Words.

TOBAGO

admin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:51:56 +0000

I hadn’t planned to go to Tobago. I just knew with unerring certainty that I wanted to spend every last penny I had on a flight to somewhere that would be at least twenty five degrees warmer than the relentlessly grey, relentlessly miserable situation that is London in January.

So when the Virgin flight sale promo email dropped into my inbox on Christmas day (nice timing, Virgin), I scanned for the cheapest long-haul destination and there, waiting at the bottom of the pile, was Tobago. I booked the flight the same afternoon.

I didn’t know much about the island before I went, except that it was in the Caribbean, usually preceded by the words ‘Trinidad and…’, and rendered some pretty appealing results on a Google image search. And, with absolutely no discredit intended towards Tobago (I’m sure it reads the blog), I can now say with there isn’t really all that much else to know. In fact, the nicest thing about Tobago is the very lack of stuff. There’s no ugly confluence of vast corporate hotels to avoid, no momentous historical ruins to feel guilty about not visiting, no bustling cities to drag yourself around begrudgingly in the draining midday heat. It’s mostly just a load of blindingly beautiful beaches, a few hundred square feet of rainforest, a slightly grubby capital port town, and a friendly, phenomenally chilled-out population of around 50,000 inhabitants.

Tobago isn’t dull, though. The people are lovely, the food is generally really good, and there are are plenty of idiosyncratic quirks to break up all the turquoise-watered, white-sanded perfection (’cause that shit just gets SO TEDIOUS after a while, doesn’t it?) Here’s a little photo diary capturing a few moments from an all-too-brief week of bliss.

Our home for the week – a lovely little self-catering apartment at Bayview Villas. It was clean, affordable, safe, well-located, blah blah blah. Perfect, basically. If you ever go to Tobago, stay there.

The taxi system in Tobago works like this: you stand on the corner of a main road, hitch a ride from pretty much any passing vehicle, agree on a small fee, and pray that the driver doesn’t end up being a homicidal maniac. Luckily, we encountered no such nutters – it was mostly just a series of young chilled out dudes who all seemed to share a love of blasting Wiz Khalifa from their subwoofers.

One of the few disappointing things about Tobago is the strange lack of readily-available fresh fruit and vegetables. I mean, this is a lush tropical island where your flip flop would probably sprout flowers if you left it out in the sun for the few days, and yet buying anything except plantain and imported American apples is almost impossible. I managed to track down some watermelon on a brief visit to the island’s capital of Scarborough, but otherwise it was mostly tinned lychees and slightly questionable tomatoes (we were staying in self-catering accommodation, so I was cooking a lot). I know, I know. Complete and utter ‘First World Problems’.

Infinity pools for the win. This one was at The Villas at Stonehaven – a very swanky hotel just up the road from our apartment where we had lunch one day and then hung around for hours, shamelessly abusing the pool, free wi-fi and happy hour situation.

Rum punch is served literally everywhere, to varying degrees of success. This ginger-spiced one from Kariwak Village was the best version we tried. We went there for a ‘buffet dinner + live entertainment’ on the Saturday night and it was easily the best meal we ate all week. The hotel and restaurant are run by a Canadian lady who grows all her own vegetables and herbs – a bit of a necessity, given the lack of fresh stuff that I mentioned above.

Obviously we were surrounded by middle-aged couples but the food at the buffet (as much homemade herb foccacia, fresh salad, grilled Mahi Mahi, beef stir fry and vegetable rice as you could eat) more than compensated for the lack of ‘vibes’, as twats in Dalston might say. And after six glasses of rum punch, the live band – who were mostly doing Alicia Keys cover versions – seemed positively fantastic.

Token photo of cute hand-painted bus shelter.

Vintage shopping, Tobago-style.

I’m a lazy vintage shopper at the best of times so naturally I didn’t even attempt to sift through this.

WAH Nails, Tobago?

More signage.

Pretty much every person we spoke to asked if we were in Tobago for the carnival, which the entire island was gearing up for. By the 8th time, I started to feel slightly stupid saying that we weren’t.

‘Pon the bus. I love getting buses in places where I’ve been advised against using them on the grounds of their supposed inefficiency/irregularity. They usually turn out to be fast, clean, cheap and a good way to get your bearings (see also: LA).

