The Alps are at their most sublime when the sun is warm, the snow has given way to meadows, and the crowds are far away, says Darius Sanai. Here we focus on two legendary resorts which really come alive in the summer

Postcard Perfect: The Matterhorn towers over Zermatt’s green summer slopes

Zermatt: The high peak paradise

Mention a luxury chalet in Zermatt to anyone with an ounce of snow in their blood, and they will immediately start to fantasize about the glorious off-piste of the Hohtälli, the vertiginous black runs down from Schwarzsee, the myriad routes down the back of the Rothorn. For chalets and Zermatt mean the ultimate in he-man (and she-woman) ski holidays on the highest runs in the Alps, for groups who can then relax in a super- luxe communal chalet and share stories.

There is, however, another and very different experience to be had in a chalet in Zermatt. Mine started with sitting outside on a broad balcony in a polo shirt, gazing up at the green foothills and rocky high peaks, birds and butterflies drifting past. The summer sun is strong here, but in the mountains the air is dry and there is always a hint of the glaciers in the breeze, so you never feel like you are sweltering.

Zermatt is a glorious place in the summer, as its soaring peaks – it is surrounded by 30 mountains of over 4,000m in height, more than any other village in the Alps – are less frozen, less forbidding, more open to being explored than in the ski season. And while the village is the number one Alpine destination for summer holidays, it is still less crowded than in winter, when the entire populations of Moscow and Mayfair flock to the village under the Matterhorn.

Peak Season:
The village of Zermatt wears a cloak of green throughout the summer months, but the jagged Matterhorn retains its mantle of snow and ice

Chalet Helion, run by uber-swish chalet company Mountain Exposure, is one of the ultimate incarnations of its breed. Technically, although it’s a wood-panelled, chalet-style building, it’s not actually a chalet; rather it is an extensive lateral apartment running across the breadth and length of the construction. You get there via a three-minute taxi ride or five-minute walk from the main train station. Cross the rushing green Zermatt river, walk past the art nouveau-style Parkhotel Beau Site on a little knoll, and there it is.

On walking into the apartment, turn left into a vast, open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen area, with space to seat a party of 20. It sleeps eight people and is well organized for entertaining, as the living quarters can be closed off from the dining and chilling space, where there is also a cosy study.

Draw back the curtains and, beyond the broad balcony terrace, is the most magnificent view in Europe: an uninterrupted vista of the Matterhorn. It rises above the end of the valley like some supernatural thing, a giant, quasi- pyramidical, almost vertical rock formation, covered in thick snow and ice, surrounded by glaciers, standing above other mountains that are green with friendly summer pasture. It looks down with disdain, mocking us mere humans with our pathetic summer activities.

It is also mesmerizing. From the balcony at dawn, it glows rose like a Laurent-Perrier champagne; in the middle of the day, its least forbidding time, it is all silvers and whites; at dusk, it takes on its most frightening aspect, its darkness making you think of all the climbers who have fallen thousands of metres to their deaths on it. My father climbed the Matterhorn when he was young and made me promise I would not do it; he can rest assured from his own place in the skies that there is no danger of that.

The Matterhorn is Zermatt’s brand, adorning every poster, postcard, sticker and banner. But development means it has become harder and harder to find a room with a view of the mountain itself rather than a view of the newest building. And this is what makes Chalet Helion so special, as its vista, from a gentle slope above the village centre, is uninterrupted.

But the mountain isn’t the sole reason to go to Zermatt. There’s only a certain amount of time you can stare at the almighty, after all. Just down from Chalet Helion is the lift system that takes you up to the Sunnegga-Rothorn mountain. A train tunnel bores through the bare granite and, three minutes later, you emerge into a wonderland.

Sunnegga, the first stop, is above the treeline and at the top of the steep foothills that border one side of the village. From here, unlike down in the valley, you see that the Matterhorn is just one of dozens of massive, icy, knife-edged peaks above the resort. Directly in front of you rise four 4,000m-peaks, culminating in the Weisshorn, shaped like a gigantic shark’s fin and, at 4,512 metres, even higher than the Matterhorn. To the left, snowy pinnacles hint at even higher summits. To see those, we climbed into the
cable car to the very top of this lift system, the 3,100-metre high Unter Rothorn (recently rebranded as just Rothorn, but as there are three variations on Rothorn around here, I prefer to stick to its original name). We stepped out into eye-watering sunshine and crunched onto a patch of snow left over from winter: 3,100 metres is high indeed. The peeking peaks from the previous stop now revealed themselves as six huge mountains layered in unimaginably thick snow and ice, rising above the Gornergrat ridge in between us.

The highest of these, Monte Rosa, looked like a giant’s meringue, massive but without the character or shape of the others. At 4,634 metres, it makes up in heft what it lacks in shapeliness: you can make out the other face of Monte Rosa quite clearly when standing on the roof of Milan’s cathedral, more than 100 miles away. (As a comparison, Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, is 1,343 metres, and Germany’s highest, the Zugspitze, is 2,963 metres.)

