Month: July 2019

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Is this Kendall Jenner’s new boyfriend?

July 10, 2019 | News | No Comments

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10th Jul 2019

Kendall Jenner split from boyfriend of one year and NBA player, Ben Simmons, at the end of May, but speculation is circling that Jenner is now dating another NBA player. The Daily Mail released photographs of the 23-year-old model hanging out on a yacht with LA Lakers forward, Kyle Kuzma, before attending the Red, White & Bootsy bash in Malibu for a July 4th celebration.

Fuel was added to the fire when Jenner revealed last Thursday on her Zaza World Radio show, “I just feel like you should be in love on the fourth of July,” adding that “Fourth of July is arguably (in) my top two favorite holidays. That and Christmas. And Halloween, so top three. Fourth of July is up there for me. I don’t know why I love it so much. It’s the fireworks and the vibe.” Could this be signs of a high-on-love Kendall? We hope so.

Kuzma grew up in Michigan and played basketball for the University of Utah before being selected to play for Brooklyn Nets in 2017. Since then he has moved to the LA Lakers and, if the rumours are true, adds to the plethora of NBA players who have fell for a Jenner-Kardashian sister. First was Kris Humphries and his famous 72-day marriage to Kim, Lamar Odom married Khloé just once month into dating and Tristan Thompson fathered Khloé’s daughter True, Blake Griffin had an under the radar relationship with Kendall Jenner, then came Ben Simmons and now Kuzma may be added to the list.

Kyle Kuzma attends the 2015 Jordan Cabernet Release Day Party, 2019. Image credit: Getty Images

 

And as much as we would love to believe the rumours to be true, don’t get your hopes up for this super-cute pairing just yet. A source told Entertainment Tonight that the photos Jenner and Kuzma were “nothing”, with another adding they were “hanging out over the holiday as friends. They’ve run in the same circle for a while and there’s no romantic relationship between them. Kendall is enjoying being single after ending things with Ben.”

Despite these sources, it isn’t far-fetched to believe the two could be actually dating, as the famously private Jenner often chooses to keep her relationships off camera and away from her family’s successful reality TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. In a recent interview with Vogue Australia, Jenner admitted “bringing things into the public makes everything so much messier,” adding “I’m very young and right now I feel like relationships aren’t always super-certain and I don’t want to bring too much attention to something if you don’t really know long term [what it’s going to be]. A relationship is only meant to be between two people, and the second you make it the world’s business is when it starts messing with the two people mentally.”

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So although it seems like it might be a while until we hear from Jenner herself if the dating rumour is genuine, we’re going to sit back and hope it is, because how cute would this pairing be?!

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

These are the world's 50 best restaurants for 2019

July 10, 2019 | News | No Comments

Salt-crusted beetroot from the garden with caviar cream; a dish from the world’s number one restaurant, Mirazur.

The late great Anthony Bourdain once said, “Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” By this logic, the official list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants is a showcase of the most exhilarating rollercoasters and relaxing ferris wheels for the taste buds. A joyful and sophisticated journey through one of the most fundamental things that brings us great pleasure – food.

The official list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants is compiled by William Reed Business Media. The awards canvas over 1,000 of the world’s foremost culinary experts – including chefs, restaurateurs and food writers – to determine who gets a place. The list for 2019 was recently announced and while Europeans dominated with 23 restaurants out of the 50, special mentions must go to Gaggan in Bangkok at number four and the city of Lima in Peru, which had two restaurants in the top 10. After Melbourne’s Attica came in at number 20 last year it does sting that no Australians made the cut, but we live in hope for 2020.

The number one spot went to Mirazur in France, owned and operated by Argentinian chef Mauro Colagreco (who is as easy on the eye as his restaurant’s views of the French Riviera). Mirazur has three Michelin stars, an abundant kitchen garden and a chook pen presided over by a prize hen named Tina Turner. Adorable.

The full count down from 50 to one appears below. Adjust your upcoming travel itineraries accordingly.

