Tuesday 22nd July 2025
Blog Page 1244

Interview: Xavier Rolet

Tom Robinson
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Interview: Xavier Rolet

I arrive at my interview with Xavier Rolet to find him talking about the Rwandan genocide and the role imperial powers played in creating internal divisions within the country. While the topic is sombre, it is a pleasant surprise that the man I am about to interview is not the stereotypical ex-banker I expected, but a man with a genuine interest in the world around him. Breathing a (very) deep sigh of relief, I realise I wouldn’t have to ‘talk finance’ the entire interview.

Xavier Rolet is the Chief Executive Officer of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), a financial infrastructure firm headquartered in London, best known for facilitating the trading of stocks and shares in the financial market. But, Rolet is keen to point out, “The UK equities business is a very small economic part of our overall business. We run clearing houses and settlement houses; we run indices, a whole range of infrastructure with large amounts of balance sheets, payment systems, and many other things.”

Rolet is obviously very proud of the institution he has led for the past six years. The London Stock Exchange may be an unassuming cog in the financial machine, with comparatively little attention paid to it in the mainstream press, but it provides vital services.

Throughout our interview, it is clear that Rolet thinks on a very macro level. Talking about the business he heads up, he is keen to mention the global scale of its operations, the diversification that he has pursued, and the forecasting of events through complex chains of interdependence. Xavier Rolet is an internationally-minded man who deals in big ideas.

And it is easy to see why this is the case. Born to parents who were both in the military, Rolet spent his early childhood in a suburb of Algiers, while his father “was out in the Algerian bush”. He then moved back to Paris, to a north-eastern suburb called Seine-Saint, which he describes as being more “more akin to, say, Tower Hamlets or Stratford… it was a sink-estate for many years.”

I get the impression, talking to Rolet, that he was not fond of his time in Paris. Indeed, in the talk he gave after our interview, he described London as the best city in the world, with New York a close second. But nowhere was there any mention of France or Paris. On leaving his homeland, Rolet notes, “I managed to, frankly, avail myself of the opportunity through the education system, through scholarships, to eventually emigrate to the U.S. to pursue my education and I started my career there.” There is little sadness in Rolet’s voice as he describes leaving France. It is a country renowned for a population that is immensely proud of its national identity, and it is odd to meet a Frenchman with little to say about his own country.

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Part of this detachment, perhaps, stems from Rolet’s deep commitment to internationalism and his awareness of how interdependent we all are as global citizens. His particular interest, he tells me, is in global security and defence. Having served as an instructor at the Air Force Academy as part of his national service, Rolet returned to education in 2007-2008, and graduated from the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence.

He recalls his time there, saying, “It was sort of continuing education if you want, centred more on global issues, economic intelligence, geopolitics, broader strategic issues related to defence.”

It is not surprising for a man brought up by parents in the military, living overseas due to France’s involvement in Algeria and serving in the Air Force, to pick up an interest in defence and security matters. But Rolet does surprise me by just how much he believes in internationalism.

“I happen to believe the world will continue to evolve towards what I believe will be a global governance mechanism. I know that when you listen to Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen who are looking towards retrenchment and putting up the borders it may not feel like this, but I’m convinced we eventually will get to [some form of global governance].”

“It may start with finance, given the outcome of the crash of 2008. We are, I believe, slowly and reasonably steadily moving towards global financial governance, both in terms of conduct but also prudential regulation.”

I sense I’ve stumbled onto a topic particularly close to Xavier Rolet’s heart; these are the big ideas that evidently occupy his attention. He points me towards several emerging imbalances in geopolitics and economics about which we should be concerned. He tells me to look at “what is happening with Russia and the Ukraine, Japan going off in a bit of a strategic surprise in terms of reflating its economy and the rivalry with China, North Korea trying to chart a separate course, the tensions in the Middle East with Isis.

“These are not unrelated. I think its obviously coming out of the crisis of 2008 – where the financial crisis was very severe – that no single nation on its own has the power or balance sheet to fix the problems when they erupt on the global scene.”

Rolet seems to be warning me of what is to come. “We are right about the time when these things are going to be tested,” he says. “Whilst periods of stress usually lead to a retrenchment, the natural sort of atavistic reaction – you know, ‘no foreigners’, ‘the problems are coming from overseas’, ‘let’s not import them anymore’ – the reality is that the imbrication is so deep that I believe we will see a test soon.”

