< PreviousOPPOSITE PAGE: The eight-pointed star is a recurring motif in Islamic art and architecture, shown here at the Ukhuwwah Mosque in Errachidia, Morocco. Found throughout the Arab world, it is an enduring symbol of technical mastery, much like the Vacheron Constantin Patrimony collection. AD_88-93_Style_Vacheron_11065428.indd 9009/12/2019 04:49:14 PMST Y L E / W a tc h e s 91 AD_88-93_Style_Vacheron_11065428.indd 9109/12/2019 04:49:28 PM88 ST Y L E / A rt is a n s ONE OF NO T MANY Featuring a distinctive salmon dial, Vacheron Constantin unveiled the Patrimony Middle East Edition as an exclusive timepiece for the region during Dubai Watch Week. To mark the launch, AD Middle East collaborated with the storied watchmaker to create a portfolio of images celebrating the timepiece and the architectural tradition of Middle Eastern landscapes. “Modern and yet extremely rich in terms of architectural heritage, the Middle East represents the ideal location for the launch of the Patrimony special edition," says Alexander Schmiedt, the Middle East brand director for Vacheron Constantin. A limited edition version of the Patrimony manual- winding, one of the haute watch brand’s most venerated models, Patrimony Middle East Edition features a generous 42mm diameter with a case and buckle strap made of 950 platinum, off ering a contemporary reinterpretation of a classic from the heritage of Vacheron Constantin. “The Patrimony collection is one of the main pillars of Vacheron Constantin,” adds Schmiedt. “It embodies our maison’s expression of the classical codes of fi ne Geneva watchmaking and also the design and architecture territories of our ‘One of not many’ brand concept.” The applied hour-markers and hands of the Patrimony Middle East Edition all follow the gentle curve of the case, and are complemented by a small seconds subdial and a pearl minute-track. The timepiece also houses the manufacture manual-winding calibre 4400 AS, decorated with a Côtes de Genève motif – a signature of the Patrimony aesthetic – which is visible through the transparent sapphire crystal caseback. The caliber, a certifi ed hallmark of Geneva, includes a 65-hour power reserve. It all combines to beautifully demonstrate Vacheron Constantin’s creative ethos. As Schmiedt says, these unique timepieces ‘off er a perfect balance between minimalism, understated design and mechanical mastery’. Vacheron-constantin.com AD_88-93_Style_Vacheron_11065428.indd 9209/12/2019 04:49:38 PMST Y L E / W a tc h e s 93 OPPOSITE PAGE: Saudi Arabia’s centuries-old Najdi architecture style is replete with geometric patterns which served both decorative and practical purposes. Combining beauty and functionality, the parallels with fi ne watchmaking are clear to see. AD_88-93_Style_Vacheron_11065428.indd 9309/12/2019 04:49:57 PM94 ST Y L E / C o u tu re Realm of Beauty Held in the Temple of Concordia in Sicily, Dolce & Gabbana’s ethereal Alta Moda show was an ode to Ancient Greek mythology AD_94-95_Style Dolce Alta Moda_10989963.indd 9409/12/2019 04:53:50 PMT he social media accounts of the invited few shared the action from the runway immediately, but the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda show felt more intimate and esoteric than any other destination show this season, from cruise to couture. In the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento on the south coast of Domenico Dolce’s native Sicily – a two-hour drive from Palermo – he and Stefano Gabbana erected a runway structure within the 430 BC Temple of Concordia and told the story of their Italian island’s Ancient Greek roots through savoir- faire. “Culture is a complicated word,” Dolce said in a preview. “We only want to share this with people who feel the same as we do.” He was referring to their devoted and extremely fabulous-looking clients, who had made the voyage to this remote part of Sicily from every continent on the globe. Here, they wear their Alta Moda dresses, their Alta Sartoria suits and Alta Gioielleria jewels, and get to be part of a very limited club. Many of them travel with their entire families – two or three generations on the front row. The designers wanted to present their show in the Temple of Concordia because, like haute couture, these structures represented a sense of elevation to the Ancient Greeks who built them. Much like decorating one’s physique in the divine craftsmanship that goes into one-of-a-kind