Love the labelling on the Ginger Beer.

We went on a fairly basic glass-bottomed boat trip from a beautiful, if very commercialised, private beach called Pigeon Point. The only other passengers were these three adorable Japanese tourists. You should have seen their reaction when a rainbow fish swam under the boat – they went absolutely fucking insane. They were all fully-clothed with no swimsuits (?!?!?!?), but ended up jumping in the sea en masse when we stopped at a shallow water pool, giggling like nutters throughout. I loved them – and they were certainly way more entertaining than the coral.

A typically stormy sky, that made way for brilliant sunshine ten minutes later (this happens about 400 times a day in Tobago).

Paradise.

More paradise.

Even more paradise.

Nearly all fish in Tobago comes fried, and with a side of fries. This is the standard lunch option on the island – the version above (bought at Pigeon Point) was probably the best version we tried.

Crab and boiled dumplins. I appreciate that this looks like a bowl of fermented algae, but I can assure you that it was absolutely delicious. No, really.

Sweets in bags. (Running out of captions now, clearly).

Me being pensive, innit.

We spent the final few hours before our flight back at Kariwak Village, an idyllic hideaway just around the corner from the airport and the place where we’d eaten dinner the previous Saturday (see above). The trees in the garden were absolutely dripping with these strange little creatures, one of which I let crawl up my leg for about five minutes before realising that there was a fairly good chance that it was poisonous. You can take the girl out of the city, etc etc.

Last day. And yes, I did wear my hair in that ratty bun for the entire week.

POWER SUIT: NINA MANANDHAR

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:45:39 +0000

“I’ve always been interested in the relationship between politics and art, and whether creativity can be used to do something socially useful as well as visually interesting.”

Nina Manandhar. Publisher and Photographer. Co-Founder of The Cut and ISYS.

I’m half-Nepalese, half-English. My Dad has been a printer since I was a kid, so I used to help him out in his print shop, doing collating and helping him out with his accounts. Just seeing that and being a part of it made me realise that it’s possible be self-employed…although he has always discouraged me from doing it! But I’ve ended up doing it anyway. Some people just prefer working for themselves. I mean, I can work for other people, and I like working with other people. But essentially I’m not really a ‘company’ person.

I hated my school. I had three best mates, and we went to this shit school. We were quite different from everyone else – we were really into indie music, particularly the Manic Street Preachers. We used to dress quite differently, and I had a strong sense of identity from the music that I loved. My style was a big way of communicating to other people what I was into. I used to have really short dyed red hair, and lots of leopard print shirts and Dr. Martens. And a lot of eyeliner!

That was just one phase – my punk-goth phase. Then I had my rude girl phase, when I was 12 or 13. I used to wear bandannas and listen to Shabba Ranks. When I was about 19 or 20, I got more into urban music – that was when UK Garage was getting big.

My background is in art. For my A-Levels, I studied Art, Politics and English. And then I did a Fine Art degree at Chelsea. I’ve always been interested in the relationship between politics and art, and whether creativity can be used to do something socially useful, as well as visually interesting. A lot of my creative endeavours have been an investigation into that, really. [When we started] The Cut, we felt that youth culture was being mispresented. Although I actually don’t think it’s so much like that now, because young people are able to represent themselves…It’s changed massively in the last ten years.

But I’ve always been interested in collaborative arts projects…the power of representation and working with people to represent themselves rather than just shooting people – just having a slightly different approach. If I had to give a description of what I do, I’d say I’m a photographer and a publisher. I think that best sums it up. I don’t really like working in one medium. I find it really hard just to do photography, or just to do The Cut.

I think at art school, you don’t really get taught that much. You have to be entrepreneurial. That’s taught me to create my own opportunities. But it’s difficult being self-employed – you constantly have to be pushing yourself and driving yourself towards the next goal. Sometimes you know what [that goal is] and sometimes you don’t. That’s the hardest bit about it.

When I left uni, Nendie [co-founder of The Cut] and I started up Hardcore Is More Than Music, which was a self-published fanzine. It was about music, art…it was before anyone had blogs, so then it was quite progressive, I guess. We printed out thousands of copies of that, because obviously my dad’s a printer!

