28.07.17
SEXUALITY and THE CITY
Meet the Londoners defining themselves on their terms
Plus:
the new ibiza and georgia may jagger’s my london
TALI
LENNOX Love, loss and making it in the art world
CONTENTS 5 The best-dressed fashion fest in CAPITAL GAINS 6 Laura Craik on the rules of holiday romance in UPFRONT 9 Our MOST WANTED are Jimmy Choo’s shiny boots 10 Tali rallies: TALI LENNOX on overcoming tragedy with art 17 How to have a SUPPER CLUB BROMANCE 21 Blinged up Birkenstocks and solid scents in STYLE NOTES 22 The new faces of LGBTQ+ LONDON
EDITOR Laura Weir
29 A flutter of colour in BEAUTY
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GRACE & FLAVOUR falls for Pique-Nique 34 Eat al fresco with TART’s barbecued mackerel 37 Soak up the London spirit in DRINKS 39 HOMEWORK pops with Memphis-inspired prints 41 ESCAPE to Comporta, Portugal 42 Georgia May Jagger’s MY LONDON 33
The ES team choose five legendary LGBTQ+ London landmarks
THE BURDETT-COUTTS MEMORIAL, NW1 ‘This sundial in St Pancras Gardens includes a commemoration to 18th-century trans French spy Chevalier d’Éon who, after infiltrating the Empress of Russia’s court by dressing as a woman, lived the last 33 years of their life as female.’ Nick Howells, deputy chief sub editor
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Cover: Tali Lennox photographed by Francesca Allen. Styled by Sophie Paxton. ZIMMERMANN dress, £3,150; roll neck, £350; earrings, £220 (020 7952 2710). Alamy
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THE WAYOUT CLUB, EC3 ‘East London’s WayOut Club is an institution — founded in 1993, it’s one of the UK’s oldest transgender clubs and demonstrates just how all-inclusive our city is.’ Frankie McCoy, features writer
HIGHBURY FIELDS, N5 ‘Visiting Highbury Fields always makes me reflect on how far we’ve come. It hosted the UK’s first gay rights demonstration in 1970 when 150 members of the Gay Liberation Front held a rally following the arrest of Young Liberal Louis Eakes for importuning (which he denied).’ Alice-Azania Jarvis, features director
GAY’S THE WORD, WC1 ‘A true London landmark and, interestingly, also a major supplier of lesbian, gay and transinterest books to libraries across the UK.’ Katie Service, beauty editor
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ADMIRAL DUNCAN, W1 ‘This is one of the great Soho spots and a symbol of the London gay scene’s resilience.’ Hamish MacBain, associate features editor
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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
28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 3
ZIMMERMANN dress, POA; earrings, £220 (020 7952 2710). RAEY jacket, £350; jeans, £140, at matchesfashion.com. MALONE SOULIERS mules, £330, at shopbop.com
ART
helped me to
heal
Tali Lennox was out kayaking with her boyfriend when their boat capsized and he drowned. Two years on, she tells Richard Godwin about pouring her grief into her art — and why her mother Annie is her idol
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PhotographS BY Francesca Allen stylED BY sophie paxton
ali Lennox is aware that her family name comes with certain expectations. And also that the expectations surrounding the children of celebrities — particularly ones who start out as models and then announce that they are actually painters — are not 100 per cent positive. ‘It’s happened to me so many times that I’ll tell someone I’m an artist and they’ll ask to see my pictures and they’ll say: “Oh, you know, I thought these weren’t going to be very good…”’ says the 24-year-old with a rueful smile, her clipped English accent punctuated with the occasional Americanism. ‘It’s almost worth it for that kinda reaction.’ We’re sitting in a café near Victoria Park. In front of Lennox are the remnants of a coffee and some dark chocolate; she is dressed in a red sweater that she picked up at a flea market in LA. Her impeccable genes come courtesy of Annie Lennox, the feminist pop icon and activist, and Uri Fruchtmann, the Israeli film-maker. She can thank them too for intercontinental connections: a childhood between Notting Hill and Ibiza (where Fruchtmann lives), and a post-school move to New York, leading to modelling gigs with Prada and Burberry, and a solo exhibition at the Chelsea Hotel. But the act of standing in front of a canvas, filling it with feeling, is one thing that Lennox feels comes purely from her. ‘It means that people can see me through what I actually express rather than what they project.’ When Lennox talks about her art — oil portraits, kitschy shrines, unsettling pastels — she isn’t just
