Monocle Weekend
Edition: Saturday

As autumn leaves begin to paint the town red, we make tracks to Frieze London, where we survey the international art crowd’s footwear, follow our nose with Loewe perfumer Núria Cruelles and sound out Bangladeshi authorities’ plans to clamp down on car horns in Dhaka. Here to take us away, Andrew Tuck is making some quality connections at the crossroads of the world.

The Monocle team has been in Istanbul this week for our annual Quality of Life Conference. The city has provided the perfect backdrop for conversations on topics ranging from global security to how Turkey became the bushy-growth centre for hair transplants. It’s fair to say that we’ve had most bases – and pates – covered.

We started proceedings on Thursday with a welcome reception at The Peninsula Istanbul, overlooking the Bosphorus. Standing on the hotel’s terrace, watching the ferries crisscross fore and aft of tankers heading up to the Black Sea, we could sense the city’s palpable vitality and industry. And we felt our centre of gravity shifting. This was not London or New York: it was a city whose links to the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Middle East shaped its citizens’ perspectives on geopolitics, trade and design in distinct ways. Then, yesterday, it was off to ArtIstanbul Feshane, the venue for the conference. Here are just a few things that we learned from the speakers onstage.

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In our panel on peace-making, the Swiss ambassador to Turkey, Guillaume Scheurer, said that, yes, in trying to reach settlements, you will have to engage with people considered to be bad players by some. But then, as he explained, “You don’t make peace deals with your friends.” He also said that these mediation processes need more women in the room.

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Octogenarian architect Richard England, whose colourful buildings dot Malta, raised the bar on his trade. He drew links between his poetry and his profession when he said that good architecture needs to “touch the soul”. Nic Monisse, our design editor, got a little carried away and asked England if he had ever licked a building. “Certainly not one of my own,” was the amusingly dry response.

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Taylor Sheppard, a US Navy submarine officer, grabbed the room’s attention with her tales of life under the waves. She spoke about how you keep calm, how you cope with a loss of personal space and how you savour small pleasures (such as a box of tomatoes brought aboard in Greece). It turned everyone’s thoughts to what they needed to survive and thrive, and how they could develop strategies for potentially combustible moments.

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I got to interview graphic designer Eduardo Aires. He talked about creating wine labels, metropolitan and national brands, and also how design decisions were being weaponised by politicians – in one case, making him the target of death threats. It was a moving panel with a man who cares about making lives better through design.

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The power of green space in cities was explored by Rasmus Alstrup of SLA, a Danish landscape-design company with ambitious projects in places from Abu Dhabi to London. His passion was persuasive as he argued that cities should make you feel good, happy and at ease. And he said that they could deliver all of these things if we gave over more space to nature. “People behave differently in informal spaces,” he explained. “These are the places where social gluing happens.”

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That sense of looking at the world from a different angle was also evident in our panel on city making. Nadia Verjee, executive director of Expo City Dubai, spoke about the challenges of creating a walkable city in the Gulf state and how, by using considered planting and the careful positioning of buildings, you can lower temperatures – on average by 4C in Expo City.

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And then there was Dr Mehmet Erdogan, co-founder of Smile Hair Clinic, which carries out 5,000 hair transplants per year. He talked about male confidence, the risks and the costs. He also revealed that, if you’re completely bald, he can harvest follicles from your chest and even further south. Perhaps going curly is the future for some men.

As the season shifts, there are few better places to take a sartorial barometer reading than Frieze London, Europe’s – and probably the world’s – best-dressed art fair (writes Alexis Self). This year, it has largely been a case of life imitating art. As galleries show more paintings (a traditional safe bet), so punters have largely dressed in a restrained, demure style with lots of tweed, gabardine and corduroy. But there are always exceptions to the rule and, in Frieze’s case, it’s flatforms.

For those ignorant of flatforms, first of all: congratulations. This style of shoe, whose name derives from a portmanteau of “flats” and “platforms”, has received both royal assent (in the form of shiny €900 Stella McCartney brogue versions) and the dubious honour of high-street imitation (fast-fashion fiends Nasty Gal have an even more unattractive €35 pair). Now the footwear can be seen on those members of the art crowd seeking to add a bit of quirk to their oversized Comme des Garçons tailoring.

But the main problem with flatforms, other than the fact that they are murder to walk in (rendering their status as shoes somewhat pointless), is what to do with all that sole. Some designers go for the monochrome option, usually white or black. But the former have something of the medical practitioner about them and the latter of the medically prescribed. Stella McCartney’s have layers of different material, giving the impression of a particularly zany kitchen-counter sample swatch. When it comes to footwear, down to earth is always preferable, though not in a soil sample sort of way. Unless, of course, you want to closely inspect every inch of that two-metre-tall canvas.