So Nendie and I did the fanzine for a few years, as well as youth workshops and projects and stuff. And then we started to think, ‘Right, how can we make a business out of this?’ We got some money from The Prince’s Trust. We had this really good advisor there called Jenny Duck, who helped us out a lot. I don’t think at the time we quite knew how to turn it into a commercial venture, and she helped massively.

The Cut started with a grant from Media Box, which was about helping young people get a voice in the media. This was a few years ago, before the government change, and there was a lot of money for community and media projects. So we got a really big grant and worked in association with this company called Paddington Development Trust – they’re a big community trust. We approached them to partner up. Since then we’ve been founded by Westminster Council, but we’re about to lose our funding. We’ve got to raise more money – we’re trying to get money from lots of different sources.

We found our first group of kids through Facebook – we held a big open day and it just gradually started from there. Every Wednesday we have meetings in this community centre in Paddington. We have a photo studio set up, and we’ve got really good mentors like Justin Quirk (editor of House magazine). We basically steer how the publication should be but it’s very much about getting people’s ideas out. We have brainstorming sessions. We’ll ask the group, ‘What would be an interesting way to present this? Should it be a feature? What’s an interesting angle?’ We’ve had the Heritage issue, we’ve had the Future issue – it’s like any other magazine in that sense. It’s the crossover between training and the actual production of a magazine.

Quite a few of our students have gone onto really good places. Some of them have worked at design agencies, some have got freelance work, lots have gone to University. The whole idea is to give people a foot into the industry. It’s 15-21 year olds mostly. It’s not just about opportunities, but learning cultural skills – how to network, how to present yourself – things you don’t really learn at school.

When the riots happened, I felt really…disappointed. When you’ve done a lot of work with young people, and tried your best to raise them up, you feel a bit let down by the ease with which [the rioters] wrecked their own areas. I can sympathise with their frustrations – the ridiculous university fees, the mass unemployment. And the youth that I work with are definitely frustrated about the lack of job opportunities. That comes up again and again. But the ones that we work with are more aspirational than disaffected. They’re the ones who want to do something positive or something creative. They want to work on a team project.

I was doing youth work before I started The Cut, and you realise very quickly that lots of people affect one young person’s life. You can’t be the sole person to change their path, but you can be part of the team. But having that support network, that base, that security, that sense of family…it’s really important in helping to build their confidence. And confidence is a really big barrier for a lot of young people.

Right now I’m also working on ISYS, which is an independent project that my boyfriend Cieron and I run together. It’s an exploration into the meaning of style, identity and British youth culture. It’s not really about fashion, it’s about style and the meaning of style. We make a lot of videos set to a soundtrack of contemporary music. So whether it’s a profile of an artist or an everyday person, they’re given the same treatment. It’s sort of reportage. We’ll film youth rituals – like the last day of school, when everyone signs your shirt. Stuff like that.

Why do I always come back to youth culture? I guess that I like the energy of young people. I think that London youth, in particular, are quite gutsy. I like that. I like the process of brainstorming with young people. I also really like shooting young people. A lot of the stuff I do now with ISYS i about stepping into different subcultures, different worlds. I really like that element…there is really exciting stuff going on in youth culture. I guess it’s all about your formative years, where you find yourself and your identity. I think my teenage years had a lot of influence on who I am. It was when I started to be who I am.

What’s next? Cieron and I are working on a project for that Tate, to coincide with the Olympics. We’re making a film and a big collaborative time capsule on young people’s tastes. And I’d like to do more publishing, with a social edge. Books are a good way, for me, of bringing everything together. Within ISYS, we do this format called ‘What We Wore’, which is photos of people’s outfits when they were teenagers. It’’s like a people’s archive. I like the idea of gathering together lots of material and putting it together in such a way that you can say something about it.

In terms of social initiatives, I want to carry on developing The Cut. I like, and am influenced by, artists like Jeremy Deller, where the art is about sort of the crossover between an archive and an education. That’s what I’d like to do. I love weird things from history. I like finding all the nuances of everyday people that you don’t normally see.

ninamanandhar.com

thisisthecut.com

isysarchive.tv

SOUS STYLE & A SLIDERS RECIPE

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:32:26 +0000

I made chorizo, manchego and avocado creme sliders for by my new favourite food blog Sous Style. Check out the post and interview here, and get the full recipe after the jump.