Zermatt is famed for its mountain restaurants, but that morning I had gone shopping at the local Coop (which in Switzerland means amazing fresh, local ingredients, from radishes to mountain cheese), and we picnicked instead, sat on a rock by the side of a pewter-coloured lake, in which the Matterhorn was perfectly reflected. Here, at Stelisee, you are at peace with the mountains above and the valleys below. The sun bakes you, apart from an occasional wisp of wind which wafts down from the glacier like nature’s own cooling mist spray. Butterflies, bees and millions of grasshoppers play among the fields of wildflowers all around. Even the Matterhorn from here looks less dark, more pretty. Never has an air-dried beef sandwich with freshly grated horseradish tasted more perfect.

Chalet Chic:
Chalet Helion occupies the entire top floor of this traditional, pretty chalet building

Walking down, we came across another lake, Leisee, deep green in colour. Fittingly, amid the sea of wildflowers surrounding this one, was a confederacy of tiny green frogs. Not much bigger than an adult fingernail, you had to be careful not to tread on them as you walked along the path.

Dinner in Zermatt comes with reservations in both sense of the word: you need to book, as the place is heaving in season; and you always feel slightly annoyed that the restaurants, however well deserved their culinary reputation, have no Matterhorn view, as they are clustered in the village centre.

This was a further joy of Chalet Helion. On most nights we cooked, and ate and drank local Valais wine (vibrant Fendant whites, deep Cornalin reds) on our balcony or at the dining table with our private, picture window view of the mountain fading to grey. After which, a Havana on the balcony: one clear night we could make out the helmet lights of the night climbers on the sheer rockface of the mountain.

On one evening, Mountain Exposure’s charismatic owner, Donald Scott, a British snow- phile who came to Zermatt and never left, brought one of the company’s chefs to create us a fabulous, complex Swiss mountain meal. Our dining area was transformed into a restaurant, an option open to any guest who pays.

We will certainly be back, for the view from Chalet Helion, and its entire experience, is as eternal as it is wondrous.

Chalet Helion is available summer and winter from Mountain Exposure, mountainexposure.com. For general information, see zermatt.ch

SPA AT MONT CERVIN PALACE

For decades Mont Cervin Palace has been the byword for glamour for all visitors to Zermatt. A well-kept secret is that this five-star hotel in the heart of the village has a beautiful, 25-metre indoor pool, and an outdoor spa pool and garden as part of its hidden annexe. The garden and outdoor pool (which is open year-round) have a dramatic view of the mountains from the village centre, and the indoor pool and hydrotherapy area are the best places in the valley to retreat to when the weather closes in – or if you want some cross-training exercise after a day’s skiing and hiking. The best news? They are open to non-residents, for a fee. montcervinpalace.ch

Gstaad: Alpine chic with a twist

Gstaad has a reputation as a gentle place, perhaps more suited to high net worth retirees wanting a peaceful and safe place close to their money (in Swiss bank accounts) in which to holiday. But that reputation vanished before my eyes as soon as I set foot into the garden of The Alpina hotel.

The Hills are Alive:
Wildflowers fill the alpine meadows around Gstaad during the summer months

Before me, a long outdoor pool, lined by teak decking and a few (not too many – this is Gstaad) sunloungers. Around it was a garden in full bloom; beyond that the rooves of this traditional village (The Alpina is on a small plateau above the centre), all framed by an amphitheatre of forest, meadow and mountain. Far away were high rocky peaks and glaciers. It was hot in the sun, and a first morning spent in and by the pool, accompanied by the occasional cocktail, was bliss due to true exclusivity. At that moment, in any number of luxury Mediterranean hotels, super- wealthy guests would be jostling for space by the poolside in neat rows, trying to attract the attention of overstressed serving staff, waiting far too long for their drinks to arrive.

We, on the other hand, had the attention of numerous waiters (there were a few other guests, but more than enough staff to deal with them) and sufficient space to have a conversation about my tax affairs on my phone with no danger of anyone overhearing (not that I would be so vulgar).

Mountain Highs: Gstaad rewards summertime
visitors with verdant valleys framed by snow-capped peaks

Suite Dreams:
Swiss artisans have created the interiors at The Alpina, using local stone and period woodwork

Wandering inside a neat little chalet, we found stairs to take us down to a cavernous and exquisitely finished spa area. One corridor led to a salt room, where even the walls were seemingly made of salt, another to the treatment rooms, and another to a quiet cafe area lined with photographic books and jugs containing various herb-flavoured waters.

Beyond that, another pool, inside the cavern, some 25 metres long, bookended by spa pools and crowned by a glass cupola looking into the garden above. If the weather ever failed, this would be the place to spend the day, as we discovered the next day when a thunderstorm swept in. The Alps form the border of the hot Mediterranean climate zone and rainy northern Europe, and you can feel the battle between one and the other, day by day.

When the sun reappeared we headed up the round, green mountain facing us – more a fairytale hill than a dramatic Alp – in a gondola and found a large chalet restaurant, Wispile, serving fondues made with cheese from the chalet’s own cows, clearly visible in the pasture above. The view was over the village and the wooded foothills and forests beyond, out towards Lake Geneva. Wispile also has a menagerie of animals, from llamas to pigs and goats, which families can help to feed.

If Wispile is all that you expect from a Swiss Alpine hut, the evening offering at The Alpina is something else entirely. The owners of this new uber-luxe hotel, which was clearly built to compete with, if not actually outdo, the celebrated Palace hotel down the road, wanted the best of world cuisine in a village not renowned for its cosmopolitan food offerings.

