Luxury magazine: February

A look inside an eight-bedroom mansion an hour from Manhattan 

Refurbished to the highest standard, this Dh22 million sprawling estate with Hollywood connections is the ideal place to host Great Gatsby-esque parties

Almost a century after it was built, this eight-bedroom mansion featured in The Money Pit, starring Tom Hanks. The 1986 film tells the story of an ambitious couple who buy a distress-sale estate with the intention of slightly improving it and selling it on for a profit. However, the house falls apart spectacularly, causing the couple to completely refurbish it. They end up living in it themselves – at least in the Steven Spielberg-produced comedy.

In reality, when the film was being shot, the home belonged to Olympic gold medallist Eric Ridder, and it had actually fallen into a state of catastrophic disrepair by the time current owners Christina and Rich Makowsky bought it for Dh7 million in 2002. They spent five times that amount doing it up, put it on the market in 2014 for Dh46 million, and – upon not finding any takers – reduced it to Dh22 million this year. In other words, it’s a steal, and here’s why.

The 5.4-acre Northway estate sits in the elite Oyster Bay enclave, an hour from Manhattan. The three-storey structure is at the end of a half-kilometre-long, flower-lined drive (rumour has it that the Makowskys spent Dh7m on landscaping alone). The three-tiered grounds also house a six-car garage, a saltwater pool and 800-square-foot pool house, an outdoor sound system, and a fountain, gazebo and rose garden.  

The house itself has a cedar roof and offers 14,000 square feet of living space. Christina, who is a fashion designer, says the decor was inspired by a “Versace-esque” style, in a nod to Long Island’s Gilded Age: all black and gold, elaborate mouldings and ebony wood floors. From redoing the plumbing, heating and electrical systems, to installing plaster ceiling medallions, hand-carved balustrades, crown mouldings and herringbone floors, the owners spared no expense with this project.

When it was built in the late 1800s, the mansion had at least 15 bedrooms, of which three are now combined to create a chef’s kitchen, with marble countertops and a centre island made from mahogany wood. In addition to the seven bedrooms divided between the upper levels, the master suite combines four rooms, and includes an opulent dressing area with mirrored French doors. There’s also a library, media room and dining room that can seat 28 people.

The massive living room boasts a 500-year-old fireplace, which was imported from France along with several chandeliers and bronzed sconces.

Three sides of the space are covered in tufted, black suede fabric, while the fourth wall is refrigerated. The lowest level has a recreation room, a gym, laundry room, staff suite, powder room, pantry and a French door leading to a bluestone patio.

A herringbone brick veranda wraps around the back of the house, while a brick staircase leads to the heated pool.

The pool house has slate flooring, and is equipped with its own kitchen, separate bathroom and changing room, and a small laundry area. As Christina put it: “The house was designed to entertain. It’s the ultimate anti-money pit.”

* Panna Munyal 

Mask for more

“Ain’t nobody got time for that.” That’s the basic premise behind Foreo’s latest futuristic-looking skincare proposition, the UFO (which may look like something aliens would ride around in, but in fact stands for Ur Future Obssession).

Face masks were a big skincare trend in 2017 – they accounted for 40 per cent of online sales for beauty companies worldwide, according to Foreo, which itself stands for “for everyone”. But there are inherent issues with the current batch of face masks on the market – notably, limited penetration, poor facial coverage and the amount of time they take to work their magic, according to the Swedish brand. Clay masks are messy and get stuck in your hair, while paper sheets are apparently ineffective as that they leave up to 20 per cent of your face uncovered.

“Face masks are the guilty pleasure of millions, but is lying under cold, wet sheets of paper the best we can do for 2018?” asks Paul Peros, Foreo’s CEO. “After four years in development, Foreo’s designers and technicians have proved there is a better way. We’re taking the latest professional beauty technologies available – treatments that can cost thousands of dollars – and incorporating them into one UFO device to unleash the full potential of our face masks.”

