I do not share the unalloyed enthusiasm for the Obama regime that my friend and FQR colleague Matthew Modine evinces. Like Matthew the US leader is a fine orator, and he seems to have offered the American nation a sense of hope and even held out the prospect of self respect for the world’s only true remaining superpower. However on the debit side I did not much care for his bullying tactics over BP and this whole business about the release of the Lockerbie bomber smacks of the expedient hypocrisy that the more cynical among us have come to regard as one of the chief instruments of reconciling politics as perceived by the domestic electorate, with realpolitik as it is played out on the world stage.

So you could say that as far as I was concerned the reputation of the Obama administration was wavering in the balance – not of course that it matters a wit what I think – until I learned that the first lady is taking her summer holiday on the Costa del Sol, just up the road from me in fact at the Villapadierna Hotel. I am of course delighted that Mrs Obama has chosen to boost the profile of one of my favourite parts of the world and I can see why she, or perhaps her security detail, has decided on the Villapadierna, in that it is located in a slight declivity in the hills, a dell of sorts, in the hills over looking the sea.

The location is a perfect natural fortress and can easily be defended, leaving it only vulnerable to attack from the air, however should someone be inhospitable enough to launch an airstrike, it is simple matter for Mrs Obama to retreat into the subterranean spa (which as far as I remember even has a room so cold that snow falls from the ceiling) and enjoy a massage until the air raid has passed and she can return to the important business of perfecting her golf swing or lounging by the pool.

In a way I am rather relieved that Mrs Obama will not be staying at the Marbella Club – I daresay that the risk assessment boys at the White House could not rule out an all out amphibious attack from the beach, by forces hostile to the US. Although I have to say that on my daily visits to the Marbella Club chiringuito, which is picturesquely located on the sands of the beach, there has been very little to indicate a potentially volatile situation.

Still I suppose that it pays to be safe rather than sorry. After all I would hate for my daily intake of charcoal grilled sardines to be disrupted by the racket of crew-cut American military personnel barking ostentatiously into walkie-talkies. Moreover I would simply be unable to give my full attention to the Marbella Club’s legendary chocolate mousse, if, every time I reached for my shagreen covered blue flame Dunhill lighter to ignite my cigar, I was wrestled to the floor by a rugger scrum of overzealous bodyguards thinking that perhaps I was about to ignite an exploding cigar of the type sent as a gift from the US government to the Cuban head of state Fidel Castro.

• Rubinacci is back in town

Tags: Marbella Club, Obama, The White House

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Nick Foulkes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I am talking of course about the Cartier Polo, simply ‘the Cartier’ as it is more properly known, or ‘Arnaud’s’ as it is known to initiates of the inner circle of Arnaud Bamberger. This last Saturday in July is very much my Fourth of June in that as soon as I walk into the marquee I feel as though my holidays have begun I suppose it is that as a veteran of, I forget how many iterations of ‘the Cartier’, there is an element of Pavlovian reflex about it: irrespective of whether I enter in work mode and walk out ready to go on holiday…but then I suppose there are those who would argue that in my case it would be difficult to get a cigarette paper between the two states.

Besides going on holiday is an exhausting and stressful business. Travel is really rather tiring, whether for leisure or for what I catholically band together under the heading of business – such taxing things as carrying out state visits to watch and cigar factories. So I am thinking of taking a leaf out of Huysmans’s A Rebours. I have not read it for a while but I seem to recall that the protagonist Des Esseintes had a series of rooms rigged up in his house to replicate the sensation of travelling by boat and arriving at a foreign destination. Accordingly I am thinking of installing a flight simulator at the ancestral seat so that I no longer need to subject myself to the punishing rigours of international travel – then the only other thing that will remain for me to do is to have a small watch factory and a full time cigar rolling operation set up in my house and thereafter I need never travel ever again.

However until such time as I can find the inconsequential amounts of money required to make these trivial alterations to my domestic arrangements I am destined to continue my ongoing familiarization process at Heathrow – and on very lucky occasions – Farnborough airports.

• Cartier International Polo 2010
• Salon Discussions at Annabel’s
• Party Pictures; Cannes Film Makers Dinner
• Modern Times

Tags: Arnaud Bamberger, Cartier International Polo, Nick Foulkes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Nick Foulkes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Van Cleef & Arpels - Les Voyages Extraordinaires - Baleine Bleue clip 2

As we are soon to launch FQR Couture, our twice yearly periodical dedicated to the serious business of elegant glamour, I have been getting in training for my new role as editor in chief of a truly soignée fashion journal, and I think I have perfected the perfect air kiss. It is actually more of a jaw bump…the lips of course pucker at the empty air but there is the reassuring clink of jaw bone on jaw bone.