For MEGU, a Japanese restaurant in the heart of the hotel that is an outpost of the celebrated New York establishment of the same name, they enticed and employed master chefs from Japan. It shows: the sushi was magnificent. A taste that I will try and remember for the rest of my life is the signature crispy asparagus with crumbed Japanese rice crackers, chilli and lemon. The Oriental salad (various Chinese vegetables, nuts, seeds, sashimi of Dover sole and sesame oil) was also unique and memorable. Stone-grilled wagyu chateaubriand with a fresh (not powdered) wasabi soy reduction was also fabulously vibrant. I’d take MEGU over Nobu and Zuma, if only it were in London.

There was also Sommet, the hotel’s other signature restaurant, which holds two Michelin stars. It is hard to tell which is more important. Sommet has the better location, a big contemporary dining room with a view of pool and mountains, and seating on the broad terrace; MEGU is the cosy space behind the bar at the heart of the hotel. Sommet has 18/20 from the Gault et Millau guide and is refreshingly fuss- free. The seabass with artichokes, hazelnuts and spinach had simple, highly defined flavours, and the organic salmon steak with tomato and olive risotto was cooked with great attention to detail. Sommet’s chef has the confidence to let his quality ingredients, combinations and technique speak for themselves, and this is contemporary fine dining of the most appealing kind.

These were two of my most notable meals of the year, anywhere in the world, to the extent that I would make a journey to the hotel just to eat there, even if I couldn’t stay there. But for overall experience, they can’t quite match that of sitting by the outdoor pool, looking at the glowing green of the Alps, under the deep blue of the mountain sky, in utter peace, while sipping a perfectly made margarita, served by an unhassled staff member who knows exactly when to ask whether I’d like another one. That may not have been the first line of the owners’ business plan when they opened The Alpina, but they have succeeded in making Gstaad a true summer holiday destination beyond, I suspect, even their wildest dreams.

thealpinagstaad.ch

Driverless cars – this year’s big thing in automobiles – trade emotion for efficiency. Can the company that invented the motor car combine both? Caroline Davies speaks to Mercedes- Benz’s Dr Thomas Weber to find out

Tomorrow’s World:
The driverless Mercedes F 015 takes to the road

The world of autonomous – or, in lay parlance, self-driving – cars, which has been on the horizon for a few years, is finally threatening to become reality very soon. Self-accelerating, self-braking, self-navigating models will soon follow today’s self-parking models in to the marketplace. But motoring is, for a significant minority, more than just the least painful way to get from A to B: in the world of luxury, a car is an end in itself, not a utensil. And for them, Mercedes-Benz has created a striking concept car, snappily named the ‘F 015 Luxury in Motion’.

Not available in a showroom near you ever – its purpose is as a debating point and research showcase – the F 015 re-conceptualizes the purpose of a car. Tellingly, rather than reveal it at a motor show, Mercedes-Benz selected the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the world’s biggest tech fest: a signal that this is not just a car. It is also the company’s riposte to latent threats by Apple, Google and other tech firms that they will disrupt the world of cars like they disrupted the world of the PC.

At the CES I spoke to Thomas Weber, effectively the global number two at Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, about why they had developed it. “We asked ourselves, ‘What is luxury [motoring] in the future?’” he said. “It is time, space and access to information.” That was the driving force behind the future driving concept.

Meet the Mercedes: Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes- Benz and chairman of Daimler, unveiled the F 015 in Las Vegas

As the executive board member in charge of research and development for the world’s leading luxury car company, Weber’s view is carefully observed by industry watchers. The monolithic design of the car gives passengers the largest possible space, he says. The inside, upholstered in white leather and open-pore walnut wood, has four rotating chairs, allowing guests to look at the road or each other. The door panels are touch screen, allowing passengers to call up contacts, information, the route, music or points of interest along the way. Unlike the original cars Google produced, there’s a steering wheel, should you feel the need to take over. Also unlike Google’s cars, it feels like a car, not a disposable electronic device.

The car is, in part, a response to what Mercedes-Benz feels will be one of the major issues of the future: a burgeoning urban population. As the world moves to live in the city, roads will become increasingly congested. An automated car provides two solutions to the problem. Firstly, it gives the passenger time back, free to do what they want instead of driving. Secondly, it allows for cars to be shared; once a car has dropped off one passenger, it is free to collect another rather than sit in a car park.

“If you want to create more than only a car, then you have to do more than only look at the car,” says Weber. “You have to ask what a city in 2030 will look like. We know that more than 50 per cent of all people will live in crowded urban areas. Then what happens? What will the customer do in their car? You have to understand their lifestyle. The car is part of your daily life, your digital companion.”

Weber believes that while a self-driving car from Mercedes may be an efficient space when it is driving itself, it will still provide pleasure when you want it to, unlike other modes of transport. He does not believe that driving will become obsolete.

“[Transport autonomy] will happen in taxis and trains but not in the car,” he says. “It is comparable to skiing. Everyone takes the lift to the top, but the enjoyable part – downhill – you want to do yourself.”

City Slicker:
The Mercedes F 015 could revolutionize urban life

Admittedly, a machine would in most circumstances be a better driver than any human; they don’t get tired, distracted or forget which side of the road they should be on. Accidents could reduce to near zero; insurance, too. “We need autonomous driving to realize our vision of accident-free driving,” says Weber. “With sensors and these machines we can mitigate most of the critical situations where accidents happen.”