Only half-jokingly, Foreo is calling the UFO “the cure to the sheet-mask epidemic” and promising to “rescue” women from all those wasted hours sitting under ineffectice masks (apparently up to five days per year in Asian countries, where the highest number of recorded users is to be found).

The UFO was unveiled during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, and is being positioned as “the world’s first smart-mask treatment to offer spa-level facial treatments in just 90 seconds”.

To do that, it combines cooling and warming elements with T-sonic pulsations and red, blue and green LED light therapy, across preset programmes. Thermo-therapy warms up the skin, softening it and opening up pores, to ensure that the mask’s ingredients fully infiltrate the skin. The cooling function lifts and firms the skin, reducing the appearance of pores and the risk of inflammation; and T-sonic pulsations, a trademarked technology developed by Foreo, heightens absorption while delivering a relaxing massage. The LED therapy, meanwhile, uses three types of light: red to erase signs of ageing and boost collagen production; green to brighten and even the skin tone; and blue to kill bacteria and stimulate blood circulation. The device works with two specially formulated smart masks that are made from soft, microfibre-infused plant and fruit extracts, concentrated botanical oils and natural flower water. The Make My Day mask features hyaluronic acid and red algae for deep hydration; Call it a Night features ginseng and olive oil to nourish and revitalise. The UFO can be paired with a Foreo app on your phone to get the most out of the device.

Foreo has teamed up with crowdfunding site Kickstarter to bring this latest innovation to the market. The device has obviously struck a chord – the Kickstarter campaign had aimed to raise $20,000 (Dh73,450); but has accumulated well over $1.3 million (Dh4.7m). It will be available to order by the end of February and will retail at Dh1,024, while a smaller “entry-level” option will sell for Dh657.

www.foreo.com

* Selina Denman

Rebellion on the runway

Prabal Gurung has a few things he’d like to get off his chest. We meet the outspoken fashion designer in Abu Dhabi

“Grant me the strength to change the things I cannot accept.” These were the words that opened Prabal Gurung’s spring/summer 2018 show in New York in September. Clearly, this reworking of the first lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer (which reads: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”), was a barely-veiled swipe. But at whom? The White House? Politicians in general? The fashion elite?

This is not the first time that Gurung has pulled this kind of trick. His previous autumn/winter 2017/18 show featured T-shirts emblazoned with phrases like: “I am an immigrant” and “Girls just want to have fundamental rights”.

Gurung clearly has some things on his mind. “Everything the new government was talking about really challenged those of us who believed in equality, diversity and inclusivity,” Gurung tells me over coffee in Abu Dhabi. Alarm at the change of leadership in America, his adoptive country, has galvanised something in this softly-spoken man.

As a brand, Prabal Gurung is known for creating stunning womenswear that is often to be seen on the red carpet. As the man behind the self-titled label, Gurung is known for being fair-minded, passionate about equality and, increasingly, unafraid to use the very public space of the runway to voice his views. “As a brand, what I stand for is the idea of feminism and femininity. I have always believed – and been a vocal advocate of, from the day I started – in visibility for women and ethnic minorities. The runway is the medium for expressing myself.”

This isn’t just talk. Sitting in the front row of his spring/summer 2018 show in New York was Gloria Steinem, a highly respected feminist thinker, journalist and political activist. At the grand age of 83 – at Gurung’s insistence – Steinem was attending her first-ever fashion show. Three seasons before, Gurung had used Steinem’s quotes on his runway, and now here she was, sitting ringside. His excitement at her presence was palpable; he personally rushed out to greet her before the show began.

“Backstage, I sat with all my models and said to them: ‘We have among us Gloria, who some of you might know and some of you won’t’. Her coming to this show represents something; this is not a coincidence. You can walk down the runway as if it is business as usual, or you can walk the runway and remember the audience, and the platform you have, and the responsibility it comes with.”

