29.09.17 NEW MONEY
Is the Bitcoin bubble about to burst?
Plus:
a Star turn with lydia leonard meet meghan markle’s beauty go -to and salman rushdie’s My London
A$AP Rocky Shot by Juergen Teller
Causing chaos with hip-hop’s hottest property
CONTENTS 4 Skipping, sipping and totes gripping films in CAPITAL GAINS 6 Keeping up with the Crawfords in UPFRONT 9 Our MOST WANTED are Mary Katrantzou’s mules 10 Off the chain, it’s Liam Payne in FLASHBULB
LYDIA LEONARD is period-drama perfect 21 Diamanté redux in STYLE NOTES 23 Slick hoodies and new-term kicks in MEN’S STYLE 25 Put your BITCOIN where your mouth is 30 Read this, A$AP 41 Rack ’em up in BEAUTY 45 Are you eating your ADAPTOGENS? 49 GRACE & FLAVOUR has a disruptive 14
EDITOR Laura Weir
dinner at Flavour Bastard
TART whip up some namesake puds 53 Cheapskate wine clubs in DRINKS 55 Do your HOMEWORK in SE10 57 ESCAPE to Mumbai 58 Salman Rushdie’s MY LONDON
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Jonny Cochrane. Cover: A$AP Rocky photographed by Juergen Teller. Styled by Jenny Kennedy. GUESS X A$AP ROCKY T-shirt, £49, at selfridges.com. Jacket, scarf and jewellery, A$AP Rocky’s own
Here are the ES team’s must-see autumn TV series
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ALIAS GRACE ‘I was completely obsessed with The Handmaid’s Tale, so I’m cancelling my November plans to binge watch the next Margaret Atwood dramatization on Netflix, Alias Grace, about servants accused of murder in 1843.’ Frankie McCoy, features writer
BLUE PLANET II ‘The countdown is on for national treasure David Attenborough’s return to narrate the BBC’s jaw-dropping follow-up to the 2001 nature series, with Radiohead and superstar composer Hans Zimmer providing the new soundtrack to the deep blue yonder.’ Matt Hryciw, chief sub editor
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AMERICAN VANDAL ‘“Have we reached peak True Crime?” asks Netflix, with its hilarious new spoofdocumentary that pokes fun at our obsession with the genre. Compulsive viewing.’ Dipal Acharya, commissioning editor
THE DEUCE ‘Set in a sleazy 1970s NYC, the new Sky Atlantic series by The Wire’s creators about the rise of the porn industry is already unmissable. James Franco is amazing as a pair of identical twins; Maggie Gyllenhaal (right) is even better.’ Hamish MacBain, associate features editor
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STRANGER THINGS, SERIES 2 ‘I’m a crazy Eleven fan girl so I can’t wait for Netflix’s second series of Stranger Things. It can’t start soon enough.’ Jenny Kennedy, fashion editor
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Editor Laura Weir Deputy editor Anna van Praagh Features director Alice-Azania Jarvis Acting art director Emma Woodroofe 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
Beauty editor Katie Service Deputy beauty and lifestyle editor Lily Worcester
Social media editor Natalie Salmon Office administrator/editor’s PA Niamh O’Keeffe
Merchandise editor Sophie Paxton Fashion editor Jenny Kennedy Fashion assistant Eniola Dare Chief sub editor Matt Hryciw Deputy chief sub editor Nick Howells
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, Nicky Yates (style editor at large), 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
29.09.17 ES MAGAZINE 3
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PhotographS BY ben quinton
Class act Make-up by Yulia Yurchenko. Suit by Alex Eagle for The Store
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She has been dazzling critics with her turn as a Scandinavian diplomat in Oslo. As it transfers to the West End, Lydia Leonard talks to Frankie McCoy about Brexit, sexism on stage and why she said no to plastic surgery
’m sitting in a bare, cell-like National Theatre dressing room, empty but for a sad smoking regulation notice and a hatstand. But Lydia Leonard’s energy lights up the gloomy space. Swivelling hyperactively in an abandoned desk chair, the 35-year-old actress is sounding off about everything — from Brexit to the gender pay gap in acting to plastic surgery — at breakneck speed. Her fine features don’t betray a trace of tiredness, despite her having just finished the first full run through of Oslo, JT Rogers’s Tony Award-winning play about the Norwegian couple who brokered the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that ultimately led to the 1993 Oslo Accords — a groundbreaking step towards peace in the Middle East (it is, Leonard insists, ‘much funnier than you’d expect’). The three-week National Theatre run sold out and Leonard, who stars as Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul opposite Toby Stephens’s Terje Rød-Larsen, is already looking forward to its transfer to the West End in October. It’s the perfect role for an actress who has made her name playing culturally vital women through history: Virginia Woolf to James Norton’s Duncan Grant in BBC2’s Life in Squares; Jackie Kennedy in Martin Sherman’s Onassis, opposite Robert Lindsay; and a critically acclaimed turn as Anne Boleyn in the RSC’s adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, for which she was variously described as ‘seductive’, ‘minxish’ and ‘wonderfully vixenish’. That star performance took her and the rest of the cast to Broadway, where she was nominated for a Tony for best actress in a supporting role. ‘One of the best times of my life,’ she recalls fondly, although she still