There are still issues – technological and legal – to iron out before these cars will be on the road. “There is a concern that some of our colleagues will do certain steps too early and terrible accidents could happen based on poorly realized autonomous cars,” says Weber. “If that happens then we could be forbidden from developing these cars. We need to do everything possible to mitigate these early failures.”

One such issue is strong internet signal; creating a bandwidth strong enough to control a full highway requires creating this digital infrastructure. Manufacturers will also have to wait until the legal framework is in place. Who is to blame if an autonomous car hits a pedestrian? What if a car was faced with a moral dilemma: for example, a mother pushes a baby in a pram into the path of an autonomous car on one side, as a cyclist is overtaking it on the other. Which way should it be pre-programmed to go? An autonomous car, for all its computing power, will not make decisions of its own: it will do what it has been told to do.

Weber is keen to have these discussions early. “Legal discussion, social discussion, acceptance discussion – these things take time,” he says. “But we have cars on sale with first situations of this technology. We have a road map.” The first autonomous cars will probably be developments of today’s self-parking cars, with drivers taking control at times.

Legislators have already started thrashing out these details and manufacturers have begun to steadily introduce autonomous elements, easing the population into the idea with the expectation that fully autonomous cars will be on the road as early as 2025. For many, that remains a frightening thought, but we have been entrusting our lives to aeroplane autopilots for years. At least style needn’t be a worry; with Weber in charge, autonomous cars will have plenty of panache.

The Luxury Travel Issue, Summer 2015

Monaco is the place where yachtsmanship and money combine in an intoxicating and irresistible blend. Millie Walton is charmed by the sailors and owner of Maserati’s record-breaking yacht

Siren of the Seas: The VOR70 shows all the hallmarks of Maserati’s design prowess

The crew of the 70ft Maserati Yacht VOR70 are sitting around a table at Bistrot Le Bouchon, one of Monaco’s more understated restaurants. They have just sailed in from Barcelona and are sporting bodily evidence of the journey – a torn-off fingernail here, a badly swollen wrist there. But they speak with excitement about the boat’s ambitious 2015 racing programme, which culminates in the infamously challenging Rolex Sydney–Hobart Yacht Race, between mainland Australia and Tasmania.

Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it – the market in photography is booming like never before, and even major museums, art institutions and auction houses want to get in on the action. Collectors take heed, says our columnist Jean-David Malat

Tony Kelly: ‘Body Builders’ for ‘L’Officiel Hommes’, Germany (September 2014)

The art market used to be very cautious about photography, but the tendency is now shifting – The Telegraph reported a 36 per cent increase of auction sales of photography in 2014. Slowly but steadily, the market and its collectors are opening up to fine art photography. On the one hand, this means that prices for artworks of this genre are going up and that we are witnessing auction records more and more regularly – how to forget Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II (1999), which became the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction when it reached $4.3 million at Christie’s New York in 2011? On the other hand, however, one notices that this young market is still relatively much more affordable than the market for fine art painting or sculpture, for example. This makes it a very attractive field, therefore, for the new collectors and art professionals, who observe a real desire for fine art photography internationally.

Reaffirming the market’s observations, major museums and trusted institutions have also been giving much more attention to the photographic genre, with large-scale exhibitions of historical and contemporary fine art photography. Founded in 1971 The Photographers’ Gallery underwent a major expansion in 2012, which made it the largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography. It focuses its activity on promoting emerging talents, conserving historical archives and exhibiting established photography artists.

This summer another landmark of the UK’s art and culture scene, London’s National Portrait Gallery, will launch an exhibition entirely devoted to photography of Audrey Hepburn. ‘Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon’ will feature a selection of more than 60 photographs, including classic and rarely seen prints by leading photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Terry O’Neill, Norman Parkinson and Irving Penn.

Responding to this tangible – even pressing – demand from collectors, Opera Gallery has historically supported contemporary photographers: Gérard Rancinan, Olivier Dassault, Fani Alireza and Zoé Flore among others. More recently, the gallery started working with major figures of the genre. In Monaco in 2013 we held an exhibition by Terry O’Neill, one of the world’s most collected photographers whose work hangs in national art galleries and private collections worldwide. Since 2014 we are also delighted to be able to offer works by David LaChapelle to our clients. Probably one of the most famous living photographers, LaChapelle has exceptional talent combining a unique hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound social messages. He is also very prominent for his striking and stylish portraits of celebrities, of course!

Gavin Bond: Shot for ‘GQ’ Mexico (February 2015)

Alongside what one could call ‘traditional’ art photography, fashion photography has made an entrance and is demanding its letters of nobility. And collectors across the world are responding with eagerness and enthusiasm!

It is this realization that made us at Opera Gallery London decide to curate an exhibition of contemporary photography, shining a light on some of the most sought-after artists of the field. Titled ‘Raw Footage’, the exhibition focuses on fashion-turned-art photography as well as on celebrity portraiture, both of which are fascinating evidence of the evolution of our cultural history. We have sourced works by some of the hottest fashion photographers of the moment, such as Vincent Peters, Tony Kelly, Mario Testino, David LaChapelle, Gavin Bond, Greg Williams, Simon Emmett, Douglas Kirkland and, of course, UK sweetheart Rankin.

