Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2018 i Vogue Living

Renato and Roberto Minotti are elegant in crisp shirts and sharply cut blazers. The sons of the late, legendary Alberto Minotti — founder of one of Italy’s leading furniture manufacturers — the brothers are in Australia to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Minotti brand with the opening of a flagship store in Melbourne. Joining them are Renato’s son, Alessandro, and the company’s art director, architect Rodolfo Dordoni, who has worked with the family-run business for 20 years. The Minotti men are decisive and aesthetically understated — a walking personification of their made-in-Italy brand of sleek, sophisticated design. Dordoni is a little more relaxed, sporting a smile and designer sneakers. It’s his first time in Australia. “I had dinner at the Sydney Opera House and was given a private tour,”…

Sai-Wai Foo MIXED-MEDIA SCULPTURE facebook.com/Pleatybunny To appreciate the layered content of artist Sai-Wai Foo’s practice, it pays to scrutinise the mortice between the dry detail of her past. As the progeny of Malay-living Chinese parents who moved to Melbourne in the 1980s, Sai-Wai was parentally primed for a life in law or medicine before she opted for “the uncertain world of self-expression” — a four-year fashion design degree at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). There, she met her current boss and “bestie”, Toni Maticevski, who convinced her to stream into Honours, the requisite intern component of which found Sai-Wai in the Myer forecasting office. “It’s not what fashion forecasting is today,” she says two decades on with a roll of the eyes. “It’s now so predictable and fashion…

This summer, Vogue Living readers will have the opportunity to meet four of Melbourne’s leading creative talents at an intimate dinner and panel discussion on innovation in the creative industries. The event, to be held in the botanical surrounds of the Melbourne Flower Merchant, will feature acclaimed interior designer Mardi Doherty of Doherty Design Studio; award-winning architects Clare Cousins of Clare Cousins Architects and Iva Foschia of IF Architecture; and eminent Australian photographer Sharyn Cairns. In an exclusive evening of fine food complemented by matching wines, Vogue Living editor Rebecca Caratti will lead a round-table dialogue with the quartet on how they started in their respective careers, what it takes to climb to the top of their professions, and the collaborations and design innovations that inspire them to drive change…

In the tradition of the grand poseur who thumbs a nose at conventional conduct and dress, The Huxleys package themselves as pure spectacle. They are transgressively absurd, terrifyingly amusing and have sprung creatively from the romantic coupling of Garrett and Will Huxley — two provocateurs par excellence who braid their respective practices of filmmaking, photography, costume design and performance art into a hyperbolic, pop-literate world where no normal exists. As the couple tell it, they met in Melbourne more than a decade ago, after fleeing their “fish-out-ofwater” worlds in wider Australia. They bonded over a love of the seditionary likes of Baltimore filmmaker John Waters (‘The Sultan of Sleaze’), glam rockers T Rex, pop chameleon David Bowie and art performance icon Leigh Bowery. Feeding off these fabulists, the pair collaborated…

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FOR THE TRADE Boyac boyac.com.au South Pacific Fabrics southpacificfabrics.com Unique Fabrics uniquefabrics.com EDITORIAL 1st Dibs 1stdibs.com AES+F enquiries to Anna Schwartz Gallery; annaschwartzgallery.com Andrew Taylor enquiries to Olsen Gallery; olsengallery.com Angela de la Cruz enquiries to Anna Schwartz Gallery; annaschwartzgallery.com Antony Gormley antonygormley.com Artemide artemide.com Augusta Woods augustawood.com B&B Italia spacefurniture.com.au Bespoke Melbourne bespoke melbourne Brodware brodware.com Callum Morton enquiries to Anna Schwartz Gallery; annaschwartzgallery.com Capocchi capocchi.com.au Carlo Golin carlogolin.com Castorina & Co castorina.com.au CDK Stone cdkstone.com.au Chris Beaumont enquiries to Olsen Gallery; olsengallery.com Christian Thompson enquiries to Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi; gabriellepizzi.com.au Christine christineaccessories.com Christopher Boots estlighting.com.au Cole & Son cole-and-son.com Corsi & Nicolai cnanaturalstone.com Country Road countryroad.com.au Criteria Collection criteriacollection.com.au Cult cultdesign.com.au Dale Frank enquiries to Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery; roslynoxley9.com.au Dedece dedece.com Designers Guild designersguild.com Designstuff designstuff.com.au Dimore Studio dimorestudio.eu District district.com.au Domo domo.com.au Duravit duravit.com.au Elliat Rich enquiries to Sophie Gannon Gallery; sophiegannongallery.com.au Emily Floyd enquiries to Anna Schwartz Gallery; annaschwartzgallery.com Erub Arts enquiries to Pieces of Eight; piecesofeight.com.au Euroluce euroluce.com.au Flos euroluce.com.au; livingedge.com.au Fred…

