18.08.17
FULLY BOOKED How to write a bestseller
Is she faux real? London’s fake fur queen
Plus:
Meet
The best bank holiday breaks dopamine for the home & Goldie’s My London
Mabel
hanging out with the music world’s new sensation
CONTENTS 7 Last of the summer raves in CAPITAL GAINS 8 It’s a cover-up, says Laura Craik in UPFRONT 11 Our MOST WANTED are sporty perforated watches 12 What’s this, it’s Sam Smith in FLASHBULB 14 Become a BESTSELLING AUTHOR here
SHRIMPS: a fabulously faux story 23 London welcomes Weekday in STYLE NOTES 25 Collar-free cool in MEN’S STYLE 26 Make way for MABEL McVEY 34 EIGHTIES hair is back and bigger than ever 41 GRACE & FLAVOUR eats up Tuyo 43 TART churn out raspberry and coconut ice cream 45 WA Green founder Zoe Anderson in HOMEWORK 49 ESCAPE for the bank holiday weekend 50 Goldie’s MY LONDON 19
EDITOR Laura Weir
The ES team choose their favourite places for bottomless brunch
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Cover: Mabel photographed by Luke & Nik. Styled by Sophie Paxton. REJINA PYO jacket, £626; trousers, £435, at mytheresa.com. CÉLINE earrings, £376 (celine.com)
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BALA BAYA , SE1 ‘“Bottomless” at Bala Baya doesn’t mean getting trollied on prosecco — instead, for £8 you get unlimited, superb Israeli small plates when you order a main.’ Frankie McCoy, features writer
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THE VINCENT, E8 ‘Anywhere with “bacon salt” on the menu gets my vote.’ Clara Dorrington, picture desk assistant
BUNGA BUNGA , SW11 ‘La Famiglia Brunch on Sundays at Bunga Bunga… warm brioche, cured meats and unlimited Bellinis, which you can walk off at Battersea Park afterwards.’ Natalie Salmon, social media editor
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MAYFAIR PIZZA CO, W1 ‘Go here for Nutella calzones and eggs Florentine, washed down with free-flowing Bloody Marys and mimosas.’ Wendy Tee, acting art director
COYA, W1 ‘At its Mayfair branch, Coya serves a fresh and healthy Peruvian menu — perfect for a girls’ catch-up on a Sunday.’ Eniola Dare, fashion assistant
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Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Wendy Tee Fashion features director Katrina Israel Commissioning editor Dipal Acharya Associate features editor Hamish MacBain Features writer Frankie McCoy
Acting art editor Andy Taylor Art editor Jessica Landon Picture editor Helen Gibson Picture desk assistant Clara Dorrington
Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare
Social media editor Natalie Salmon
Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells
Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester
Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe
Contributing editors Lucy Carr-Ellison, Tony Chambers, James Corden, Hermione Eyre, Richard Godwin, Daisy Hoppen, Jemima Jones, Anthony Kendal, David Lane, Mandi Lennard, Annabel Rivkin, Teo van den Broeke, Hikari Yokoyama Group client strategy director Deborah Rosenegk Head of magazines Christina Irvine
ES Magazine is published weekly and is available only with the London Evening Standard. ES Magazine is published by Evening Standard Ltd, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, Kensington, London W8 5TT. ES is printed web offset by Wyndeham Bicester. Paper supplied by Perlen Paper AG. Colour transparencies or any other material submitted to ES Magazine are sent at owner’s risk. Neither Evening Standard Ltd nor their agents accept any liability for loss or damage. © Evening Standard Ltd 2016. Reproduction in whole or part of any contents of ES Magazine without prior permission of the editor is strictly prohibited
18.08.17 ES MAGAZINE 3
Success story Can you teach someone to write a bestseller? Judging by the Faber Academy’s record, the answer is yes. With 62 publishing deals and a glittering roll call of alumni, it’s rapidly earning a reputation as the book world’s fame school. Patricia Nicol finds out its secrets
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Getty; Goff Photos
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soggy, sultry Tuesday night in Bloomsbury. Inside The Plough, a traditional boozer on Museum Street, a party of damp drinkers chats animatedly. They have rushed here through a humid downpour and steam is rising off them — but so is excitement. This is their penultimate session as students on the six-month Writing a Novel course run by the Faber Academy, which is fast gaining a reputation as UK publishing’s Fame Academy. Since the creative writing school, an offshoot of the world-famous publishing house, opened its doors in 2009, 62 graduates have gone on to secure publishing deals. Its bestselling alumni include SJ Watson (Before I Go to Sleep),
