As the birthplace of Renaissance art and culture, even after the rolling decades, Florence still retains its ancient beauty. The creative place is made livelier with the presence of Gucci Giardino 25, the latest addition to the Gucci House.
In a nod to the flower shop that used to occupy the spot and Gucci’s former CD’s favourite number, the venue embodies the House’s codes while luxuriating in Florence’s vivacity. From dawn till dusk, it offers an all-day menu created according to the ever-changing seasons and inspired by Tuscany’s verdant lands. But it is the cocktails that are the focus here. Bar manager of Gucci Giardino 25, Martina Bonci, hails from the picturesque Umbria. Having taken up the position during the pandemic, Bonci has steered the ship towards safe harbour buoyed by her signature cocktails. We pulled Bonci over for a quick chat about mixology and Gucci Giardino 25.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: We have yet to get to Gucci Giardino 25. What can we expect when we visit?
MARTINA BONCI: You’ll be welcomed by a young and smiley team. Expect to have a unique experience in a unique location. It’s not just about having a good cocktail but rather you’ll have an experience you will remember fondly.
ESQ: When people visit Gucci Giardino 25, what should they order?
MB: Our best seller Mémoire di Negroni, of course. It’s the first signature drink I’ve ever made, which also became a bottled drink. I’d recommend the Mémoire di Negroni if they like a ‘dry’ drink. Or if they prefer a sour, [I can point to the] Chi si Ferma è Perduto, which is a twist on Margarita with tequila mint bergamot and spirulina salt.
ESQ: How did the Mémoire di Negroni come to be?
MB: I had just joined the Gucci Giardino 25 team. The bar was about to open and I was so nervous and so excited at the same time. I was walking the streets of Florence and I saw a shop selling Fiorentina (the Associazione Calcio Firenze Fiorentina, Florence’s football team) T-shirt merch in its official colour: purple. That’s where I got the inspiration. And since Negroni started in Florence as well, the drink is also a tribute to the city.
ESQ: I’m curious, what was your first drink?
MB: Long Island Iced Tea. It was a bit of a shock, tasting it, to say the least! At the time, I expected it to be more of a tea than an actual alcoholic drink. But I still have it from time to time when I want to have something less “nerdy” than my usual orders.
ESQ: Do you think that there can ever be a “terrible drink”?
MB: One thing I love about mixology is that there’s no such thing as “bad for everyone” or “good for everyone”. There may be some technical errors in [making] a drink, but ultimately, it all boils down to what you’d like to drink.
On a warm afternoon in the middle of nowhere, Antony Lindsay, the newly-appointed CEO of Fabergé sits before us as the ice in a glass next to an unopened can of Coke, tinkles as it melts. As the CEO of a storied brand like Fabergé, Lindsay’s task is to spread the word (and work) of the Romanov’s favourite jewellery house. With Sincere Watch Limited as its official retailer in Singapore, Fabergé continues to make its presence known. And yes, Fabergé is synonymous with the gem-encrusted eggs but the house has other achievements like jewelled boxes; animals carved out of precious stones and other ornamental objects.
In 2007, the brand underwent a revival. Taking inspiration from its storied past, Fabergé created original pieces like the Vissionnaire watches, where a Chronograph model displays two time zones at once, and the Altruist line, which has a clean and simple-to-read dial, with a crown that’s reminiscent of winding up a traditional clock. The collection that secured Fabergé’s footing in the hard jewellery world is the Compliquée models, which won the 2015 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève award.
As water pool at the bottom of the glass, Lindsay talks to us. About his history, where Fabergé is at and the future.
ESQUIRE: Did Sean Gilbertson (Fabergé’s last CEO) leave you with any wisdom when you took over?
ANTONY LINDSAY: [laughs] There’s been many over the years. I’ve known Sean, coming up to almost 14 years, and we shared some moments, both good and challenging. Nothing springs to mind... except for this Winston Churchill quote, “If you ever find yourself going through hell, keep walking.”
ESQ: What’s your journey been like?
AL: I come from a family of jewellers and had an interest in gemmology at a young age. I’ve been neurolinguistically programmed to appreciate jewellery, timepieces and objets d’art just by hanging out at my dad’s atelier on the weekends. I’d look at the gemstones handled by the craftspeople. I have an appreciation for hard luxury and completed my apprenticeship as a bench jeweller. I’m proud of having played such an important role within Fabergé for about 14 years. I’ve worn different hats as well. Proud when I was appointed MD and was invited to join the board of Gemfields UK Limited. As well as becoming CEO this year.
I feel privileged and fortunate to be part of a team to write the next chapter of one of the most celebrated names in luxury. I see that as an honour. It’s the revival of the coloured gemstones on one hand and it’s also the revival of Fabergé on the other. It’s what keeps us very busy.
ESQ: What sets Fabergé apart from the rest of your competition?
AL: I’d say that Fabergé’s reputation for unrivalled craftsmanship and design is globally recognised. I’d say Fabergé’s diverse use of techniques like the guilloché enamel with the use of hard stone or visible setting. In keeping with tradition, we seek to work with the finest ateliers. Because we don’t have our own workshop, we seek out workmasters all around the world. That’s quite unique to us.
ESQ: Speaking of tradition, how do you maintain that heritage while courting the newer generation?
AL: That’s a good question. It’s important to us that we pay homage and recognise what was done in the past. We draw inspiration from Peter Carl Fabergé, whether that be through his philosophies, values or craftsmanship. To apply it in a modern and contemporary and relevant way; we like to consider ourselves as a forward-thinking brand.
ESQ: How did your partnership with Sincere come about?
AL: I’d say that we are actively looking to partner with the finest retailers in existence. We don’t profess to understand every market on the planet. So, we believe that by partnering with the best of the best, who understands how to represent a brand like Fabergé; and how to offer first-class customer service... that’s very important to us. Sincere Watch Group is the perfect fit for Fabergé and we’re delighted that they are representing us here in Singapore and soon in other parts of South East Asia.
ESQ: What would you introduce to someone new to Fabergé?
AL: I would introduce the Compliquée Peacock watch, which is quintessentially Fabergé. We took inspiration from the Imperial Peacock Egg and, in keeping with the Fabergé tradition, we sought out the finest watch movement manufacturer and that led us to Jean-Marc Wiederrecht of Agenhor and now his two sons, Nicolas and Laurent, who run the business on a day-to-day basis. Throughout the discussions with them, we made the Peacock watch that has a special retrograde movement, that functions off four gears, and that allows us to add a feature for the peacock’s tail to unfurl.
ESQ: Peacocks, playing cards; are there other motifs that will utilise that movement in the future?
AL: There are some plans and they are confidential. [laughs]
ESQ: You talked about Fabergé as a book that you’re proud to be part of. What is the next chapter?
AL: To continue this revival and personally—and I know I speak on behalf of my co-workers—it’s about ensuring that the Fabergé story can still be told. What Fabergé symbolises is more than simply luxury and decadence. For us, it’s about creating prized possessions that can stand the test of time and be passed down through the generations. That’s important to us and runs through our DNA. You can scour through Christie’s and see that Fabergé is one of the highly sought-after hard luxury names in existence.
Something’s off, but you can’t quite name it. It’s the moment you get home after staying with friends and an influencer using their exact coffeemaker pops up on your Instagram feed. There's the split-second after an actor delivers a quippy line on a streaming series and you try to parse whether this scene has already become a meme or if it’s just written to court them. It’s the new song you’ve been hearing everywhere, only to discover it’s an ‘80s deep cut, inexplicably trending on TikTok.
There is a name for this uneasiness. It’s called “algorithmic anxiety,” and it’s one of the main subjects of Kyle Chayka’s new book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Chayka charts the rise of algorithmic recommendations and decision-making. He shows how culture has slowly started effacing itself to fit more neatly within our social media platforms' parameters
Algorithms, Chayka reminds us, don’t spring from the machine fully-formed. They’re written by humans—in this case, humans employed by the world's biggest tech conglomerates—and their goal is simple: to prioritise content that keeps us scrolling, keeps us tapping and does not, under any circumstances, divert us from the feed.
Filterworld shows us all the ways this can manifest, both online and IRL, into a kind of contentless content. Songs are getting shorter, because it only takes 30 seconds to rack up a listen on Spotify. Poetry has enjoyed an unexpected revival on Instagram. But mostly when it is universal, aphoristic and neatly formatted to work as image as well as text.
There’s the phenomenon of the “fake movie” on streaming services like Netflix. These cultural artefacts have actors, plots, settings—all the makings of a real film. But it still seem slickly artificial, crowd-sourced and focus-grouped down to nothing.
If our old tech anxiety amounted to well-founded paranoia (“Are they tracking me? Of course they are.”), the new fear in Filterworld is more existential: “Do I really like this? Am I really like this?” Is the algorithm feeding us the next video, the next song, tailored to our unique taste? Or is it serving us the agglomerated preferences of a billion other users? Users who, like us, may just want something facile and forgettable to help us wind down at the end of the day.
Chayka doesn’t give us easy answers at the end of Filterworld. He does, however, offer an alternative to the numbing flow of the feed: taste! Remember taste? We still have it. Although the muscles may have atrophied after so many of us have ceded our decision-making abilities to the machines.
Rediscovering our personal taste doesn’t have to be an exercise in high culture or indie elitism. But it does require what Chayka calls the conscientious consumption of culture. In seeking out trusted curators, seeking out culture that challenges us and taking the time to share with others what we love.
To go deeper, Esquire sat down with Chayka to talk about the cultural equivalent of junk food, the difference between human and algorithmic gatekeepers, and why “tastemaker” doesn’t need to be a dirty word. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ESQUIRE: Let me start with a slightly provocative question. Is there anyone with a bigger grudge against algorithms than journalists?
KYLE CHAYKA: Well, journalists are known to have a grudge against algorithms. I can speak to my own dislike of them. Just because they’ve taken away this filtering, tastemaking function that journalists have had for so long. But through the course of the book, I talk to all sorts of creators who hate algorithms just as much.
It’s the illustrator who got trapped into doing one bit on Instagram because it succeeded all the time. Or the influencer whose hot selfies get tons of likes but their actually earnest, artistic posts don’t get any attention. In the book, I interview coffee shop founders around the world, and even they are like, “I hate the algorithm because I have to engage with all these peoples’ photos of my cappuccinos.” Everyone feels kind of terrorised.
Maybe journalists were just part of the first wave to realise this?
I think journalists are often canaries in the coal mine, partly because we complain the loudest about everything. But you could see the impact of algorithmic feeds in the media really early on. We moved from consuming news on cable TV or in a newspaper or even on a website homepage to consuming stories the majority of the time through social media feeds. And that just takes away so much control.
A newspaper front page or a website homepage is a human-curated, thought-through intentional thing that highlights important stuff, along with fun stuff, along with goofy stuff. There was an intention and a knowledge to that, which algorithmic feeds have just totally automated away.
Let’s take it from news to culture, which is really the focus of your book. Filterworld explains that the algorithms driving social media exist to keep us engaged as long as possible.The result is a kind of flattening of culture. Our social feeds privilege content that’s easily digestible so we can keep on grazing. What happens to us when all the culture we consume is flattened like that? And we’re not pushed to seek out new things, or to just try something that makes us uncomfortable? What happens to us when we aren’t getting any nutrients, you could say, from the feed?
It makes me think of the cultural equivalent of junk food. It’s engineered to appeal to you. To engage your senses in ways you might not even like, per se, but it’s just so chemically perfect. I talk a lot about how creators feel pressure to conform in certain ways to the feed. Consumers also have to conform in a way. Algorithmic feeds push us to become more passive consumers. That we don't really think about what we’re consuming. We float along on the feed and not think about our own taste too much. I feel like that makes us into more boring people. It makes the cultural landscape less interesting. But it also takes away this opportunity for us to encounter art that is really shocking or surprising or ambiguous.
