Maurice-Richard Hennessy

The Vintner

Text by Josh Sims

Portrait by Olivier Lalin

"It's where you want to go if you want a proper drink," says
Maurice-Richard Hennessy. To a swanky five-star hotel bar or velvet-roped nightclub? "The working men's clubs of Newcastle and Wales -
they're heavily subsidised, comfortable and the men who go there don't want any rubbish." The advice is all the stranger coming from Hennessy -
not only because he is an erudite, middle-class, middle-aged French gentleman vineyard owner, but also because his name gives him away as a member of the Hennessy family. That would be the one that has been making fine cognac since 1765; the "H" in luxury-goods empire LVMH.

"The name certainly has more advantages than disadvantages, especially around cognac, and there are not many parts of the world now where the name does not give most people a little tingle," he says, his Berluti loafers undercutting an otherwise salary-man attire. "I remember once passing through US Customs in San Francisco and the officer asked me if I had any samples. I joked that she could get it in the shops. Back then I was still impressed by how well known the brand name is."

These days that renown is, in part, down to Maurice-Richard choosing to pick up where his grandfather left off. He is part of the eighth
generation of the Hennessy family since ancestor Richard emigrated from Ireland and began making what was then still called brandy, and is now the
only family member still involved. (His father opted to become a nuclear physicist.) Hennessy is the brand's ambassador, with the not-unenviable
job of travelling the world, espousing the spirit's merits and annually clinking glasses with royals and celebrities in a private box at the Hennessy Gold Cup, Britain's oldest established horse race. When he is not doing
that, Hennessy, the man, is growing grapes to sell to Hennessy, the company, to make Hennessy, the cognac.

"First and foremost I'm a farmer, which I love," he explains. "It is
something I want to build up and one day leave in good health to my daughters. But, of course, I grew up with cognac: my father giving me a piece of sugar soaked in cognac on Sundays, or an ounce of wine - a very good Bordeaux, mind. When I started drinking cognac I didn't really
like it. But, of course, while I think it's more important to look forward, I'm conscious of the family heritage. Then the taste comes until you like it very much."

He is not alone. Though once seen as a luxury good with a secondary function as an economic barometer - if sales of cognac go down, watch out, yacht brokers - the spirit now seems to be bucking the trend. And this despite its prices, which reflect the fact that it takes nine litres of quality wine to make one litre of cognac. Once perceived as an old man's drink, cognac has been repositioned as stylish sup - in Russia and China by
the newly rich, and in the US and UK through hip hop. In 2007, Hennessy was rap's third most frequently name-checked brand, after Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Hennessy may be an unlikely habitué of working men's clubs, but he's an even unlikelier rap fan.

"Some of it is amazing work - physically very challenging, some
clever play with words, even if a lot of it is very rude," he notes. "But certainly, Hennessy now has a much more youthful image."

Everywhere, it seems, except in its homeland. Ironically, explains the French face of an iconic French product, the French are hardly cognac connoisseurs. "People in France aren't ready to spend the money. They drink cheap whiskeys, cheap vodkas, whatever's cheap," he says. "It's true that so much of Hennessy's advertising plays on being French and its French heritage. But, you know, there's a reason why it's all in English..."

Nick Cave

THE WRITER

Text by Fiona Sturges

Portrait by Gavin Evans

"Ambitions?" says Nick Cave, raising a dubious eyebrow. "Oh no,
definitely not. I've never had any of those." The Australian musician is reflecting, in his thoughtful, sardonic way, on the course of his career, from rock'n'roll bad boy to renaissance man. "I think one idea that I had early on was that all the songs and all the writing were part of a bigger picture," he says. "An attempt to create a universe that is sort of Cavean, and where all the characters are part of a community. I guess that community expands and deepens, but it's a very particular type of world."

Particular, maybe, but no longer rarefied. Since John Peel favourites the Birthday Party took shape over 30 years ago, led by Cave, his output has grown to encompass the worlds of music, film and literature. He is one of our most distinctive, if adopted, cultural figures, a reluctant icon for whom the notion of fame holds little appeal and who nevertheless possesses many of its supposed accoutrements - a one-time heroin habit, a beautiful wife, ex-model Susie Bick, an impeccable wardrobe and a son, Jethro, who has lately become a model himself. Cave remains infallibly cool - no mean feat for a 50-something man with dyed hair and a handlebar moustache.