50. Schloss Schauenstein, Fürstenau, Switzerland
Click Here: online rugby store malaysiaImage credit: Instagram.com/gaultmillau_schweiz

49. Leo, Bogotá, Colombia
Image credit: Supplied

48. Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet, Shanghai, China
Image credit: Supplied

47. Benu, San Francisco, USA
Image credit: Instagram.com/clee_benu

46. De Librije, Zwolle, The Netherlands
Image credit: Supplied

45. Sühring, Bangkok, Thailand
Image credit: Supplied

44. The Test Kitchen, Cape Town, South Africa
Image credit: Supplied

43. Hof Van Cleve, Kruisem, Belgium
Image credit: Instagram.com/lauracentrella_food

42. Belcanto, Lisbon, Portugal
Image credit: Supplied

41. The Chairman, Hong Kong, China
Image credit: Instagram.com/andychingho

40. Restaurant Tim Raue, Berlin, Germany
Image credit: Supplied

39. A Casa do Porco, São Paulo, Brazil
Image credit: Instagram.com/acasadoporcobar

38. Hiša Franko, Kobarid, Slovenia
Image credit: Supplied

37. Alinea, Chicago, USA
Image credit: Instagram.com/thealineagroup

36. Le Bernardin, New York, USA
Image credit: Supplied

35. Atelier Crenn, San Francisco, USA
Image credit: Instagram.com/atelier.crenn

34. Don Julio, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Image credit: Instagram.com/donjulioparrilla

33. Lyle’s, London, UK
Image credit: Instagram.com/lyleslondon

32. Nerua, Bilbao, Spain
Image credit: Supplied

31. Le Calandre, Rubano, Italy
Image credit: Supplied

30. Elkano, Getaria, Spain
Image credit: Supplied

29. Piazza Duomo, Alba, Italy
Image credit: Instagram.com/piazzaduomoalba

28. Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, USA
Image credit: Instagram.com/andyheart

27. The Clove Club, London, UK
Image credit: Supplied

26. Boragó, Santiago, Chile
Image credit: Instagram.com/rgborago

25. Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen, Paris, France
Image credit: Supplied

24. Quintonil, Mexico City, Mexico
Image credit: Instagram.com/rest_quintonil

23. Cosme, New York, USA
Image credit: Supplied

22. Narisawa, Tokyo, Japan
Image credit: Supplied

21. Frantzén, Stockholm, Sweden
Image credit: Instagram.com/restaurantfrantzen

20. Tickets, Barcelona, Spain
Image credit: Instagram.com/ticketsbar

19. Twins Garden, Moscow, Russia
Image credit: Instagram.com/twinsgardenmoscow

18. Odette, Singapore
Image credit: Supplied

17. Steirereck, Vienna, Austria
Image credit: Instagram.com/steirereck

16. Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, Paris, France
Image credit: Supplied

15. Septime, Paris, France
Image credit: Instagram.com/septimeparis

14. Azurmendi, Larrabetzu, Spain
Image credit: Instagram.com/clarapvillalon

13. White Rabbit, Moscow, Russia
Image credit: Supplied

12. Pujol, Mexico City, Mexico
Image credit: Supplied

11. Den, Tokyo, Japan
Image credit: Supplied

10. Maido, Lima, Peru
Image credit: Instagram.com/cc_75

9. Disfrutar, Barcelona, Spain
Image credit: Supplied

8. Arpège, Paris, France
Image credit: Supplied

7. Mugaritz, San Sebastián, Spain
Image credit: Supplied

6. Central, Lima, Peru
Image credit: Instagram.com/copenhagen_foodie

5. Geranium, Copenhagen, Denmark
Image credit: Supplied

4. Gaggan, Bangkok, Thailand
Image credit: Instagram.com/gaggan_anand

3. Asador Etxebarri, Axpe, Spain
Image credit: Instagram.com/puertoricoeats

2. Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark
Image credit: Instagram.com/nomacph

1. Mirazur, Menton, France
Image credit: Instagram.com/restaurantmirazur

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

8 Frank Lloyd Wright sites have made the UNESCO World Heritage List

July 10, 2019 | News | No Comments

Image credit: Instagram.com/danieljkiser

As one of the most well-known architects in the world, Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy on the architectural landscape is massive. From the modernist marvel Fallingwater in Pennsylvania to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and even this Blade Runner house, the esteemed American architect, interior designer and painter has made his mark all over the United States (36 states, to be exact). So it’s with much celebration that the late architect’s foundation has finally secured inscription of eight of his best-loved works on the UNESCO World Heritage List in the United States.