Rolet is frank about our situation. “We’ll either keel over and go into a disaster area, as Europe, frankly, has seen many times before, or we’ll be able to evolve into a more integrated global structure.”

Sometimes, it is hard to distinguish between the times Rolet is interested in external affairs for its own sake, and when he is interested because they affect his business. He manages to translate the crises of today fairly seamlessly into how the London Stock Exchange tries to anticipate them to protect itself. “We can be right, we can be wrong. But if you can correctly anticipate the trend – even if there are severe speed bumps on the way – if you predict the correct medium to long term trend, you can gain substantial competitive advantage,” he tells me.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Rolet is obviously a man with insatiable curiosity, concerned with both finance and global affairs. He certainly has important insights to share on the interdependence of participants on the global stage.

Although Rolet is unquestionably a capitalist, even here he occupies a more nuanced position than a simple characterisation of him as a free-marketeer type of capitalist would allow. There is a human side to his economics, a recognition of the need for regulation and guidance, a need for capitalism to work for people. Maybe he places too much faith in the mechanics of capitalism, but I cannot fault him for his desire to subsume and address social issues within his framework.

Rolet explains why companies, including financial institutions, should employ people with “a mixture of liberal arts, history, languages, experiences overseas”. He even suggests, “Maybe having a tough youth, where you’ve got to struggle to make it, can be useful in some respects.” In his talk, he tells us that some of the most entrepreneurial individuals can be found in the rough, deprived neighbourhoods of our cities.

Rolet himself is someone who has struggled and risen from what he describes as a “sinkestate” to become a very successful businessman. He has been fortunate to ride the surf of capitalism and truly believes, I think, in its positive impact on society. But at the heart of Rolet’s philosophy is a recognition that we are imperfect: states, organisations, and individuals can never know or control everything. Diversity and a breadth of study, he argues, can “help you adjust to an environment where you simply do not have all the elements necessary to make a decision”.

His views are somewhat refreshing. Rolet and the London Stock Exchange do not make the aggressive trading decisions that characterise much of the banking sector. His industry relies on neutrality, making efficient the exchange of goods and laying down the financial infrastructure for others. Unsurprisingly, Rolet has a lot to say on how we can avoid some of the mistakes we have made in the past.

I ask him whether the complexities of the financial system, and the type of securities being traded in the run up to 2008, had any bearing on the crash itself. Will we ever return to a situation where such instruments are traded again? “If you go back through the last 300 years,” he tells me, “you see a multitude of crises. The products can change, it can be U.S. savings and loans, it can be Latin American debt, you can have extreme amounts of complexity, but at the core it is still the same problem and we haven’t fixed that. It is our extreme addiction, through regulatory and fiscal subsidies, to debt.”

Rolet is not your ordinary capitalist. He is nuanced and engaged, excited and concerned simultaneously.

He also recognises that capitalism needs to do more for the ordinary citizen to trust finance again. His ideas are certainly big and exciting, but we’ll have to see if they ever come to fruition.

Oxstew: Oxford death toll of 500 in battle for free speech

Ravenna Webster
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Oxstew: Oxford death toll of 500 in battle for free speech

Fighting broke out yesterday in Oxford between two groups of students over a disagreement as to the nature of free speech. Oxford residents have been advised to stay indoors until further notice as heavily armed bands of students continue to roam the streets, killing or capturing anyone who does not practice free speech in the right way. Official estimates put the death toll at 503, but some sources have challenged this and have put the figure at the far higher 613 mark, with over 200 injured.

Reports suggest that it all started on Turl Street, when two groups of BNOCs exchanged insults as they passed each other on the pavement. This descended into a passionate argument about Marine Le Pen, which swelled in numbers as interested students walking by decided to joined in. After around half an hour, Turl Street was blocked with the crowd, and reports have since surfaced claiming that the noise could be heard from as far away as St. Hugh’s. What sparked the subsequent events is not entirely clear, but the argument soon turned into a physical fight, which then spread around the crowd.

Several eyewitness accounts of the beginnings of the conflict have emerged, all corroborating this story. Peter Frisk, a passerby, happened to witness how the violence began, described it as, “an absolute bloodbath”.

“It was really odd,” Frisk continued. “Although they were shouting at each other, everyone seemed to be broadly agreeing with everyone else – saying that free speech was jolly important and an essential part of our society, and so on. Then someone bellowed something along the lines of ‘I don’t like what you’re saying, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it’ and everything kicked off. The French students started screaming about misquoting, politics students about the difference between saying something and saying something on a platform, and then a guy in the centre of the crowd whipped out a sword and started beheading people.”