talking about the perils of being taken seriously as a celebutante, but a means of coping with tragedy. Two summers ago, she and her boyfriend, American photographer Ian Jones, 32, were Art house: paintings in Tali staying at a house belongLennox’s studio ing to the hotelier André Balazs in upstate New York. One August morning, they took a kayak out on the Hudson River to visit a lighthouse before returning to Manhattan. The boat capsized in strong currents. Neither was wearing a lifevest. Jones helped Lennox to cling to the kayak, but he was swept away by the tumult. Lennox was rescued by a passing boat 20 minutes later. Jones did not survive. Lennox was distraught. She Lennox and her wrote on Instagram: ‘My heart is mother, shattered. My best friend, my soul Annie mate, my partner in crime & creativity, the love & light of my life is no longer with me… Let us honour & celebrate this exceptionally beautiful soul & keep following the light.’ Over the past two years she has tried to honour this promise, painting her way
28.07.17 es magazine 11
We’ve come a l PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY COCHRANE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ASHLEY MARY
Fifty years after sex between gay men was decriminalised, Kate Spicer meets the Londoners changing perceptions of sexuality and gender today
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22 ES MAGAZINE 28.07.17
LYALL HAKARAIA, 49 Creative director, designer, owner of VFD and fairy godperson to the LGBTQ+ scene ‘I’m bisexual, homosexual, I’m pansexual, I fall in love with who I fall in love with. I am not gay. I am male, but I love being androgynous,’ says Hakaraia, a key nurturing figure in the queer community and a dad of one ‘typical teenager’. He arrived from rural New Zealand in 1990 and fell in love with the mother of his child, with whom he parted amicably — ‘It just happened’. Having designed costumes for Madonna and Beyoncé, seven years ago he opened Vogue Fabrics — a club, arts space and ‘crazy bubble of acceptance’ — in an old Dalston haberdashers. He changed the name to VFD, but it remains a beacon on the queer landscape. Its influence on fashion is undeniable, too, Charles Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY line having sprung from its shabby shopfront. (vfdalston.com)
Make-up and grooming by Yulia Yurchenko
nyone who went to Pride or Queer Picnic this summer will find it hard to believe that it was only 50 years ago on 27 July, 1967, that this country decriminalised — and only partially at that — homosexual acts in private between two men over the age of 21. It was not an Act passed graciously, either: one law lord, Lord Arran, insisted that ‘ostentatious behaviour’ should be avoided, as it would be ‘utterly distasteful’. How far we have come. Today, we live in a multigendered, sexually and socially inclusive city where the freedom to be whoever you want to be — and to fancy whoever you want to fancy — is cherished and celebrated. Our lexicon has expanded: while not everyone’s chosen self-description, the word ‘queer’, for example, has been reclaimed as a positive and inclusive term, representing many shades of identities in the not-straight world. Once a Victorian term of abuse, it can now mean everything from women who want to be men, to people who prefer to express no gender, to drag kings and drag queens. Likewise, our understanding of gender has evolved, moving away from the strict binary choice of male or female as prescribed by born sex. Sexuality, too, is viewed with more nuance; as writer and activist Charlie Craggs points out: ‘We’re in an interesting time, moving towards a more liberal age. Fifty per cent of millennials don’t consider themselves straight and see gender and sexuality in shades of grey, not black and white.’ The city has risen to the occasion, as it always does, as a place where all human life is welcome. Here, we meet the Londoners at the vanguard.