Take the example of a Spotify playlist. You start by listening to something that you choose. Then Spotify pushes you along on this lazy river of music that is similar to what you put on and is not going to disrupt your experience but it’s also not going to push you anywhere new. It’s not going to try to disrupt you; it’s not going to try to challenge your taste. In the book I contrast that with an indie radio DJ who is making these intentional choices to put songs next to each other that don’t really fit but have some kind of implied meaning based on their proximity. Algorithmic feeds fundamentally can’t create meaning by putting things next to each other. There’s no meaning inherent in that choice because it’s purely automated, machine choice. There’s no consciousness behind it.
You talk a lot about curators in Filterworld. What else can a curator do for us that an algorithm cannot do? Why should we trust them more than an algorithm?
Curating as a word has this very long history dating back to Ancient Rome to the Catholic priesthood. It always had this meaning of taking responsibility for something. I feel like curators now take responsibility for culture. They take responsibility for providing the background to something, providing a context, telling you about the creator of something, putting one object next to others that build more meaning for it. So curating isn’t just about putting one thing next to another, it's all this background research and labour and thought that goes into presenting something in the right way.
That’s true of a museum curator who puts together an art exhibition. It’s true for a radio DJ who assembles a complicated playlist. It’s true for a librarian who chooses which books to buy for a library. But it’s not true for a Spotify algorithmic playlist. The Twitter feed is not trying to contextualise things for you with what it feeds to you. It’s just trying to spark your engagement. TikTok is maybe the worst offender because it’s constantly trying to engage your attention in a shallow way. But it’s absolutely not pushing you to find out anything more about something. There’s no depth there, there’s no context. It actively erases context, actually. It makes it even harder to find.
But we know curators can have their own agendas. What’s the difference between, say, a magazine editor who needs to please their advertisers and a tech company looking after their bottom line? Is there a difference?
There’s this transition that I write about in the book from human gatekeepers to algorithmic gatekeepers, so moving from the magazine editors and the record label executives to the kind of brute mathematics of the TikTok ‘For You’ feed. I think they both have their flaws. The human gatekeepers were biased. They were also beholden to advertisers; they had their own preferences and probably prioritised the people that they knew in their social circles. Whereas the flaw of the algorithmic feed is that while anyone can get their stuff out there, the only metric by which they’re judged is: How much engagement does it get? How much promotion does it merit based on the algorithmic feed?
So they’re both flawed. The question is: which flaws do we prefer? Or which flaws do we want to take with their benefits? The ability of the human gatekeeper was to highlight some voice that would be totally surprising or shocking—to highlight some new and strange thing that totally doesn’t fit with your preconceived notions of what art or music or writing is. The algorithmic feed can’t really do that because it’s only able to measure how much other people already consider it popular.
The advertiser thing—another hobbyhorse of mine is Monocle magazine, which has existed for a decade or two now. It’s a print magazine with a very nice mix of shopping and international news and culture and profiles. That magazine does really well selling print ads because they put print advertising in a good context with good articles. The advertisers appreciate the quality of the content that surrounds it. So that’s a net positive for everyone. Whereas with the internet now, the advertisers are almost in a war with the platforms just as much as the users are. Advertisers don’t want their content appearing willy-nilly, messily next to the crappy content the algorithmic feeds promote, which at this point might be snuff videos or videos of bombings in Gaza. That’s not serving either users or advertisers.
The other night, I was scrolling through this beautiful, curated interiors account and then there was an ad for Ex-Lax, just dropped in the middle of this very aspirational stuff.
That collision to me is the case and point. It’s so useless, and so not productive for either party, that it just feels like a glitch, you know? And that’s because of algorithmic targeting. It’s because these feeds don’t prioritise anything besides engagement.
Places like Monocle, for instance, cater to a relatively small readership. It’s not for everybody; it’s for this smaller subset of people who consider themselves clued-in. We’re getting into a sticky discussion about taste and tastemaking here, but: how do these more niche platforms react against the algorithm?
Tastemaking is a really complicated topic. I think it strikes a lot of people as elitist because you're talking about what people should like and why they should like it, and why I know something that you don’t. “I’m going to tell you something, and it's going to heighten your sensibilities or lead you somewhere different.” That can be intimidating, it can be pretentious, it can be alienating, it can be very biased in class ways, identity ways, all sorts of ways.
But I almost feel like it has to be defended at this point, just because we’re all so immersed in automated feeds. We’re consuming so much through different platforms that we’ve kind of lost touch with the human tastemaker. We all have voices we love following on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok but those voices get lost in the feed. We sometimes lose track of them and we sometimes don’t see their content. Those feeds are also not serving those creators particularly well because the business models are all based on advertising and the creators don’t get access to the bulk of that revenue. Through the book, I propose that one answer to Filterworld, to the dominance of these algorithmic feeds, is to find those human voices. Find tastemakers who you like and really follow them and support them and build a connection with those people.
Thinking about your own taste doesn’t have to be elitist. Fundamentally it’s just about creating a human connection around a piece of culture that you enjoy, and that should be open to anyone. It’s literally telling a friend why you like this specific song, or saying, “We should go see this movie, because I like the director because of XYZ reasons.”
Tastemaking is almost just being more conscientious about cultural consumption, being more intentional in the way that we’ve become totally intentional about food, right? Food is such a source of identity and community, and we take pride in what we eat, what restaurants we go to, what we cook. I would love it if people took more pride in going to a gallery, going to a library, going to a concert series at a concert hall. I think those are all acts of human tastemaking that can be really positive.
And all the things you mentioned are also things outside the house.
Yes. You’re coming together with other people in appreciation of the kind of culture you like to consume. And that’s really good. That helps everyone.
I want to finish by talking about the idea of ambient culture. You clearly appreciate ambient music, and in Filterworld you describe genres like lofi hiphop and Japanese City Pop as music that feels almost designed for the algorithm. Our feeds seem to push us toward ambient content: stuff that’s frictionless and easy to ignore. So I’m wondering, is that always a bad thing? When is ambience necessary and when is it detrimental?
I do really enjoy ambient content. My first book was about minimalism, which has a kind of ambient quality. I wrote an essay about Emily in Paris and ambient TV. I've written about Brian Eno a lot, the musician who coined the term ambient music. That kind of art fulfills a function: to put your brain at rest. It provides a pleasant background at a technological moment when we have a lot of distractions. Ambient TV is maybe the perfect TV to look at your phone in front of. It relies on the presence of that second screen to complement it. The TV show doesn’t have to be that interesting because your phone is interesting.
The problem becomes that through algorithmic recommendations, so much content is pushed towards ambience, and you never want all of your stuff to be ambient. You don’t only want to consume ambient art because then what are you actually paying attention to? If everything exists as a soothing background, what’s actually provoking you? What’s leading you somewhere new?
I think the critique goes back to Brian Eno’s definition of ambient music, which was that the music has to be “as ignorable as it is interesting.” You have to be able to ignore it. It can be in the background, but you should also be able to pay attention to it and be rewarded by your attention to it. I feel like a lot of culture now only falls into that former category. You’re only able to ignore it. Once you start paying attention, there’s nothing really gripping there. Certainly with TikTok and Spotify playlists, there’s this prioritisation of the soothing, numbing quality of ambient content. Functional stimulus in the form of culture is so big these days, whether it’s ambient music or ASMR videos.
Sleep sounds…
So now sometimes, culture exists in a functional context rather than an artistic context. You’re like, “Oh I watch The Office to fall asleep,” or, “I listen to this track while I run because it sustains my exercise.” I personally always want to make an argument for culture for its own sake and for thinking deeply about artistic process and ideas.
Originally published on Esquire US
Archie Madekwe doesn’t get enough sleep. A self-professed night owl, he will get up at dawn if work dictates. Like today, for this interview. “Also,” Madekwe adds, “if I do wake up late, I’d feel gross [for wasting the day]. I often don’t but I’m working on getting better at it.”
We caught up with him at his London home, in his bedroom, possibly. He’s attired in a long-sleeved sweater and light blue denim jeans. A five o’clock shadow does little to weather his boyish looks.
His parents named him “Archie” after Archie Bell & The Drells. “My mom and dad are big Motown fans,” Madekwe says. “My mom got really set on that name. If not ‘Archie’, it would have been ‘Art’, and I’m glad that wasn’t the case.
“‘Archie’ is more subtle.”
Subtlety seems to be the theme of Archie Madekwe’s acting career. His roles, at least the ones that matter, seem to be carefully curated. He may not be a household name but he’s slowly becoming a familiar face on the screens, big and small.
In the early days, his UK agents, Olivia Woodward and Alex Sedgley, worked with Madekwe to be deliberate about the roles he took on. “Our aim was to make sure I’d be considered for the everyman part.
“I’ve been really lucky in that a lot of those initial jobs I took fell under that last category,” Madekwe says. “They could have easily cast a white actor for [Edward Albee’s play, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?], I was in Les Misérables, which could have had an all-white cast.”
It was The Secret Life of Bees that informed him that it was possible for a person of colour to grace the screen. More specifically, Sophie Okonedo. “[She] was so unbelievable in it,” Madekwe had said in a conversation with fellow thespian Josh O’Connor, “I remember looking her up, seeing that she was from London and that she was mixed race—she was a North Star for me. In my mind, she was the validation that I could do it, that there were people like me doing it.”
Years later, Madekwe would join the cast of Albee’s The Goat. Okonedo was in it as well and she played his mom. He told her about how inspirational she was in his formative years. “Sophie remains a really good friend and we actually just worked together again so I remind her about that a lot,” Madekwe says with a smile on his face. “It’s important to remind people of the impact they’ve had on you. Especially in this industry, where it is so easy to feel dismissed. And that happens to some of the biggest actors I’ve worked with.”
His West End tenure was also where Madekwe cut his teeth. It was an education that years at the BRIT School or The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art could not impart. What drama schools taught him was confidence, especially when auditioning in a room full of strangers. But does that assurance spill over into other aspects of his life? “It’s not a one-size-fits-all,” he says, “but I do try to apply it to most situations. It’s definitely something that I had to learn throughout my career and try to appear confident even in situations where I don’t feel it. You kinda need to trick yourself into feeling that courage.”
He still finds it hard to watch himself in films. By the time we spoke, he’d only recently watched the finished version of Saltburn at a premiere. “I think there was maybe 2,000 in attendance and it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to put myself through,” Madekwe says, cringing at the memory. “You become so attuned to the audience’s reaction. ‘Why didn’t they laugh at that? Was that bit not funny? Well, I thought it was funny.’ You become hypercritical and now you’re contesting with your own thoughts as opposed to just watching it with the audience.”
Madekwe is jealous of any actor who can watch something of theirs without feeling judgmental. “Must be a lovely feeling.” He did, however, come close to that. He was privy to an early cut of Saltburn and he lost himself, carried away by the story. “At least for a little bit. There were still a couple of clips of myself that I couldn’t get past, but it was the closest I’d come to feeling like an outsider watching my own work.”
Madekwe and Ari Aster became friends during the making of Midsommar. In this horror-in-the-daylight film, Madewke plays Simon, one of the unwitting victims of a Scandinavian folk ritual. Madewke subsequently made an appearance in Aster’s follow-up, Beau is Afraid.
“[Ari and I] became really good friends after Midsommar and we’d been talking about working together again in some capacity. I was filming in Canada and Ari was shooting Beau. I’d asked to meet so we could discuss a potential project. That’s when Ari said, ‘Dude, we should just get you into one of these scenes’.”
That scene is something of a chef’s kiss, an Aster egg (sorry, not sorry). Context is needed: In Midsommar, Madekwe’s Simon was frantically screaming for an elderly couple not to leap off a cliff but in Beau is Afraid, Madekwe’s character (the credit lists him simply as “Laughing Man”) is encouraging a man to jump to his death. Other than having fun on the set with Aster and his producers Tyler Campellone and Lars Knudsen, Madekwe even got to watch Joaquin Phoenix act. “Even if it was for a short moment. I mean, it was so cool.”
Social media is a love-hate affair for him. On one hand, it’s a way to connect with his friends and family; it’s an exposure to other cultures, fashion and art. On the other, he doesn’t like the hold it has on him.