It’s the culmination of some 15 years of work from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the eight works include the aforementioned Fallingwater and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The eight sites span 50 years of the architect’s considerable oeuvre and the naming marks the first modern architecture designation in the United States on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which currently numbers 1,092 sites globally.

Image credit: Instagram.com/guggenheim

“It is an immense honour to have Frank Lloyd Wright’s work recognised on the world stage among the most vital and important cultural sites on Earth like Taj Mahal in India, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and the Statue of Liberty in New York,” says Stuart Graff, president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, in a statement. “To have this unique American legacy placed alongside these precious few sites around the globe is meaningful because it recognises the profound influence of this American architect and his impact on the whole world. This designation is a great source of national pride, and while eight buildings are included in the inscription, it recognises the importance of Wright’s work, embodied in every one of his buildings and designs. These sites are not simply World Heritage monuments because they are beautiful. It’s so much more than that. These are places of profound influence, inspiration, and connection.”

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A pioneer of the Prairie School of architecture, Wright founded a style famous for its consideration of nature, landscape and craftsmanship and its link to the American Midwest. Below, take a look at the eight sites that have been selected.

All other images from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website.

Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois
Photo by Tom Rossiter courtesy of Harboe Architects.

Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois
Photo by Nick Abele courtesy of Frank Lloyd Wright Trust.

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin
Photo by Andrew Pielage.

Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, California
Photo by Joshua White.

Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania
Photo courtesy of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House, Madison, Wisconsin
Photo by David Heald courtesy of James Dennis.

Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona
Photo by Jill Richards.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Photo courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

Trump Isn’t the Only One Who Should Be Embarrassed by the U.K. Ambassador’s Cables

July 10, 2019 | News | No Comments

President Donald Trump is done with the man he calls “the wacky Ambassador” from the United Kingdom—he is over, had it, finito, “will no longer deal with him,” as he put it in a tweet on Monday. “I do not know the Ambassador,” Trump added, but he did know that he was “not liked” in the United States. (On Tuesday morning, the President called him “a very stupid guy.”) The diplomat, Sir Kim Darroch, had, in fact, met the President a number of times, as he recounted in a series of leaked cables, spanning two years, portions of which were published by the British tabloid the Mail on Sunday, and “always found him to be absolutely charming.” Darroch observed, though, that Trump “radiates insecurity” and “had no filter,” that his White House was “a uniquely dysfunctional environment,” and that its Iran policy was “incoherent and chaotic.” Darroch wrote, “I don’t think this Administration will ever look competent.”

Fair enough. A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May, who was also an object of the President’s Twitter rage in the face of the leak of the cables—“What a mess she and her representatives have created”—said that, although the government regretted the leak, it relied on diplomats to provide “an honest and unvarnished view.” Here, May seemed to be neglecting a piece of advice that Darroch had sent along: “You need to start praising him for something that he’s done recently. . . . You need whenever possible to present them as wins for him.” But then May, as Trump gloatingly noted in his tweets, is due to leave her office by the end of the month—part of the wreckage caused by the British political establishment’s unending struggle with Brexit—and Darroch himself is near the end of his tenure. The most likely candidate to succeed her as Tory leader and, by extension, Prime Minister, is the reckless former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, whose relationship with the truth is somewhat similar to the President’s. On Tuesday, Johnson, who has been intermittently critical of Trump over the years but also bragged about their closeness, said in answer to a question about the Darroch affair, “I’ve a good relationship with the White House and no embarrassment in saying that.”

The other remaining candidate for the job, the current Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who is Darroch’s boss, said that, although it was, indeed, important for diplomats to be “frank,” to his mind, Darroch had got it wrong: “I think the U.S. Administration is highly effective.” (On Tuesday, though, after Trump’s second round of invective, Hunt tweeted that the President had been “disrespectful and wrong to our Prime Minister and my country.”) Meanwhile, Liam Fox, the U.K.’s Trade Secretary, told the BBC that, as luck would have it, he had a meeting with Ivanka Trump on his calendar, and he would take that opportunity to apologize to her personally. (Darroch was supposed to be at that meeting, too; he no longer plans to attend.) Nigel Farage, the tiresome head of the new Brexit Party, said that Darroch should be fired at once.