Vivienne Westwood gold jacket, POA (020 7439 1109)
a long way, baby
TAYYLOR MADE, 26 DJ and club promoter
SADIE SINNER, 26 Founder and curator of Cocoa Butter Club
‘Coming to London from Washington DC four years ago I was like, “Wow! Look at all these girl-oriented venues,”’ says the woman born Taylor Hilton, whose roving east London Vibrate night is one of the city’s coolest lesbian club events. She began DJing aged 12, growing up with culturally open, ‘very cool’ middle-class parents in predominantly white, suburban Potomac, Maryland, and is unbothered by labels. Calling her lesbian, queer or gay is fine, but one thing that does rile her is ‘the disbelief that a feminine-looking woman can’t possibly be lesbian’. Based in a warehouse in Tottenham, she shares her home with all types of people and says that ‘the best parties are the ones where just anybody turns up. The sickest warehouse parties are full of all kinds of people.’
‘Really, I feel off the binary,’ says ‘black, queer, female’ Sadie Sinner. ‘More part woman, part goddess.’ A contemporary dance graduate who grew up in Enfield, Sinner was born to Zambian parents — her father was once the country’s vicepresident, while her mother is a doctor — and now lives with friends in Islington. ‘London is doing the best it can. So many people call it home because it’s multicultural and accepting. You leave this city and it’s not so great out there.’ Her fury and energy is poured into her Cocoa Butter Club cabaret collective. ‘We do things differently,’ she adds. ‘Just because it’s not all pin curls and shaking tits and ass doesn’t mean it’s wrong.’
28.07.17 ES MAGAZINE 23
my london
georgia may jagger as told to lily worcester
Home is… North London. I found my house there three years ago and did it up. I was living in New York before and had no garden, so a requirement of this place was lots of surrounding green.
Earliest London memory? I grew up by Richmond Park (above), so it would probably be being bitten on the finger by a squirrel when I was feeding it a Skips crisp. I received a lot of tetanus shots growing up. Where would you go for a nightcap? A nice hotel. I like to feel transported to another era, so the Savoy or somewhere equally fancy.
Which shops do you rely on? I like Vivienne Westwood but I’m not allowed in there any more because I buy too much. Last play you saw? I go to the ballet more than I go to plays. I also love to go to the Hackney pantomime (below) every year. Best meal you’ve had in the city? I’m obsessed with the spicy Asian soups at Caphe House in Bermondsey. Who’s your hero? I love Oprah because she’s so kind-hearted. I’d like to come back as one of her golden retrievers. I also love Drew Barrymore. She’s very real — I met her recently and she’s so nice and normal. She’s an inspirational businesswoman.
42 es magazine 28.07.17
The model drinks at the Albion in Islington, shops at Vivienne Westwood and is obsessed with the spicy Asian soups at Caphe House If you could buy any building in London, which would it be? The store, Liberty, because it’s made using timber from an ancient ship and it’s so visually stunning. You’ve got the café, the wine bar, all the clothes and you can play around in the candle and cosmetics area. It’s so beautiful. I’d definitely live there. Best piece of advice you’ve been given? My mum says: ‘Always be on time and always be nice to everyone, even if they are not nice to you.’
Where do you go to let your hair down? I used to go to The Box, but I haven’t really been clubbing in ages. I’d love to open a roller disco club, make it completely retro with Coke floats and maybe a pool table. What would you do if you were Mayor for the day? Make the Thames less smelly. Last album you downloaded? Probably Requiem by Goat (left). I saw them play at Glastonbury — they were so good. Or a band called Deap Vally; it’s my friend’s band and they have an amazing album called Femejism.
What do you collect? What don’t I collect? Rocks from every beach I go to, troll dolls (above), plants — when my dog died I put a plant in every place he’d hang out and now I have a jungle in my house. What’s the best thing a cabbie has said to you? The worst thing a cabbie has said to me was right after the Women’s March. My friends and I were in the back of a cab, all worked up about it and chatting. When we paid the cabby he said, ‘Well you girls have had fun at the Women’s March. Now you can go back to cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and doing all the things you do best.’ Volcom x Georgia May Jagger collection is available now (volcom.co.uk)
Getty; Alamy; Rex
Favourite London pub? The Albion (above) in Islington. It has a great beer garden and it’s fab in the summer.