“I hate that I’m not in control of when and how I use it. It’s like muscle memory. I’ve deleted the app before and I’ve found myself tapping my finger on the space where the app used to be.”
Madekwe wishes he had spent less time on it but confesses to enjoying a “weird validation” when people send messages and like his posts. These little interactions become a serotonin boost. “I wish I didn’t rely on that so much. I’m trying to strike a healthy balance with it.”
Being memed is another thing that Madekwe is trying to get used to. The recent one was a Tik-Tok clip of his character, Farleigh Smart, singing Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent” during a karaoke session. It was only six seconds long but it took social media by storm; with fans wanting to see Madekwe sing a cover of it (there won’t be one, Madekwe has confirmed in a separate interview).
“It’s the character Farleigh singing it, so it feels strange when people ask me to sing it again, because I can’t see a context in which recording that would make sense,” Madekwe explains. “I’m still working out my feelings with going viral. There’s something really fun about it and I love that film can have a life of its own, but the exposure is on another level on social media. I’ve really felt that. You feel more eyes on you or people coming over asking for pictures. That’s something that comes with the job, I suppose. No one really teaches you on how to deal with that. It’s something that you had to learn very quickly on your own.”
But Madekwe does have some pipes on him. He loves singing and will be doing so in his next project. “I’m not Ben Platt or an actor that can carry a Broadway show… but singing is something that I’ve always enjoyed.”
Art is another endeavour that Madekwe enjoys as well. Other than the ceramics classes he is taking, Madekwe showcases artists and their work on his Instagram account.
“I have an immense appreciation for art. I love the stories that jump out at me; I love the craft. Over the years, I’ve grown to love it more and I’m excited for it to occupy a larger part of my time.”
He’ll be curating an art show in Atlanta, a project that he’s excited about. As acting can be an all-encompassing force, it sometimes leads Madekwe to neglect and forget about the things that inspire him. “At the end of the day, all those things will feed into the work to make you a better actor, let alone human being.”
There is one particular artwork that left a mark on the actor: Arthur Jafa’s “Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death”. Created in 2016, the seven-minute video essay depicts scenes of the Black Experience. From the elation of Obama singing “Amazing Grace” to the low of police brutality; it’s a kaleidoscope of emotions felt as Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” plays.
“After I first saw it, I went back, maybe 20 more times,” Madekwe says. “I’d constantly bring friends and force them to watch. It’s one of the most impactful pieces of art I’ve ever seen.”
To hammer the point home, he takes out a slim black hardback book that a friend gifted him recently. He opens to the front cover and points to the inscription on it: it’s addressed to Madekwe and signed by Arthur Jafa.
Madekwe's 1.95cm height has become an identifying trait for the actor in articles and interviews. “[My height] has always been an anxiety for me,” Madekwe says. “When I was younger, somebody warned me that my height would get in the way of my acting career and I thought, ‘How the hell can I control how tall I grow?’” His disquietude ballooned until he was consumed with Googling ways to stunt his growth, including but not limited to height reduction surgery.
There have been one or two instances in his life where a casting director explained a lead actor didn’t want to be captured with someone as tall as him. “But overall, I’ve never found a lack of work because of my height.”
However, a lack of work did occur during the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) strike. When the SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) couldn’t agree on labour, IP rights and compensation, actors working on American productions were asked to refrain from working on or promoting any finished films or TV shows.
“With every kind of fibre of my being, I was in support of the strike,” Madekwe says. “And yet… personally and selfishly, [Gran Turismo] was supposed to be one of the most exciting moments of my career and I was unable to talk about the project at all.”
It was frustrating as this was his first leading role. “If I’m honest, the worst part of it was not being able to laude the crew and cast that worked so hard on the film,” Madekwe says. “But, in the end, it’s a small sacrifice to pay when you’re working towards fair compensation.”
In 2023, Perri Nemiroff, a senior producer for the online entertainment site, Collider, remarked that Madekwe was having the best year with Gran Turismo and Saltburn. And she’s right. To lead a major studio film and be part of an exceptional ensemble, all within the span of a year, that is no small feat.
He’s in the zone now; a flow state. With a slate of projects in development, a new film in the pipeline and exciting forays into fashion and art, it seems that the actor has “miles to go before [he sleeps again]”.
He stands at the threshold, between the past and what-will-happen; a place of possibilities.
Photography: Charlie Gray
Fashion Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Adele Cany
Grooming: Maya Man at STELLA CREATIVE ARTISTS using CURLSMITH and 111SKIN
Styling Assistant: Zoe Glanville
When one thinks of Moncler these days, its often that two things come to mind. One, the collaborative efforts that drop on an almost monthly basis with some of the biggest names in fashion and pop culture; and two, those highly dependable (and sought after) down jackets.
But it is Moncler Grenoble that propelled the brand into what it is today. Moncler's super technical and professional pillar, Moncler Grenoble is named after the French city where the 1968 Winter Olympics was held. Moncler officially kitted the French downhill team, and needless to say, the team pretty much dominated that category for that edition of the Games.
Over the years, Moncler Grenoble has evolved while staying true to its aim of creating superior skiwear with a host of technical capabilities. The line now includes both men's and women's collections that offer après-ski options as well as professional-level skiwear—all designed with Moncler's contemporary aesthetics with nods to its heritage. The latest iteration (55 years since it was first conceived) is a fine example of this endeavour.
Punctuated with bold colours, the Moncler Grenoble Autumn/Winter 2023 collection amps up its High Performance subdivision with nifty design elements such as ski pass pockets, GORE-TEX fabrications, and heat-sealed laser-cut zipper patches. The Après Ski line consists of tactile knits, while the less technical (but still ski-appropriate) Performance & Style line feature pieces that are easily transitional. And because form and function are key tenets of all things Moncler in general, the entire Moncler Grenoble collection is meant to be seamlessly paired with one another.
The latest campaign stars a quartet of Moncler Grenoble ambassadors: Cai Xuetong, Perrine Laffont, Shaun White, and Richard Permin. All ski stars in their own right, the campaign captures them in their skilled element, all while displaying the high performance and style of the collection.
French skier Permin's journey is much like Moncler Grenoble's—a natural evolution and progression built from an undying passion for the sport. And as we learn from the man himself, a love for where it all started.
ESQUIRE SINGAPORE: You’ve worked with Moncler for a couple of years now. How is this partnership different perhaps from that you’ve experienced with other brands?
RICHARD PERMIN: Working with Moncler has been a fantastic experience for the past couple of years. What sets this partnership apart is the brand's commitment to pushing the boundaries of style and performance. Moncler's fusion of high-quality materials with innovative designs aligns seamlessly with my vision, allowing me to express myself athletically and aesthetically. The collaborative spirit and emphasis on excellence make this partnership truly unique in enhancing both my skiing performance and personal style.
ESQ: What’s one thing about the latest Moncler Grenoble collection you think avid skiers would appreciate?
RP: The latest Moncler Grenoble collection is stunning, especially the entire GORE-TEX range. I'm particularly loving the Montgirod jacket—for its incredibly stylish design, and the GORE-TEX membrane that adds another level of quality and durability to the product. The collection has got a bit of everything for every style, whether it's on the slopes or in freeride. Personally, I rock the GORE-TEX line daily in the mountains—walking, hiking, skiing, it's my go-to.
ESQ: The kind of skiing that you’ve pioneered is a combination of showmanship and technical skill. How do you prepare for these acrobatic feats? Is it a lot of trials and experimentations or have you done things in the spur of the moment?
RP: I've gotta give credit to the journey, you know? Started from alpine, grooved through freestyle and freeride, and here I am, merging experience and style. Training's a mix of reps, getting cozy with the mountain vibes year after year. It lets me level up in the mountains, keeping that cool, calm vibe but safety always riding shotgun. Because, you know, safety's the MVP in this game.
ESQ: What is it about skiing that gets you still passionate about it?
RP: Skiing's my grind, where freedom meets challenges, and the stoke never fades. Lately, I'm deep into video projects, rolling with the crew, and it's not just a job—it's the mountain passion on repeat, fuelled by determination and the love for the game and to be out there.
ESQ: How did you get into filmmaking?
RP: Getting into filmmaking for me is a natural extension of freeride skiing. Competitions are part of the sport, but when you're navigating uncharted terrains, films become integral. They've always been a key aspect of freeride skiing, enabling us to showcase the level each year. We operate in secluded areas where there's no audience, so films become the medium to share the experience. From the start, it fascinated me, and I prioritised capturing beautiful visuals even more than winning medals. It's ingrained in the culture—a way to share the passion and elevate the sport.
ESQ: What challenges have you faced in your career and how did you solve it?
RP: The biggest challenges in my career have been injuries, which typically demand a substantial recovery period. Additionally, conceptualising projects might seem great on paper, but executing them in reality is often far more complicated. So, these are challenges that you solve on the field and require a significant amount of time and patience.
ESQ: How does one become a good skier?
RP: Shred like a pro, swap walking time for ski time. It's all about sliding, not striding!
ESQ: Where’s your favourite place to ski thus far?
RP: Europe holds a special place since it's where I began, and then there's the love for British Columbia, Alaska, and Japan.
ESQ: What is your future plan and target?
RP: I've got some exciting travels lined up—Japan, Georgia, and Norway. As for target: it's all about snow conditions and terrain, so there's a lot of on-the-spot improvisation. The charm lies in the unpredictability—you never know what you'll encounter, and that's where imagination kicks in.
The Moncler Grenoble Autumn/Winter 2023 collection is available now on moncler.com and in select Moncler boutiques.
This story contains spoilers for the Season Two finale of Loki.
It's been—what's the word?—a hectic couple of months for Loki's executive producer and head writer, Eric Martin. Rolling out a six-episode television series from a billion-dollar-plus-grossing superhero universe is no easy feat, even during normal times. But doing it during an actors' strike, which pretty much shifts the promotion of said television series entirely onto your own shoulders? Phew.
So when I caught up with Martin not even 24 hours after Loki's uber-chaotic Season Two finale aired, I asked him, you know, how he was doing. "I'm good," he said. "Relieved more than anything. I'm not great at celebrating victories. But I definitely felt some pride and had a bunch of people over from the show last night to watch the finale. That was a lovely event."
Even by MCU-postgame standards, we had a lot to talk about. Of course, the Loki finale begged a multiverse's worth of questions: Is Tom Hiddleston's Loki the most powerful being in this entire story, quite literally holding time and space together? Will Owen Wilson's Mobius transition to a full-time, Heineken-sipping suburban dad? Is Season Three in the cards?
Also, how Martin handled the ongoing legal issues of star Jonathan Majors, which emerged after filming wrapped. Uneven responses from reviewers and fans, too. Add to that, Variety's explosive dispatch from earlier this month, which alleged significant turmoil at Marvel.
Here, Martin opened up about Loki's journey to true godliness, where Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie goes next, his thoughts on Loki's critics, and more. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ERIC MARTIN: That's an interesting question, because time isn't passing. I always approached it as if there is a [nutritive] requirement. Thermodynamics still apply and they need to create energy to move. But they don't get much time for it. Everything moves quickly at the TVA. You're always working and you get your nine-minute lunch break. There was a great gag we had in Season One. We ended up just having to cut it, but it was funny. We see a hunter in the cafeteria—they finish their meal, and then they just prune the tray. Instead of throwing anything away.
The big idea was taking Loki from a lowercase-g god, to a capital-G God, powering him up to that place where he gets his throne—but it's not a throne he wants anymore. This is a duty. He's doing this so everyone else can have their lives. He's giving up the thing that he wants most so that everyone else can have their free will… We wanted to power up his abilities, but also his wisdom and knowledge.
I leave that up to interpretation. That final image is meant to be ambiguous. So I'll let people make up their own minds there. If you look into mythology, someone like Atlas is an interesting person to look at with that.
Mobius was the one in turmoil through all of this, truly not knowing which way to go. As much as he was this rascal that kind of broke the rules a little bit, he was a company man. Now, finding out that company isn't a place [where] he wants to work scrambled everything going into Season Two. So it's like, Well, what is my role? He just takes on the mission, while trying to ignore the other possibilities that are now out there. So with him by the end of the season, it's like he's just now able to go explore and figure out the opportunities that are out there.