When asked whether he was traumatised by the incident, Frisk paused for a minute before replying, “No, not really. I wasn’t really that interested to be honest. I just wanted to get a panini from Heroes and they were all in the way.”

The OxStew also spoke to Carmina Wild, a student who managed to evade capture by two different groups on her way home later in the evening.

“The first group that got me,” she said, “asked me straight away to demonstrate my commitment to free speech. I didn’t really know what they meant, and was starting to panic, but then I noticed in the crowd a prominent Union member and guessed that they’d like something strong. I felt bad, but I had to survive, so I denounced the entirety of Islam as inherently violent and threatened to deport or sell into slavery anyone without three good A-levels. They let me go, but then five minutes later the other side grabbed me. This time I simply said ‘smash the patriarchy’, and they all cheered, gave me a free badge and wished me well on my way.”

The Proctors are attempting to get the battle under control, by confiscating weapons and giving extra essays to those known to have participated in order to keep them off the streets. In a statement today, they have promised the residents of Oxford that their city will soon be safe once more, even if it means using some of the Vice-Chancellor’s hard-earned cash to achieve this. They also pledged to launch an inquiry into the incident, but, when asked, refused to comment whether students would ever see the results of it. 

The Campaign: Giving What We Can

Henry Phipps
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The Campaign: Giving What We Can

We often think of giving to charity as an act of self-sacrifice, something we ought to do given the huge amount of suffering in the world, but something that involves sacrificing our own wellbeing to increase the wellbeing of those less fortunate. However, recent research has challenged this assumption. It indicates that giving to charity tends to significantly increase a person’s wellbeing.

Imagine you are given some money. Do you think you would increase your happiness more by spending it on yourself or giving it to others? Research suggests that while most participants believed they would experience more happiness by spending the money on themselves, those who gave the money to charity or spent it on others experienced significantly more happiness.

A related study examined the spending decisions of employees in Boston, Massachusetts, who had received a bonus from their company. Those who chose to spend the money on others reported significant gains in happiness from doing so, whereas this was not the case for those who spent the money on themselves. It has been found that in most countries, charitable giving correlated with an increase in happiness equivalent to a doubling of household income.

Donating money to charity is not something that will only grant you increased happiness if you are already affluent. Research suggests that even when controlling for income, those who spent money on others rather than themselves reported greater levels of wellbeing.

RAG and Giving What We Can Oxford are currently running a ‘Big Match’ campaign to raise money for two of the world’s most effective charities: Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI). SCI helps run national prevention programmes against Schistosomiasis (a disease caused by parasitic worms). AMF hands out insecticide-treated bed nets to people in areas at risk from malaria. Student societies from across Oxford have collaborated to put together a matching pot of £10,000. For every £10 you donate, a further £10 will be released from the matching pot. If £20,000 is raised, this will be enough to treat over 20,000 people for parasitic diseases and to provide almost 5,000 mosquito nets.

Find out more by searching for the Big Match campaign online. 

Interview: Richard Evans

Tom Robinson
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Interview: Richard Evans

Sat waiting in the Gladstone Room at the Oxford Union, I felt quite intimidated by the prospect of meeting Richard Evans. Having spent six years at Oxford as both an undergraduate and doctoral student, Evans later served as an expert witness in a high-profile libel case. More recently, Evans has written several noteworthy books including seminal works on the Nazi period, the Third Reich Trilogy, its last part described in The New York Times as “not only the finest but also the most riveting account of that period”.

Richard Evans, now President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, is by any measure an intellectual heavyweight. Yet Evans turns out to be a very likeable, unassuming and open person. Remarking on his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, he describes himself as “a terrible swot” and that his admission to Jesus College in particular was no mere accident. He tells me, “It was full of Welshmen, which is why I was sent there.”

Evans also speaks fondly about studying for his doctorate at the more “cosmopolitan” St Anthony’s College, as he described it. From undergraduate life at a single-sex college, suddenly “there were women. Intelligent and beautiful women. Of course I fell in love with them all and made a fool of myself several times over but I also had some wonderful supervisors and some incredible intellectual experiences.