Through the selected works, we interrogate how fashion photographers and their collaborators – designers, stylists, models and viewers – participate in disseminating our culture and defining our aesthetics. Alongside them, we will feature other photography geniuses: Nicolas Guérin and his mesmerizing ‘Polaroid Dreams’ series; Paul Solomons who, although he comes from the fashion world, takes a very different approach to photography, working with repetition and pattern-making; and Gérard Rancinan, self-described “active witness” to humanity, who states he works against the obliteration of our collective memory. All of these fascinating and inspiring image- makers are being brought together to capture an image of our times and to shine a light on beauty and its unattainable status.

Beyond that, the exhibition will reaffirm our strong confidence in the burgeoning market of photography, as an art that is both affordable – an aspect that is especially attractive to new collectors – and also a rather safe and sound investment: ArtTactic reported in June 2014 that “the confidence in the Contemporary Photography market continues to improve with an increase of 10 per cent since December 2013, reaching the highest reading since March 2011”. And if a photograph is also depicting a scene, celebrity or subject you admire and can lose yourself in, then the investment is doubly positive: a financial placement as well as an emotional commitment.

Jean-David Malat is an art dealer and curator, and the director of London’s Opera Gallery. operagallery.com

Presiding over a global restaurant empire, spanning Bahrain to Boston, Wolfgang Puck is one of the world’s most celebrated chefs. He speaks to Alice Clarke about food, family, canned pineapple and Coco Chanel

Top Tables
Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants include Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles (above), and CUT at 45 Park Lane, London

Alice Clarke: Did you love cooking as a child?
Wolfgang Puck: My mother was a chef and I helped her to cook at home. I loved pastries and sweets more than anything back then. When I was 14 I left home to start an apprenticeship with a chef 50 miles away. That was a long way and it was hard when you had to work on the weekend and all your friends were playing or going skiing. It was only when I went to France that I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I was working in a restaurant in Provence called L’Oustau de Baumanière, which had three Michelin stars and was run by the legendary Raymond Thuilier.

AC: Do you look back and think of Thuilier as your mentor?
WP: Yes, he was in a way. I remember when I came to Los Angeles with a friend who’d also worked there and we said, ‘OK, we’re going to open a restaurant like Baumanière’.

AC: It’s interesting to see how some chefs have been so influenced by those who they trained under.
WP: Well, I think you get into a certain style and if you’re happy with it, you don’t change. For me it was different – I always tried to experiment and do new things. That’s why I’ve been married three times! Just kidding… But with regards to restaurants, I was interested in so many different things. After I’d opened Spago [in West Hollywood in 1982] I didn’t want to open another branch next, that would be too boring. Instead, I wanted to have a Chinese restaurant, so I launched Chinois [in Santa Monica, 1983], which was the first Asian-American fusion restaurant. I didn’t even know how to make fried rice at the time but I said, ‘I’m going to learn my own way’.

Head Chef: Austrian born, Los Angeles-based Puck oversees almost 30 restaurants worldwide

AC: Is there one particular cuisine that you enjoy the most?
WP: I love spices, but I also love the simplicity of a restaurant like CUT [with branches in Beverly Hills, Las Vegas, London, Bahrain, Dubai and Singapore], where you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s the best quality. It’s almost like if you get a great dress and it fits perfectly, you don’t need too much jewellery. Or if you have great earrings, you don’t need a necklace or rings. Coco Chanel said that before you leave the house, you should take two things off; that way you’re going to look better. I think it’s the same with food. If we pair it down, make it more minimalistic, it’s often better.

AC: There seems to be a real movement towards organic, fresh, sustainable food at the moment. Are you on board with that?
WP: Well, I grew up on a farm in Austria, so when we had salad we got it from the garden, and if we had vegetable soup we picked some carrots, cauliflower, beans or whatever, cut them up and made soup. So for me, there has never been anything so new about that. What was exotic and interesting was canned pineapple. I remember the first time somebody bought me canned pineapple from Hawaii, I thought: ‘Wow that’s exotic, that’s amazing’. I opened it and ate it really slowly. When I was younger we went to the forest and picked raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and white strawberries. In early spring my mother planted radishes and things like that, so by Easter we had the first fresh salad. Now all of a sudden in America everyone talks about ‘from farm to table’. I’ve never known anything different!

Fresh Start: Proving breakfast is the most important meal of the day, CUT is also a top spot for brunch

AC: Do you cook to relax?
WP: Oh yes. When I tell people I cook at home they say, ‘What do you mean? Don’t you already do enough?’ But I really like it. My children love it, too. My nine-year-old loves food. If he doesn’t get out of bed, I tell him I’m going to make scrambled eggs without him. He jumps up, comes downstairs, breaks the eggs, and has to cook it with me.

AC: Are there any chefs at the moment who you are particularly impressed by?
WP: I think Grant Achatz is one of the most talented chefs in America. He makes his own thing, a little bit out there, but very interesting– like Heston [Blumenthal] with The Fat Duck.