Sylvie is interesting, because of all the stuff with McDonald's and her living that quiet life. It feels very gap year-ish. I'm not quite ready to grow up and do the thing. And she was pulled out of that. Now the work begins. I'm not sure where she goes from here. But I don't think she's going to live just a quiet life. Maybe she would. I don't know. But she's going to make a very active decision about what she's going to do—whatever that is. She's making that choice. It isn't just like, Oh, I'm going to feel things out. She's going to go in a direction.
Oh, yeah. It was amazing. Everything was so period-specific. McDonald's has an in-house historian that advises on [projects like this]. It's one of those things I never considered like, Is that a thing? And then it's like, Of course it is. That's a gigantic company.
I'll let people muse about what that can mean. She's up in the air. There are things that can happen with her. If you look to the comics, there are some fun inferences that can be drawn from the pyramid. And you know, who knows? Does Alioth kill her? Or did they strike up a friendship? Maybe Alioth remembers her? I don't know.
You know, it's just: Try to keep it about the show. Let's do the best thing we can, here. There's so much, like—we just don't know about anything. So, OK, what can we do with our show? Let's just treat our show with respect, and you see what happens. It's a difficult situation all the way around.
You know, that's a larger studio conversation. For us, we were just focused on what we had and making that.
Yeah, no, we didn't do any reshoots for this season. There was no additional photography. So everything we shot, there in London, is what we see.
That is a decision that is made above my pay grade. They decide who's going to end up in what things.
I actually don't know what the overall story is going to be. Things are so siloed off. I hope that we've been good teammates and created fertile ground for other things. The goal is to make it so good that the rest of the MCU comes to you. Obviously, I'd love to see all of our characters live on—OB and Ke certainly deserve to continue on. I'd be shocked if they didn't use them.
Thanks for watching? [Laughs.] No, I mean, I don't want to be ridiculous about that. Seriously, thanks for watching, and I hope they stuck with it. I think we had a challenging season with a lot going on. And I'm sure people at points got a little frustrated, like, Well, is this gonna lead to anything? But it always was.
That's the tough thing about Rotten Tomatoes, and people reviewing and weighing in on things that are in progress. Nobody's going out and reviewing a movie at the midpoint. It doesn't make any sense. You need to see the whole [season]. But I hope they stuck around, and I hope it landed for them. Ultimately, I'm just glad they watched.
Yeah, for sure. I'm really happy. We had a weekly release. It's good for the industry; for the viewers; for the people making it. It makes what we do a little more precious, and it doesn't reduce it down to your weekend binge, and then you forget about it. It's good to live with these things, and to absorb them and fight about it. It makes it all more valuable.
Originally published on Esquire US
I discovered that there exists (at least) two Mark Ronsons. Mark1 is a thoughtful intellectual, who ponders over every word before pronouncing it, who slowly and timidly guides you into his inner world and opens the treasure chest of his creative process, refined by a life of total immersion in music and attention in the studio to every detail, every beat and every note. Mark2 is the multi-instrumentalist stage animal who, in a double-breasted suit, closed the Montreux Festival while scratching on turntables live, dragging the audience along like a rocker, directing a band of nine of the best soul and jazz musicians in the world, deus ex machina of a sound performance that—evidently—fills him with joy, especially when the irrepressible wave of music that Mark2 evokes live on stage coincides with the one that Mark1 had designed in his head.
I meet Mark1 on the morning of the Montreux Festival. Slender, wearing a pair of sunglasses with bottle green lenses that he will not remove, and clad in a faded T-shirt, he enters the room where I wait for him, almost asking for permission. He looks younger than his 48 years.
He sits on a corner sofa that seems too big for him, but his presence and concentration, contrast with his physical appearance. We understand that this will be a real interview, that he is here to answer, and which he will do seriously, for the time that we need. There are many other people in the room, but they stay at a respectful distance away, as if not wanting to disturb the process through which answers, thoughts and anecdotes emerge from the well of his conscience. He himself seems to become aware of some of his reflections as he recounts them, as if he were noticing them for the first time.
What I earlier assumed to be fatigue and detachment is instead his way of adhering to reality. It is the way he often presents himself even when he is among others—almost as if he likes standing a little to the side, watching his thoughts pass by. I had observed him the evening before, at a dinner, having recently arrived in Switzerland with his wife Grace Gummer, the daughter of Meryl Streep. The couple had remained apart from others for a long time, him gently embracing her by the midsection, or assisting her while she applied eye drops, or leaning against a column applauding an impromptu jam session by the musicians in a lake-view cottage turned museum owned by Claude Nobs, founder of the festival. Eyes always a little widened, he has a look that reveals more than he would like. His head is often slightly tilted—the same pose assumed by animals when studying the situation.
Only one topic is taboo: we cannot speak about the Barbie soundtrack, which at the time of this interview has yet to be released and which Ronson produced by bringing together a very diverse cast of stars: from Dua Lipa to Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Lizzo, Charli XCX, Tame Impala and Billie Eilish.
INTERVIEWER: You manage to produce projects that are very different from one another. You jump between different genres. How do you do it? What holds them together?
MR: The first album I produced, almost 20 years ago, was by Nikka Costa. In a timespan this vast, if you really love many genres of music, you evolve, you jump here and there. I could never imagine doing just one thing, I am not judging those who do. I love soul, jazz, funk, hip hop... I grew up listening to all these genres—a somewhat schizophrenic childhood, musically speaking. I loved being a DJ, but my stepfather was in a rock band. I was very fortunate. Of course, looking back now there are also some projects that on hindsight makes me say, “Maybe I went a little too far here”. But, deep down, at the root of the music that I really love is usually a great melody, a great vocal or instrumental performance, and a great groove, a great rhythm. If you think about it, you can say the same about many genres, from Fleetwood Mac to Earth, Wind & Fire, to A Tribe Called Quest and Quincy Jones. Groove and melody are transversal, common in many genres.
INTERVIEWER: When Audemars Piguet announced that you would be producing the closing night of the Festival, you said that the lineup would be “the best band that I have ever put together”.
MR: These musicians are the ones that have given life to some of my best records. Therefore, this is the best band that I have ever put together. Montreux is not just any festival, it is an event that celebrates music, representing so many different things. But for me, in my head, it is Aretha Franklin. It is Miles Davis. It is Nina Simone. It is Curtis Mayfield, the Average White Band, all these incredible soul and funk records that I love, that made me fall in love with music. So I really wanted to do something special.
Then I had this idea to bring some of my favourite musicians, to have their bands perform. I thought, well, since we have all of them here during the evening anyway, these musicians who played in all my records, from “Back to Black” to “Uptown Funk” to the productions for Rufus Wainwright, we could do something truly special at the end of the evening, something we have never done before. Bringing those songs to the public, perhaps just once performed by the people who created the magic in the studio. Guys like Tommy and Homer, and the bassist, even after they recorded “Back to Black”, they only did six or seven concerts with Amy [Winehouse]. Then Amy went on tour with another band, so there were few opportunities. All these musicians have built successful careers over time, writing other songs. Some of them, like the base group that played on “Back to Black”, never played together again in the same lineup that recorded the album. It is really special and moving. When you hear it you say, “Damn, it sounds like we are recording the album.” It is as if it’s the first day, when we pressed the button and recorded. It’s how it was, for example, with “He Can Only Hold Her”. Finally, having Yebba here is really important. To honour and celebrate Amy, one of the greatest singers of all time, you definitely have to have someone very special. I truly believe that Yebba is one of the best singers of her generation, and I also think that she has incredible courage and talent to stand up and say, “Yes, let’s sing something about Amy,” while at the same time bringing her own personality to it all.
INTERVIEWER: What was it like bringing them together? How did you work together?
MR: We tried like crazy, also because I am a bit anxious. We tried to the point that some of them wanted to kill me. They are super professionals, musicians who learn a song in five minutes and on that same evening, they play it on Jimmy Fallon [Editor’s note: host of The Tonight Show, one of the most important broadcasts on the NBC network]. I am not like that, I must play and try. We learnt 18 songs that we had never done before. All in five days. In some of the sets, I deejay a cappella while the band plays. There are a lot of things that could go wrong, go haywire. There are no computers to correct it, we are live. Risky but fun. Even if we make a mess, they will be wonderful mistakes. [Editor’s note: that evening, I will notice only one mistake during the performance. In fact, it will be extraordinary, almost as if it served to remind us how fragile and difficult it can be to achieve harmony and perfection].
INTERVIEWER: :You won an Oscar for “Shallow”, a Golden Globe, seven Grammys, an endless list of other awards. Is there one you are most attached to?
MR: If you ask me to choose one, I’ll tell you producer of the year for “Back to Black”. In the end, I feel more like a producer than an artist, and that is why it is important to have someone telling you, “Hey, you’re the best producer this year”. Whatever they say about these awards, I think that one really recognises the essence, and the craftmanship that I feel in my work.
INTERVIEWER: You have produced and composed for some of the biggest stars in pop, hip hop, soul, funk and rock. How do you prepare for each of these meetings? How do you manage to bring out the best in each of them, to take them where they do not usually go?
MR: I try to feel them, to understand them. I could have had an entire album ready in my head before seeing Lady Gaga. But she arrives in the studio that first day, expressing a certain emotion, a song. My job is to chase that emotion, to try to catch it. My friend Richard Russell—great producer—says that this job consists of being constantly in tune, in making a series of right decisions continuously. Trying to emotionally intuit what is happening to the artist. Then, of course, there is the writing, the arrangement. When I started working with Lady Gage on “Joanne”, something happened. She loves jazz, and given my previous work with Amy, for all these reasons I imagine she had the idea that maybe we would make a jazz record.
We were in the studio, trying to understand each other, and she said to me, “You love jazz, right?” And I replied, “Yes, of course, but I don’t know it that well”. I like funk and soul, but I cannot write orchestral arrangements like Quincy Jones. In short, she was trying to take me in that direction. I looked at her, we were in the studio in Malibu, California, she was dressed in denim shorts, boots and a cowboy hat. Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled towards country, a kind of Stevie Nicks [Editor’s Note: musician, soloist and lead singer of Fleetwood Mac] vibe. We started working on “Joanne”, a song that she was writing. At first it could have been a jazz motif, then almost fingerpicking, very acoustic.
Eventually, it transformed into something totally different, which resulted in the record and even the genre of “A Star is Born”. I try to always have an antenna ready to pick up, to be aware of the direction we could take. It is good to be prepared for anything: when you go to the studio on the first day, you must be open to every possibility, you must always be ready to change direction.
INTERVIEWER: You are a good listener.
MR: I believe this is the producer’s most important tool. An emotional listen. Producers must constantly hear the arrangements, the music, the melody and the harmony. But the ears can be useful for much more than just simple, technical listening to music.
INTERVIEWER: Could you feel immediately that some of the musicians you met would become stars?
MR: I think if there really was something that you could intuit, like for Clive Davis [Editor’s note: the producer who discovered Whitney Houston] then I’d be much richer than I am. I can only tell if they have something that moves me, that I have never heard before, if they have a sound so unique that nothing and no one resembles it. Furthermore, even if I were able to feel that they are extraordinary, it does not mean that I would be able to help them release that hidden gift. But I find it really exciting to work with artists who are just starting out because it is all new to them, so exciting. It takes me back to my early days when I felt that way too. It is an energy. Like drinking from the fountain of youth.
INTERVIEWER: There are many rankings of the best songs that you have produced, all arbitrary and subjective. I have chosen one of the supposed top 10 compiled by Billboard some time ago. I would like you to tell us something about each of them, ok?
MR: Ok.
INTERVIEWER: The first is “Ooh Wee”.