Rachel Joyce (The Unlikely The January 2017 intake draws from an Pilgrimage of Harold Fry), international cross-section. I meet a Spanish Renée K night (Disclaimer), scientist based at King’s, a Moldovan selfLaline Paull (The Bees) and published author, at least five journalists, an Joanna Cannon (The Trouble with Australian investment banker and a Goats and Sheep). Canadian IT consultant. There is also Nell ‘Sixty-two publication deals in Bryden, a 40-year-old singer-songwriter, nine years is phenomenal,’ says originally from New York, who has supported Richard Skinner, the Faber the likes of KT Tunstall and Gary Barlow, Academy’s (FA) fiction director and Barbara Horspool, The White Company’s and tutor on the Writing a Novel clothing director. course, which has generated most Horspool, 59, a hugely respected figure in of these deals. He adds that not British retail with senior stints at Jigsaw, even the University of East New Look and M&S behind her, claims ‘this Anglia’s MA, the UK’s bestwas never on the agenda’. She applied at the established creative writing course last minute after being inspired by her since the 1970s (Booker winners English student son’s coursework. Now she Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro gets up at 5am to write and plans to continue and Anne Enright, as well as 2017 meeting up with her fellow Faber students. Baileys winner Naomi Alderman, ‘It has stretched — and, at times, petrified — studied there), or the Iowa me doing this,’ she says. Writers’ Workshop, the worldA week later I return to The Plough, now celebrated literary launch pad full of British Museum tourists navigating a featured in the fourth series of pub lunch, to meet Chloé Esposito and Lydia Girls, can claim an equivalent hit Ruffles, close friends from the 2015 course rate over the same period. and two of Skinner’s most successful recent Among the students clustered graduates. In April 2016 Esposito, 33, a at the bar, the talk is of how bereft former English teacher turned management they feel that their 28-session consultant, became the sensation of the course costing £4,000 — which London Book Fair when her ‘clit-noir’ trilogy, entails a weekly evening class Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, amassed and one Saturday a month, international advance deals of more than covering topics such as character £2 million. Mad came out in June. Universal and setting — is drawing to a is developing the films. close. Ana Garcia, a 36-year-old For 36-year-old Ruffles, whose last job documentary-maker writing a was in corporate communications, the revenge story set in Gibraltar, Faber course has proven one of her signed up on maternity leave. life’s most ‘formative, positive ‘For that time every week no experiences, akin to university or a one calls me mum,’ she says. first job’. Her young adult debut, ‘We are all here as writers.’ The Taste of Blue Light, partially For SJ [Steve] Watson, who, in inspired by her own experiences of 2009, took a punt on the first FA novelsynaesthesia, will be published by writing course, that ‘permission to Hodder in September. But she didn’t think of yourself as a writer was quite just find the impetus to sustain a story Chloé a profound thought. You get so many idea she’d had on the course — she Esposito messages that writing is a waste of also found her tribe. ‘ The time and you’re never going to get atmosphere in our first class was published — and if you do get electric,’ she recalls. She shows published then there’s no money us her forearm: ‘Look, it has SJ Watson in it. I just thought if I’m going to given me goosebumps just have a proper stab at this then I remembering it.’ need to give it energy and time.’ She and Esposito, who On the course, he began his meet regularly for ‘writing ‘domestic noir’ psychological dates’, are part of a particularly thriller Before I Go to Sleep, impressive FA cohort. Felicia which went on to become Yap’s highly anticipated 2011’s must-read debut, a dystopian novel, Yesterday, was global bestseller and a published this month, and Sam movie starring Nicole Hepbu r n’s p sycholog ic a l Kidman and Colin Firth. thriller, Her Perfect Life, came Rachel Joyce
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Definitely MABEL She may be the daughter of Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack producer Cameron McVey, but Mabel is making her own way in the music world. She talks to Hamish MacBain about childhood anxiety, being pals with Skepta and why she wants to be as big as Beyoncé PhotographS BY Luke & Nik stylED BY Sophie Paxton