AC: What is your latest cookbook about?
WP: Wolfgang Puck Makes it Healthy is about eating better and exercising. I go skiing with the likes of [downhill champion] Franz Klammer but for about nine years, even if we weren’t going fast, I had to keep stopping to breathe. Similarly, I was playing tennis in Maui, where it is quite hot and humid, and after about 10 minutes I had to sit down as I couldn’t breathe anymore. I thought to myself, ‘I have to change my lifestyle and also start to exercise and eat better’. This book is really a result of that.

AC: How do you get people to eat more healthily?
WP Even if you go to a cheap grocery store, that’s still better than buying canned or frozen food. We should say to ourselves, ‘Okay, I like rice, why don’t I buy brown rice’, which has more flavour and is better for you. And the same with pasta. Once you get used to eating wholewheat pasta, you realize it’s really tasty and all of a sudden you think regular pasta is bland. So little by little you can try things out and begin to understand what is good and not so good for you. I also think that, in America especially, the portion sizes are too big. People think they have to eat a lot, but they don’t. In fact, they say you actually live longer if you eat less.

AC: You do a lot of charity work. Can you tell us about your philanthropic endeavours?
WP:In 1982 we started to do events with some chefs and wineries, so we called it The American Food and Wine Festival. We donated the money raised to ‘meals on wheels’, which provides food for old people, for people who don’t have any money and so on. We then started a cancer benefit for people who can’t go to hospital for treatment. We do a big event in Las Vegas for Alzheimer’s sufferers, because my mother had Alzheimer’s. We also do a big event in Cleveland for children at a cancer clinic there, too. We do a lot of work with schools, plus my wife has an orphanage accommodating 700 children in Ethiopia. So that alone is quite a lot of work!

Shooting Stars: Spago in Beverley Hills is one of only three restaurants in LA to hold two Michelin stars

AC:Do you find it hard to juggle everything?
WP:Sometimes, yes, it’s complicated and difficult. I have very good people who have worked with me for a long time though, so that helps.

AC: What has been your favourite meal recently?
WP: I had dinner last night at Alain Ducasse’s latest restaurant at the Plaza Athénée in Paris. I liked it a lot because it was so different; it was a really interesting experience. Sometimes the whole experience is better than each dish. I told them I only had one hour and they served me 10 different dishes. Three-star fast food!

AC: Your first restaurant, Spago, opened in 1982. Do you still feel as inspired by food today as you were back then?
WP Oh yes, I still love it just as much. If not, I wouldn’t be here.

wolfgangpuck.com

The Water Issue, Winter 2015

Léa Seydoux, the French star who’s conquered Hollywood and is the new face of Prada Candy, speaks to Caroline Davies about childhood, perfume and Nietzsche

A ski-in, ski-out residence complete with Martini bar and pool sounds very Rocky Mountains, yet L’Amara is a spectacular addition to one of the most traditional skiing regions of France, as Darius Sanai discovers

Powder White: Avoriaz’s high elevation ensures a fine supply of deep snow

How do you like to take your Alpine winter holiday? I suspect that cosmopolitan readers of LUX like to ski in the Alps, as well as put carbon fibre on snow in Colorado, Idaho and Hokkaido. There is something about the home of skiing, the crescent of mountains that rises out of the Mediterranean above Nice and sweeps through France, Switzerland, northern Italy and Austria before petering out, like the Turks, at the gates of Vienna, that is more concentrated, more alive with possibility and atmosphere, than anywhere else. The powder may be deeper in Niseko, the back country bigger in British Columbia, the whole experience more effortless in Aspen: but the Alps are where the story started, and where it evolved and continues to evolve. (Snowboarders have a different tale to tell, but not that many of you are boarders.)

If you are of one generation of wealth, you may stay in a hotel in St Moritz, Lech or Gstaad. Another, and you will be pounding the new hotels of Courchevel (see our helpful tongue- in-cheek guide at the end of this article). Or you may instead take over a whole chalet in Zermatt or Verbier. One rung down from the gourmet-catered chalets are the traditional French ski holiday chalets, cheerfully run by a chalet girl fresh out of British boarding school, happily burning the scrambled eggs and fighting off the advances of a soon-to-be-retired chartered surveyor from Surrey while his family occupies the Jacuzzi.

While there is no shortage of grand hotels, old and new, and chalets of every style, what the Alps have largely lacked is sophisticated, concierge-led residences in the American style, where you have a kitchen and living room, an in-residence pool, and a proper reception/bar/ restaurant downstairs, hotel-style. Until recently. L’Amara, one such development, opened last year to a considerable buzz in the French resort of Avoriaz. Avoriaz itself, located at a very high 1,800m on a mountainside above a deep valley, in which lies its mother resort of Morzine, has undergone something of a rebranding in recent years, shedding its 1960s middle-middle-class French bourgeoisie image and turning more contemporary and upmarket. L’Amara is in an extension of the main village, on a ledge overlooking Morzine (rather satisfying, if, as during our stay, there is deep snow all around but the grey of rain far down below).

When booking we did wonder whether being a) high on a ledge, and b) 500m from the main part of Avoriaz would be an issue, and this is a good demonstration of how even an enormous amount of online research can draw you to the wrong conclusion. L’Amara’s location, bordering the thick forest that plunged down the valley, was spectacular and felt exclusive. The walk to the village centre was panoramic, flat, and thrilling; even more so when my younger daughter decided that the wheelbarrows-on-skis that you can pick up and deposit back anywhere in the village would be an ideal mode of transportation: one daughter thus transported the other throughout the trip. (This would not work in a resort thick with teenage British partygoers, who would inevitably shove each other down the run leading down the ledge in an alcohol-fuelled daze, with predictably alarming consequences. Fortunately, Avoriaz is very upper-middle-class family, or was when we were there.)