Beyond the unusual front row and catchy slogans, crew members were decked out in T-shirts that read “Stronger in color”, and the runway was walked by models of every shape, size and race. Plus-size models paraded beside dark-skinned girls, alongside size 6 Caucasian, mixed-race and Asian women, with a few boys thrown in for good measure.

Selecting models that did not fit the traditional mould of tall, blonde and Caucasian was a clear act of rebellion. “I wanted it to be a collection that included diversity in the biggest possible way, with models of different sizes and races. Maybe I can change just one person’s thinking on what beauty is, especially in an industry where beauty is such a one-dimensional idea, because real women are different sizes.

“The greatest beauty a woman can have is when she embraces her femininity. To see a woman in her full feminine glory is so unnerving for so many people and, oftentimes, people don’t know how to handle it,” Gurung says.

The collection was also diverse. Although initially it felt optimistic, with loud pops of colour, it was filled with deconstructed dresses and pieces that were, quite literally, coming apart at the seams. Dresses and tops were made from sheer, see-though fabrics, perhaps raising questions about transparency in the wider sense, while practically every look had bits that were caught and held, or exposed and flaunted. 

If it feels like Prabal Gurung comes at things from a slightly different perspective to the rest of the fashion pack, there is good reason. Gurung was born in Singapore and raised in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, and his path to fashion stardom has been anything but ordinary. “I am a boy from the mountains, and all I ever dreamed of was fashion,” he says. “There were no Nepalese fashion designers for me to look up to. When I told people I wanted to be a fashion designer, I was told: ‘That’s a good hobby, but what do you really want to do?’

“I went to an all-boys British Catholic school, where I was just told I was different, that I didn’t belong, that I was not like regular boys. Even then, I thought, if they think I am different, then I will do things differently.” Some might have been crushed by such negativity; instead, it taught Gurung how to glean the positive from every situation, he says. He went on to study in Mumbai and moved to New York in 1999, to attend Parsons School of Design. During this time, he also interned for Donna Karan, before starting work for Bill Blass, as design director. He left to set up his eponymous label in 2009. 

“As a fashion designer, my job is not to dictate what women must wear. The runway is one version of my idea, and good fashion is a conversation, an exchange of ideas, of thoughts. I wanted somehow to be able to create that dinner table, where I am able to talk about fashion, politics and art. It’s not just hemlines – which I love, don’t get me wrong – I wanted to create a luxury brand with a soul. I want to let people know that they matter.”

Such lofty ideas now sit at the very heart of the label and the designer. But that has not always been the case. It was a chance conversation that led Gurung down his current path. “I was doing an interview and the journalist said to me: ‘It’s fashion, you aren’t exactly saving lives.’ And that really struck me. After she left, I called my family and said I wanted to start a foundation in Nepal. We started with 12 girls and now we have more than 350 children. We pay for their education until they graduate and help them to get their first job. After the earthquake in 2015, we started rebuilding work, and we have been able to help about 15,000 people.

“In Nepal, we believe in karma, and that what you do comes back to you. What you put out there, comes back to you tenfold. There is so much negativity on social media, so I wanted [my social media presence] to be like a Nepalese prayer flag. We have a flag with prayers written on it, and the whole philosophy is you hang it outside, and the wind blows the prayer all across the universe. I wanted my Instagram and my social media to be that.

“I have so much to be grateful for. Success is a true test of your character. Nothing else. It is testing you, what kind of person you are going to be, and who you really are. My whole thing is, whatever you do, do it with grace and love, and things always work out.”

At the end of every runway show, designers traditionally step out to take a bow. Some bob an unwilling head around the partition, while others revel in the moment, drinking in the applause. Gurung? At the close of his spring/summer show, he stepped out and started walking, his fingers held up in peace signs, wearing a T-shirt that read: “Resist with love”.

Vive la revolution.

* Sarah Maisey

Tea’s new identity

The age-old commodity has been a constant luxury over the years, but is currently attracting a whole new crowd, who are deviating from accepted tea-drinking traditions

Drinking a cup of freshly brewed tea while sitting on your sofa, in your pyjamas, may be a daily ritual for some, but the trendy way to consume tea these days is sipping a unique blend in an establishment that specialises in the beverage.