There’s nothing better than miniature versions of delicious junk foods. Sliders are basically just mini burgers but, as far as I’m aware, you can’t buy the teeny weeny buns anywhere in London. So I did what any mildly insane person would do and decided to make my own. It was actually a lot easier than it sounds. Well actually not that that much easier – you still need to buy yeast and strong white flour and other random ingredients that you’ve probably never even looked for in a supermarket before. But just look at those little guys below? They’re totally worth it, aren’t they? I think yes.

Photographs above courtesy of Sous Style / The very talented Rory Van Milligen (and yes, that is a picture of Method Man hanging over my kitchen sink)

Slider Buns

Recipe courtesy of Dan Lepard

50g custard powder (or corn flour)
550ml milk
2 tsp sugar
25g unsalted butter
750g strong white flour
1 7g sachet fast-action yeast
2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten, or milk, for glazing
Seeds, for sprinkling on top

In a saucepan, whisk the custard powder with the milk, then place over the heat and cook, stirring often, until boiling. Stir in the sugar and butter, pour into a mixing bowl and leave until warm.

Add the flour, yeast and salt, mix to a firm, even dough, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Knead the dough lightly until smooth, then return the dough to the bowl and leave covered for an hour and a half.

Divide the mixture into 50g pieces for small slider buns, or into 125g pieces for medium-sized buns or even into 175g pieces for extra-large burger buns. Shape each piece into a ball and place them on a tray or trays lined with nonstick baking paper. Cover again and leave to rise for about an hour, or until they have doubled in size.

Brush the tops of the buns with egg wash and scatter over different seeds, or just dust with flour, and bake at 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7 for about 12 minutes if making small slider buns and up to 18 or 20 minutes for much larger ones. Remove from the oven the moment they’re barely golden on top, and wrap well as soon as they’re cool.

Chorizo Sliders with Manchego Cheese and Avocado Creme

Recipe adapted from Rachel Ray

Ingredients

250g Spanish chorizo, casing removed and coarsely chopped
600g ground pork or beef
1 tablespoon smoked sweet paprika
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
250g Manchego cheese, shredded
2 avocados
1 lemon, juiced
1 large clove garlic, pasted or grated
A small handful fresh coriander leaves (optional)
100ml single cream
12 slider rolls or split brioche roll

Heat a cast iron skillet or griddle over medium-high heat.

Grind the chorizo in a food processor into very small crumbles. Place the ground chorizo and ground pork in a bowl and season with Worcestershire, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. Add a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil to the meat mixture and combine. Form 12 patties that are thinner at the center than the edges. Cook the sliders 3 minutes per side. Pile shredded cheese onto the burgers for the last minute of cook time to melt.

Meanwhile, place the avocados in a food processor. Add the lemon juice, garlic, cilantro, if desired, and cream, and process until very smooth and mayo-like in consistency.

Serve the sliders on the buns above with a dollop of the avocado creme on each. Party food win.

CORNER ROOM, TOWN HALL HOTEL

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:34:03 +0000

If you live in London then it’s well worth making the trek to Bethnal Green to explore the Town Hall Hotel.

Housed in, erm, Bethnal Green’s former Town Hall, it’s an incredibly grand and beautiful building from the outside that’s unexpectedly delightful and charming on the inside. The whole place is packed with amazing furniture, artwork and random artefacts, but I wouldn’t describe it as ‘quirky’. No, it’s much more interesting than that – the long corridors, quiet reception area, and relatively remote location give it this deliciously sinister air. It sort of reminds me of the hotel in The Shining, but in a really good way.

And that’s not to say that Town Hall Hotel isn’t totally luxurious – it is. I was lucky enough to stay there for a night when it first opened (launch weekend discount rates and all that) and can testify that the rooms are airy, majestic, and filled with nice toiletries and fluffy bathrobes and all the other things that befit a five star hotel. Town Hall Hotel also houses a great bar, an incredible spa and swimming pool and now Corner Room – the new, more lowkey little sister of the hotel’s award-winning Viajante restaurant.