MR: Ah, that, I am proud of it. Last month, I did a surprise DJ set in London with a friend of mine, who has this truck with a system, speakers and so on. Something that we announced only an hour before. Around 200 kids showed up and I started with “Ooh Wee”. It is a song that is almost 20 years old, birthed with Nate Dogg and Ghostface Killah, the one that took me to Montreux for the first time in 2004, and it still works, it sounds so lively. I am proud of it. And I am grateful for that record, I have a perfect song to start a DJ set with a hip hop sound. Always rocks.
INTERVIEWER: “Littlest Things”, with Lily Allen.
MR: This takes me back to an intimate era. It was before I found success as a producer. Lily Allen was so brilliant. A couple of her singles had come out and were doing well. She came to New York, we were friends and I think she was 20 years old. We went around the city into record shops looking for tunes to sample.
A bit like rummaging through garbage, something of that sort. I think that the piece we sampled was in the soundtrack of Emmanuelle. The piano riff came from there, I think. Basically, I put the record on the turntable, put on my headphones and said, “Cool. Lily, come here”. She listens, she likes it. We returned to the studio and in one hour, the song was born. I ended up opening for her tour, right when she was blowing up in the States. It was really fun.
INTERVIEWER: “Back to Black”, with Amy Winehouse.
MR: This is a somewhat swirling memory, a sort of tornado of memories. I met Amy at three in the afternoon, I think it was a Tuesday. She came to my studio in New York. We sat and talked about music. Usually, when a singer comes to me, I already have songs for them to listen to, “What do you say to this, what do you think?” But she was so fantastic, special, unique. I knew I had nothing new to make an impression with, and she was leaving to return to England the next day. She was supposed to be in New York for only one day. I told her, like, “I don’t have anything for you to hear right now, come back in the morning”. You know what, I stayed up all night because I wanted something that could work. I told myself, “Amaze her, make her stay”. The opening piano riff and drums of “Back to Black” came out. She liked them, stayed in New York for another five days. She wrote the lyrics in half an hour, I burned the track like how it was done in the old days, on CD. She went to the back room, the track was probably only a minute and a half long, she started listening to it and rewinding it to write the lyrics. It was pretty crazy.
INTERVIEWER: “Cold Shoulder”, by Adele.
MR: It was born because of Amy. You know, working with her was what made me famous. Richard Russell, the founder of XL Records said to me, “Would you like to come and meet this girl, Adele?” I entered his studio and there was a big sofa, almost like the one we are sitting on now. She looked like an 18-year-old girl, sitting cross-legged. She did not stop smoking. This is Adele, they told me. And I’m like, “Oh, nice to meet you”. She replied, “My pleasure. I have this demo, the song is called ‘Cold Shoulder’, I’d like to know if you’d be interested in producing it”. I listened to it, it was cool, just her and the Wurlitzer piano.
I do not know why I said it, maybe I was a little greedy, or I felt that I had to say something, or I had a hangover, so I was like, “Oh, cool. Are there other songs?” And she said, “No, just this one”. It was practically take it or leave it. “Do you want to work with me? This is the song I’m telling you to produce.” It went like this. To be honest, I wish I had done a better job on that song. It was a period when I had just achieved my first success. I was running everywhere; I was on tour. We went to a different studio than the usual, with musicians and sound engineers I did not usually record with. We had only one day to make this song. In retrospect, I wish I had done a little better with the sound and production. Anyway, I mean, it is still great and, obviously, her voice is incredible, so whatever.
INTERVIEWER: “Mirrors”, by Wale.
MR: Yes, cool, with Wale. I remember Jay-Z listening to that track, but I had already promised it for Wale. I think a great friend of my manager at that time said, “You know, Jay-Z heard that track, he wants it.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t even know what to say... Of course, it’s a dream to have Jay-Z wanting to collaborate with me.” But I had already promised the track to Wale, he was my friend, as well as an artist on my label, and obviously Bun B is also on the track. I love that song because hip hop is one of my greatest musical loves, but it’s not a predominant part of the music that I have made. For some reason, I took my love of hip hop and drums, and fused them with other music genres. I took the hip hop influence, and I combined it with Amy or whoever. But there are some tracks in my career, like “Mirrors” and “Fried Chicken” with Nas and Busta Rhymes, maybe a few others, that I am very proud of.
INTERVIEWER: “Alligator”, with Paul McCartney.
MR: Working with Paul McCartney is a scary thing because, not only are you there with, you know, perhaps the greatest singer/producer/arranger ever. For me it is a little like being with Stevie Wonder, I suppose. But you are also in a room with the ghosts of Jeff Lynne, Nigel Godrich, George Martin, and every other great producer with whom McCartney has worked with. I noticed that on the first day Paul allows you to stumble, look stupid, make mistakes. I imagine that everyone behaves like this on the first day with Paul McCartney. But I also felt that on the second day, it is best that you wake up and start bringing good ideas. I always remember and think about something he said when we were recording that song, “Alligator”. It starts with an acoustic guitar, and I set up the microphone with this acoustic guitar. It sounded good, sounded like an acoustic guitar. It was not anything incredibly special. He listens and says, “No, it’s an acoustic guitar. I want it to sound like a record.” In other words, make that sound iconic, because I have recorded seven million acoustic guitars in my life. I want that when I hit the first chord it sounds like someone putting the needle down on the first groove of a vinyl record for the first time. It was a fantastic comment. “It is just a guitar, make it sound like a record.”
INTERVIEWER: “Baby Blue”, with Action Bronson.
MR: Oh, I missed that song. So, I actually still have a couple of hip hop records. I like Bronson and his music, you know, he is from New York. Now the city is no longer the centre of hip hop, there is Atlanta, the South, Los Angeles. The phenomenon is completely global, from London to Italy. So when someone from New York comes along I feel a sense of pride; today we would be talking about Ice Spice or someone else. Anyway, when Bronson arrived, it really seemed like he revived the New York scene. So we made this song together. At that time, I was finishing “Uptown Funk” and I was in my studio in London. Chance the Rapper was there for a show, and he came to the studio. He asked me, “What are you working on?” I replied, “Oh a bit of this and that.” Then I made him listen to Bronson’s song. And he goes, “Who the hell is this?” “Action Bronson,” I replied. “I want to jump on board,” he said. “Well, I can’t say yes because this is his stuff, he likes it a lot. But you two know each other, so, why don’t you put a verse in there anyway? Then I can get him to listen to it.” Chance did a good job. Action also liked the verse a lot. In the end they worked together, made a video and everything.
Another interesting thing about that track is that when Bronson and I started working on it, Zane Lowe the Apple Music DJ had a studio above mine in London and came downstairs to return a cable, or something of that sort that he had borrowed. He heard the music and said, “Oh, that’s cool. You should do a chorus like, ‘Why you always all on my back...’” And I replied distractedly, “Yes, thanks Zane. You can put it there.” Instead, Bronson said, “Cool! What were you singing?” That was the only time when my ears were not open when they should have been. I was an idiot. It was my friend from the floor above, I did not expect him to come and write a chorus like that, out of the blue. But this was how that lucky refrain was born.
INTERVIEWER: “Uptown Funk”.
MR: It is just... it is incredible to think how humble the beginnings of that song were. Bruno [Mars] had a little studio in West Hollywood, not really in West Hollywood, but in Hollywood, in the worst part of town. It was a tiny studio with a drum kit set up in a back room that looked more like an office. There was also a fax machine, it was probably an office in the past, the drum kit was in there. All very cramped.
That evening we were simply improvising. Bruno went into that office and started playing the drums. I played bass, Jeff Bhasker the synthesisers. In truth, we had no precise idea what we were doing. We were just playing. I played some sort of bass line; it was very groovy and fun. There is something truly beautiful when you let yourself be carried away, sometimes with friends or people you hang out with. We continued to play for around five hours, much longer than was necessary. Then we entered the room and Bruno played “All Gold Everything” by Trinidad James. We said, “Let’s get busy with that rhythm, but let’s put our own words into it.” We went on like this. Bruno, Jeff, Phil [Lawrence], and I sitting on two sofas, just like this one. And then someone said, “Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold” [Editor’s note: the second verse of the song]. And that was when we thought, “Oh this is a strong verse, there is something here.”
BUT IT TOOK A LONG time to finish that song after that night, wherever we were, because Bruno was on tour, in Memphis, in Toronto and so on. We were trying to recreate that same feeling from the first night, but it was as if we could not get ahold of it any more. We continued to look for the excitement of the first night, so it took us a long time. Seven months to finish the song because we wanted every part to be as emotional as the first verse we wrote. Eventually, we got there, but there were many moments when, out of frustration, we were about to give up.
INTERVIEWER: Luckily that did not happen.
MR: I knew it was for my album, I was interested in finishing it. I waited a few weeks, so that everyone would forget how exasperated we were that night. So I said, “Guys, do you want to get back together and finish that song, you know?” And off we went again. Each time we got a little closer.
INTERVIEWER: We have already talked about Lady Gaga, but one of the songs is “Million Reasons”.
MR: It was very lucky that I walked into the room at the right moment, when she was working with Hillary Lindsey, a great country singer from Nashville. It was already evening, they were already well into working on the album. I think I might have been away for the weekend because I was deejaying or something. And then I arrived just as they were almost finishing the song. They could have probably completed a great song without me, but I came in and wrote some chords for the bridge between the chorus and verse. And I helped to complete the outro. Those are the two songs on that album that I think have held up best, “Joanne” and “Million Reasons”, the ones that are a little more touching, let’s say.
INTERVIEWER: Last on the list is “Find U Again”, with Camila Cabello.
MR: It is fruit of the genius of Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, you know. He had practically the entire instrumental idea. And he had the melody. I added some drums and helped with the lyrics, but honestly, Kevin had this killer demo right when I was working on my “Late Night Feelings” album. Kevin and I had probably worked on that song in different versions, changing the beat, the arrangement, you know, different instrumentation, probably for a year. I was always there saying, “We must do something important with this song. The melody is too beautiful.” Then, at the last minute, while I was finishing the album, I managed to get in touch with Camila Cabello, who I was a fan of. We did not know each other, and I proposed the song to her. And she said, “Yes, I like it. I want to write on it.”
INTERVIEWER: Did we miss any other songs which you wanted to talk about [Editor’s note: and while I say it I think of hits like “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”, with Miley Cyrus.]?
MR: I would say no. I am sorry; I cannot talk about the soundtrack project that I have just finished [Editor’s note: Barbie]. But apart from that, I cannot think of any songs in particular right now. In our set tonight, we will be playing some beautiful ones. There are also a couple of songs like “I Need a Dollar” and other songs that the guys wrote that I have nothing to do with, but we play them anyway. They are also their songs. But when I look at the setlist for tonight, songs like “Somebody to Love Me” or “He Can Only Hold Her”, seem like the right ones. It is really incredible for me, especially because I am not a conventional artist or singer, to have made five albums with this variety of songs. Some I have forgotten, honestly, but others are very special for me. It is a great fortune to be here in Montreux to play them.
INTERVIEWER: You are something more than an ambassador, I would say almost a curator for the Audemars Piguet musical project at this point, right?
MR: Yes, it is a truly positive relationship. We could not do this show tonight without AP. They are patrons of the arts. François [Editor’s note: François-Henry Bennahmias, CEO of AP] is passionate about music and during our first meeting, one of the first things that came up was Montreux. Tonight’s show is very financially demanding, I would have to play here for three weeks in a row if I wanted to afford all this, and I would probably have to deejay at every after-show party and wash the dishes of the restaurant on the terrace. So, obviously, I am very grateful. Every project with them has been different. I think for AP it is always important for them to lift the hood and show the public the creative process: the first time Lucky Daye and I made a song together; we filmed the day we composed it. For this evening, we started a collaboration with Daphnee Lanternier who created an incredible conceptual scenography. The thing I am sorry about is that we will only do one show. It is like this is the only time I can go on stage and feel like I am Daft Punk. In short, we manage to think up something interesting every time and we really try to create art. We are not just here for a branding exercise.
INTERVIEWER: Let’s continue to look under the hood of the creative process. How do you look for inspiration?