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s we walk through the streets of Brixton, looking for somewhere quiet to talk, one of the first things that becomes apparent about Mabel McVey — black Old Skool Vans, black leggings, black Nike sweater, Louis Vuitton backpack — is that she is bilingual. When we are chatting about her love of Drake and Beyoncé (at the shoot earlier, she sang every word to her fifth album), it is in English. But when she breaks off to talk to the lady accompanying her — who turns out to be her aunt-slash-housemate-slash-travel companion, or ‘my auntie-mother-sister’ — it is in Swedish. The way she switches between these two tongues is so seamless that at first it feels almost conspiratorial, as if the Swedish is for stuff that Mabel — professionally it’s just ‘Mabel’; you know, like ‘Beyoncé’ — does not want me to hear. In truth, though, it is just representative of her international — and very impressive — heritage. Her mother is double Brit-winning, Ivor Novello and Grammynominated Swedish pop icon Neneh Cherry, while her father is Cockfosters-born producer Cameron McVey, who has worked with the likes of Massive Attack and Portishead (as well as on all of Cherry’s music), and who, in the course of growing up, Mabel realised was ‘a genius’. ‘When I was in my teens, and was like, “I really want to do music”,’ she says, as we settle down with a cup of mint tea, ‘I felt quite embarrassed by being my mum and dad’s daughter. I thought, “People will never take
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me seriously.” But actually, the older I get, the prouder I become of the things they’ve accomplished. Like, my mum’s sung for Nelson Mandela, and my dad produced one of my favourite albums of all time [Massive Attack’s debut, Blue Lines]. Mabel, 21, does not really need to worry about existing in her parents’ shadow. Her family ties must have helped — but she has her own, entirely self-constructed career. Her music is a 21st-century take on the Nineties R&B that she and her sister, Tyson, seven years her senior, bonded over when she was young — something she remains obsessed with to this day. Tomorrow, she will fly off to Portugal to shoot two videos: one for her next single, ‘Fine Line’, with rapper Not3s (whose ‘Addison Lee’ song has been everywhere this year), and another for her song ‘Finders Keepers’ (which already has nearly six million plays on Spotify). In April, she went to Coachella with her friend Skepta — ‘Skep’, as she calls him. Coachella, she says, was fun, although she felt somewhat perplexed by the fact that it all seemed to be ‘about “being on the scene”, or “having the right wristband”.’ This is the opposite of what Mabel is about. You might be able to find pictures of her, with her mother, on the front row of Stella McCartney’s Paris Fashion Week show in 2014 (‘My mum’s friend,’ she shrugs when I bring it up), and her family may be close to the likes of the Olivers (as in Miquita) and the Aboahs (as in Adwoa), but she is
ACNE STUDIOS jacket, £1,075 (acnestudios.com)
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my london
goldie as told to lily worcester
Home is… Phuket, Thailand, and my wife Mika and I have a house in Hertfordshire. done for 20 years — and the sticky toffee pudding (above). They took it off the menu one year, but I complained and they put it back on. Oh, and the bang bang chicken to start. My first date with my wife was at The Ivy — I proposed to her there. She got the ring in her sticky toffee pudding.
Where do you stay in London? Sanctum Soho (left). It’s beautiful: lovely, wonderful people and great food. We base ourselves there when we go back to London. First thing you do when you come to London? Go to Bar Bruno on Wardour Street and have a good old British fry up. It’s the only greasy spoon in central London, really — the only proper greasy spoon, anyway.
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The musician tucks in to liver and bacon at The Ivy, buys his aftershave at Liberty and wants to give the Tate a paint job What do you collect? Kimonos (below), weirdly enough. I’ve got about 30. Which shops do you rely on? Liberty and Supreme. Liberty has really good aftershave. Diptyque 34 and Mr Marvelous have very beautiful smells. Last album you bought? The Epic by Kamasi Washington. A really good album. There’s a great track called ‘Re Run’ on there.
Where would you go for a nightcap? If I’m in central London, I’ll go to the Groucho and have a jar and then end up in the Library until late. I’ll have straight vodka — 42 Below — with one ice cube. Who is your hero? Pat Metheny (right). Everything I’ve been taught about arrangements in music I’ve learnt from him. Best meal you’ve had? The Ivy. I always have liver and bacon — I have
What’s your earliest London memory? Performing at Electro Rock at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square (right) in 1985 for a live recording. It was a breakdancing competition. Best piece of advice you’ve been given? From David Bowie: ‘Always reinvent yourself, sunshine.’ If you had to be locked in a building overnight, which would it be? The Tate. I’d rock up with my paints and do some painting myself. I’d go with a [graffiti] guy called Drax because I know he can paint well; we could just paint the place all night. Goldie tours the UK from 14 Nov (goldie.co.uk/tour)
Alamy; Getty
What would you do if you were Mayor for the day? I would make graffiti (above) legal in certain areas of London; it’s not going to go away, so we should have it in areas where people will appreciate it. I think Sadiq Khan is an absolute don. He’s doing an incredible job — I think he really stands for the pulse of the youth.