A winter walk through East London last Saturday led us, unexpectedly, to the bleak stretch of London that is Cambridge Heath Road, where I remembered Corner Room from a recent recommendation from a colleague. It’s a small dining room with a small menu, and if you get there before 6pm you can have two course meal for £16 or three courses for £19.

I went for the two you see above: a seabass ceviche, folllowed by confit salmon with braised red cabbage and maple pecans. The starter was delicious, if a bit too…refreshing for a freezing cold January day, but the main course was probably the best thing I’ve eaten all year (I know we’re only 19 days in, but still…)

All in all, a really nice way to add some decadence to an extra bleak January day, at a Hotel that’s worth seeing just for seeing’s sake.

SHAMELESS REQUEST

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:33:25 +0000

Please vote for me to win Stylist magazine’s Travel Review competition. (Details after the jump).

I’ve made it to the shortlist of Stylist’s 100 word Travel Reviews competition. If you’ve ever liked anything I’ve written, then I’d be much obliged if you could vote for my entry.

Thanks so much!

DELS IN HOUSE MAGAZINE

admin — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:27:58 +0000

A piece I wrote on rapper DELS for the most recent issue of House magazine.

FROCH

admin — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:10:03 +0000

A beautifully-shot short film from Luke Monaghan.

I’ve tried to avoid posting external content on my blog in recent weeks but I thought this mini documentary on British boxer Carl Froch was worth sharing. Nice work, Luke.

FOOD MISSION

admin — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 09:09:50 +0000

One of my favourite things about the weekend is the chance it provides to undertake a food mission (i.e. travelling out of your way to eat particularly good food). Here are two suggestions of meals worth trekking for.

St. Ali

St. Ali is one of a handful of Antipodean coffee shop/cafe/restaurants (alongside Caravan, Flat White, and Lantana) that are currently churning out pretty much all the good coffee that central London has to offer. It’s also one of the best brunch places I’m aware of. London still doesn’t really do brunch well, so St. Ali was a more than welcome discovery.

The cafe is spread across two carefully-distressed floors in a building in Clerkenwell, making it a 15 minute walk from my house and therefore not strictly a food mission for me. But even if you don’t live anywhere near then there’s one dish in particular that justifies the journey: The sweetcorn fritters that you see below, which are served with with poached eggs, spinach, halloumi, and a spicy tomato relish.

The fritters are actually more of a dumpling in size and consistency (clearly not a bad thing), the halloumi is nice and chewy, the relish provides some much-need tang – for want of a better word – and poached eggs always make everything better. It’s the perfect combination of tastes and textures. Go try it.

Lucky Chip

As you can see above, Lucky Chip is not a restaurant but actually just a van, which is parked up in Netil Market just by London Fields. I’d read very good things about their burgers from one of my favourite food blogs Things We’ve Eaten so obviously I had to make the journey and try them for myself.

I had a classic cheeseburger with fantastic fries and crispy beetroot onion rings (the sides were shared with my eating buddy – I’m greedy but not that greedy) and it did not disappoint. I’m not sure the burger patty has that same level of sheer red meat satisfaction that Meat Wagon burgers offer, but overall it was just as good.

Lucky Chip also offer some more eccentric burger fillings if that’s how you get down – the week I went, the special offer was the ‘Life Aquatic’, featuring soft shell crab, beef patty, guacamole, spicy mayo, and ginger sweet chili. Probably worth trying before you die.

Have a good weekend, everyone, May it be filled with artery-clogging foodstuffs.

POWER SUIT: SARAH BAILEY

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 20:50:47 +0000

“I think there’s something to be said for not doing your dream job when you’re 22.” A new Power Suit featuring Sarah Bailey, Deputy Editor at Harper’s BAZAAR UK

“I studied English at University, at Cambridge. I got involved with the student newspaper and became the media editor and I also did a crazy ‘zine with my best girlfriend, and it was called Mucker. It was so rudimentary…We’d take photos of bands playing in Cambridge. And we’d sell ads, which I’d draw. So if we were advertising takeaways I’d draw pictures of beautiful Indian goddesses and things like that. It was very, very eccentric!

