How to Look Amazing, and Where to Go When You Do.

  • 25/4/13

    Let me walk you through the future of magazines, where paper and mobile meet and make sweet music.

    Caroline Issa _ Read more
  • Fashion  

    Meet the Man  

    3/4/12

    Purdy

    This fine street-smart man has one impressive hair-cut. It immediately reminds us of 80's sitcoms and Will Smith's heyday (when everyone knew the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme tune by heart).

     

    Citing LA rapper Taz Arnold as his style icon, Purdy has taken '80s street style and transformed it into 21st century cool. His tracksuit bottoms, turtleneck and hairdo are smoothly updated by the blue laptop case and neon green shoelaces, in a way that is only fitting for a young menswear stylist.

     

    Still, a boombox would definitely complete the picture.

     

    Because: Do you have a style icon?

    Purdy: Taz Arnold.

     

    What do you like to do in your spare time?

    Party.

     

    What kind of music are you into?

    Doves and MIA.

     

    Purdy is wearing:
    Vintage Moschino jacket
    Uniqlo turtleneck
    American Apparel tracksuit bottoms
    Kickers shoes


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  • Fashion  

    Meet the Man  

    26/3/12

    Martin Brudnizki

    If you've had a fancy lunch at a hip restaurant in a leading international style capital at any point in the past few years, it's high time you met Martin Brudnizki - because he probably designed it. In his London studios, which are fittingly situated just moments from Knightsbridge's swankiest stores, the Stockholm-raised designer has spent the past few years quietly and unfussily becoming the go-to guy for top-end bar and restaurant design the world over. That's not regulation style-mag hyperbole; it's the reality. In his adopted city, the Brudnizki-redesigned rib room opened in October, followed by another primo meaterie, grand new steakhouse 34 (which the Observer's Jay Rayner called "the most self-assured, delicious London restaurant launch in years"), a few weeks later. Before those two were Corrigan's, the St Pancras Grand, Scott's, J Sheekey, The Club at The Ivy, the Dean Street Townhouse. Beyond the capital and the UK, Brudzniki has a long-standing role in the global expansion of the Soho House empire (as well as redoing owner Nick Jones' country pad) and has been commissioned by Rocco Forte to build a hotel in Jeddah. A Brudnizki-designed Dubai Ivy and an Abu Dhabi Italian, Oro, both opened last year too (you can see all these, and the rest, at his revamped website: mbds.net). In short, then, if they will come, Martin Brudnizki probably built it. Impressive enough given that he left Stockholm to study interior design in London just two decades ago (with "no clue," he says, laughing); all the more so given the high-stakes rivalries and egos of the restaurant world and its insistence on a distinct visual identity. Though there are recurring tendencies - a relaxed, lived-in kind of luxury, an engineer's sensitivity to space and size, a fondness for fixtures and fittings that evoke rustic Sweden, mid-century Manhattan and the grand old cafés of Europe - Brudnizki's secret is the absence of an unchanging "signature style". "You have to follow the brief," he says. "You have to understand the client, what they want. It's not about me. It's not my restaurant. They have a menu, they have a target market and all these things. Then I also have to look at the neighbourhood, the street, the city…" Once he's done all that, one renowned Brudnizki signature is the forensic accuracy with which he manages everything from the placement of bars to the height of surfaces and the best way to get an old-school tungsten filament afterglow from a dull modern light bulb. In a recession, he says, getting it right is not only about spending carefully, but also about looking that way. "Don't go over-glitzy with the massive chandeliers, over-the-top detailing and lots of luxe, over-expensive stuff going on. You create a room that's beautiful that looks like it's already been there for a while and isn't over-extravagant." Brudnizki's been in London for a while, long enough to remember the time before the great bar revolution of the mid-1990s, when nightlife was usually about either avant-garde nightclubs or tatty pubs. He believes the city's nightlife and its food culture has come on amazingly since that time. Many critics would say Brudnizki was central to that process; others would disagree, but still give credit where it's due. Judging by his review, A.A.Gill liked 34 restaurant a whole lot less than Jay Rayner, but he did concede that it was "beautifully lit."

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  • Fashion  

    Meet the Man  

    16/3/12

    Sam Cotton

    Print isn't dead. In fashion terms, digital has only served to provide it with a host of new incarnations. While the ancient art of applying colour patterns to fabric is still practised with varying degrees of hand-crafting in fancy collections everywhere, Photoshop now lets people devise entirely new kinds of prints, and digital printing lets them apply those prints to clothing almost as if it were paper (or a pro-version of those photo T-shirts you can get done at Snappy Snaps). For all that, print - ancient or modern - is still, of course, much more widely experimented with in women's fashion and wardrobes than it is men's. Perhaps it's something to do with childhood Paisley traumas, or the ever-present risk of looking like a clown or the office wacky tie-guy, or just the way that - outside of safe checks and nautical stripes - it doesn't cater to our preference for risk-free style codes. This season, though, more big designers have dared to print far more contentious material on men's clothes, from Prada's florals to tribal designs, exotic birds and boldly abstract epics at print veterans Etro. And next week, print-centric new label Agi and Sam will hold its first ever London Fashion Week catwalk show, having been selected as one of the nation's best new menswear labels. It's no great surprise: the design duo won lots of admirers with a smaller-scale presentation at the last fashion week, and you can tell their palette from a mile off. Nominally, Sam Cotton is the print half of the partnership, and Agape "Agi" Mdumulla is in charge of the cut of the cloth, but, as Mdumulla explained on a stool in their east London studio, it's more fluid than that. "We both have ideas for everything but I can't use Illustrator and Photoshop and Sam can't use a sewing machine. I studied menswear design and Sam studied Illustration, so if we're sat there and he says, 'Why don't we design something like this…' then I'm the one who can actually make it." The autumn/winter collection the pair were working on - their fourth - was, Cotton said, "Looking at the evolution of man and fabrics." We won't spoilerise the specific story that inspired their imminent show, but chocolate wafers and time travel both feature. As for the collection, there are cleverly refined and resized prints that look like thick, multicoloured wool, tweed and tartan till you get up close to see they're totally textureless. (Cotton has found producers able to use dye sublimation, a less costly and fiddly alternative to digital printing, and get similar results on more fabrics.) This hint of an optical illusion is something of a trademark; explaining one lovely avian print, Cotton says they also looked at "tessellations by Escher." You don't need a fine art degree to get the appeal of their prints, mind - as Agi points out, the textural intrigue of a simple sweatshirt that looks like a woolly jumper is enough to draw a stranger ever closer to you in a bar. Cotton also has a proven commercial eye, having seen his work make it on to finished garments during his stints in the print departments at Alexander McQueen, J.W. Anderson and Karl Lagerfeld, and from there, on to the backs of retiring musical flowers like Kanye West and Rufus Wainwright. Cotton doesn't only want to make outfits for pop stars, though. "We've kind of got known using this full printed look, but now we're using more plains and trying to make it more inclusive," he said. With the printed pieces, he says, the secret now, as always, is to keep the ingenuity in the print design, not the cut of the garment itself. "You can't really put print on weird shapes, it's just too much weirdness at one time." Final proof that Britain is ready for Agi & Sam's playful pattern cognition? Cotton recently heard the ultimately bittersweet tribute that proves a young British label is going places: in the design studio of an all-conquering UK menswear chain, there's a whole "inspiration" board covered in his prints.

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Dressed down rainy Friday. Ripped jeans and striped cotton.

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