insists that ‘the quality of the theatre in London is the best in the world’. Not that the London scene is immune to the usual problems when it comes to gender discrimination in the acting world, where women are notoriously paid less than their male counterparts. The pay gap is ‘an issue I care deeply about’, says Leonard. But she’s more concerned with changing the world than one industry. ‘I don’t always think it’s that helpful to view it through the prism of the acting world. Actors’ wages are determined on a whole host of complicated and sensitive factors, which is why we have agents. In the theatre I take comfort in the fact that much older actors are probably paid more than me, as it lets me believe there might be some stable progression in this most unstable of careers.’ She adds that ‘it’s a problem across all professions and by no means just acting’ and finds the recent furore over the BBC pay gap ‘so irritating because it’s distracting from a serious conversation about equality’. The acting world has made leaps and bounds even in the years since Leonard went to drama school at the Bristol Old Vic in 1999. It was, she says, ‘weird... I didn’t love my time there.’ Back in the late Nineties, she explains, the drama school only accepted three women each year — compared with nine men. ‘So it was very hard to get in if you were a woman,’ she winces. ‘It was terrible, it was really unequal. But it was classical training and they didn’t want to turn out loads of classical actresses that there weren’t parts for.’ Another incident occurred early in her acting career which you suspect would not have happened to a man. Lydia Leonard and Toby Stephens rehearsing Olso
howhe rolls He’s hip-hop royalty, a fashion darling — and in A$AP Rocky’s world, anything can happen. Hamish MacBain meets music’s most exciting star for an exhilarating morning of chaos PhotographS BY juergen teller stylED BY jenny kennedy
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LOEWE jeans, £450; BALENCIAGA trainers, £595, both at selfridges.com. Falke socks, £11 (falke.com). Jacket and scarf, A$AP Rocky’s own
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Buff
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they normalise the hormones and bring you back to biochemical balance.’ It was an extreme case of adrenal fatigue that led Naomi Buff, the bright-eyed and glossy-haired nutritionist behind Naomi’s Kitchen, to adaptogens. ‘I’d been running round like a superwoman: moving house three times in one year, with two small children and starting a business,’ she explains. ‘I was exhausted, burnt out.’ Searching for a way back to health, Buff started to explore the potency of adaptogens such as rhodiola, the root of which has long been used in the East to combat fatigue and as an antidepressant. ‘After my burn-out I started to use adaptogens seriously and regularly.’ She was sufficiently impressed that, with the help of Sara Palmer PhD, the Cambridgebased scientist behind Lumity supplements,
“If an athlete is going through an intense regime, adaptogens will help their body adapt” she set out to design the I AM range. ‘My I AM Energised blend features some of the adaptogens that helped me in my recovery and are a staple in my diet when I feel fatigued.’ Rhodiola is also a favourite of top trainer Jon Denoris, who trains athletes and celebrities from his Marylebone space, Club 51. ‘Rhodiola is excellent during periods of increased stress, or when an increase in drive, focus or sporting performance is required. Using adaptogens with training is a technique long used by Soviet coaches: if an athlete is going through an intense regime, it will help their body adapt to this physical stress.’ Round the corner from Denoris on
Chiltern Street, the acclaimed Devon wellbeing retreat Yeotown has opened its first Yeotown Kitchen. The new café’s menu features adaptogen-based drinks, ‘Yeotonics’, designed in collaboration with Arianna Huffington’s chef/nutritionist Heather Umlah. Patience is a calming brew based on schisandra, an Ayurvedic herb associated with reducing anxiety. Perspective is an immunity tonic that contains ashwagandha — a herb celebrated for its ability to strengthen the immune system and combat stress. At new café High on Duke Street, you can order maca hot chocolate (maca root benefits are said to include a positive effect on hormone balance and energy levels). Then, just as you were wondering if there was anything they couldn’t fix, Dr Frances Prenna Jones (below) has incorporated them into her skin cream, Day Work, to ‘protect against the stress response of cells in the skin, which is provoked by the environment’. And Purearth cold press juice company has launched a ‘Shot to Trot’ dose of ginseng, to boost energy and also libido (other well-known adaptogens include reishi, shiitake and liquorice). Are there any downsides? ‘Because adaptogens really do work, you should take them with care,’ advises Denoris. Rhodiola is best taken in the morning, for example, and in limited quantities. ‘If taken to excess, liquorice root can increase blood pressure so it should only be taken under the care of a professional.’ Finally though, it seems there is a real alternative to that can of Coke. Something that may bring your mind and body back to equilibrium — and not only give you the acuity to finish the task in hand, but also the energy and stamina to enjoy it.