It takes a bit of angling of the head both in the forward and lateral planes of the neck, but I can assure the results are worth it and your participant in this ritual will thank you for not disturbing her hair, hat, earring or maquillage. I intend to patent the process and then have the directions, complete with filmed advice, placed on Her Majesty’s Internet. In order to ‘monetize’ my invention Tristram will be putting it safely behind the FQR pay wall.

I am terribly excited by FQR Couture; as we will be unashamedly elitist in our approach and have nothing to do with the sordid mimicry of the High Street…unless of course we attract copious advertising from Messrs Primark and Zara, in which case we will of course sacrifice our meagre principles in pursuit of lucre. But until such a day, which I believe is scheduled just after the first cold snap in hell, we will remain true to our ideals of glamour, glamour and …well…more glamour. You see, I do believe that men are, if anything, better qualified than women to comment on fashion. I know it sounds sexist, but I am not a man’s man. I would much rather be looking at a pretty woman in a pretty frock than I would be arguing about the torque of the new Bentley Mulsanne in my local public house – for a start, I would have trouble locating my ‘local’. Don’t get me wrong I can swap manly banter with the best of them, but it is just that I prefer beautiful women to hairy-arsed petrol heads.

Nick Foulkes at Goodwood

Anyway, back to my training; I have been busy reading Cecil Beaton’s Glass of Fashion, a volume which tells you all you need to know about feminine elegance. What Cecil did not know about fine women in fine clothes was simply not worth knowing, he chronicles the allure of such figures as the vampish Marchesa Casati and the boyish Mrs Vernon Castle, with wit style and grace…qualities which I hope will be discernable in FQR Couture.

 And as well as preparing myself for the world of fashion by steeping myself in the intoxicating nectar of Sir Cecil’s prose, I also took the precaution of going to Paris during couture week, not so much to look at the frocks but to cast my eye over the latest collection of jewellery from Stan ‘the Man’ de Quercize and Nicolas ‘the Boss’ Bos, who together run Van Cleef & Arpels. Their new collection was based on four of the novels of Jules Verne and if you have a spare one or two million Euros knocking about I would give them a quick bell and transmute your rapidly devaluing Euro zone folding stuff into something of lasting value.

And then, after being dazzled by the clever use of opals and spinels – the latter so much more chic than the low quality rubies one sees too much of these days – I popped round the corner to pick out my summer ashtray from Hermes and while I was there, I bumped into my friends Simon Le Bon and Mr and Mrs Tim Jefferies. Only a few hours earlier, after being interviewed for German Vogue, albeit in a supporting role to a real world class star the elegantly suited and shod Bryan Ferry, I had been in Tim’s Mayfair gallery looking at some of Bailey’s old contact sheets from the 1960s and was particularly taken by some wonderful images of Cecil Beaton and Nureyev – funny how I keep seeing the old boy everywhere (Charlie Gladstone who was his great nephew writes about growing up with Beaton in the next issue of FQR).

Nick Foulkes at Goodwood

Now, although only Wednesday; this was the third time that I was seeing Messrs Le Bon and Jefferies inside the week. I had spent Sunday judging the Cartier Style et Luxe at Goodwood Festival of Speed with the lovely Mrs Le Bon where of course I saw the wonderful Mr and Mrs Jefferies. Then the following evening it had been the glorious celebrations of 20 years of the Riva restaurant.

Riva is quite simply the finest Italian restaurant in this or indeed any other hemisphere and although there was some sort of other gathering on the same night for Mario Testino’s snapshots of Kate Moss, or so I heard, Andrea Riva’s party was the real hot ticket – the man is, quite simply, a god. As course after course spilled out of a kitchen not much larger than a box of Cohiba Siglo VI, I marvelled at the inventiveness and staying power of the place. I thought we were doing all right to have managed to keep FQR ticking over for two years, but Andrea has managed two decades and is open twice a day every day of the week, with the exception of Saturday lunch, when I believe he has a little doze. By contrast we just about managed to bring out one newspaper every third month – but then as I said, the man is a god and alas I am but mortal.

• Dubai, faring well

Tags: Cartier, Cecil Beaton, Goodwood, Hermes, Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Nick Foulkes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.