MR: It is strange, emotions cannot be controlled. You can manage them, but the emotions themselves determine the music you create. If you have a bad day and you feel melancholy, that will be reflected in the music. You could never do the opposite, say, “Ok, now I want to be melancholic because I have to write a song like this.” You cannot go into the studio every day and create something extraordinary or exceptional. You just have to follow the emotion. You can never do the opposite or try to influence the emotion itself too much.
INTERVIEWER: How do you recharge?
MR: I meditate. It is one of the things that I do. I try to leave my phone in another room when I am in the studio. It is so easy to pick it up every 45 seconds, but this disconnects you from the creative process. I stay home with my wife and daughter [Editor’s note: he and Grace Gummer had a baby girl a few months ago]. This is the best way to recharge.
INTERVIEWER: What is your relationship with success?
MR: I feel lucky, no one follows me on the street. If I happen to be walking in my neighbourhood, and someone approaches me and says, “Hi, I love your music.” They do not even ask me for photos, they just want me to know that they appreciate what I do. This is ideal. I worked with many artists and people who, once they reach a certain level of success are forced to change the way they live, how they move, and they cannot even go out. This is not something I want for myself, nor for my family.
INTERVIEWER: You grew up immersed in music, when did you start making it?
MR: I started playing the drums when I was very little, I think I was three or four years old. When we moved to New York, my mother married my stepfather, Mick Jones, who had a recording studio because he was the guitarist for Foreigner. He let me record little demos with all the sophisticated equipment that I barely knew how to use. I loved making demos. There was something about the moments when I was alone in that room, like, “Now I will play the drums, then I am going to overdub the bass and the keyboard.” It was something so powerful and immersive. Four hours could pass in an instant. I liked it. At first I did not even write my own songs, I did covers. I was rerecording songs like Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Wishing Well”, note by note, the songs that I loved.
INTERVIEWER: That album [“Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby”, 1987] is beautiful. I consumed it.
MR: It is incredible, truly incredible. An extraordinary album. It’s funny, I never thought about it until you asked me. It is funny because, in becoming a record producer, my first passion for music was not so much “I want to get on stage and play rock guitar” but it was more “I love being in this environment where I can control the sound.” Now it seems obvious to me, and I think that there are definitely strong parallels with being a DJ, there too you find yourself at the console managing the levels and sounds. You control how people listen to the music. Yes, I think that period, when I was 10 or 11 years old and I was going to my stepfather’s studio, was instrumental.
INTERVIEWER: When did you understand that this would be your life?
MR: It did not happen right away; I was not sure of it. I loved music so much. I worked as an intern during the summer at Rolling Stone magazine. I did not know if I wanted to write about music or create it, because I was not a piano prodigy. It was not so obvious as to say, “Here, this is your path.” I was trying to understand it, but I think that it was around 16 or 17 years old when I decided that this was going to be my path.
INTERVIEWER: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
MR: I do not have an answer. I always feel disappointed that I do not have something specific to say. Like, “I want to be on the moon broadcasting the first live concert” or something of the sort. I simply do what I love most. And I continue to challenge myself and constantly evolve in all that I do. Now I am composing film soundtracks. I am happy as long as I challenge myself musically and conceptually, and continue to do what I love.
I do not have grand ambitions, so to speak. I am currently writing a book on the New York nightlife of the ’90s, about my journey as a DJ and conversations with other DJs. A bit like when Anthony Bourdain was talking to other chefs. It is kind of a funny story about New York at that time.
INTERVIEWER: When does it come out?
MR: I am writing it right now, so I am not sure, but I hope it can be published next year. It takes a bit of time because it is a demanding job and I have never done it before. I have to reconnect with many people, remember some of the stories, and so on. But it has been fun so far.
INTERVIEWER: Is there an artist whom you are listening to with interest, someone promising?
MR: No one comes to mind right now. I would tell you Yebba, I know that she has already released an album, she is not a newcomer, but she is certainly one of my favourite singers and songwriters.
INTERVIEWER: And is there someone whom you would like to work with but have yet to?
MR: My hero is Steve Winwood, even if that is not why I wore this T-shirt [Editor’s note: he is wearing a T-shirt from the 1991 tour]. I do not think that we will ever be able to make a record together, but his solo work, as well as with Spencer Davis, Traffic and Blind Faith, are exceptional. He is so full of soul. The first time I came to Montreux was in 2004 and we went to Claude Nobs’ home. At that time, there was an evening dedicated to hip hop at the festival. I was there with a group of rappers from New York. I remember thinking, “I do not know who is playing the Hammond piano right now, but he is really good.” I looked over there and it was Steve Winwood. I dropped the guitar. I thought, “I am not worthy of playing with Steve Winwood, it’s too much.” That was the only time I was in the same room with him.
Mark1, polite, bids goodbye, stands up and dissolves softly, lightly, fading like a jazz standard, just as he had appeared. Rehearsals and a nap await him before the evening.
Nothing like Mark2’s farewell who, at the end of the concert, seeks the audience’s embrace and riles them up, yelling into the microphone, “My name is Mark Ronson, I hope we will meet again soon.”
Us too.
Photography: Caroline Tompkins
Styling: Antonio Autorino
Photography Assistat: Patrick Woodling
Grooming: Laila Hayani using CASWELL-MASSEY at FORWARD ARTISTS
Production: Sabrina Bearzotti
Translation: Lestari Hairul
Project made in collaboration with Audemars Piguet
ESQUIRE: I watched you in the original musical Let Me Fly. I was surprised. I had thought it would be a science fiction drama after reading the synopsis about a time-travelling female lead, who dreams of becoming a NASA scientist, and a male lead, who wanted to be a fashion designer. Other than that, I didn’t go in with a lot of expectations since I’m not a sci-fi fan. But 40 minutes in, I found myself sobbing.
PARK BO-GUM: (laughs) Thank you so much. I still remember the first time I watched this musical. I personally know Shin Jaebum, who was playing the same Namwon role as I am this season. We were classmates majoring in musical theatre at school. When this musical was playing for the first time last year, he invited me to come see the show. I did, and I was surprised because the production was great. I too wondered if it was a story about space, or about the fashion-designer-wannabe male lead. But it was actually a story about time and love. “It was our journey through time together. Even if I were to be reborn, I will not go back and will choose this path again.” Everything including this line, the numbers, each prop, and stage elements were perfect. On the day I watched it, everyone in the audience cried so much that their masks were wet from tears. I remember leaving the theatre with such happiness and emotions that exceeded whatever I expected before I went in.
ESQ: There were many people in the audience crying loudly on the day I watched it as well. I didn’t want to make a sound, so I clenched my fists like Zo Insung (in the drama Something Happened in Bali). They weren’t tears that emphasised sadness though. They were tears of intense happiness. I enjoyed the show.
PBG: That’s so true. You can hear Namwon’s voice as he sincerely expressed his love to Jungbun despite not remembering anything. This might be a spoiler, but the moment the word “cupcake” is mentioned, the audience realises Sunhee’s true identity.
ESQ: The audience actually knew it before that. But it didn’t matter, we just enjoyed it.
PBG: I’m glad. It makes me so happy to hear that.
ESQ: I’m also surprised that Let Me Fly is playing in such a small theatre with only 300 seats. It’s not every day that we get to see one of Korea’s top drama actors dancing and singing like that. I’m curious about what made you decide to accept this role.
PBG: Productions like this usually cast multiple actors for a role so that they can take turns. As I mentioned earlier, when Shin Jaebum invited me to watch the show last year, Oh Euishik and Kim Jihyun were also playing Namwon. When I met them backstage, they half-jokingly said, “Bo-gum, let’s do this show together next time and bring it to a bigger theatre!” I think that played a big part in my decision to accept the role. I told them at the time that I’d be waiting for the call. I heard that the producers had no intention of casting me, but Jaebum persuaded them to just try reaching out to me. My seniors and batchmates were cheering me on, so I had no reason to turn down the role.
ESQ: Your timing was great. I heard that original Korean musicals and theatre productions were badly hit during, and even after, the Covid shutdowns. At a time like this, staging Let Me Fly and having a superstar like Park Bo-gum in the lead role can bring life back to Daehakro.
PBG: That it’s an original Korean production was the main reason I took the role. I wanted to share the emotions I felt when I watched the show last year. If my being cast can help promote this production to not only Korean fans, but international fans as well, I’d be so thankful.
ESQ: When I watched the show, there were many fans who seemed like they were from North America or Southeast Asia. What’s interesting was that when I went to buy a programme at the merchandise booth, there was a foreigner in front of me who said “Give me one of everything you have.” They must have really liked the show since they wanted to buy everything.
PBG: Really? I had no idea. That makes me so happy!
ESQ: The show I watched had Lee Hyunghoon playing the older Namwon, Hong Jihee as Jungbun, and Bang Jinhee as Sunhee, and the chemistry between them on stage was just remarkable. I can’t imagine that it’s easy achieving the right chemistry, especially when all four characters are played by three different actors. Kudos to them. They made it look and feel so believable.
PBG: That is why I can confidently say that no matter which actors you watch, they all bring their own charm to each of the shows, and they are all great. I also feel a different excitement when I’m on stage with different actors. You are showering me with so much praise that I think I’ll do really well for tonight’s performance.
ESQ: You’re going to perform tonight after this interview?
PBG: Yes. It’s going to be with Kim Dobin, Choi Soojin and Na Hana tonight.
ESQ: When will Let Me Fly be staged in a large theatre?
PBG: Large theatre... I don’t think it’s time for that yet. The small theatre right now is great. It feels intimate. Expanding to a mid-sized theatre might work, but a large theatre... At the end of the day, that decision is not mine to make. It depends on the production company.
ESQ: That is true. There’s a charm to small theatres because we can see the stage from a closer proximity, and it does feel more intimate.
PBG: That’s right. That is also what I like about this production. I can see and feel the immediate reaction from the audience. Of course, I can’t see their faces or expressions from the stage, but I can feel how engaged the audience is. It truly feels like we’re communicating with the audience because I can feel it when they burst into tears. This is my debut on a theatrical stage, so it’s my first time experiencing this sort of energy.
I mentioned earlier that Jaebum was my classmate from the musical theatre department in college, but I was usually just working behind the scenes as the director or music director.
ESQ: That’s amazing! I was just thinking to myself that you must have had lots of practice since you majored in musical theatre in college. As I look again at your characters Choi Taek in Reply 1988 and Lee Yeong in Love in the Moonlight... those don’t seem like they could dance, and yet you just brought them into action. You were great. You were also great at aegyo (acting cute) with your “bbuing”.
PBG: Not at all! I was getting lots of help from the people around me for the dancing and the singing, so all I really had to do was follow their directions and suggestions. Actually, the aegyo scene came about because we were trying to figure out how to make the characters for young Namwon and older Namwon be more cohesive. Each of the cast members has different charms. So, when you watched Lee Hyunghoon’s older Namwon that day, I had to add more to my acting to match his bubblier version of the character.
ESQ: I didn’t know you had to think of that as well.
PBG: That’s what makes it fun. (laughs) I spoke with and practised a lot with the other actors playing the younger Namwon.
ESQ: What was the process like for you during practice? It must not have been easy planning your schedule.
PBG: This is the first musical production that I’m involved in, and one that I love as well. As I practised every day, my desire to put on the best performance grew. After filming for my drama, I would always head straight to the studio to practise late into the night with our choreographer. All the other actors in this show helped me a lot. They stayed late so that we could clean up specific scenes. But the interesting thing is that my footsteps felt light on the way to the studio, and I enjoyed it so much. I was the youngest in this production, so I was just a student to everyone else. Everyone there was my teacher. Especially Shin Jaebum and Na Hana, who taught me the best way to project my voice. I didn’t know how loud I should be, or what’s the best method to deliver my lines since it was my first time on stage. Ah! Especially in the scene with the mirrored choreography, where older Namwon and younger Namwon faced each other and danced as though looking into a mirror. We put in a lot of effort for that scene because all three of us felt that we needed to be as perfect as possible.
ESQ: I remember the scene because it seemed like a mime show. It was perfect!
PBG: Although we should also pay attention to the other scenes, we focused a lot on that particular scene, even right down to the timing of our eyes blinking. We paid so much attention to our breaths, our steps and each movement of our fingers while practising.