“The best things were the Latin American parties,” Evans recalls with a smile, “because they all after a certain stage brought guitars and started singing songs about Che Guevara – it was the sixties, you see!” It is evident from speaking with Evans that he finds cultural differences incredibly stimulating. 

I press him on a remark he made for History Today, in which Evans described a sense of “otherness” he felt and that derived from his Welsh heritage. “I never learnt Welsh, I grew up in London,” he admits. “But we went back to North Wales a lot. Everyone was speaking Welsh around me and I didn’t understand, and I had to sit through interminable Welsh language sermons… and it got me fascinated. And it was completely different, I mean, as different as you could get: the Welsh mountains, slate quarrying, castles, all of those sorts of things, again, I found hugely exciting.”

It was this intrigue surrounding other cultures, as well as his experience growing up around post-war London that inspired Evans to study German history, he tells me. “You’d go into the East End, into Stratford or Leyton and see all these rows of terraced houses with huge gaps in them. I was very struck by that. Who were these strange people who’d done that, why did the Germans want to bomb London and so on? And of course, my parents and friends had all lived through the war and talked about it a lot.”

In a foolish attempt to appear insightful, I ask Evans if he sees any parallels between Hitler’s foreign policy and that of Putin in Eastern Europe today. He bats me down immediately. “No, not at all. History doesn’t repeat itself. And the reason is that we know what happened before so that makes it very difficult for it to repeat. Putin, I think, essentially wants to recreate the Soviet Union so there’s this great limit. He’d like to annex the Baltic States to reconstitute that larger idea of Russia that he grew up in, the Russian empire. 

“Hitler was completely different. He wanted to conquer the world. He had no limits in time or space to what he thought of the Third Reich as doing, what he aimed for it to do. Whereas Putin’s use of violence is covert and relatively limited, Hitler, of course, was overt and without boundaries.” 

With my tail firmly between my legs, I move onto Evans’ time as an expert witness in the highly publicised Irving v. Lipstadt case, after Lipstadt had alleged in her book that Irving was a Holocaust-denier. As an expert witness, Evans was instructed to analyse Irving’s work, concluding in his report that, “Not one of his books can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject.” Lipstadt was, the court found, justified in saying some of Irving’s work amounted to Holocaust denial. 

On how he found working in such an environment, Evans tells me, “You have to be absolutely on your toes the whole time. It was very draining and the adrenaline sort of keeps you going, I would collapse in the evening and think ‘I’m going to have an early night’.”

On a more sombre note, Evans also tells me of those he could see in the public gallery. “There were a lot of Auschwitz survivors who turned up with their arm sleeves rolled up and you could see their numbers tattooed, hanging on my every word when I was in the witness box.” He says it became “very important to do them justice, as it were, even though I don’t think the trial in the end could deliver the kind of catharsis that some of them, maybe, were looking for.” As the interview nears its end, Evans leans in towards the microphone and tells me, “History is not a court; we are not judges.” To Evans, studying history is about rising above moral standards of the time and not seeking to paint people “as perpetrators, bystanders, or victims.” While his analysis may seem coldly logical, it is clear that Evans, as a person, is not. Richard Evans is a phenomenal historian, but one with an overwhelming sense of humility, humour and insatiable intrigue.

Review: The Boss of It All

Anna Zanetti
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Review: The Boss of It All

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

Who is the boss of it all? The one who appears to be so? The one who plays the part of the boss? The one who controls the boss? Or, the one who actually gets what’s going on and is in control of the situation?  This production, adapted from a comedy by Danish screenwriter Lars von Trier, seems to be interested in asking precisely on this question. It partly succeeds, although not  with the best outcome.

The play revolves around the boss of an IT company (Jack Chisnall), who hires an actor (Cameron Cook) to play the part of the boss, so that he can still enjoy popularity among his staff but at the same time carry out his interests, which are in fact to sell the company. Of course, this trick works up to the point where it becomes clear that blaming someone else is not always possible, and one has to be responsible for one’s own actions. The theme of ‘boss-ness’ is nicely developed in all its possible combinations, and pretty much everyone sooner or later in the play gets to be the boss at some point.

Another interesting motif is that of pretending and dissimulating. We see this in the actor playing the part of the boss, but finding himself without a script and thereby forced to improvise. Eventually, we witness a gradual shift from the puppet controlled by the boss (the real one), to the real boss being turned into a puppet. All this makes the staff (and the audience) question who the boss of it all actually is.