dressmaking, classicism was man’s way of building a stairway to the gods: reaching for an all- encompassing beauty ideal that went beyond the material. Dolce and Gabbana named each dress after a Greek muse and took inspiration from their patronages, from the armour of Athena to the crossbow of Diana. But beyond the theatrical metal accessories and beaded gold leather sandals, each gown interpreted Ancient Greece through painstaking artisanal profi ciency. Pottery motifs and meandros patterns materialised on transclucent tulle dresses in delicate embroidery; in beaded appliqué on a dress with sleeves shaped like ceramic vases; rendered entirely in sequins on cocktail dresses; and on an intarsia mink cape. A section of gowns paid homage to the Grecian goddess silhouette with rich robes architecturally composed from plissé panels, while fringe – the most ancient idea of surface decoration – appeared on a dress in micro- beaded frills that rustled like metal tinsel. The fl oral decorations of Sicilian houses became foliage on porcelain-like dresses, and some tulle dresses were covered in embellishments only to be overlaid with more fabric and embellished again, creating a depth eff ect that looked, quite literally, beyond. In a kind of optical illusion, Dolce and Gabbana transferred the neoclassical paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Jean- Antoine-Théodore Giroust to silk gazar gowns, which momentarily disappeared through the fi lters of fabric as the models curved around the arch of the runway. Helena Christensen also appeared, in a runway-sweeping gilded black tunic that glistened in the Sicilian sunlight, her name never as appropriate as in a show deifying the Hellenistic ideal. dolcegabbana.com – ANDER S CHRIS TIAN MADSEN “Pottery motifs materialised on a dress with sleeves shaped like ceramic vases” AD_94-95_Style Dolce Alta Moda_10989963.indd 9509/12/2019 04:54:00 PM96 ST Y L E / F la s h b a c k Young, chic and, ultimately, doomed, India’s most dashing royal couple transformed their home into an unlikely Art Deco oasis The Modern Maharajah Yeshwant and Sanyogita Holkar of Indore, photographed by Man Ray in 1927. P H O TOS : MAN R A Y 2 0 15 TR U S T / ARTI S T S R IG H TS SOC IE T Y ( A RS ), NY / AD A G P, P A R IS , CO LLE C T IO N AL THAN I 2 0 19 / PR U D E N C E C U M IN G , CO LLE C T IO N VE R A M U TH E S IU S , SOTH E B Y’ S / ART D IG IT A L S T U D IO , PH ILLI P S A U C T IO N E E R S L T D AD_96-98_Style Flashback Modern Maharjah_10993834.indd 9609/12/2019 05:18:10 PMD o not accuse me of exaggerating when I tell you, very simply, that my two hours at your house were among the best that I have spent in Paris and France, even in Europe.” So Yeshwant Holkar, dapper maharaja, wrote to Jacques Doucet, haute-couture grandee, on October 22, 1929, shortly before boarding a train to India. The latter had jettisoned his ancien-régime antiques to become a pioneering Art Deco patron, and the 21-year-old aesthete had gone to pay wide-eyed homage – just in time, too, because the elderly Doucet died a few days later. “Those precious memories I will guard jealously and keep forever,” Holkar continued. This was followed by a compliment (“Your comments and tips have not been less valuable”) that indicates the maharaja had discussed with Doucet his own forthcoming stylistic transition: the transformation of a Jacobean-infl ected bungalow in Indore into an avant-garde home. A doe-eyed Oxford alumnus with a taste for fast cars and jazz music, the 14th maharaja of Indore (now part of the state of Madhya Pradesh) spent the long journey home savouring the memory of Doucet’s decors: the extravagant Eileen Grey and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann furnishings, the exquisite Pierre Legrain book bindings, and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Pablo Picasso’s Cubist masterpiece. “The West has always been inspired by the East,” says Olivier Gabet, director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where Modern Maharajah: An Indian Prince of the 1930s runs until January 12, 2020. “But this young guy was one of the very few to do the inverse.” To remodel the bungalow known as Manik Bagh, or Jeweled Garden, the maharaja and his wife, Sanyogita, hired a friend, German architect Eckart Muthesius, who, at 25, was barely older than his clients. “They look like babies,” Gabet says of Man Ray’s portraits