I had a boyfriend at the time who was not particularly interested in his degree and he was desperate to go off and do a very amazing postgraduate photography course in Newport Gwent, run by a guy called David Hearn who had been in Magnum. So his interest in reportage photography and my ‘zine and the student newspaper…that’s how I got all my juices flowing and my interest in being a journalist began.

I went to the careers advisor and said ‘I really want to be a journalist, and I want to do the postgraduate course at City University.’ And she said, in the way that careers advisors do: ‘Well it’s very hard to get in, have you thought of doing something else?’ And like all those encounters, that made me determined to get a place at City, which I did.

City was brilliant for me, actually. It got me used to living in London. It was an amazingly-taught course. You tended to be taught by professionals, and they were incredibly strict with you. After doing a self-indulgent arts degree at Cambridge, that was brilliant for me. They’d give you strict deadlines for stories – the masters used to put a big manila envelope on their doors, and if you didn’t have your story in it by 11am, it wouldn’t be marked. We had to learn shorthand…It was an amazing year for me. It really knocked some of my self-indulgent corners off me.

Another great thing about City is that they’d really encourage you to make contact with the industry. I started selling stories to Young Guardian on bands. There was this gorgeous group called Soho – they were twins, Jacqui and Pauline – I sold a story about then. I’d done a periodicals course at City, you choose a specialism and I chose women, and I always knew that I wanted to do features. So I was always pitching features, not news.

After City, I got onto a graduate training course at (publishing company) IPC, which I don’t think they do anymore. It was from there that I got into women’s weeklies at IPC and had this really funny experience at Woman’s Realm, which was so old-fashioned and strange. But for me, coming from the kind of background I’m from, I always needed to earn money. So I could never intern. And actually at that point [interning] was much less of a phenomenon in British magazine publishing and very frowned upon. The unions were so much stronger, and it was like ‘every job should be a proper job’. Having lots and lots of kids who lived with their parents, working for free, knocking around the office just was not a phenomenon at the time. It certainly wasn’t an option for me, so I always needed a job.

I think that definitely meant that the first jobs I took weren’t necessarily my dream jobs. But, I think, actually there’s something to be said for not doing your dream job when you’re 22. I sort of look at people who come to Harper’s BAZAAR and it’s the place that they’ve always wanted to be and they’re working as an intern and they can’t leave. There’s no way in their heads that they can go and take a job on Prima or Mizz or More to get editorial experience. They’re addicted to being in their sweet spot. I think it really hinders them in terms of building up their skills, because they just want to be in this perfect, gorgeous moment.

So I didn’t work for gorgeous magazines! I went to Women’s Realm, and from there I got a job at Chat. That, actually, was a real sort of lightbulb moment for me, career-wise. Quite how I got the job, I’m not sure but having arrived there, I realised that I had to step up. I had to learn how to write news stories, I had to follow up leads, I had to find case histories. I had to do it for real, to keep up to the amazing standards of my colleagues. I think through doing that job, I realised that I could get out there and do a news story, and come back and file it really quickly.

So that was an absolute baptism by fire. I learnt so much, really quickly. But the subject matter and genre wasn’t me. So my mission was to get into a magazine that I would like to read myself. From there I got a job as the Features Editor at Just Seventeen. Even though it was a magazine that wasn’t suitable for me at the time, it was a magazine that I had the hugest admiration for and had read as a kid myself.

Just Seventeen was just like a revolution in publishing. It had this incredible feminist agenda. There’d never been anything like that before. Prior to that it had been Jackie and Dear Cathy and Claire. It was never going to inspire girls to be young, bold, brave feminists. So I thought Just Seventeen was a really important title.

I was definitely very idealistic at that stage and very much believed that magazines can – well, actually I still believe that magazines can really change young women’s lives. So the sex education side of Just Seventeen was something I really believed in. In the years I was there, it was coming under attack from the government a lot, getting criticism for being too racy, whereas anyone who’s a feminist knows that educating women about contraception is something that protects their rights. So as well as being tons of fun, it had this political edge that was pretty exciting.

From there, I had an opportunity to move to ELLE magazine. I remember going to interview Christian Bale, and then writing this expansive 3,000 word profile. That was another lightbulb moment going off. I knew then that I wanted to be a freelance journalist for a while. I managed to wrangle a film column at ELLE, so I was their film editor suddenly, which meant I got to go to screenings, I went to Cannes. I worked for other titles at that time as well.