L’Amara itself is genuinely ski-in, ski- out (unlike some places that dub themselves so): unless you execute a perfect stop, you will find yourself skiing into the ski room, and conversely you can launch yourself out in the morning like a racer from a downhill starting gate. The ski school assembly area, where I left the family every morning, is above the main village. On day one we walked, and felt rather laden down with skis, poles and rucksacks (the altitude doesn’t help). Day two saw us ski down out of the hotel to the bottom of the (easy) blue run, with the aim of taking the chairlift that would deposit us just above the ski school area; we were just patting ourselves on the back for working out this ruse when we were confronted by a 20-minute queue of several hundred other people who had the same idea. (In the resort’s defence, we were travelling on the busiest week of the year and this was the only lift with any kind of significant queue.) On day three we found the solution that we used for the rest of the week with joy: a horse-drawn sleigh taxi, which whooshed us up to the ski school in a cloud of hooves, powder and sleigh bells (to the children’s delight) in three short minutes, for a mere €10. Worth the money for the ride alone.

The skiing in Avoriaz is extensive but not very tall: there are no ultra-high lifts of the type you get in Zermatt or Chamonix. Double- diamond and power-hound experts would run out of thrills quite soon, I think, but for a skier like me (and I am possibly the most common type of lifelong skier) the selection of interesting reds and proper but not kamikaze blacks was varied enough to hold the attention for a week without getting too much déjà vu.

Avoriaz is in the middle of an interlinked region called the Portes du Soleil. It is not as logically and broadly linked as the Trois Vallées of Courchevel, Meribel and Val Thorens: you can choose to ski to Champéry in Switzerland or, in the other direction, to Châtel in France. The Châtel trip was a ski journey of the type I enjoy, but it took a bit of navigation with the map. A lift up, then down to a collation of restaurants in the next valley called Ardent; up another lift and down a pleasant red to another, bigger collation of restaurants called Les Lindarets in a confusingly similar-looking valley; then up two lifts to a high-ish station called Chesery, from which it would be easy to take the wrong piste and end up back in Les Lindarets.

From Chesery there was a long view down a new valley all the way to Lake Geneva. The most interesting run of all, a steep, straight and mogulled red through the trees (really a black), led down to the pretty, traditional village of Châtel. It felt strangely satisfying to know that to drive back to Avoriaz from here would take up to two hours, around the mountains, and I was planning to have a hot chocolate (laced with a little something) and admire my last run, when I realised that I would need to turn straight round and return if I weren’t to miss the last in the fiddly series of lifts to get back home. I had to positively will the chairlifts to go faster and ski like an impatient Italian instructor eager to get down to his first date with a blonde Swedish student. I still had my heart in my mouth as I did my last racing turn (or what I hoped was a racing turn) to meet the final lift: it closed at 4.15pm, my watch said 4.17pm and… it was still moving. I shot through the gate without slowing down and was whisked back up to safety.

The rest of the family had just as enjoyable, if rather less eventful, times and after years of staying at luxury hotels it was a curious relief to be back into our extensive den at L’Amara. I enjoyed cooking (shopping in French supermarkets is always a pleasure) and opening wine purchased from a wine shop, not a marked-up hotel restaurant (it’s the principle, not the price). And after a day of ski school/private lessons, nobody felt much like talking to more strangers in the form of waiters and the like.

L’Amara has been designed with great attention to detail: we liked the porthole window by the floor-to-ceiling balcony door, the wraparound balcony itself, and the extremely well-equipped kitchen (complete with oyster shuckers and other signs of entitled bourgeoisie). On two nights we ventured across the snowy courtyard to Le Grand Café, part of the same complex, a new-but-trad restaurant serving steak on hot stones, various fondues, and high-class thin, misshapen pizzas of the best kind. Neither hotel nor chalet, and rather better than both, residences like L’Amara have a bright future in the Alps – the best type of American import.

Crystal Holidays offer comprehensive luxury packages to L’Amara in Avoriaz. crystalski.co.uk

Controversy and chaos collide in the photography of Tierney Gearon, discovers Millie Walton. No wonder Charles Saatchi is a fan.

Tierney Gearon is hard to pin down. It takes a couple of weeks for me to catch her on the phone from her home in Los Angeles, and even then it’s only for a few minutes, as she’s “arrived at a friend’s house and doesn’t want to look rude”. I shouldn’t be surprised; she is one of the world’s most sought-after photographers. Yet despite the fact that she’s balancing two jobs as an artist and mother, she’s more than willing to talk and welcome me into her world. There’s a familiarity to her, even though we’ve never spoken before, and her answers feel genuine and unrehearsed.

The way she puts it, she sort of stumbled into photography. Born in Georgia, initially she was a ballet dancer “and then I cut my hair and became a model. While I was modelling and travelling around the world, I kept a Polaroid diary of everything I did. One of my agents saw the Polaroids I’d taken of the other models and said, ‘Oh my god, you’re an incredible photographer!’ That’s basically how I broke into fashion photography.” There’s a pause as she’s seen something she needs to take a photo of – a little girl playing with her mum. “Give me two seconds.” Despite this little interlude, Tierney doesn’t usually carry her camera around with her. She finds it “far too intense”, preferring instead to allocate dedicated work trips.