Tea-drinking norms have deviated dramatically from their old-school, aristocratic roots. And while the drink still carries luxurious connotations, the vibe at up-and-coming, New Age tea hotspots is laid-back and lighthearted.

Charlie Cain, who goes by the Twitter name Tea Evangelist, predicted the decline of traditional, Victorian-themed tea rooms in 2011, and hypothesised that urban cafes appealing to younger consumers would soon thrive. “While there will always be a place for well-run Victorian tea rooms, tea is no longer the exclusive choice of the Red Hat Society and those with the flu. Tea is young, hip, and healthy. Tea is cool,” he wrote in a blog post for Chicago-based tea retail business Adagio.

Indeed, in its list of industry trends for 2016, the World Tea Directory noted a 10 per cent yearly growth in speciality teas, noting that millennials were showing an increased interest in the hot drink. This shift is also reflected in a 2016 report on the tea industry in North America, compiled by Chris Monk of market research company Nielsen. “Millennials are your growth cohort – go after them,” he advises tea brands in his report. He also states: “Don’t be afraid to be edgy to breathe life back into tea consumption. Be memorable and evoke conversation.”

Tea has a fascinating past – one that’s somewhat at odds with our current relaxed approach to drinking it. There were rules, regulations and societal expectations surrounding the process of drinking of tea, Nirmal Sethia, founder and owner of Newby Teas, tells me. “You didn’t drink tea, you sipped tea. That’s part of the tea culture,” he says. Sethia founded his luxury tea brand in London in 2000 and, today, it is available at high-end hotels around the world. The brand has won numerous awards for its ethics and quality teas and, in the UAE, has established an e-commerce site.

To say that Sethia is passionate about the heritage of tea would be an understatement. When I visit his stately office in Dubai, he gives me an hour-long history lesson. Tea is believed to have been invented by Chinese Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BC, and introduced to Europe in the 15th century, when the Portuguese exported it from China, along with silk and bone china. When it was eventually brought to Britain, it was reserved for the ultra-elite. “Tea was only for the royals; it wasn’t for the common people,” says Sethia.

He goes on to explain that tea leaves must be preserved and protected in order to retain their characteristic fine taste – and at Newby Teas, this happens at the brand’s production facility in Kolkata, India. He also reveals that when it was first exported from China, less than 1 per cent of tea was technically suitable for consumption, and this small portion would all go to Chinese emperors and European royals and aristocrats.

But demand grew. “As the world population was increasing, the consumption of tea was also increasing,” says Sethia. “A new culture started, picking up 99 per cent of the poor tea. They started packaging it beautifully, and not preserving the tea, so that by the time the tea went into the package, it had lost its entire character.” While the first teas introduced to British nobles may have been of ultra-fine quality, tea soon became a drink for the masses, packaged in teabags and often tasting too bitter, causing many to add milk and sugar to it – a disgrace to the very nature of tea, Sethia claims. “The culture started declining, and the tea culture was 100 per cent destroyed by the year 2000,” he says.

But while the tea culture of the past may be lost on modern-day consumers, in its place, a new league of tea-drinking destinations has sprung up. These have developed cult followings for their unique blends, appealing atmospheres and social-media-worthy decor. In 2016, Alfred Tea Room opened in West Hollywood in Los Angeles, and quickly became a hotspot for celebrities such as Kourtney Kardashian and Larsa Pippen. Founder Joshua Zad saw a gap in the market between fast-food-style tea and coffee joints, and traditional high-end tea rooms where the hours-long experience involved being taught about the ingredients in each tea by a skilled tea master. His resulting concept was minimalist, yet customers were quickly captivated by the pink-tiled walls decorated with cheeky phrases spelt out in neon lights above the bar. Black, green, white, fermented and caffeine-free teas are all on offer at Alfred Tea Room, and come in simple takeaway cups decorated with cactus illustrations on pink backgrounds.

