’m only 28.”

It is more than difficult to meet Roberto Saviano. Making an appointment with him is nearly impossible because his movements are often decided at the last minute, and obviously his safety depends on nobody knowing in ad-vance where he’s going to be.

Three hours before our scheduled interview, he lets me know that he’s in Milan. A message arrives with the name of his hotel: “Hope it goes well, it’s increasingly difficult for me to go out in public.” We meet one fine early spring afternoon. In front of the hotel entrance, a man in a blue car surveys who’s going in and warns someone by radio. There are seven policemen in Saviano’s escort. Five live with him constantly, while two work shifts. The chief, Nando, has become his shadow.

“I wonder why everybody trembles when I walk into a hotel?”

robErto saviano

On 20 October 2008, six Nobel Prize laureates - Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Rita Levi montalcini, Desmond Tutu, Günter Grass, and mikhail Gorbachev - published an article in Italian newspaper La Reppublica expressing their support for Saviano and their belief that the Camorra is not just a problem of security and public order but also a democratic and existential threat.

Portrait by Speranza Casillo

5 4 CORe 55SummeR 2009

napleS iS BuRninGphotoGRaphy By antonio ZamBaRdino

When the garbage piled up on the streets of Naples last year, Antonio Zam-bardino, like many other photographers in the city, found himself “seduced

by these sexy mountains of trash”. But instead of documenting the city’s refuse crisis, Zam-bardino headed for the outskirts of Naples and discovered that all wasn’t as it seemed. In the middle of a flat landscape, there was a perfectly round hillock that had originally aroused Zam-bardino’s suspicions when he first passed by it in the summer. Come autumn, the rain had washed away the top layer of soil, exposing a structure made entirely of waste. Deciding to investigate the matter further, Zambardino dis-covered other illegal landfills that contributed to the Campanian landscape what he estimates to be hundreds of artificial hills, some up to 30 metres tall. Of these photographs, reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich’s melancholic land-scapes, Zambardino explains “ for the past 30 years, there has always been a problem with waste management when you get out of the city. The Camorra have a monopoly on trash.” And the 27 year-old photographer discovered that they “would rent land for legitimate waste disposal and charge people for the transport of trash, but then illegally burn it in the woods at night. Or put trash in the foundations of other construction projects they are working on. It looks like something out of Wall-E”

Robert Neon

Courtesy of Contrasto agency

62 CORe 6 3SummeR 2009

thE EnE�gy

of KEnnEdy

man of action Bobby kennedy, Jr. is putting america’s energy policies back on track

text by Jill Brooke photography by Gilles Bensimon

as one of the featured speakers at New York’s Bedford Environmental Summit in early 2009, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. listens on as fellow panellists discuss ocean preservation, recycling and the benefits of school and community gardens. Wait-

ing is always difficult for him. Though his 6’2” frame sits in an upright position, his foot is waving back and forth like an American flag caught in a gust of wind. The organisers of the event wisely put him as the last speaker to inspire the audience - and he doesn’t disappoint.

Walking up to the podium, his sea blue eyes surveys the crowd. The event is taking place in the wealthy enclave of Bedford, New York, where residents are primarily Re-publicans who care about cutting their carbon footprint but without compromising their pocketbooks. So Bobby Kennedy, Jr., whose family has represented the Demo-cratic party in the Senate, Congress, United Nations, State Department and even the Oval Office, doesn’t open his remarks as he does in other speeches by talking about how protecting rivers diminishes mercury in tuna which causes childhood diseases, or how reckless corporations that polluted the nation’s waters were choked thanks to his tireless efforts as chief prosecuting attorney for the Riverkeeper Organization. No, today he invokes a story that showed why a little original thinking can lead to business innovation that also helps the environment.

“Carbon is the principal drag on American capitalism,” he says, speaking the audience’s language. “We’re borrow-ing a billion dollars a day to buy oil from countries that don’t like us and use the money to hurt us. Using wind and solar power and weaning our economy from foreign imports will fix the economy, generate billions in invest-ment and create millions of jobs.”

Like a seasoned politician, he waits for the crowd to absorb the information favourably and then proceeds with his speech. Turns out that last November, Lord Da-vid Puttnam debated before Parliament a bill to combat global warming and shared how 200 years ago, Parlia-ment heard the doom and gloom predictions that abol-ishing the slave trade - which provided Britain with its primary source of cheap abundant energy - would cause economic ruin.