In part, this is a story about British politics. One of the premises that the Brexiteers operate from is that breaking with the E.U. will allow them to negotiate the independent trade deal of their dreams with the United States, which will, in turn, help them to tell the E.U. who’s boss, and for that they want Trump. The cables are said to have been circulated to only a limited number of people in the May government, and it has not yet been determined who leaked them, but there is widespread speculation that their release has something to do with internecine Tory-Brexiteer politics. Trump, for his part, portrayed Darroch’s observations as sour Brexit grapes. “He should speak to his country, and Prime Minister May, about their failed Brexit negotiation, and not be upset with my criticism” of its handling, he said, in a screed that stretched over three tweets. “I told @theresa_may how to do that deal, but she went her own foolish way-was unable to get it done. A disaster!” That analysis is no more realistic or self-aware than the formula that Trump has publicly offered for resolving the complexities of Brexit: “I would have sued.” The British have had any number of irrational responses to Brexit. But Darroch’s conclusion about Trump’s Presidency—“We don’t really believe this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept”—is not in that category.

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But the mortification here is not only for the Tories, or for Trump. Darroch’s cables should, rightly, also be an embarrassment to the Republican Party, and to all those who work with Trump. In the summer of 2017, Darroch wrote, “We could also be at the beginning of a downward spiral, rather than just a rollercoaster; something could emerge that leads to disgrace and downfall.” By last month, though, in assessing Trump’s reëlection chances, he was writing that there has been a key change since the 2016 campaign: the institutional Republican Party was now “four-square behind him.”

The people around the President, whom Darroch described as his “gatekeepers,” were, to the Ambassador’s eye, also susceptible to flattery and glitz. They loved being part of Trump’s state visit to the U.K., in June, he wrote, “telling us that this had been a visit like no other – the hottest ticket of their careers.” In their “dazzled” state, Darroch wrote, they would open doors for the U.K.

Darroch attended the rally in Orlando, in June, at which Trump launched his reëlection campaign, and he described the joy of the President’s supporters. The crowd was overwhelmingly white but “with a pretty even mix of men and women, young and old.” The answers that Trump offered to the problems facing the country satisfied the crowd, Darroch thought, even though—or maybe especially because—“as is standard at these rallies, the language was incendiary, and a mix of fact and fiction.” Thanks largely to the support of Trump’s base, Darroch thought that Trump had “a credible path” to victory. Despite all the scandals around him, Trump might even “emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator.” (Arnold Schwarzenegger, as it happens, briefly replaced Trump as the host of “The Celebrity Apprentice.”) Much depended, Darroch said, “on who the Democrats choose.” That is true, and Trump knows it. One hopes that the Democrats do, too.

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

The Death of British Steel and the Myth of the Good Brexit

July 10, 2019 | News | No Comments

On May 22nd, British Steel, which is the United Kingdom’s second-largest steelmaker, went into liquidation. It hasn’t been easy to manufacture steel in the U.K. for a number of years. The country’s high energy costs and property taxes make it an inhospitable place for heavy industry, even compared with other European countries. But it was Brexit—specifically, the unresolved, purgatorial, shapeless Brexit that Britain finds itself in, three years after deciding to leave the European Union—that carried British Steel over the edge. Last year, with uncertainty stalking the economy, orders began to dry up. In April, because the Brexit negotiations were not complete, the company was hit with a hundred-and-twenty-million-pound bill, as part of the E.U.’s emissions-trading plan. At a court hearing the following month, British Steel, which had revenues of 1.2 billion pounds last year, revealed that it would run out of cash within a week. Since then, the company, whose origins go back to the industrial revolution, and whose evolution maps the story of British manufacturing, has been kept alive by the government. The current Prime Minister, Theresa May, has not yet left, and her successor, probably Boris Johnson, has not yet arrived. Desperate to avoid a spectacular bankruptcy in the interlude, the state has been paying British Steel’s bills and the salaries of its workers, while looking for a buyer to take four blast furnaces, named after English queens, and a two-thousand-acre steelworks off its hands.