Pushing the Boundaries
Gearon’s ‘Colorshape’ series explores the idea of putting someone in a box, literally and metaphorically

She’s back, slightly out of breath and laughing. “Sorry about that! Where was I? When I got married I put my photography aside for a while to concentrate on having children and being a mum,” she continues. “When I started having marital problems aged 38 I needed to find myself again, so I started photographing my family in a new, artistic way. I’m one of those people who believe that you should just follow things in your path. You never know what’s going to happen.”

In 2001 Gearon’s photographs were showcased in the Saatchi Gallery in London – a huge achievement for a virtually unknown artist. However, the exhibition (‘I Am A Camera’), which included two photographs of her nude children (then aged four and six) caused public outrage, resulting in the near-seizure of her work under indecency laws. The abuse propelled at her by the media was particularly vicious – a News of the World review labelled the show “perversion under the guise of art”. She was, she says, “an innocent person who was simply trying to document” her life, but looking back on the controversy now Tierney appreciates how naïve she was to the art world. “When Charles Saatchi saw my work he knew that something would happen because of it,” she says. “Those were intended as light, funny images. To me, the darkness is in the eye of the beholder. If you see something dark that’s your issue, not mine.”

Did the incident cause her to reconsider her artwork? “It made me lose interest in the business of the art world itself,” she says. “I feel like a lot of galleries and people are just looking for sensation. Charles Saatchi is a master at advertising, creating sensation. Being a successful art director is an incredible gift and he is very talented. It’s great to have people like that appreciate your work, but at the same time one needs to be careful not to get caught up in the art world game.”

Site Specific The Plexiglas structures are built on site wherever Gearon is shooting

Perhaps that’s why Gearon’s images are so rooted within the domestic world. She works through an organic creative process, which naturally encourages people to use their imaginations. “Usually I direct organised chaos and interesting things happen within it,” she explains. “A lot of the time people don’t even know I’m taking their photograph.”

It’s that combination of reality paired with fantasy that makes her photographs so mesmerising. The worlds she depicts often have a way of inviting the viewer in while also evoking an atmosphere that’s punctuated by sadness or uncertainty. This is most obvious in ‘The Mother Project’, a series of photographs that explores Gearon’s relationship with her mentally ill mother. Despite the hardship that must have entailed, the artist looks back on her childhood fondly. “Both my parents gave me an enormous amount of love and allowed me to be an individual,” she recalls. “They gave me the space to be creative and to appreciate creativity.” It’s something she aims to allow her own children by encouraging them to collaborate with her on projects. Her most recent release, ‘Alphabet Book’ – “an art book for children and a children’s book for adults” – is the result of that collaboration and an enchanting example of what combined imaginations can produce.

Aside from being an outlet for creativity, I wonder why Gearon feels so compelled to photograph and what it is that she’s hoping to capture in her images. “My photography is like a diary of my soul,” she says. “Every single project I’ve done is a way of working through different issues in my life. My images tell a story, they provoke emotion and feelings.”

What’s the story behind her current series, ‘Colorshape’, I ask. “It’s about putting someone in a box. I wasn’t raised with a lot of boundaries, so by putting someone in a box I was also learning to contain myself.” One can’t help feeling that the project, like all of Gearon’s work, will keep going until she discovers exactly what it is she’s looking for. She admits to be being “a perfectionist” and says that “I may appear disorganised from the outside, but anyone that really knows me understands that even the chaos that sometimes surrounds me is an organised chaos.”

Organisation, it would seem, is the key to Gearon’s sense of stability. It’s a way of grounding herself and her children. “I have a very distracted personality and I create structure by creating a strong family home that feels safe for us,” she explains. “I don’t drink, smoke or do any drugs. We go on a lot of family trips and I have a huge support team, which includes my close friends and family.”

I wonder how her work has developed since becoming a mother. “All of my projects are from my heart and soul. I feel I have become more focused and more confident over the years. I live in the present, which keeps my work very current, but I don’t work every day so my work doesn’t consume me. My children consume me.”

We move on to talking about her relationship with her audience. With 54,000 followers on Instagram, it’s safe to say Gearon has a significant following who enjoy viewing her professional work as much as the “visually inspiring images” of her everyday life. “I’m not even sure who my audience is because I’ve never met them,” she muses. “But I feel that people who appreciate my work are people looking for something raw and individual, something very authentic. Because I share myself with people in my work, people reach out to me, they feel understood by me. Instagram has been very interesting because I am able to communicate directly with my audience and people can share with me, too.”

It’s a refreshing take on the social media craze that’s consuming our lives and expresses Gearon’s genuine lust for life. “As long as I love what I do I will continue to do what I do,” she says. “As soon as I lose interest or inspiration then I will move on to a different medium so my goal is to never stop finding inspirations and discovering new things.”

It seems a simple philosophy, but one that most of us could do with adopting ourselves. Our conversation ends, leaving me feeling uplifted and impassioned. In the world of Tierney Gearon, nothing is impossible.

tierneygearon.com