“Instead of collapsing, as slavery’s proponents had pre-dicted, Britain’s economy accelerated,” Kennedy reveals. “Slavery had been a ball and chain not only for the slaves but also for the British economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Creativity and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy launched the Industrial Revolution and inaugurated the greatest era of wealth production in human history.”

72 CORe 73SummeR 2009

aftEr EffEcts philippe parreno presents a post-apocalyptic

imagining of the earth

The Upcoming Tragedy by Philippe Parreno (with Claire Leroy)

All illustrations from Suicide in Vermillon Sands, 2008

116 CORe 117SummeR 2009

miGRatoRy eyepoRtfolio By maSSimo vitali

row upon row of sun loungers as far as the eye can see – no one does beaches like the Italians do. Lounging could even be consid-ered a national obsession, one that has families clamouring to

book the prime front rows months before the annual August migration to the sea. And no one quite captures crowds as the Italian pho-tographer Massimo Vitali does. From the mass-es splashing about in and around the world’s largest swimming pools and packing into the Mediterranean coast’s sweaty megaclubs – Vita-li can even capture large crowds through their absence, as in his photographs of the empty ruins of Roman amphitheatres. Here Rimini, perhaps the most vibrant and kitsch of Italy’s holiday resorts, reverberates in the blink of his shutter.

Robert Neon

Courtesy of Bonni Benrubi Gallery NY and massimo Vitali

124 CORe 125SummeR 2009

when Charlotte Casiraghi and Stella mcCartney met in london recently, they struck a natural friendship. for Above,

they talk fashion vs. ethical awareness, improving the planet and the importance of not being perfect

interview by Charlotte Casiraghi photographs by tim Barber

stELLa Mcca�tnEy

on doing

thE right thing

13 4 CORe 13 5SummeR 2009

emeRGenCe:a life in ten ChapteRSphotoGRaphy BynoRBeRt SChoeRneR

StylinG ByChaRlotte StoCkdale

Nude leather body corset by una Burke

Model – Trish GoffHair – Alain Pichon at StreetersMakeup – Shinobu at CLMSet Design – [email protected] Artist – [email protected] Operator – Toru Hosaka at Iino Media ProPhoto Assist – Hide ShimamuraStylist assist – Katie Lyall, Melissa Simpemba, Janine GriebSet Assist – Daniel Richards, Rhoslyn ButlerProducers – Rosie Vogel at CLM, Matteo Caraccia at BigSkyThanks to – Big Sky, the Stockdale family and Gerald

SummeR 20 09 143142 CoRe

a Man

and the missing link between fashion and fish. welcome to the world of Jean pigozzi

photography by tierney Gearonintroduction by nicolas Rachline and Robert neon

a pLan

a canaL

panaMa

Stylist – Sally LyndleyHair – Ryan TaniguchiMake up – Teresa Pemberton

SummeR 20 09 163162 CoRe

fade into you

a longtime champion of all things ecological, angela lindvall shares her favourite ethically-

sourced beauty products with Above.

photography by david mushegain

18 4 CORe 18 5SummeR 2009

life of an oBJeCt /

the dirt on denim

No matter how you wear it, denim is a cult fashion item. From city shorts to mini-skirts, bikers and builders, it’s everywhere you look. Our appetite for the workwear that built the American West is now such that denim accounts for a $700 billion global industry. But the fashion behe-moth is also a burden on the environment. Here we tell you why and how.

Cotton Jeans are made from durable denim, which is made from cotton. The Environmental Justice Foundation calculates that 16% of the world’s cotton production is used for den-im. Cotton fields consume a lot of energy – an astonish-ing six pints of water per cotton bud – which strains the resources of already impoverished regions. The Aral Sea has shrunk to 15% of its original size as the water sources that once supplied it have been diverted to grow “white gold” in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The California Cot-ton Ginners and Growers Association (CCGGA) estimate that 987 gallons of water are used in total to produce one pair of jeans.

In addition, many chemicals used in cotton farming are acutely toxic. At least three of them – Endosulfan, Mono-crotophus and Aldicarb – are in the Pesticide Action Network’s "Dirty Dozen" and supposedly banned in 120 countries after a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) conference in 2001. So far this hasn't happened. The World Trade Organisation attributes 20,000 deaths and 3 million chronic health problems each year to the use of agricultural pesticides in developing countries.