Then Fiona McIntosh became Editor at ELLE, and she made me Editor-at-Large. So I started spending three days a week there, and I became more involved again. I’d had this sort of ‘spread my wings’ moment, and I became really involved with ELLE because she thought my voice was perfect for what she wanted to do with ELLE at that time. It’s kind of incredible to look back and think that this was a world before Heat, before Grazia, and Fiona hit upon the idea that the way to sell more issues of ELLE was to put celebrities on the cover. She wanted me to be part of that team to make that happen.

So I started to go to Los Angeles a lot, going on publicist-schmoozing trips. Suddendly we started shooting people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston. It was just incredible, and the sales went through the roof. It sort of wasn’t happening on fashion magazines at the time, it was access to these people, pre-Grazia and pre-Heat. It was a really exhilarating period.

So I was soaring and flying high and then Fiona told me she was working of ELLE Girl. Obviously with my passion for teenage media, I was up for working on that. It went into development at EMAP, and I was the editor, and we launched ELLE Girl. We tried to keep the sass that I loved from Just Seventeen days, but mixed it with high fashion. It was a glorious time for me, I had such fun. Anyone who’s worked on a launch will tell you that the exhilaration and the late nights and the hysterical in-jokes…It’s a wonderful, incredible, exhausting experience. I think we had Britney on the first cover.

Fiona then left ELLE, and I applied for the job…and I got the job. My vision for the magazine was that, with greatest respect to Fiona, it needed to be updated to reflect the times. I remember that ‘Sex and the City’ was the hottest thing on TV at the time, and quite important in the way that women saw themselves. I really felt that ELLE should have that spirit, that fast-paced, witty dialogue, and the touching on things that were quite taboo. I wanted to get that tone into the magazine.

I think most people in magazines are turned on by the idea of the New York publishing industry. The incredible professionalism of American media, the glossiness, the slickness, the incredibly-researched, perfectly-written articles. My favourite magazine was Details and particularly in the ‘90s, which sort of captured a cosmopolitan, sophisticated, quite subversive editorial tone and lifestyle that I really aspired to.

How did I end up working in America? Through a wonderful stroke of luck, opportunity, chance. I met the magnificent Glenda Bailey [editor of Harper's BAZAAR US] at a fashion show in Paris, and she stopped me when I was walking across the runway and said ‘Oh you’re Sarah Bailey, aren’t you? Everyone thinks you’re my sister. You should come and see me. Come to my hotel.’

So I did go and meet her the next day. I dressed up in all my party attire, which turned out to be a good instinct. I walked into her hotel room and she was holding court with Jean Paul Gaultier and her right hand man at the time, Lionel. I realised that I couldn’t stop their conversation; I just to join in. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t really expecting Jean Paul Gaultier.

When I got back to London, Glenda called me from New York on a Thursday and I asked if I could be there on Saturday morning. That was my formal interview, it was all very dramatic. And I got the job working at Harper’s BAZAAR US, and that was how I came to work for Glenda.

American media is very expensive to produce. Incredibly expensive salaries, and huge staffs. That will have to change, because there’s obviously been a crisis in advertising -much more severely than here, actually. But at that period, it was utterly different working for BAZAAR in the United States. All the things that people groan about – being fact-checked to within an inch of their lives, and the highly-strung contributing editors – they’re all true.

People in New York love media, they’re obsessed with it. People believe in fashion magazines in a way that I don’t think they quite do here in the UK. The status like Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter and Glenda Bailey have in city life…they are Gods. So there was a feeling when working there that you are at the centre of the universe, and everything you do is incredibly important. It’s so exciting to be in the middle of it.

My time with Glenda…I learnt so much from her I can’t tell you. She’s an amazing mentor, she’s so strong. She pushes for what wants almost to a point beyond reason, you can’t imagine anyone could push any harder. But she’s such a fighter. She’s like a self-help book on legs. She’s a brilliant teacher, as well. I can hear her in my head when I have tough situations to get through. She’s relentlessly honest and straightforward with you, with you realise after years of working that most people aren’t. It’s often very abrasive! It can be quite devastating, but she’s the only person I’ve worked with that you 100% know where you are with her. She has extraordinary strength and confidence to always pursue her vision. So she’s an amazing woman to work for.