ESQ: You’ve mentioned in interviews that you had dreamt of being a singer when you were younger. As I watched you in this show, I didn’t think you meant that as being an idol singer.
PBG: That’s right. I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. I played piano as a kid, so I wanted to comfort others and spread joy through the songs I wrote. Back when I used to audition for entertainment companies, there were not many male contestants who sang while playing the keyboard.
ESQ: You’re right. There weren’t many who could play the keyboard. You were good enough to play one of Lee Seungcheol’s songs on the keyboard for a TV show. This musical plays from September to December, and by the time this interview is published, you would have played this character over 10 times. Is there anything that has changed for you since the first time?
PBG: I also thought that things might become routine as time went by, but every time I perform with a different actor, I experience a new chemistry between us, and I feel new emotions each time. That is why I think this is such a great production. Despite playing the same show, the same character with the same lines, and everything is repeated, it always feels new with every show. Even when I think, “The emotions won’t get to me today,” I end up getting absorbed into the performance and sometimes get overwhelmed by emotions. That’s what makes this so very interesting for me. I’m experiencing things I don’t feel when I do movies or dramas.
ESQ: From the sounds of it, it’s almost as though you’re a first-time jazz improvisation musician.
PBG: That’s exactly what it feels like. Jazz musicians might be looking at a music sheet with the same chords, but they create music by communicating with one another through their emotions. Taking turns to act with different actors fits into that definition of jamming, and there’s a unique joy to it. There’s a term for the delight that musicians feel when they click together during a session, but I suddenly can’t remember it. For example, when someone improvises on stage and I immediately pick up on it and make the scene work, I feel so happy because I knew I was focused on the scene.
ESQ: The image of musicians performing on stage at a jazz club for the first time comes to mind.
PBG: (laughs) You can say that.
ESQ: But why have you been hiding your singing talents all this while?
PBG: I don’t sing well at all. Oh dear, please don’t say that. It’s just that I enjoy it, and the other musical actors are teaching me a lot, so I’m improving slowly.
ESQ: What’s the drama you’re currently filming?
PBG: I’m filming a Netflix drama called You’ve Done Well. The screenplay was written by Lim Sangchun (who also wrote Fight for My Way and When the Camelia Blooms), and directed by Kim Wonseok who also directed Misaeng, Signal, and My Mister.
ESQ: There’s no information available online for this drama yet. Can you tell us more about the character you’re playing?
PBG: All I can tell you is that the character is strong as steel and unwavering like an old tree.
ESQ: I’ve always seen you as a youthful star, which is a charm that’s emphasised in the dramas Boyfriend, Love in the Moonlight, and Record of Youth. But through this musical, it feels like you’ve expanded your range.
PBG: I could say that taking this role was a conscious decision to expand my career and roles. I do want to try new genres and characters that I’ve never done before.
ESQ: You’re also waiting for the release of your upcoming movie Wonderland, right? I’ve been telling people for three years now that I’m looking forward to it.
PBG: Wonderland is a thought-provoking movie. It’ll make you think about what is considered precious in value. I actually haven’t seen how they’re piecing the movie together, and we haven’t even done the preview for it yet. I’m also waiting for it to be released. It’ll be a fun watch. I felt it when we were filming.
ESQ: I personally want to see you play a serious character that doesn’t smile at all.
PBG: Ah! I know what you mean. Like my character in the movie Seo Bok right?
ESQ: Maybe something a little colder and more terrifying than that.
PBG: As I’ve mentioned earlier, I want to expand the types of characters I play through works that I want to recommend to others. While the characters are important, being able to confidently tell people “This is a really good story,” is more important to me. I want to build my career with projects that I’d even want to recommend to my future kids. I want to be an actor who people have faith in and can say, “Park Bo-gum’s work is great.”
ESQ: Wow! There aren’t many actors with such a filmography. Even if they had acted well, there will be times when the story itself isn’t all that great.
PBG: It’s just something I’m hoping for.
ESQ: I’m curious about Park Bo-gum as a person. You’ve always played characters who are polite, kind and considerate. Even people who’ve worked with you said the same about you. But what is your biggest desire in the depths of your heart?
PBG: Eating.
ESQ: Really? That’s great! I was worried you’d say something like “My desire for acting.”
PBG: I adore good food. There are so many different cuisines in the world that I want to try, and I really enjoy having a good hearty meal. When filming schedules are gruelling, I often don’t have time to eat proper meals. When that happens, I get late night cravings once I get home. I know I shouldn’t eat late at night but I really can’t help it sometimes.
ESQ: Oh, I’m always craving for carbs after 10pm. Like chapaghetti (black bean paste instant noodles).
PBG: Exactly. I should resist those temptations, but there’s so much I want to eat in this world. People who work out can relate: I just crave proteins. It doesn’t matter if it’s pork or beef, I crave different proteins every day. My manager also works out, so we binge on proteins together. I recently had nurungji (scorched rice) ginseng chicken, and I loved it.
ESQ: Nurungji ginseng chicken is the perfect food. It’s interesting that you have this simple side to you as well.
PBG: I’m lucky to be able to enjoy so much delicious food lately, but that’s the first thing that came to mind. There are times when my face puffs up after eating something the night before filming. As an actor, I always regret when that happens.
ESQ: You don’t drink, right?
PBG: I don’t usually drink, but I do enjoy a couple of drinks with friends occasionally. I have never tried soju though.
ESQ: What? Not even once?
PBG: Unbelievable, but it’s true. I’ve never had soju before. I’ve tried sweeter alcohols, but never soju. People who can drink a few bottles of it at a time amaze me.
ESQ: Besides work, how do you usually spend your time? Do you devote it on a hobby, maybe?
PBG: Lately, it’s singing practice.
ESQ: But singing is part of your work. Doesn’t count.
PBG: That’s true, but I’ve honestly never thought of doing musicals, movies, dramas or business travels as work.
ESQ: Oh, stop being so impossibly perfect. (laughs)
PBG: I realised very early on that if I think of it as work, at some point, it becomes something I have to do and I’d start getting stressed about it. Being able to do what I love is happiness in itself and is a huge blessing to me. Even after getting on board this musical, I enjoyed the songs so much that I thought to myself, “Wow, I really should sing these amazing songs well,” and that stopped me from feeling like practice is work.
ESQ: Looking at you while you talk about this, I can feel your sincere happiness and joy. As a fellow professional, I’m envious.
PBG: Really? Even for music, I only listen to numbers from Let Me Fly these days.
ESQ: How was the photoshoot with Celine?
PBG: I’m excited to be able to show a side of me that I’ve never shown before through this shoot with Celine and Esquire. It was fun. To me, fashion photo shoots are like playing a character. My hairstyle, make-up, outfits, and even my expressions and poses come together to create a new character. I really enjoyed it. The pieces from the Winter season this time look great too.
ESQ: Is there an outfit that stood out to you?
PBG: I loved all the coats, especially the ones with Celine’s signature patterns.
Photography: Mok Jungwook
Styling: Kim E Joo
Fashion Editor: Yun Woonghee
Features Editor: Park Sehoi
Hair: Ji Kyoungmi
Make-up: Lee Young
Production: Jang Homin
Assistant: Song Chaeyeon
Art Design: Kim Daesup
Translation: Astrid Ja’afarino
Alessandro Sartori is a fan of the Formula One races. He must be—he’s been travelling here for the Singapore Grand Prix since 2018, taking in the race from the top of The Fullerton Hotel while Zegna holds a by-invite-only trunk show and party during race weekend. It has become a sort of Zegna tradition with friends of the brand flown in from around the region to revel in the atmosphere annually. You would see mannequins dressed in Zegna and racks of clothes positioned around the suite but no one is pushing for a sale—at least not on the evening of the finals.
I don’t think Sartori cares much for it too.
It’s not that the artistic director of Zegna isn’t particularly interested in heading a profitable business; he knows that his directional menswear designs sell. And they do. Zegna Group’s preliminary first-half revenues for 2023 reached more than EUR900 million, of which Zegna-branded products (Sartori-designed pieces as well as licensed products) account for EUR541 million, a 27.3 per cent increase from the year before.
Everything that Sartori has been doing point to the year-end financials looking to be just as promising.
The recent trunk show in Singapore was a celebration of Zegna’s traceable Oasi Cashmere collection and its debut collaboration with Los Angeles-based brand The Elder Statesman. “It was very organic. We didn’t think to collaborate. [laughs] I met Greg (Chait of The Elder Statesman) through common friends. I was in love with his collection because I love the homemade-handmade aesthetic. He was actually doing things with a very grandmother quality, you know?” Sartori tells me.
Zegna’s expertise in cashmere led Chait—who was in Italy to source for the material—to Sartori at the recommendation of a mutual friend. A one-and-a-half-hour coffee meeting later, Sartori invited Chait to visit the brand’s headquarters Oasi Zegna, while he was invited to visit The Elder Statesman atelier in Los Angeles. They realised that they both share the same values and decided to talk about collaborating a year after.
The Zegna x The Elder Statesman collection is not one you would expect from Zegna. It’s a burst of colours in contrast to Zegna under Sartori where the use of colours is more keenly calculated and monochromatic in nature. It’s also more tactile in the kind of “grandmother quality” that The Elder Statesman is known for. But what’s truly Zegna is in the level of craftsmanship, the luxury leisurewear aesthetic, and of course, the use of Oasi Cashmere throughout the collection.
Sartori says that the goal was to be very precise in what would end up on the final line-up. “If we thought that the garment was not good for The Elder Statesman or for Zegna, we edited. And we edited beautiful pieces but the aesthetic was too much of this or that, or too strange,” he explains.
The result was a collection with each look striking a balance between Italian savoir-faire and luxury coupled with a laid-back Californian vibe.
The fact that this is only the third big-name collaboration that Zegna has produced makes it an industry outlier. While fashion brands big and small continue to seemingly churn out buzzy collaborations at least once a season, Zegna released its first collaboration—a phenomenal one at that with Fear of God—only in 2020. One might say the brand was simply late to the game, but Sartori never felt the need to keep up.
“I was very surprised Zegna collaborated with Fear of God, because it was the first-ever and I always felt like the brand didn’t need to go that route,” I tell Sartori.
“You like it?”
“I loved it. I tried to buy a piece but it was sold out everywhere.”
According to Sartori, he still receives requests to produce more of that landmark collaboration. When asked if the success of his first collaboration created pressure for him to do more, Sartori was quick to dismiss it. “I could have done plenty but I don’t want to. I want to do what we feel is right for the brand, something that has meaning and connection to the work we do,” he says. “We don’t do collaborations to make money. Of course, we need them to sell because if you don’t, that means you don’t deliver. But they’re made with the purpose of connecting different communities.”
With Zegna x The Elder Statesman, the idea of bridging different communities not only refers to the two different customers of both brands, but also to amplify the possibilities of creation using Zegna’s excellent quality and traceable cashmere. Oasi Cashmere is one of two material sustainability efforts that Zegna is investing heavily on currently—the other is Oasi Lino, traceable linen for the warmer months. The beauty of directly owning a number of Italian fabric mills allows Zegna to control the production of textiles right from the source, including the origins of the raw material itself. “I say this quite often lately, ‘One day, a generation will arise where if a garment isn’t tagged with a digital passport, they won’t buy it’,” Sartori opines. He likens it to the food industry where manufacturing details are extensive and clear on labels.
Before you deem this as merely Zegna jumping on the sustainability bandwagon that every other fashion brand is on, the very foundations of the brand is rooted in caring for the environment and community. It goes back to 1910 with founder Ermenegildo Zegna planting the first tree in the area surrounding his mill. And about 20 years later, he constructed a 26-kilometre road to make Oasi Zegna accessible to the local community and link them to its natural surroundings, providing a public space for leisure and outdoor activities among nature.
“I’m almost surprised that Zegna had never spoken about Oasi Zegna before,” Sartori expresses. “We thought it was a mistake and something we needed to communicate because it’s the honest and authentic vision of the company.”