Shot on location at Smalls wine bar, Melbourne, designed by Fiona Lynch; smallsbar.com.au @smalls_bar…

With the unfurling of Polly Borland: Polyverse — the nominative exhibition of new and seminal work now showing at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia — the expat Aussie artist has an opportunity to reflect on her past lives. She does so from the long distance of Los Angeles, “the toxic town” to which she claims to have unwillingly relocated six years ago for the sake of her film director husband, John Hillcoat (crafter of such dark cine-classics as 2005’s The Proposition and 2009’s The Road). Age is softening the focus of hindsight, advises the fiftysomething artist, whose signature round spectacles impart the wisdom and nocturnal wiles of an owl. No surprise there. It’s been nearly three decades since artist Polly Borland hightailed it out of Melbourne and headed for…

There are few florists as famous — or with as many Instagram followers — as their A-list clientele, but Jeff Leatham is one of them. Not only artistic director for both the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills and the George V in Paris (where he was knighted by the French government in 2014 for his acclaimed work there), Leatham has also recently set up his own design studio and flower boutique in the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. After nearly 20 years in France, Leatham has come full circle — his studio is based right out of the very same space he first started in as a trainee in 1994. More rock star than bouquet-maker, Leatham conjures and sculpts flowers into gargantuan, mesmerising art-like…

What constitutes art? It’s an age-old question that gets many purists’ knickers in a fine old twist — especially in light of the rising popularity of museum exhibitions displaying creative works that are not paintings, sculptures, drawings, mosaics or fine photography. Blockbuster shows in recent years including Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, David Bowie Is and The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture broke attendance records in multiple international art venues. Yet there are still certain critics (some might say ‘snobs’) who would question their rightful place in such hallowed institutions. The same argument rears its head when it comes to design. Does this form of creative mastery belong in a gallery or museum? It’s a challenge that Simone LeAmon, curator of contemporary design and architecture at the National…

Botanic Gardens precinct Melbourne is masterful at retrofitting the old with intriguing new relevancies. Take the 172-year-old Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, 36 hectares of spectacular parkland planted with more than 10,000 botanical species that serves as the green lungs and living room of the city by day, and the crucible for edgy culture after dark. French art luminaries Compagnie Carabosse recently fired it up with a river of flame for the Melbourne Festival, while Circus Oz amplified their acrobatic mayhem with the premiere of Precarious in the grounds. In summer, it is cinema classics and Shakespeare served under the stars with picnic hampers and puppies (dogs are always welcome). This city-wide willingness to drop one ecosystem into a contra-indicated other expresses to great effect in the adjacent Shrine of Remembrance,…

Wellness retreats are flourishing in regions as distant as Iceland and Patagonia, and ‘holistic’ is the buzzword. These places are more than boot camps offering hardcore diet regimens — expect cutting-edge facilities and glamorous surrounds, with traditional remedies alongside such New Age practices as crystal therapy and meditation, and hybrid treatments. Closer to home, one of Melbourne’s buzziest shopping streets is High Street in Armadale, known for its antique dealers and lively precinct cafes, fashion boutiques and furniture stores. It’s a real change of pace, then, to enter two heritage buildings on the strip and, behind them, find a space of such tranquillity it might be a monastery. Willow Urban Retreat is one of a number of wellness-focused businesses to have blossomed at the Glenferrie Road end of High Street.…

Melbourne has always excited me. It’s a city of sometimes contradictory layers, from the glamour and clamour of Cup Days and Grand Finals to the unassuming chic of its independent galleries and laneway bars. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the electricity of the city when you’re there. This summer, we’re celebrating all our unofficial cultural capital has to offer. From the refined and renowned darlings of the dining scene to emerging artists and entertainers, we peel back the city layer by layer to reveal Melbourne’s myriad hidden and not-so-hidden charms. This issue would not have been possible without the passion of two extraordinary Melbourne women — our Melbourne editor and features writer Annemarie Kiely and respected interiors photographer Sharyn Cairns. These two passionate Melburnians have taken us…