"It's definitely taken some time to get to grips with what I do, to
recognise my place and be confident with it," he reflects. "There's always a little bit of embarrassment when you put this music or writing or whatever out there."

This seam of uncertainty exists in spite of the fact that pretty much everything Cave does is greeted with unfailing respect. His albums are held in lofty regard, his live performances reveal a magnetic showman and his film scripts, such as that for award-winning thriller The Proposition, have been widely lauded.

More recently, there has been a novel, his second in 20 years.The Death of Bunny Munro tells of a priapic hand-cream salesman who, following the suicide of his wife, seeks refuge in female flesh, while wilfully ignoring the needs of his son Bunny Jr. It is, says Cave, "an adventure into the imagination" and was "hugely enjoyable to write, certainly compared to writing songs, which is like giving birth to a watermelon through the tiniest fucking aperture. With the book, there was no gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands."

The book is only part of the story, however. In a unique merging of mediums (and a canny step in the face of a faltering publishing industry), The Death of Bunny Munro has been released, unabridged, on iTunes, read by Cave and featuring a score by Cave and his long-term musical collaborator Warren Ellis, as well as in a CD and DVD box set and as an iPhone app. Cave has also been touring the book in theatres as a full-blown performance, complete with visuals and backing band, handily timed to coincide with the re-release of a series of Birthday Party albums and the release of White Lunar, a new collection of his film music with Ellis.

Whether this new approach will change the way we read fiction remains to be seen, but it has clearly galvanised Cave. As he points out, his incarnation as a writer of the darkest prose is really an extension of what he's been doing for decades. "I've dedicated myself for years to the art of writing, in one form or another," he says. "I'm preoccupied by all the same things." Sex, death, damnation? For Cave, it's all in a day's work.

Thierry Dreyfus

The Lighting Designer

Text by Hywel Davies

Portrait by Marie Drouin

Designer and hairy giant Walter Van Beirendonck once made a passing comment to Thierry Dreyfus that was to shape the latter's career. "First, a fashion show is a collection," Beirendonck said. "Second, it's the spirit of the designer. And third, it's the emotion you feel."

Dreyfus, whose career in the fashion world was just beginning,
decided he could express that ethos through light. It is largely through his skill with spot, filter, shade and effect that fashion houses from Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein to Comme des Garçons, Jil Sander and Louis Vuitton have brought additional drama to their shows.

Over a quarter of a century, Dreyfus, now 49, has turned a technical skill into what is now widely regarded as an art form. He also makes highly collectable lighting objects, which lay unabashed claim to artistic status -
one recently appeared in a London exhibition about the interface of art and design. Ask him to explain his lighting choices and he concedes that it is "altogether an emotional feeling - it's almost like a chemical reaction. For the fashion-industry work, I match the collection and highlight it through the set and the light scenography. But I aim to create a vibration..."

In the early 1980s, Dreyfus started out assisting the lighting designer at the Strasbourg Opera, and in 1985 he was commissioned to light his first fashion show, for the late American designer Patrick Kelly. Dreyfus grins at the suggestion that the world of opera would have been an ideal introduction to fashion's histrionics and clashing egos. "But in that challenge lies creativity," he explains. "Otherwise I would not continue to work with them. Maybe 'challenging' is not the word. It has to do with emotional connections, sensibility and the need to share. I'm working for someone, the artist, to whom I must dedicate my own imagination, to express their vision, while respecting a budget."

Presenting himself as a mere contractor has not deprived him of high-profile jobs: in 2001, he was given carte blanche to light Yves Saint
Laurent's retrospective farewell show in the Centre Pompidou, and in 2005, he lit Paris' Grand Palais for its reopening. Starwood Hotels commissioned him to create light installations for the façades of Le Méridien in Shanghai and San Francisco, where he deployed red beams and coloured panels across their exteriors.

And he has enjoyed complete creative freedom with his acclaimed installations. He staged a lighting of Versailles' water basins in 2006,
while for the 2000 Lyon Biennial, he suspended a screen between buildings onto which were projected real-time images of a sunny sky. As night fell, a small patch of blue with scudding clouds remained stuck in another place and time.

"There are no average days - I simply express myself," says Dreyfus, who, when not with his family in Paris, has plenty of time to study the play of light through aircraft windows between assignments. "Light does not speak intellectually. Light doesn't have words - it is all about emotion."