It is a distinctive and unmissable component of the soundscape of many of the world’s more bustling metropolises: the incessant honking, parping and tooting of car horns (writes Andrew Mueller). Authorities in Bangladesh have decided that Dhaka, the country’s clamorous capital, should do something about it. From December, a ban on gratuitous horn use will punish obdurate klaxoneers with fines beginning at 500 taka (€3.82) for a first offence.

The scale of cultural change this calls for is considerable. After all, Dhaka is a city where the car horn is not a rarely heard yelp of warning but part of a constant conversation. A Kolkata cab driver once explained it to me as a kind of sonar, keeping other vehicles apprised of one’s proximity; I have also heard it referred to as “the Cairo brake pedal”. In Cambodia earlier this year, the exasperated government banned beeping – and not just because it was irritating. Children were dancing to the sounds by the side of busy motorways.

All cities should strive for as much peace and quiet as possible. The drafters of Bangladesh’s new anti-horn measures correctly observe that noise is not merely annoying but actually bad for people, causing or exacerbating hearing loss, as well as stress-related conditions such as high blood pressure and heart disease. No one who lives in a city expects to hear nothing but the twittering of birds and rustle of trees. But while some noise is necessary, a lot isn’t. Only good can come from citizens being able to hear themselves think.

The Monocle Concierge is our purveyor of top tips and delectable recommendations for your next trip. If you’re planning to go somewhere nice and would like some advice, clickhere. We will publish one answer a week.

Dear Concierge,

I’m taking a trip to Bordeaux in early November. Do you know any gems that I won’t find in the guidebooks?

Thanks,
Andrew Kraushaar,
UK

Dear Andrew,

With their rich gastronomical and cultural heritage, the Bordelais have plenty to be proud of. Check in to the 19th-century guesthouse Maison la Course (pictured below) on the edge of the Jardin Public and the Chartrons neighbourhood for an elegant and comfortable base from which to explore the city.

If you’re an architecture enthusiast, head to the Cité Frugès, a unique housing estate built by Le Corbusier and now a Unesco World Heritage site. For lunch, Au Bistrot (pictured below), next to the Marché des Capucins, offers a delicious menu of French classics with fresh ingredients from the market. Stop by manufacturer Paraboot for a chance to get your hands on high-end shoes made in Saint-Jean-de-Moirans.

Bordeaux is, of course, the French capital of wine-making. A tour of La Cité du Vin museum will uncork this centuries-old tradition. The fact that the building is shaped like a swirl of wine is an added bonus. End the day with a candlelit dinner at Soif restaurant, complete with a glass of bordeaux – bien sûr.

Núria Cruelles is the nose behind Loewe Perfumes. Cruelles, who also trained as an oenologist, grew up smelling the delicate floral notes of Loewe Aire on women in her native Spain. She has been working to give the brand’s original perfumes a new lease of life, as well as creating fresh hits. She tells Monocle about the formulae that she has been concocting and explains how she created one of the most sought-after home fragrance lines using nothing but the ingredients in her kitchen.

Tell us about the collection that you have been working on and its ties to Spain. 

The idea was to have a single ingredient define a whole collection. We began by thinking about Spain and how to incorporate more of our values in the perfumes. The country is often associated with the Mediterranean and aromatic scents but we wanted something more special – so we used rockrose from the south, which has a very rustic, balsamic odour. It’s like discovering a rough diamond and having to polish it.

Do you keep a dialogue going between the fashion and perfume sectors of the business? 

Jonathan Anderson [Loewe’s creative director] has always respected my expertise and what I bring to the table. At the same time, his collections inspire us: the shapes, the colours and the textures of the clothes that you see on the runway all inform the perfumes.

What scents would you recommend for different moments at home?
For relaxing in a bath, try the oregano line – it has a calming, lavender-like effect. If you’re hosting a dinner, go for one of the tomato, cucumber or sweet-pea candles, something that matches the food. For the bedroom, I recommend our wasabi candle and the honeysuckle room spray.

Do broader market trends influence your work? 

We want to be trendy but we don’t follow trends. The key is to choose an ingredient and work around it. Dress it up and use it to create different textures and feelings. The perfume talks to you and it will tell you what it needs. You just need to listen.

A longer version of this interview features in Monocle’sOctober issue, which is out now.

French footwear label JM Weston’s latest collaboration with Japanese brand Sacai offers an idiosyncratic new take on the former’s classics, including its Golf Derby shoes and the lace-up Worker Boot. We’re going for the classic derbies, rendered in smooth black calfskin.
jmweston.com; sacai.jp

For more stylish journalism, pick up a copy of Monocle’slatest issue. Orsubscribetoday to join the club. Have a great Saturday.