Since I’ve returned to the UK, I’ve had a much more rigorous approach to…well to everything, really. There are so many aspects to a creative job that are wooly around the edges. You can sit in meetings and think you’ve all discussed the same vision, and when you end up with disappointing results. It’s about really, really pinning it down when you’re in the room – Who are you working with and why? Where’s the visual, can we see it? The endless asking of questions, doing everything upfront to really get the result you want, even when it’s exhausting and people are sick of asking the questions…I learnt all that from Glenda.”

PARIS: SOME PLACES I LIKED

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:20:14 +0000

A few of the places where I ate, slept and got drunk in during my birthday trip to Paris last weekend…

LE CITIZEN HOTEL

If you’re planning on going to Paris anytime soon, know this: it is EXPENSIVE. I’ve lived in London all my life so I’m no stranger to vastly overpriced food, travel and just about everything, but Paris still surprised me. It was fairly hard to find a birthday-worthy hotel within our price range but eventually we ended up at Le Citizen. It wasn’t exactly a bargain, but you get good value for your money – it’s clean, bright, and set right on Canal St Martin – a really buzzy area with loads of great bars, clubs and places to eat. It’s also really near the fashionable Marais and a massive Metro station. The staff are lovely, too.

SEPTIME

Finding somewhere to have my birthday dinner in Paris was actually surprisingly difficult (#whitegirlproblems). All the top-rated restaurants in the city are astronomically expensive and – because I’m neurotic – I didn’t really want to take my chances and just look for somewhere that seemed OK on the night.

After reading a couple of reviews, I settled on Septime in the 11th arrondissement and booked it in advance (very necessary) with the help of the staff at Le Citizen. Luckily it turned out to be pretty much perfect. We got the five-course ‘Carte Blanche’ tasting menu, which featured scallops, squid, duck, cheese, chocolate and all sorts of other delicious things that seemed befitting of a special occasion. Washed all that down with a ‘coupe’ of champagne at the start of the meal, some really good red wine throughout, and the most amazing rum I’ve ever tasted in my life to round it all off. Needless to say, I practically crawled out of there (and then onto Chez Prune for several nightcaps – but obviously I was way too drunk to take photos by that point).

LA DROGUERIE

Crepe with sugar and lemon. Obviously had to be done, and La Droguerie did it perfectly.

CHEZ ROBERT ET LOUISE

If you’re an Anthony Bourdain fan/obsessive then you might recognise the name of this place from his show ‘No Reservations’. Located in Le Marais, this tiny restaurant houses an open hearth at the back, where they cook côte de boeuf for two and serve it with goose fat-roasted potatoes. Jesus Christ, those potatoes were incredible. It’s probably worth a visit for those alone.

HOTEL DU NORD

Slightly confusingly, this isn’t a hotel at all – it’s a bar and restaurant. It was literally a minute’s walk from our hotel so we went there on Saturday night, which ended up being a good choice. You know when sometimes you want to eat somewhere quiet, and sometimes you want to eat somewhere packed and buzzing and fun? This place falls very much into the latter camp.

The food was good but not incredible – I had a Japanese-inspired tuna dish as a break from all the cheese and cream – but the atmosphere definitely warranted the (by that point all-too-familiar) pricey bill.

BISTROT PAUL BERT

If you want classic French bistro food, then Bistrot Paul Bert is a good bet. They offer a three-course Prix Fixe menu for 36 Euro – which is really good value for Paris. The scallops and fish were amazing, as was a salad with poached eggs and lardons. We rounded off the meal with a ‘Paris Brest’ – a doughnut shaped pastry filled with some sort of hazelnut cream that was out of this world.

CAFE DE FLORE

A Parisian classic, and for good reason. I ordered onion soup solely because it was one of the few reasonably-priced dishes on (another) really expensive menu, but it didn’t feel like a compromise when it arrived. There must be a whole packet’s worth of cheese on that thing. Obviously it tasted amazing.

So yeah, Paris. A whole lot of eating, walking, and drinking. Fun times.