The colouring phase consumes energy, water and pollutes the water table with nitrates and arsenic. The days of natural indigo – perhaps the oldest dye known to man, used in the earliest Levi’s and extracted from the Indigofera plant species – are long gone. Instead, synthetic compounds are created for dyes, often incorporating sulphur treatments and mercerisation – a process that involves treating cotton in a caustic soda solution, then neutralising it with acid to improve dye absorption. To achieve a faded appearance, large quanti-ties of potassium permanganate – a bleaching agent – are used. Chemicals used in laundries often end up polluting local waters – the deep blue hue of the creeks surround-ing denim factories in Tehuacan, Mexico is the result of such unregulated dumping. In many regions, the sheer volume of water used by laundries cannot be accommo-dated because of arid conditions and low water levels.

Cutting & Sewing & Drying Many denim companies capitalise on the inexpensive labour available in developing countries, forcing employ-ees to work over 12 hours a day. Young women who sew at high speeds to meet unrealistic production quotas often suffer repetitive strain injuries, back problems, and eyestrain. Manual labour, and lots of it, is required to pro-duce the desired vintage look. Denim, for example, is of-ten sandpapered by hand to achieve a “distressed” look, resulting in respiratory problems for factory workers. The large heated dryers consume huge amounts of electricity and workers are seldom protected from the toxic fumes emanating from the machines.

Human Rights Six of the world’s top seven cotton producers have been reported to use children in the field – a clear infraction of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. In China, the world’s foremost manufacturer of denim, the ILO reports serious violations of human rights such as forced labour, child labour, discrimination against woman and rural workers and naturally, no freedom of association. Children can sometimes work up to 15 hours a day to earn only 10 Yuan [1 Euro].

In Uzbekistan, the world’s second-largest producer of cot-ton, children as young as seven are pulled out of school to work in the fields. In 2000, UNICEF estimated 1.4 Mil-lion Uzbek children between the ages of five and 14 to work at least part-time in cotton harvesting. In 2004, eight children died while harvesting cotton in Uzbekistan.

The Alternative Today a plethora of ethically-minded fashion labels pro-duce denim made from organic cotton and in keeping with fair trade regulations. Kuyishi, for example, is a Dutch denim label that uses only organic denim from leading European mills. Made from Soya, hemp or linen, Kuyishi’s denim consumes less water and pesticides, even recycling excess water used in the production process.

As the ethical denim bug is catching on, mega-brands such as Levi’s and Diesel are getting in on the act. Both have recently launched jeans made entirely from organic ingredients – coconut shell for buttons, and dyes made from potato starch, mimosa flowers and Marseille soap – with sustainable production processes in keeping with the Fair-Trade standards.

Jeans are a worldwide wardrobe staple. But what about their impact on the environment? Text by Charlotte Casiraghi, Illustration by Nick Lowndes

2 0 8 S TR ATOSPHeRe 2 0 9SummeR 2009

w.d.d.d?*(*what do designers do?)

Now in its 48th year, the Milan Furniture Fair continues to set the benchmark for innovative design. This is not just about fur-niture, however, It’s also an incubator for new ideas in lighting, living and spatial design from the likes of Marc Newson, David Adjaye, Established & Sons and many more international talents. Given the plethora of visionary, sustainable design solutions on show, Elizabeth von Guttmann and Alexia Niedzielski set out to find out if the fair-goers were as green as their mindset.

RenZo RoSSoFounder of Diesel clothing company

• What is the last thing you recycled? A ring I recently made from one I had 15 years ago.

• What does upcycling mean to you? It means existing in a better way

• How do you get from A to B? I love cars…my Aston Martin!

ClemenS weiSShaaRCo-founder of the Kram Weisshaar design agency

• Do you prefer a bath or shower? A quick shower

• What does upcycling mean to you? Glorified recycling

• How many squares of toilet paper do you use? As many as necessary!