The government set a deadline for the end of June to receive bids for British Steel. On June 28th, I travelled to Scunthorpe, in North Lincolnshire, where the company is based. A Moravian chemist named Maximilian Mannaberg poured Scunthorpe’s first steel, on March 21, 1890. The town sits on a broad, fertile plain not far from the North Sea. The roads are wide. The air smells slightly of coke ovens. Until 1936, Scunthorpe was a village, part of a collection of hamlets, fields, iron mines, and workers’ cottages strung around a giant amalgam of three competing steelworks—Appleby-Frodingham, Redbourn, and Normanby Park—that together built a century of British railways, steel rods, warships, and bridges. (Scunthorpe’s town crest includes the heraldic emblem of a “Blast-Furnace issuant therefrom Flames all proper.”) By 1967, Britain was the second-largest steel producer in Europe, after Germany, and more than twenty-five thousand people worked in Scunthorpe’s furnaces and mills. The place was known as a “boom town Eldorado,” according to the local paper. These days, mainly as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s free-market reforms, the U.K. makes less steel than Belgium. Scunthorpe’s three steelworks have shrunk to one, and the town has a lung-cancer problem. In 2016, what had become British Steel was sold to a group of private-equity investors, named Greybull Capital, for one pound. The same year, in the E.U. referendum, people in Scunthorpe voted for Brexit by a margin of two to one.

Des Comerford, who runs a menswear store in the town, picked me up from the station. In the seventies, soon after he left school, Comerford broke his pelvis. When he came out of the hospital, his job at a shop had gone. “Who came to my aid and savior? British Steel, in Scunthorpe,” he said. Comerford, who is sixty-two, worked for a year and a half as a shunter, tipping molten slag out of huge ladles from the furnaces. (Scunthorpe’s motto, “May the Heavens Reflect Our Labours,” comes from the way that the slag used to light up the night sky: it was visible to trawlers fishing at sea.) There was a “Save Our Steel” poster in the window of Comerford’s store, which is called Fallen Hero. He explained that the results of the Brexit vote in Scunthorpe had been a culmination of decades of neglect by London and a sense of being outmaneuvered by rival E.U. countries, which better protected their steel industries. “That was a defiance. That was ‘Enough,’ ” Comerford told me. “That was like saying to the government, ‘You’ve left us stranded.’ ”

Nobody in Scunthorpe has much time for Greybull Capital, the previous owners of British Steel. (In 2017, one of Greybull’s other investments, Monarch Airlines, went bust overnight, leading to the repatriation by the government of a hundred thousand holidaymakers—the largest airlift of British citizens in peacetime.) But the company has had lacklustre owners before. The priority now was to sort out Brexit. Scunthorpe’s M.P., Nic Dakin, a member of the Labour Party, voted to stay in the E.U. and now wants a second referendum. “There is a mood of anger towards our local M.P.,” Comerford said, describing Dakin’s positions as a betrayal. (Dakin, a former teacher in Scunthorpe, is a member of a cross-party group of officials and politicians trying to find a buyer for British Steel. “Nobody voted Leave to lose their job,” he told me.) Recently, Comerford went to a meeting, at Scunthorpe’s soccer stadium, of Nigel Farage’s insurgent Brexit Party, which has proposed that “a national strategic corporation” take ownership of British Steel. “They were the first political party that showed a genuine interest and desire and ideas of how to save the steel plant,” Comerford said. “It was fantastic. And do you know? Most of it was common sense.”

Since the spring, when Theresa May’s Brexit deal suffered its third defeat in Parliament and Britain’s departure from the E.U. was delayed for a second time, a kind of disassociation has set in. Even though the Brexit conundrum remains almost entirely intact—the country is divided, the E.U. is its largest trading partner, and the Irish border is still the Irish border—an idea has taken hold, particularly among Brexiteers, that a parallel, straightforward departure has been possible all along. There is a clear path, which, either out of incompetence or for some darker reason, Britain’s politicians have refused to take. The myth of a good Brexit contends that it is not leaving the E.U. that is damaging the U.K.’s standing in the world, or vulnerable businesses like British Steel; it is merely the way that the enterprise has been conducted so far. “It’s the indecision that is doing us,” Paul McBean, a representative for Community, Britain’s largest steelworkers union, who has worked at the Scunthorpe plant for forty years, told me. “I do negotiations for a living. The negotiation side of it has just been absolutely useless.”