All characters, especially ‘the colourful bunch’ of the staff members, are quite amusing and give a humorous insight into stereotypes: the algid emotionless beauty, the moody and delirious rustic, the chronically depressed widow – there’s room for everyone. However, the deliberate anxiety and social awkwardness, supposed to be performed to excess for comic purposes, is sometimes taken too far, departing from the ‘excessive = funny’ model, and leading to the ‘excessive = fake, rigid, awkward’ one. Kristoffer/Svend (Cameron Cook) himself, although he seems really into the part and over-the-top, sometimes comes across as too stiff, repetitive, and contrived, which effects the large potential for humour the play has.

Nevertheless, there is still laughter among the audience – which creates the most bizarre contrast with the utter depression being staged at all levels – and in some cases rightly so. There are moments of very good humour, such as the scene in slow motion and the exchange between the actor and his own part. However, other bits are not up to such standards. For example, less hilarious is the use of the puppet. It is a brilliant addition in concept, which does not feature in the original script, and it works really well with what the play is all about. But, yet, I feel that it could have been used better. Equally dubious is the decision of having a random Danish voice off stage between the change scenes; it is funny the first time, but a bit pointless after a while.

So an entertaining play overall with an engaging plot, some hilarious types, and a few funny tricks. Although, I sense there could definitely have been even more fireworks.

The Boss of It All runs at The BT Studio until Saturday.

The first Street Style blog

Elif Acar
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The first Street Style blog

The street style blog exploded onto the nascent blogging scene as the new craze-du-jour in 2007. Seven years later, every major fashion city is saturated with ‘photographers’ roaming its streets, approaching well-dressed strangers with the flattering request of “Could I take your photo for my blog?”

‘Street-stylists’ may be patting themselves on the back for inaugu- rating this new phenomenon, but in reality, credit is owed to famed Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne. Considering that he was shooting the fashionistas of South Kensington in the early 1900s, it’s surprising it took a century to catch on.

The work of this amateur photographer is unique as a rare glimpse into the casual dress of the Edwardian woman. With its depiction of the constrained but immaculately coiffed woman grimacing in her discomfort, it offers a stark contrast to the stereotypical image of contemporary dress.

Though they might seem rather prim to us Oxonians in our crop tops and tight jeans, Rebecca Richardson insists that an Edwardian context these shots are “laced with erotic undertones”.

It didn’t take long for the blossoming fashion indus- try to seize the opportunity to monetize this ripple of social change, sexing up silhouettes and creating the ‘ideal’ hourglass figure. Indeed, the maxim of ‘sex sells’, prominent in today’s fashion media, was active, albeit passively, in a time governed by moral and social judgment.

Amongst all this praise of his uncredited revolution, Linley Sambourne’s work
is somewhat tainted by his dubious methods. ‘Candid’ is the operative
word here. With the use of a concealed camera, his subjects were entirely oblivious they were being photographed.

Before the days of CCTV, this clan- destine operation may feel like an intentional and active violation, perhaps altering the impact of his project.

However, I can excuse Edward his surreptitious ways – his work, limited by a lack of resources, was unique for the time and every Katie, Tom and Emily has him to thank for their current corner of the internet.

Jeremy Scott’s Superbowl

Elif Acar
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Jeremy Scott’s Superbowl

For her big 12 minutes in front of 110 million viewers, Katy Perry spared absolutely no fireworks. The half time slot at the Super- bowl is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many entertainers – although perhaps not for Katy Perry – and has previously been filled by Madonna and Beyoncé.

Her performance included Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliot, dancing sharks, and an absolutely amazing anima-
tronic lion, but to make the most of her
time on stage, Perry also called upon her long term friend Jeremy Scott, the creative director of Moschino, to design her four outfits.

Despite a clothing change practi- cally every three minutes, Perry never left the stage during the slot and Scott stated that dressing her was a “math and science lesson about layering, how to hide, and to have her have
big reveals”. The classic Ameri-can designer, known for his ‘fast-fashion’ designs inspired
by McDonalds and other American corporates, was
the natural choice to design
the clothes for the most quintessentially American
‘California Gurl’ performing at the most quintessential of all American sporting events.

The humour may have been taken
a bit too far by some, with a massive number of memes exploding all
over the internet, likening her flame encrusted dress to Cheetos packaging and Will Ferrell in the ice skating film Blades of Glory. However, despite being incessantly mocked online, Perry can have the last laugh as her half time show now holds the record as the most watched in all of Super Bowl history. All-in-all, a very successful 12 minutes for both her and Scott indeed.