It’s one of the rare instances in our interview that Sartori agrees that if there’s something the brand needs to be “louder” about, this would be it.
On Sartori’s part, it had already been a guiding principle for his designs. He sees sustainability as more than simply using recycled materials—Zegna continues to do so with its #UseTheExisting fabrications made from recycled sources—or one-off capsule collections. To Sartori, it’s a mindset that goes down to the very make of a garment. He cites the example of the very basics of tailoring: quality construction made to last. From the stitchings of the shoulders to how a buttonhole is made, everything has to be built with the idea that it should last for a very long time.
“If I designed a jacket that after three years doesn’t hold together and breaks during travel, I wouldn’t have done my job. The goal is for you to wear a jacket that after 15 years might have a little hole, but remains completely wearable. That is my dream,” he says.
Sartori calls this “designing for sustainability”, where there needs to be some foresight in constructing a garment in ways that would allow it to last, as well as have the possibility of being recycled. A jacket constructed with a lot of fusing, for instance, wouldn’t be recyclable because disassembling it is near impossible.
While seasonality is still apparent in Zegna’s collections, Sartori doesn’t design specific to each season. The collections have been streamlined such that ideas transcend seasons, but still rooted in a specific aesthetic that he’s crafted to be Zegna’s version of modern tailoring. It’s unabashedly louche and relaxed with foundational elements consisting of knitwear, the overshirt, the chore jacket, the signature Triple Stitch sneakers, voluminous trousers and the like. The look has been consistent since the Autumn/Winter 2021 collection as part of an evolution that was already in the works but accelerated by Covid.
In the consistency lies timelessness. You wouldn’t easily part ways with a Zegna piece from one season; there’s seamless integration between pieces from different seasons. Let’s face it, a Zegna piece is an investment that you’d want to hold on to and wear for as long as possible anyway. And Sartori continues to make that easier.
So yes, Sartori may be a fan of the Formula One races. The speed and the sounds (he’s unfazed by the zooming of cars below us, audible towards the end of our interview) may thrill him. But at his core, he’s not one to condone needless speed, but a still, calm force that pushes ahead with intention.
When it comes to profiling an actor like Keita Machida—to talk about how he got here, there’s no better place to start than, well, at the beginning.
In 1990, the Machidas welcomed baby Keita into the world. Little Keita grew up in a household filled with three generations of Machidas. As the only son, he was doted on (he has two sisters).
“I lived my early life running around in the woods,” Machida said. “I grew up with kendo (which is the Japanese martial art of swordfighting), baseball, swimming and many other sports.”
He was a precocious child, a bundle of energy that needed an outlet, and he found release in sports. Motion would be a constant theme in his life. How his body—a machine of blood, bone and flesh—could engage in the science of movement.
After passing the Dai 3kai Gekidan Exile audition, Machida became one of its members. That same year, he kickstarted his acting career on the stage in Rokudenashi Blues.
It was a rather circuitous journey to becoming an actor. “I think I was ultimately led down the acting path. If there wasn’t an opportunity, I would have forged a career on my own.”
When he’s not acting, Machida plays sandlot baseball and trains at the gym. He has also recently taken up golf. “I haven’t played video games for a while but before that, I used to play a lot of the Final Fantasy series and Ghost of Tsushima.”
Like many others, acting jobs slowed to a stop for Machida during the pandemic. With the country’s borders closed and being stuck indoors, Machida could return to the familiar source of comfort: watching TV programmes and films. “I watched movies and dramas incessantly,” Machida said. “It reminded me of the importance and happiness of the industry that I am in—creating works that people can consume and be entertained by. As a public figure, it’s important to feel gratitude for this and I want to perform as soon as it is possible.”
A youth spent glued to the screen (both big and small) seeded a desire to become an actor. Again, this might be how Machida is fascinated about what his body can do in the face of limitations. In this case, allowing himself to inhabit a character unlike his own.
From dramas to manga adaptations, in his 13-odd years of acting, Machida has amassed a massive portfolio. Regardless of the genre, he is attracted to multi-dimensional roles. To him, each role possesses its own unique difficulty.
One of the bigger productions that he has been involved in was Netflix’s Alice in Borderland. When asked about other manga adaptations that he wants to be part of, Machida said, “I know it’s difficult, both in terms of my age and the greatness of the original work, but I always wanted to play Mitsui from Slam Dunk. I’m always captivated by the charm of the character.
“In adapting an original work, I try to reflect the image of the original work as much as possible,” Machida said. In playing Karube in Alice in Borderland, Machida tapped on his character’s penchant for patterned shirts and chain necklaces. “Fashion is a very important tool of expression because it can be effective in bringing out a character’s inner self and personality.”
So what does it say about Machida’s own place in the fashion scene?
You can’t box Machida into a particular taste. It’s ever-evolving as he constantly gets fresh exposure to many different styles. He relies on his stylist Ishikawa Eiji for sartorial counsel.
“I’m always indebted to Ishikawa as he teaches me about the world of fashion.”
It’s paying off. Last year, Machida was appointed as a Friend of the Italian fashion house Tod’s. He didn’t think that Tod’s would approach him for the campaign. “I’ve always been interested in the brand but it inhabits a glamorous world in which I never thought I could be included.” But since his appointment, he likened it to an expedition to the museum: “I’m completely intrigued by it all.”
If there is a fashion accessory that he’s excited about it would be his Tod’s shoes. “I feel it’s important to have a good pair of shoes. The beautiful quality and comfort are wonderful,” Machida said, excitement hanging over every syllable. “Tod’s shoes give me confidence and are the key to any outfit.”
It’s a perfect summary. In the end, wherever you are, as long as you’re comfortable, that is a good place to be.
Photography: Chee Wei
Creative Direction and Styling: Izwan Abdullah
Hair and Makeup: Kohey
On-set Stylist: Eiji Ishikawa at TableRockStudio
He's a musician, an all-round performer, and a member of K-pop group GOT7—Mark Tuan is an entertainment force in his own right. But aside from his musicianship, the man has got style in spades, especially when paired with Saint Laurent. The two have developed a close relationship over the years with Tuan becoming a fixture on the front row of the Saint Laurent runway shows.
So who better to bring us to the most recent Saint Laurent Summer 2024 womenswear show by Anthony Vaccarello than Tuan himself? Follow along his journey to the show as he recalls his fondest moment with the fashion house as well as the thought process behind his choice of outfit for the show.
What goes through your mind when you’re getting ready for an average day in your life?
I approach each day with an open mindset, ready to adapt to whatever challenges or opportunities may arise. I don't stick rigidly to a fixed routine because I believe in spontaneity. So while I do have a general plan for the day, I'm always open to adjusting it if something unexpected and exciting comes my way. This approach allows me to stay flexible, embrace change, and make the most of every moment.
Why did you decide to go with this outfit for the Summer 2024 women’s show?
I decided to go with this outfit for the Summer 2024 women's show because it was an elegant look, and I simply connected with it. The design and style of the outfit resonated with my personal taste and aesthetic preferences. Fashion is not just about wearing clothes; it's also about expressing oneself and feeling a connection with what you wear. This particular ensemble not only exuded elegance but also made me feel confident and in tune with the theme of the show. It was a choice driven by both aesthetics and a personal sense of harmony with the attire.
You’re no stranger to being on the front row of fashion shows. What do you look out for when viewing a collection?
When I'm on the front row of fashion shows, there are two key elements I particularly look out for when viewing a collection: colour palettes and silhouettes. These two aspects play a crucial role in shaping the overall aesthetic and mood of a fashion collection.
You’ve also been to a number of Saint Laurent runway shows now. Is there a particular show or moment that still sticks to this day?
The Saint Laurent runway shows have consistently delivered memorable moments, but if I were to choose one that still sticks with me to this day, it would undoubtedly be the first show I attended. What made the experience truly unforgettable was the unexpected and breathtaking setting. I didn't expect to be sitting with the Eiffel Tower as the backdrop, so when the walls came down to reveal that iconic Parisian landmark, it was absolutely stunning.
If you could choose a song from your discography to be the track for a runway show, which would it be?
As of right now, I don't feel like any of my songs are suitable for a runway show, but perhaps in the future, I'll create music that perfectly complements the runway experience. Music plays a vital role in setting the mood and enhancing the overall atmosphere of a fashion show, and I would want to ensure that the song chosen aligns seamlessly with the designer's vision and the collection's theme. While my current discography may not have the right fit, I'm open to exploring and collaborating to create music that adds a distinctive and captivating element to future runway shows.
Marie-Laure Trichard’s experience with luxury brands under LVMH has been a matter of exquisite taste. It includes being the international marketing manager at Moët & Chandon. She also served as global marketing and communication director at Champagne Jacquart. Taking a leap from the champagne industry, Trichard has found a fitting parallel in the world of horology. Last February, she became Bell & Ross’ head of marketing and communications. We check in with Trichard about her experiences in the luxury market and Bell & Ross.
ESQUIRE: You’ve previously worked at LVMH and Champagne Jacquart. What was your takeaway from a business like LVMH?
MARIE-LAURE TRICHARD: LVMH was my foray into the luxury sector. Within marketing, there were different fields of competencies and what was interesting was LVMH’s method of strengthening its brand. They found a way to focus on their brand’s DNA, making sure that it’s clear enough as a brand story.
Their history is brought to life in a very creative and memorable way. That’s the gist of LVMH’s management. A mix of history and creativity that evolves the brand to stay current. And that is what’s being done at Bell & Ross. Of course, you’ll need perceptions of the local markets because when you’re working on a global scale, there’s a need for consistency. It’s important to understand different markets in order to encourage brand evolution.
ESQ: What did you find surprising about the Southeast Asian market?
MLT: The market here is very strong about Bell & Ross. With regards to brand positioning, we have far more Bell & Ross boutiques in Southeast Asia than elsewhere.
ESQ: You’ve worked with many organisations like the Tara Ocean Foundation.
MLT: We went with Tara because of its combined use of man and machine for its underwater missions. We equip Tara with the tools needed for its research. Another challenge for Tara is generating awareness; that’s where we come in. We provide communication globally with some point-of-sale to showcase the foundation and visibility to what it does.
ESQ: What about your partnership with the Alpine F1 Team? How does this collaboration start?
MLT: Basically, it’s shared values. We looked at the organisations that we want to work with and see if our ethos align. The collaboration needs to make sense. From the start, Bell & Ross, developed proficient tools for the use in extreme conditions. It’s all about the union of competences; that’s what the brand was built upon. There needs to be this idea of surpassing oneself. To push against the boundaries of excellence.
ESQ: Is Bell & Ross interested in jumping onto market trends like genderless dials?
MLT: There was a restyling for watches done that way. A preference for smaller cases. Our design is minimalist so the idea is that we’d use smaller cases but retain the traits that it’s a man’s watch. I’d say that there needs to be a mix of creative inspiration and the brand DNA in order for it to be relevant.
ESQ: Do you have an uptick of female patrons in the last few years?
MLT: The world is always evolving. In this day and age, a woman would pick up a man’s watch and vice versa. Our BR S model is a smaller case but that’s not core to the brand. We just want to focus on what Bell & Ross it’s known for, which is legibility, functionality, reliability and precision.
ESQ: What’s the first watch you’ve ever got?
MLT: When I was young, there was this huge hullabaloo about Swatch watches. It was ubiquitous and so trendy. So, that was my first timepiece.
ESQ: Are you also a watch collector?
MLT: No. But my interest in the watch industry is mainly for the craftsmanship. But after spending so much time in the watch industry, I finally understand why people would collect them. I understand the allure.
ESQ: You’ve also worked with the Patrouille de France. For its 70th anniversary, there’s a special nod to its history with the silhouettes of the five aircrafts that were flown since 1953.
MLT: We delve in different fields of competition like in the air, on land, in the waters; that’s the common approach across the board. The idea for the Patrouille de France is bringing its story to life and we wanted to highlight that evolution by etching the plane models on the back of the ceramic case. We needed to simplify the look of the planes while not losing their traits.