In recent weeks, the contest to replace May, which is between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, an ostensibly moderate former Health Secretary (and the incumbent Foreign Secretary), has become a competition to say the most macho things possible about the resumption of talks with Brussels. In late June, Johnson promised to take Britain out of the E.U. by October 31st—the current Brexit deadline—“do or die.” Hunt followed that by promising to stop negotiations a month early if no agreement is in sight, to prepare the country for a No Deal exit. “We won’t blink as a country,” he said.

Quite how any of this will play out in reality is another matter. Brexit was supposed to have happened by now, which means that the summer of 2019 is a badly timed moment of transition for the process. The U.K.’s chief Brexit negotiator, Oliver Robbins, is about to step down. The civil servant in charge of the country’s No Deal preparations, a thirty-three-year-old official named Tom Shinner, has also left the government. Neither Johnson, a Brexiteer who has alternately cheer-led and heckled from the sidelines, nor Hunt, who voted Remain, have had any hands-on experience of the negotiations. Recently, when Hunt promised six billion pounds to Britain’s farmers and fishermen, to cover any losses that might result from a No Deal departure, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, who is likely to lose his job soon, pointed out that the Treasury wouldn’t have that kind of money to spare. (According to Hammond, a No Deal exit would cost the British government ninety billion pounds.) In the case of steel, if Britain fails to agree with the E.U. on a quota for exports, then the bloc could immediately impose tariffs of twenty-five per cent. “No Deal means no steel,” Dakin told me.

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At an industrial park on the edge of town, I stopped by the Bradbury Group, which uses steel to make security doors. Tim Strawson, who founded the company in 1991, voted for Brexit but was having some doubts. “I wanted Britain to have control over its own destiny,” Strawson said. “I’m not sure that I made the right choice.” Strawson was dismayed by the performance of May’s government, but he also acknowledged the daunting complexity of attempting to redraw Britain’s trading relations with the E.U. Although his factory is only three miles from British Steel, Strawson did not know how much, if any, of the processed steel that he buys comes from the plant. The nature of E.U. supply chains means that steel might leave Scunthorpe and cross several borders before returning to his factory to be turned into a door. If the steelworks closed, the damage would fall most obviously on Strawson’s staff, many of whose families work for the plant or in its direct supply chain. “It would be a disaster for the town if British Steel went, a big disaster,” Strawson said. I asked him if he had changed his mind about Brexit. “If I was sticking with my head,” he replied, “the logical answer should be to remain.”

In the afternoon, there was an emergency meeting of the North Lincolnshire Council, to support the steelworks. The council chamber, which overlooks the town square, was opened this year and painted white. Steel girders, stamped “British Steel SRSM”—from Scunthorpe’s rail-and-section mill—sloped from ceiling to floor. There was no real purpose to the meeting, except to express the town’s fear and its desperation to be spared the closure of the works. (When the June deadline arrived, there were about ten bids for British Steel, although it is not known how many came with the intention to break it up.) “We all know what effect it would have, the loss of twenty thousand-plus jobs across North Lincolnshire—you don’t have to wax lyrical about that,” Len Foster, a Labour councillor who has worked for British Steel for forty-four years, told the chamber. Margaret Armiger, a Conservative councillor, described her father, in the early days of the Second World War, cycling more than a hundred miles to find a job at the steelworks. Another Labour councillor, Tony Gosling, who worked in a plate mill until 2015, read out the names of British steelworks that have closed since the eighties, like a list of the dead. “Consett, Corby, Ebbw Vale, Hartlepool, Llanwern, Ravenscraig, Redcar, Rotherham, Sheffield, Shelton, Shotton, Stanton and Staveley, Worthington,” he said. “Don’t let the light go out on another community.” Brexit was barely mentioned, because it was something that most politicians in Scunthorpe, Labour and Conservative, agree on. It was something that most of the people in town had wished for, because things could not carry on as they were. Now they were praying to be saved.