On the defensive: get your fill of adaptogens
The snack With health benefits to rival goji berries, jujubes are the new desk munchie. Abakus dried jujube fruit, £1.99 (abakusfoods.com)
The power powder A daily dose of efficiency with maca — delicious in almond milk. Moon Juice Brain Dust, £25, at cultbeauty.co.uk
The mask Soothe and safeguard city skin with an infusion of coco and adaptogen, pure aloe. Skin & Tonic Coco Mask, £22, at content beautywellbeing.com
The supplement And breathe… a pill to ease low mood and aid concentration. Pukka Wholistic holy basil, £16.98 (pukkaherbs.com)
The brew Sip a cup of this mood-boosting ginseng tea. The Real Tea Company More Zest herbal tea, £5.99, at tea-direct.co.uk Getty
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ver get bored of feeling knackered, stressed or manic? Ever reach for another coffee/biscuit and wish there was instead some magic pill that would give you a healthy buzz, and raise your energy levels — without any kind of comedown? Maybe something that would afford calm and clarity. What about, let’s reach for the stars here, something that could also give you better quality sleep and even a bit of anti-ageing? Let me introduce you to adaptogens. Mainly derived from herbs and roots, adaptogens are plant-based compounds that modulate the body’s stress responses, promote healthy immune function and stimulate energy. Long celebrated in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, suddenly their benefits are being recognised in the West. In LA, the likes of Gwyneth (above) pick them up at cult health store Moon Juice; now in London you can stop by Selfridges to pick up one of the new Naomi’s Kitchen adaptogenic powders — great in a smoothie — or sip a delicious ‘adaptogenic latte’ at Notting Hill’s Farmacy restaurant. So first of all, what is an adaptogen? ‘The term was coined in the 1940s, to refer to a group of plants that essentially help us to “adapt” to stress in our environment,’ says nutritionist Eve Kalinik. ‘They work instinctively to “turn up” or “turn down” your body’s response, depending on where our internal stress thermostat is hovering, to bring you back to homeostasis.’ In layman’s terms, they return you to an even keel. To understand how they do this, Omniya health clinic’s Dr Sohère Roked explains we must look to our adrenal system. ‘The adrenals are small glands that sit on top of the kidneys and produce hormones such as oestrogen and cortisol.’ If we experience prolonged stress and are stuck in ‘flight or fight’, we may end up with far too much — or far too little — cortisol in our blood, which puts pressure on our sympathetic nervous system, creating symptoms such as unstable moods and low energy. Pointing to research done at the Swiss Herbal Institute, Dr Roked continues: ‘Adaptogens work to redress the balance between the adrenals, the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. Remarkably, they will work whether you are experiencing either adrenal Naomi fatigue or overstimulation —
my london
salman rushdie as told to dipal acharya
Home is… New York. What would you do if you were Mayor for the day? Consider holding a London referendum about seceding from the UK and staying in Europe.
Last play you saw? I went to see Dreamgirls (above) at the Savoy Theatre at the end of July with June Sarpong, Kathy Lette and her son. I liked the first act much more than the second. Where is the best place to let your hair down? It would be nice to have hair to let down.
If you had to be locked in a building overnight, which would it be? Buckingham Palace (above), but only if I could be Queen. And yes, I’d bring a friend and we would totally rule.
Favourite shops? The only London shops I’ve been to in the past several years are a) Harrods because I needed shoes and b) Selfridges because I managed to arrive in London without any pocket handkerchiefs — which I still old-fashionedly use and which aren’t easy to find. Earliest London memory? I arrived in January 1961. It was sunny and cold, and my father and I checked in at the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch. The nearby Odeon was showing The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s, and we went to see that and
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The author likes to drink vodka and tonic at the Savoy and idolises James Joyce had chocolate milkshakes (below) at a Lyons Corner House. I was 13 years old and on my way to boarding school. Ever had a run-in with a policeman? I have spent more of my life in the company of policemen than I ever expected. Many of them became my friends. So, no run-ins, no. I have however been on a number of occasions to the ‘Secret Policemen’s Ball’, actually an annual Special Branch party at Scotland Yard to which they invited all the people they protect or have
protected. At these parties, I met, among others, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Enoch Powell. Favourite place for a nightcap? The drink would either be vodka and tonic or bourbon on the rocks, depending on my mood. Maybe in the bar at the Savoy (left). Biggest extravagance? Never flying coach. What are you up to at the moment? Answering questions about my new novel and wondering what on earth to write next.
Best thing a cabbie has said to you? ‘Get out of the cab. Now!’ This was back in the early 1970s in Soho. When I got out, he zoomed off down the street and screeched to a halt beside an elegant lady and a man in a wheelchair. It was Charlie Chaplin and his wife Oona. I understood the cabbie’s point of view completely. Who’s your hero? I love James Joyce (right) for doing everything better than everyone else. From Joyce you learn humility. He’s always going to be better than you. ‘The Golden House’ by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape, £18.99) is out now
Getty; Alamy
Best place for a first date? Somewhere that I didn’t tell the Evening Standard about.
Who do you call when you want to have fun? Lady Antonia Fraser, the most enjoyable lunch companion I know.