GiamBattiSta valliFashion designer

• Do you prefer a bath or shower? It depends with who it will be with

• What does upcycling mean to you? Upcycling is like being in love

• How green is your weed? I can’t remember, when I smoke I don’t pay attention

lapo elkannEntrepeneur and founder of Independiente Italia

• What was the last thing you recycled? My grandfather’s suit

• What does upcycling mean to you? Increasing your creativity

• How many squares of toilet paper do you use? I’m a rational consumer

matteo fantoniArchitect and founder of Matteo Fantoni Studio

• What was the last thing you recycled? I use t-shirts to clean shoes

• How green is your weed? I only smoke organic

• How to you get from A to B? I only ride on love

eRika kuRihaRaFashion Editor, i-D magazine

• What was the last thing you recycled? I bleached some old black jeans from Acne

• What does up-cycling mean to you? Making something better from something already existing

• How do you get from A to B? On my boyfriend’s back

fRanCa SoZZaniEditor-in-chief, Italian Vogue

• Do you prefer a bath or shower? A shower

• What was the last thing you recycled? I recycle almost everything

• How do you get from A to B? I walk a lot, I’m not a very good driver!

maRC newSonArtist and Designer

• Do you prefer a bath or shower? 90% shower, 10% bath, at approximately 10 minutes

• What does upcycling mean to you? I have absolutely no idea

• How many squares of toilet paper do you use? A lot less than my wife

Above’s team quizzes selected top design names about their green reflexes.

2 2 0 S TR ATOSPHeRe 2 21SummeR 2009

audrey marnay’s secret Garden: les Buttes Chaumont, paris, franceText by Lauren Bastide Photography by Alexandre Guirkinger

I wonder what this little green paradise Audrey Marnay described on the phone will actually look like. Emerging from the Buttes Chaumont metro station, I turn right and into the park. Audrey is there, in the middle of a field of yel-low tulips, smiling in the pale sunlight. “Aren’t they splendid?” she asks as she walks towards me, her signature suede ballet shoes damp with morning mist. Maybe it’s because Les Buttes Chaumont, the biggest public garden in the capital, is the place Audrey’s grandmother used to take her as a child when she came to Paris for the holidays. Audrey is a country girl. She grew up on a farm near Chartres. “I wasn’t a big fan of the pavement and cars, so my grand-mother would bring me here,” she says. “We would walk for hours. Our goal was to climb the cliff up to the chapel.” A cliff? A chapel? What are you talking about? “Have a look!” As we take a turn on a small path, a stunning scene materializes before my eyes – there is a cliff, a huge, rocky one, with a suspension bridge and a little temple on its crest. I feel like I’ve been transported to some mystic place in the Pyrenees. Audrey laughs. “Les Buttes were built by Napoleon III on the mine where they used to quarry stone to build”, she explains. “The lake and the cliff are artificial. And so is the cave.” The path indeed leads to an amaz-ing waterfall sheltered in a cement cave, where a century of humidity has cloaked the grotto with a thin layer of luminescent green moss. When Alexandre Guirkinger sets up his camera, Audrey’s top-model instincts instantly take over. The little girl taking a walk with her grand-mother transforms into the promising actress she is today. As we keep walking through the green hills, Audrey muses on her relationship with nature. “I wouldn’t say I am ‘green’. It’s too trendy a word. To me, ecology has been a way of life since I was a kid, when I was taught by my parents about saving water and energy and eating natural food. In Paris, I never turn on the heater, I don’t own a car and always go by bus or metro. I mainly wear second-hand clothes and of course I recycle. Today, I teach those rules to my two little boys.” The walk is over, we reach the park gates and the city rumble is audible again. She turns around and casts her eyes over the park one last time. “I will come back here with them, and teach them the names of all the trees.”

Audrey Marnay stars in the film Nucingen Haus, directed by Raoul Ruiz.

2 2 2 S TR ATOSPHeRe 2 23SummeR 2009

the French-Israeli artist photogra-pher Ron Agam became known for his intensely vivid yet deeply mysterious portraits of religious Jews in Meah Shearim, the near-ly impenetrable ultra orthodox

neighborhood in Jerusalem. Agam also docu-mented the first hours following the September 11 tragedy and published a powerful portfolio of the men and women from the New York fire and police departments who reached the apoc-alyptic scene in the immediate aftermath. This In Full Bloom portfolio, it seems to me, serves as a highly potent antidote to the horrors Agam witnessed at Ground Zero. "His" flowers, as he likes to call them, are the very essence of na-ture; beauty, purity, diversity and perhaps the last remnants of the Garden of Eden.

www.ronagam.com

Nicolas Rachline

in full BloomphotoGRaphy ByRon aGam

2 24 S TR ATOSPHeRe 2 25SummeR 2009

Louis Vuitton is proud to support The Climate Project.

The journey of a star, captured in a flash. Annie’s studio. New York.Follow Annie Leibovitz and Mikhail Baryshnikov on louisvuittonjourneys.com

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