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

Inside the Levi’s x Stranger Things collaboration launch in Melbourne

July 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

Above: April Pengilly

80s sci-fi series Stranger Things is back for season three (now streaming on Netflix!), meaning it’s time to revisit the lives of Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will and Eleven. After seasons one and two were set during the school year in 1983 and 1984, respectively, season three is set in the summer of 1985. “This is that time of year where it’s not about school, it’s about the swimming pool and campfires and parades and Fourth of July and fireworks, so there’s a kind of poppy fun to season three that’s really enjoyable before things inevitably turn super dark,” said executive producer Shawn Levy. And not only does Eleven (played by Millie Bobby Brown) have a new haircut for the third season, she also has a fresh wardrobe, thanks to the show’s new collaboration with Levi’s. Same goes for Dustin (played by Gaten Matarazzo), with both characters serving as the inspiration for the collection, which features vintage-inspired T-shirts and sweatshirts, new denim and archival fits.

“When this opportunity slid across my desk, my nose started to bleed. Getting to visit the set and work on some of the costumes with their amazing designers was another level of collaboration,” said Jonathan Cheung, SVP of design and innovation at Levi’s via press release. Given that the new season was set in 1985—the same period when Levi’s was at its peak in cultural relevancy and disruption of everyday style—and that the show’s costume designers were already mining the Levi’s archives to dress the characters, this collaboration between the two is effortless, if not obvious.

Above: Zima Anderson, Olivia Junkeer and Jemma Donovan.

The launch event was also in keeping the authentic spirit of both the denim brand and the TV show. The newly revamped Geddes Lane Ballroom in Melbourne hosted the city’s young revellers for a night of live music, dancing and denim tailoring. The downstairs space was modelled on Stranger Things’s The Upside Down, while the Byers’ living room, The Star Mall and The Palace Arcade were all recreated. Levi’s also set up a Tailor Shop for guests to be custom-fitted in the new collection. Upstairs, the live music venue welcomed performances by Luke Million, I Know Leopard and Genesis Owusu. And to keep the crowd going all night, a New York-style pizza truck and hot dog stand were stationed outside in the laneway. See more from inside the event below.

The exclusive Levi’s x Stranger Things collection is now available to shop at Levi’s, Surfstitch and General Pants.

The Mai Sisters

Leah Jay and Chelsea Williamson.

Justin Lacko and Annita Scott.

Tani and Daniel Edwards.

Josef Weir and Kate Bethune.

Anna Burgess and Dan Hamil.

Alex Zieball and Kate McDonnell.

Alicia Twohill and Kitiya Palaskas.

Tim Kano, Dan Roberts, Kelly Thompson and Elizabeth Toime.

Ashley Graham and Harrison Luna.

Harvey Miller

Blair Norfolk and Makenzia Vega.

A recreation of the Byers’ living room.

Luke Millions

Inside the Levi’s Tailor Shop.

A customised denim jacket.Click Here: Pandora Jewelry

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

Low chignons and haute braids: the story behind the hair at Valentino couture

July 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

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8th Jul 2019

“We went with the personality of the girls. Some of them had very tight braids on the hair, some of them short little haircuts, fringes and little caps of hair,” Guido Palau tells post the Valentino haute couture autumn/winter ’19/‘20 show, aka one of the most anticipated shows of the week. “But the main group of girls had a low chignon, a loop and I put braids on either side of the parting and brought it down, wrapping it right down to create the style. It has a romantic beauty and the braids were incorporated into that,” says Palau, the seasoned hairstylist and global creative director for Redken.

Palau’s array of looks riffed off the models’ personalities. From ornate headdresses to closely cropped hair that was brushed forward, some of the girls’ cuts were almost left alone, while others, a handful, walked with sleek ponytails and shiny, immaculate centre partings. All befitting the wintry couture vision Pierpaolo Piccioli had for his new-season collection. “The Seventies thing is a real Valentino aesthetic,” Palau explains, “but this was a Victorian kind of hair with a to the Seventies.” 

It was a significant departure from last winter’s extravagant Sixties bouffants he carefully crafted for Piccioli’s celebrated couture show.