Ilana Moses, cofounder of Melbourne fashion mecca Grace, is no stranger to the detaildriven world of architecture and interior design. As those who follow her Instagram feed will know, for every photographic grab of a fabulous garment found during Paris Fashion Week, there is a forensic capture of an inlaid floor or a customised fixture. Typically it’s a ‘#lookdown’ comparing the drama of her dress to the detail of a boutique or back-street passage, as illustrated in a ‘#fridayfinds’ of Paris’s Galerie Vivienne — the muted, mosaic-tiled floor of which turns up the volume on the saturated Sicilian florals encircling her Dolce & Gabbana skirt. This play of old patina and new pattern speaks of the retailer’s visual smarts; an all-quotients intelligence that today tells in her blues-fest of MSGM…

After nearly 20 years of secreting her fashion phantasmagoria into a basement space in Flinders Lane, Melbourne’s queen of experiential retail, Christine Barro, is moving to Collins Street and, again, concealing her cabinets of opulent curiosities in a counterintuitive space. “But this time, it’s all about the vertical laneway,” says Barro of the upwards lift of her self-named salon, Christine, into a heritage-listed building at the end of the city’s premier boulevard. “For me, the real thrill in fashion delivers in the unexpected find; the hunt and the catch that rewards with the shock of the new.” This relocation, precipitated by the development of the building she has long inhabited into a boutique hotel, has given Barro pause to consider “more obvious” real estate options. Not one to bend to…

Imagine Sydney without the Sydney Opera House. As legend has it, Jørn Utzon’s design didn’t even make the 1957 architectural competition’s shortlist. It was only after arriving late to the judging table that Eero Saarinen, underwhelmed by the already shortlisted entrants, pulled Utzon’s sketches from the reject pile et, voilà, the rest is Australian architectural history. The following decade, as Utzon was essentially being fired from the Opera House project, another 20th-century Australian paradox of sorts was unfolding in the art world. Abandoning industrial design, Clement Meadmore had just moved to New York to pursue his career as an artist. Today, he is widely considered to be one of Australia’s greatest sculptors. He just had to leave Australia, permanently, to become so. The work he created after moving to New…

Back in the noughties, when Kate Challis bought a decommissioned shop on Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street — the hipster heart of Melbourne — she had a PhD in art history and a hankering to practise design. The street had a gritty allure, was glued by a sense of community, and incurred a short walk to the home of her beloved grandfather, Bernard Smith, one of the pre-eminent art historians of the 20th century. As she recalls it, the neighbourhood was then a rub-up of the city’s rich and poor — a diamond in the rough with an outlaw reputation, a counterculture vibe and not a barista within cooee. “That was 15 years ago,” says Challis, a fine-featured beauty with a bohemian air who has since traded academia for a self-named design…

Stay golden’ is the warm entreaty issuing from the website of Kylie Dorotic and Alicia McKimm, two interior designers formerly of We Are Huntly, who have rebranded their studio with the tint of success. According to McKimm, Golden, their auspicious new mark, is more a portent of what they do and the excellence of its execution than their indeterminate old name. It is also more suggestive of the sentiment they seek to spark in their immersive work; one made manifest on the firm’s website with an evocative slideshow of sun on flaxen hair, peach on a woven placemat and afternoon light hitting a linen curtain. If it all sounds like spin, feast your peeps on this Victorian house, given the Golden touch by Dorotic and McKimm. Nestling amid an architecturally…

VILLA STÉPHANIE, GERMANY This technologically advanced medi-spa in Baden-Baden is part of the five-star Brenners Park Hotel & Spa. Its 10-day Kings Way program is the star, combining science and alternative therapies and featuring 91 different treatments involving diet, relaxation and detoxifying. oetkercollection.com/destinations/villastephanie AMILLA FUSHI, MALDIVES ‘Movement is medicine’ is the mantra of Bodyism, a holistic program that combines yoga, stretching, classical ballet, functional movement and Pilates. At Amilla Fushi’s Javvu Spa, housed under a thatched roof on the water’s edge, there’s lifestyle consultation, special wellness meals, a daily treatment and a movement class twice daily. amilla.mv BORGO SANTO PIETRO, TUSCANY This exquisitely restored manor house, organic farm, restaurant and cooking school is one of the most sublime country estates in Italy. For starters, guests are greeted with an organic…