One Art Work, Five Canvases and Makeup

Tallulah Le Merle
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One Art Work, Five Canvases and Makeup

Makeup is extremely versatile. For some reason, this versatility pales in comparison to social stigmas that situate makeup, and the act of applying it, as superficial and narcissistic. This assumption is very one-sided. The purpose of makeup is not singularly, and certainly not always, to at- tract a man or woman, and a love of cosmetics does not signal self-obsession or shallowness.

Instead, I proffer that makeup is a form of creative expression, an art. Some might find this suggestion an overstatement, but what about applying a brush, carrying colour (whether in powder form, gel, liquid, cream, or otherwise), is not artistic? Like painting, makeup articulates and reframes a canvas, highlighting key features, malleable to different moods, bold and brazen or soft and subdued. The purpose of this week’s shoot was to underscore the very inherently artistic nature of makeup. We also specifically chose to recreate styles that have a history or are somehow socially constructed, emphasising that cosmetic trends are cultural artifacts just like art of certain eras and ages. Our models, Georgia Galton-Ayling, Persis Bhalla, Brenda Nijiru, Charlotte Ward and Sarah Fan all pose, therefore, using makeup designs from different eras to demonstrate this.

60s graphic liner (Georgia): When you think of thick eyeliner, Egyptian-style winged liner first comes to mind. We chose to emulate the look popularised by Twiggy in the 60s, which is a very stark, graphic design. The contrast of a pale lid with a dark, dramatic line is interesting and bold. It changes the shape of the eye, and can be very flattering. Recently, the makeup industry has gone very natural, as assistants at makeup counters often en- courage clients to go for brown and grey liner shades, rather than black, which they suggest is too ‘harsh’. But we embrace and appreciate the black, graphic trend.

Dark lips (Persis): Dark lips have a long and diverse history: from the Maori of New Zealand, and the Hindu tradition, to Queen Elizabeth I and the 1920s film industry. But the trend really took off in, and is still associated with, the 1970s and 80s punk/goth movement, when dark lips were not limited to women, but also seen frequently on musicians such as Robert Smith (The Cure) and Marilyn Manson.

Brights (Brenda): Bright colours in makeup often immediately recall the 80s, when lids were swept with a pop of colour, or lips were glossy and cherry-red. Modern makeup seems to tend instead towards neutral shadows, and there is an aversion to colour at times. I, however, am a big fan of colour, and going all out. A thick line of eyeliner in teal or purple perks up my eyes in less time than a full lid of shadow, and bright fuschia lips make me feel alive when I’m hungover.

Strong brows (Charlotte): Eyebrows are the most frequently forgotten facial feature. Not only do eyebrows frame the face, but they can also change the facial expression; heavily arched brows create a more surprised look, while straight brows are bold and no- nonsense. These days, bold brows are back – think model of the moment Cara Delevingne. Perhaps surprisingly, the tweezer has taken a hiatus. We experimented with this look on someone who has naturally thin, light brows – the end result is different, but wearable.

Heavy contouring and highlighting (Sarah): By choosing to contour, changing how light hits the face and where shadows fall, you can seemingly change your bone structure in just a few steps. I have loved experimenting with this, and watching the lines and angles of my face shift and change. The trick with contouring for everyday purposes is to blend, blend, blend (which we actually didn’t do in this shoot). Finding a contour shade that mimics the actual shadows on your face is important so that the skin doesn’t look muddy.

 

The original Calendar Girls: more WOAH than WI

Rosie Gaunt
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The original Calendar Girls: more WOAH than WI

As certain as a bad hangover on New Year’s Day are the resolutions and self-made promises of January detoxes, cleanses and health kicks. Amongst all the talk (and let’s face it, it’s almost always just talk), there is hope, because with the new calendar year comes new calendars; and if you want inspiration that’s going to last all year round I suggest you buy one, a naked one. I’m not talking about one with 12 months’ worth of scantily clad, heavily photoshopped Justin Bieber photos, or Page Three girls on a beach, I’m talking about true art in celebration of the human form.

‘Form and Desire’ is the aptly named exhibition of 40 years of photography from the best of the best of these calendars: the Pirelli.