The idea of uniformity (including the hair) was gracefully sidestepped and the spirit of unique individualism was elevated. As the show unfolded through the network of lofty rooms at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, the message was clear – be your best self.

Image credit: Gorunway.com.

Guido Palau’s step-by-step guide to haute couture Valentino hair: 

  1. Start with freshly washed hair using Redken Nature + Science All Soft Shampoo and Conditioner, then blow-dry smooth with a small amount of Redken Frizz Dismiss Rebel Tame. 
  2. Make a clean centre parting and add two tiny braids either side of the head using a little Redken Dry Shampoo Paste to smooth. 
  3. Gather hair into a ponytail at the base of the neck, covering the ponytail with an invisible net and make a fold of the hair underneath. 
  4. Bring the ends of the ponytail around the base of the fold and wrap. Then, with two side braids, wrap cleanly around the base finishing as you go with Redken Forceful 23 hairspray. 
  5. If the hair is not long enough, make up some tiny braids with extensions to wrap the base.

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES

The 6 greatest moments from the haute couture autumn/winter ’19/’20 shows

July 9, 2019 | News | No Comments

Image credit: Getty Images

Did you spot Lauren Hutton’s Valentino catwalk cameo? How about Iris van Herpen’s mechanised (and mesmerising) minidress? Here’s ’s roundup of the six moments that defined the autumn 2019 couture shows.  

1. Feminist artist Penny Slinger’s golden Dior commission  

On the same day that Dior artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri received the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest honour, she exercised her influence as the first female to lead the house with a powerful closing look. The golden doll’s house dress – a piece created in collaboration with feminist surrealist Penny Slinger – provided a poignant sign-off. Its unveiling also came just in time for the release of the documentary on Slinger’s work, . 

Image credit: Gorunway.com

2. A moment of calm in Chanel’s library

Book lover Virginie Viard transformed the Grand Palais into a vast circular library for her debut Chanel couture show. “I dreamt about a woman with nonchalant elegance,” Viard said of her graceful 1930s silhouettes. The result? A perfectly peaceful moment that skilfully reminded viewers of the “calm procured by reading”, the collection notes revealed. A cue for showgoers to put the phone down momentarily?

Image credit: Gorunway.com

3. Lauren Hutton’s Valentino runway cameo

Pierpaolo Piccioli has many masterstrokes. His autumn/winter ’19/‘20 Valentino couture show was not only an ode to texture play (sequins, feathers and yarn) or scenic prints (in homage to paintings of Diana Vreeland) but the benchmark for diverse casting. “The only way to make couture alive today is to embrace different women’s identities and cultures,” Piccioli told American ’s Nicole Phelps during a private collection preview. Enter 75-year-old model and actress Lauren Hutton, who while wearing one of the collection’s most straightforward looks, caused nothing short of a global sensation.

Image credit: Getty Images

4. Iris van Herpen’s kinetic couture

Iris van Herpen’s mechanised designs arguably delivered one of the most mesmerising moments in the history of couture. The finale look – a handmade dress constructed of feathers and stainless steel, which took four months to create – was made in collaboration with American kinetic sculptor Anthony Howe. Consider the bar on performative fashion officially raised.

Image credit: Getty Images

5. Givenchy’s feathered extravaganza

The “extra” appeal of feathers shows no sign of waning in the eyes of the front row, or couture week’s heavyweight designers. This season, Givenchy claimed the crown when it came to plumage – and who better to showcase Clare Waight Keller’s decadent vision for the future of cocktail wear than Kaia Gerber. The key takeaway? your head and hands should be visible.

Image credit: Gorunway.com

6. Maison Margiela’s “anarchic” vision

If Instagram is typically the default medium for designers providing a window on their world, John Galliano went against the grain in choosing to declare his artistic intentions via a podcast, released before the Maison Margiela Artisanal show. It was here that he declared his couture intention to be “impulsive and anarchic”, and sure enough the iconoclastic designer scored a critical success with a collection that showcased his unmistakable talent for transforming the everyday (in this instance, men’s trousers) into fantasy couture.

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By GETAWAYTHEBERKSHIRES