21.07.17 Get your limited edition es Magazine T-shirt
sex on set with dominic west
THE GLOUSSY POSSE
Meet the Cotswolds’ new elite
Plus:
London’s boom bars and emily maitlis’ little black book
adwoa
gurl talk with the model of the moment
EDITOR’S LETTER
EDITOR Laura Weir
COVER Adwoa Aboah photographed by Steph Wilson. Styled by Jenny Kennedy. Hair by Johnnie Biles at Frank Agency using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up by Celia Burton using CHANEL Travel Diary and Le Lift Skin Recovery Sleep Mask. COACH dress, £625 (uk.coach. com). All jewellery, Aboah’s own
Your response to our special edition London United issue and the artists’ covers (7 July) has been incredible. No other issue of the magazine I’ve produced has galvanised such an overwhelming sense of goodwill in the way that this project did. Thank you for your emails, letters, tweets and DMs, I’m still in the process of replying to each one of you — I’ll get there, I promise! In the meantime we have been thinking about how we can keep the conversation going around London’s resilience in the face of recent tragedy and terror, and continue our drive to raise money to support the work that the incredible London Community Foundation and the Dispossessed Fund are doing. Partnering with T-shirt manufacturer Everpress, five out of the six of our iconic covers, by Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Jamie Hewlett, Wolfgang Tillmans and Ai Weiwei (Gillian Wearing didn’t feel her cover image was appropriate for a T-shirt so will be giving us some signed prints to auction instead), are for sale online for £25 each at everpress.com/esmagazine. Seventy per cent of proceeds will go directly to the Dispossessed Fund, a charitable fund run in partnership with the London Community Foundation. The remainder will go to Everpress to cover its production costs. The fund supports local projects, so if you buy one of these T-shirts you will quite literally be supporting your neighbours, whether it’s the little girl or boy who shares a classroom with your child, the person you sit next to on the bus or any number of the people you pass on your way to work without knowing their private struggles. These are the people in our London family who need us right now. So please buy one at everpress.com/esmagazine, wear it with pride and send me your pictures using the #esmagazine hashtag. Keep loving, London.
5 JAMIE HEWLETT (everpress.com/ esmagazine /jamie-hewlett) £25
4 WOLFGANG TILLMANS (everpress.com/ esmagazine /wolfgang-tillmans) £25
Here are the five limited edition ES Magazine T-shirts
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ANTONY GORMLEY (everpress.com/esmagazine /Antony-Gormley) £25
ANISH KAPOOR (everpress.com/ esmagazine /anish-kapoor) £25
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AI WEIWEI (everpress.com/ esmagazine /ai-weiwei) £25
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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
21.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 3
MOLLY GODDARD top, £295; trousers, £220, both at Dover Street Market (020 7518 0680). Jewellery, Aboah’s own
24 es magazine 21.07.17
gurl power She’s the west London model whose drug abuse left her suicidal. Now Adwoa Aboah is teaming up with Coach to help young women fulfil their potential. She talks to Hamish MacBain about rehab, conquering the catwalks, and her BFF Cara Delevingne
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PhotographS BY Steph Wilson stylED BY Jenny Kennedy
n a swelteringly hot summer’s day in the gardens of Chiswick House, Adwoa Aboah and I are sitting outside the café. Dressed in a white oversized men’s shirt, black sunglasses and battered Reebok Classics, she sips bottled water and smokes Camel Lights (‘Do you mind?’): the latter, given that she has now been drink- and drug-free for almost two years, being the last vice that she has left. Sobriety, of course — and talking about sobriety in the context of all the other issues she has faced — is now a big part of Aboah’s life. Because as much as being a successful model who has walked a huge number of high-profile shows, appeared in campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs and who in March featured on the diversity-celebrating ‘Women Rule!’ cover of US Vogue (alongside Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Ashley Graham), she is now just as well known for Gurls Talk, the online platform she founded to encourage girls to open up about mental health, body image, addiction, sexuality and ‘just whatever we want’. This, she says, is now her primary focus. ‘When I first talked about my mental health and my addiction background it was a massive responsibility,’ she continues, in a deep, world-weary voice that belies her 25 years. ‘I was like, “Okay, if I’m going to do this, then this is a journey.” I can’t just put a foot in and then be like, “I’ve done my work.” This is what I’m going to have to do.’ Aboah has kept this promise to herself. On the first of this month, she put on a free, one-day Gurls Talk festival in London. A collaboration with Coach — ‘I’ve known Adwoa for many years and we’ve also worked together lots so it felt very natural,’ says executive creative director, Stuart Vevers — it saw more than 700 young women turn up for a day of talks, workshops and pop-