The location of the exhibition is as fitting as its name: the fashion Mecca that is Milan. While clothes are few and far between in the shoots, the models, stylists and photographers are some of fashion’s finest. The 2015 Calendar is shot by Steven Meisel, styled by Carine Roitfeld and features Adriana Lima, Joan Smalls and Natalia Vodianova to name just a few.

Previous photographers include Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Patrick Demarchelier, Mario Testino and Karl Lagerfeld, whilst the likes of Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Heidi Klum and Eva Herzigova appear as models.

Pirelli is fashion, and not just because, as Vivienne Westwood famously announced, “Fashion is about eventually being naked”. The exhibition in its own words is about photography as a “testimony of particular changes, of new styles, of new ideas, of many creative and technical innovations”, just as fashion is.

The 200 photos in the exhibition are displayed accordingly – not chronologically, ironic given that is an exhibition of prints from calendars. They are grouped in five rooms, each room’s collection highlighting a different aspect of the calendar that has run through 40 years of different concepts and photographers. Finally, Meisel’s photos for this year are presented, and they have saved the most overtly sexual for last.

However, there is another surprise too, amongst all the latex and fetish gear: Candice Huffman. She is the calendar’s first plus-size (read: normal size) model. “My presence on this set,” she said, “the most glamorous in the world, is a sign that things are really changing.” She’s right, of course.

Having visited the exhibition during a vacation spent scoffing pizza and pasta in Italy, I hoped to find inspiration for a cleaner, leaner 2015. Instead, I found true inspiration for a happier, but no less glamorous, one.

Some might say that in this age of Facebook event pages and smartphone reminders there is no longer a need for the traditional calendar, but I believe they still have a place, marking the passing of time with regularly changing art.

Unfortunately this is inspiration that I cannot hang on my wall all year round, as the calendars cannot be bought but are merely sent to a select and secret lucky few. So, while I’m working on looking ‘sexy’, not ‘scary’, in the hope of one day getting sent one, I suppose I’ll have to content myself for the moment with the RAG Blues Naked Calendar.

 

 

Fashion Matters

Archive
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Fashion Matters

The fashion world has long lived by that well-known adage ‘beauty before age’, but flick or click through the pages of any fashion mag or site today and you’ll find that times are changing.

Almost every big brand’s spring/summer ‘15 ad campaign’s lens favours the older woman. The oft-featured Italian nonnas at Dolce and Gabbana move to centre stage with the young’uns. Octogenarian American writer Joan Didion (much to the internet’s delight) shares the spotlight with 14 year old Freya Lawrence at Céline, as do three veteran models with their daughters at Lanvin. Burberry’s line-up sees Naomi Campbell star with Jourdan Dunn, in a shoot similar in style to the brand’s fragrance ad last year, starring Kate Moss with Cara Delevigne. Some brands have even gone as far as throwing the baby faced models out with the bathwater: see Madonna’s return to Versace and Joni Mitchell for Saint Laurent.

It’s true that this shift has not simply come overnight. The fashion-set have long been obsessed with the likes of 90 year old icon Iris Apfel and Ari Seth Cohen’s Advanced Style blog (and now book and documentary), which features street style photos of New York’s “most stylish and creative older folks”. Cohen describes his work as “proof… that personal style advances with age”, but this is proof for which fashion designers and editors need only look, behind those big sunglasses, to themselves.

For a long time, they have been reluctant to do so all the same. In 2013, the then 64 years old Miuccia Prada explained in an interview with T magazine that she wouldn’t put an older lady on the runway saying, “Mine is not an artistic world, it is a commercial world. I cannot change the rules… I’m not brave enough. I don’t have the courage.” Just one year later, Rick Owens and Jean Paul Gaultier plucked up the courage to do just that, sending older models down their runways in Paris wearing their AW14 collections. What a difference a year makes: that brave leap of faith in AW14 now seems like little more than a toe-dip in the fountain of old age, amongst the silver-haired spreads of SS15.

This change of tides, with its influx of older models, is ultimately positive for an industry that, while being creative, needs to be tethered to reality, as it is so often accused of not being. Brands have clearly been starting to realize this in recent years as 2014 saw the arrival of transgender models and a greater number of ‘plus-size’ models on the runway and in print, and so older models were the necessary and natural next step. There is clearly some skepticism as to whether this is the industry recognizing the potential of appealing to wider audiences, or more cynically understanding the power of shock and spectacle as a talking point. Either way, the result of the change is for the better as women see that, just like their quality designer handbags, they get better with age.

 

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