of the couple canoodling on their honeymoon. Though the monarch had a well-trained eye, “Manik Bagh was the project of a couple,” Gabet insists. “For him, it was a big leap, trading a traditional Indian lifestyle for European sophistication. It was an even bigger leap for an Indian lady at the time.” Monolithic without and what Gabet calls a “Utopian modernist universe” within, the U-shape stucco building, completed in 1932, that thrilled critics was actually a bit of a fi ction. For practical reasons, namely monsoons, Manik Bagh had peaked roofs, but offi cial images were retouched to present a dramatic fl at roofl ine. As for the Europhilic interiors, also designed by Muthesius, The Miami Daily News praised them as “colorful, modernistic, lovely.” CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The maharaja, as painted by Bernard Boutet de Monvel in 1934; offi cial imagery of Manik Bagh; Boutet de Monvel’s portrait of the maharani; a custom leopard skin B306 chaise longue; an Ivan da Silva Bruhns carpet; a sketch of a Puiforcat bowl. AD_96-98_Style Flashback Modern Maharjah_10993834.indd 9709/12/2019 05:18:26 PMMore than 300 commissioned objects, from Puiforcat fl atware and Muthesius red-leather armchairs with inte- gral reading lights to Bernard Boutet de Monvel oil por- traits of the young Holkars, will be displayed in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in settings that evoke their original settings, rounded out by home movies. Many of the fur- nishings had been auctioned at Sotheby Parke Bernet in 1980; Manik Bagh is now government offi ces. “It was really a large house – six or seven bedrooms, a banquet hall, a ballroom, a couple of sitting rooms, a nurs- ery, stuff like that,” says Prince Richard Holkar, the maha- raja’s son by a later marriage, an entrepreneur who runs the family’s 18th-century Ahilya Fort in Maheshwar as a heritage hotel. “My mother was a California girl: She enjoyed comfort, rounded corners, and cozy sofas. The furniture at Manik Bagh was the antithesis of all that: You never knew where to put your elbow.” The palace’s decoration was daring, though its art was largely not, despite the mentoring of French dealer Henri- Pierre Roché. “He introduced the leading artists of the day to my father and his wife,” Holkar explains. “Alas, my father didn’t cotton to Picasso, but he fell in love with Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space and asked the artist to design a pavilion to house two of them, one white and one black.” That project, never realized, was intended as a memorial to Sanyogita; she died in 1937 at 22, following an appendectomy, leaving behind a toddler daughter, Usha, the present maharani. It wasn’t long before Yeshwant’s aesthetic adventures also fl atlined. “He just stopped,” Gabet says. Dogged by emphysema and romantic disap- pointments, the maharaja died in Mumbai in 1961, after burning personal papers that would have detailed his brief reign as India’s champion of the cutting edge. “He never talked about it,” Holkar recalls. “If there’d been some sort of intimacy between him and either of his two children about those early days, when he was quite an unusual presence, it would have helped us understand him.” Today, Gabet says, “Nobody knows about the maha- raja of Indore: Who is this incredible guy?” The show skil- fully sheds light on that, but as Gabet cautions, “Some mysteries have no clues.” – MITCHELL OWENS 98 ST Y L E / F la s h b a c k CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The maharajah painted in traditional dress by Boutet de Monvel c.1933; the maharani’s bedroom; the royal couple captured by Man Ray in 1927; a 1931 portrait of the maharani; an Ivan da Silva Bruhns carpet design; a table designed for the maharani’s dressing room. “The 14th Maharaja of Indore had a taste for fast cars and jazz music” P H O TOS : X C O LLE C T IO N AL THAN I 2 0 19 / AD A G P, P A R IS , 2 0 19 PH OTO B Y PR U D E N C E C U M IN G , CO LLE C T IO N VE R A M U TH E S IU S , MAN R A Y 2 0 15 TR U S T / C E NTR E P O M P ID O U , M NAM -C C I, D IS T. R M N -G R AN D P A L A IS / G U Y CAR R A R D , PH OTO É C L’ ART / GALE R IE DO R IA , P A R IS AD_96-98_Style Flashback Modern Maharjah_10993834.indd 9810/12/2019 01:21:51 PMTHE MIDDLE EAST’S BRIGHTEST TALENTS IN ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN AD_1_AD50 COVER_11057743.indd 110/12/2019 06:46:04 AMNext >