Instagrammable disposable cups are a hallmark of the new tea-room trend; a far cry from the fancy crockery previously considered essential. According to Sethia, prior to the 19th century, a person’s status could be determined by his or her tea set. “If it was silver, it had to be beautifully chiselled and very ornate, and if it was porcelain, the teacups had to be beautifully painted,” he says.

Elaborate table settings boasting such tea sets are typical of afternoon tea – a tradition introduced in England in 1840 by the Duchess of Bedford. These lavish afternoon teas, as well as high teas, are offered in the UAE at fancy cafes like Fortnum & Mason, and at five-star hotels across the country. But while luxury locations may have traditionally attracted UAE residents, tea drinkers are increasingly opting for outlets that are more accessible.

Still, fans of the beverage don’t visit tea rooms for a run-of-the-mill black tea that they can make at home. Located in The Dubai Mall, the TWG Tea Salon offers a glimpse into the glorious world of tea in a location that couldn’t be more convenient for the city’s residents. Yellow artisanal tea cans containing loose tea leaves are on display in large, glass windows bordered by rich, wood-panelled walls. More than 200 different teas are listed on the menu – including a 24K gold-infused tea called Gold Yin Zhen, which costs Dh998 for a single pot.

“We’ve noticed a growing trend of discerning customers who are increasingly demanding in their request for fine harvest teas as their palates develop,” says Maranda Barnes, co-founder of TWG Tea. Amanda Herhold, TWG Tea’s business manager at Al Futtaim in Dubai, explains that a tea salon provides customers with a full-on experience, from the vast selection of teas available, even within single categories like Earl Grey, to the accompanying snacks. The macarons and desserts at TWG are also tea-infused.

While these new tea rooms are more like cafes, since they tend to serve a selection of snacks, pastries or even light meals, Sethia admonishes the coupling of tea with edibles, and says that traditional tea rooms in China and Japan dedicate themselves solely to the preparing, presentation and etiquette of sipping tea. “The pairing of tea with food is the falsification and destruction of the tea culture,” he believes. “Good teas never have to be paired with food.”

Sanjeev Dutta, director of commodities and the tea centre at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), insists that the world of tea is becoming ever more diverse. “Though tea is one of the world’s oldest traded commodities, there still exists plenty of room for innovation,” he says. “There is no ‘one cup fits all’; rather, drinkers of all ages can explore new flavour combinations customised to their own palate.” Last year, the DMCC launched a luxury tea brand of its own, called Shai Dubai, featuring blends such as pistachio, cocoa, nutmeg, sweet dates and herbal tea.

In the Middle East, teas are often infused with ingredients such as saffron and cardamom, and karak chai has also become a beverage that’s considered cool, with concepts like Emirati homegrown cafe Karak House, specialising in the popular drink. After all, it is tea, not coffee, that ranks as the second most consumed drink, after water, among UAE residents.

Dutta says that Dubai is the largest re-exporter of tea in the world. “In 2016, the DMCC Tea Centre handled more than 41.6 million kilograms of tea,” he says. Euromonitor International has estimated that the UAE’s tea market will be worth US$70m (Dh257m) by 2018. And, according to the DMCC, the country as a whole consumes about 7m kilograms of tea per year, and more than 19,000kg daily.

Not only do many of the country’s expats hail from tea-drinking cultures, such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Japan, China and United Kingdom, but UAE residents are also increasingly concerned with health and well-being, and this could be a reason why younger residents are turning to tea.

“I do think tea has been revived because people are so health-conscious,” says Herhold, who emphasises that it can be a detoxifying drink as long as you avoid adding sugar. “Recent studies of younger drinkers have indicated that more than a third are willing to pay more for blends that offer added health benefits, such as antioxidant properties, anti-inflammation, or energy boosters,” Dutta adds.

* Hafsa Lodi