ups, and was the culmination of ‘a year and a half’s work’. Sporadically, too, she has been going into schools talking directly to girls of the age she was when her own troubles started. ‘We get a lot of girls writing in and asking if I’ll come and speak at their school and that’s where I want Gurls Talk to be. When we get to a place where we’ve done our groundwork, I’d love it to be part of the academic curriculum, so [schools] have to give an hour out of their week where someone comes in and talks from a place of experience.’ It was when Aboah first talked of her own experience that she really captured her generation’s imagination. The video she made in April last year for StyleLikeU’s What’s Underneath Project — in which subjects remove their clothes while describing their own personal battles — still seems superhumanly brave. ‘I’d only ever talked about it in front of my parents or my doctor,’ she says, ‘so to be talking about it with strangers was cathartic and amazing. But I think I blocked it out. It came out and I went, “Wow, okay… my life is out there.” I mean it was quite scary… but it was amazing, the response that I got.’ The story that Aboah told, her true story, goes like this. She was born in west London in 1992: not far at all, in fact, from Grenfell Tower. ‘I flew from the US that day. I landed that evening and it happened that night,’ she says. ‘[My family] knows everyone: those people in that Moroccan shop we know, the people in the corner shop we know. It’s this amazing, beautiful community and then this has happened. We might not know the people personally but, say, the person you buy your electronics off: their uncle’s died. It’s just so close to home, and it’s awful, and it makes you so angry because it’s something that shouldn’t have happened. But the way in which everyone’s pulled together is amazing.’ Her parents were ensconced in the fashion industry: her mother, Camilla Lowther, the founder of highly
21.07.17 es magazine 25
my london
emily maitlis as told to lily worcester
Home is… Kensington, which I just adore — I’ve lived there for 12 years with my husband, two boys and whippet, Moody. My parents live at the end of the road; it’s a very Maitlis-centric part of the world.
Favourite pub? The Dove (right) in Hammersmith. It’s on the water and it’s teeny. Most romantic thing someone has done for you? You know in When Harry Met Sally when he says to never pick someone up from the airport because the next time, if you don’t, they will start thinking that your relationship has dropped off the boil — we live by that in my family. Sweetly my husband came and picked me up the day I came back from a 24-hour trip to California. I found that really romantic.
42 es magazine 21.07.17
The news presenter performs karaoke at Lucky Voice, enjoys drinks by the river and calls Piers Morgan for a good time Best piece of advice you have been given? My colleague Kavita [Puri] said, ‘You have to ask for things at work — women sit there waiting for things to come to them and not realising that actually all the men are running off asking for them. Things don’t just happen, you don’t get something because you sit politely and are well behaved — that’s not how it works.’
Where do you go to let you hair down? I love karaoke at Lucky Voice (right) on Poland Street. I have a very beautiful voice after three dirty vodka Martinis. If you could buy any building, which would it be? The French embassy — it has a lovely garden and they’ve got impeccable taste. Who do you call when you want to have fun? Piers Morgan (left). He used to have a pub — evenings there were legendary… and painful.
Best meal you’ve had? Six Portland Road. I turned up there with my dad, who is in a wheelchair, and they were like, ‘Who are you? We don’t have a booking.’ So I hit the roof — I was really quite rude. I had booked completely the wrong restaurant, called The Portland, which is miles away. It could have been so embarrassing but they were so brilliant and so welcoming, they made us amazing cocktails and the food was to die for. Ever had a run-in with a policeman? I have run over a policeman while I was rollerblading, not in a bad way, in a kind of ‘that’s the only way I know how to brake’ way. He was very nice and gave me his arm. I was rescued by the strong arm of the law. Emily Maitlis presents ‘Newsnight’ on BBC2 and is an ambassador for Centrepoint
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Last play you saw? Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead at The Old Vic (above). I found it had dated a bit. I remember seeing it as a student and thinking it was just mindblowing and now as a grumpy forty-something I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this.’
Which outlets do you rely on? My Persian beautician called Sima, from Sima & Fe’ on Kensington Church Street. During the facial she’ll start quoting Rumi or Hafez at me, all these wonderful Persian poets — it’s actually quite restful. She uses completely raw elements, so you kind of go, ‘Oh my God, my face is on fire’, and she says, ‘Yes, I just put chilli flakes on it.’