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checking in
hotel amigo, brussels
Atmosphere: The doormen at the Amigo set the tone for this compact luxury
hotel situated one block behind the Grand Place. Friendly, efficient and smart,
they exude confidence that theirs is the best hotel in Brussels and they take
pleasure in welcoming you in.
An old prison bought up by Sir Rocco Forte in 2000, the Amigo has been lavishly decorated in red and buttermilk by Forte’s sister Olga Polizzi. She’s added some humourous touches to the 174 rooms with prints by Belgian surrealists Marcel Broodthaers and René Magritte. Bathrooms are illustrated with framed miniatures of Hergé’s Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock.
Plus points: The Amigo is perfectly positioned mid-way between the Grand Place with its pubs and jazz clubs and the business district. Food in the Bocconi restaurant is excellent and the two-course business lunch is good value at €27. There’s no pool but you can work off all that Belgian beer in a fully equipped Technogym on the first floor.
Minus points: You can spend far too long waiting for the lift – there’s just one to serve five floors. Also, there are rather fierce notices in the wardrobe that show the cost of every item in the room should you be inclined to larceny.
Tech talk: In-room internet access costs €20 per 24 hours. Wi-fi in the public areas is even more expensive at €25 for 24 hours.
Cost: Standard doubles from €205. Breakfast is an extra €30.
Hotel Amigo, Rue de l’Amigo 1-3, Brussels, +32 (0)2 547 4747 www.hotelamigo.com
Hot Air
Columnist Boyd Farrow on all that’s wrong with the world. This issue: cynical acts of charity
Here’s a question. A friend tells you he’s going to try to complete a marathon to raise money for a Good Cause. Research into a so-far incurable disease, perhaps. Or victims of flood or famine or civil war, maybe. He wonders if you would sponsor him to run. Would you tell your friend: a. “Sorry, but I’d rather treat myself to a nice meal”; b. “Of course, I’d be honoured to sponsor you”; or c. “Sure, I’ll sponsor you, but on one condition. You must run the entire 42km dressed as a giant chicken. No, wait a minute! Make that a clown, a clown with enormous flipperty flopperty feet!”
Judging by the huge number of people who participate in charity stunts dressed as penguins or Batman, it seems safe to assume that the vast majority of us would go for the third option. Clearly, we have become a society of complete and utter sadists. In fact, with reality TV having raised the humiliation-for-cash bar so high we must be close to sponsoring the feeble or the desperate competing in their own fancy-dress fun runs.
Yet the alternative theories are equally unpalatable. Either we’re such a society of exhibitionists – grateful when any Good Cause bestows on us a fig leaf of respectability – or we’ve become so sanctimonious we are constantly looking for ever more ostentatious ways to announce our generosity. Cycle naked to save the planet? Saddle up. Sit in a bath of herrings to save the dolphins? Bring it on. We’ll happily squeeze into any old superhero costume for a worthy cause just as long as we aren’t required to subscribe to the superhero code of anonymity.
The most nauseating example of look-at-me philanthropy is the celebrity auction where business leaders bid thousands of euros to kiss supermodels or buy actors’ napkin doodles. As if anyone is not aware that these self-aggrandising stunts reap more free publicity for a company than an oversized cheque being handed to a leaping telethon host. Virtue certainly is not its own reward when stock prices also jump.
‘Foundation’ or affiliated disease or pet endangered species. Have you noticed how long the bank queues are recently? This is because half the tellers are taking inspirational photos of each other on icecaps for the company’s annual report. Management consultants wear more coloured ribbons than ballerinas. You can’t book a hotel room on one continent without discovering what the chain is doing for some tribe on another. You can’t buy an espresso without learning about your bean grower’s subsidised dental plan. Your insurance company is gaga for lepers. Your travel agent is out there curing cancer. Your car rental firm has saved more lives than the seatbelt.
accept that foundations are tax-deductible. We know that donations can improve the image of a company and help it to deliver bigger profits. We, like, get it. In our really cynical moments we might even suspect that by running a charity for one bunch of kids, a company can divert attention away from the fact that its products are being made by another bunch of kids somewhere else in the world.
Yes, we know all that, but we also know that whatever the motives, charity is a Good Thing. It can change or save lives. The point is, if companies don’t stop making such a huge song and dance about how much good they are doing their customers are going to become jaded very quickly and there might even be a huge charity backlash. And saving the world is not a sprint but a marathon.
a natural success
Danish businesswoman and former nurse Charlotte Vøhtz first started mixing up all-natural beauty products to cure her daughter’s painful skin allergies. Now 10 years and 100 products later, organic beauty is big news and her UK-based company Green People is hitting the supermarkets
words by Camilla H. Tjellesen
Charlotte Vøhtz’s organic
products worked
wonders
on her daughter Sandra’s
eczemaWant to know where to find the breaks, learn your first moves or just sink a few beers in Europe’s surf capital? We gathered the local lowdown from three surfers who know the territory
It was 1957 when Peter Viertel, an American film producer, brought the ancient sport of surfing to France. In Biarritz to make the movie of Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, he couldn’t help but notice the perfect swell lines forming off the town beach. As the legend has it, Viertel immediately sent to California for his board and in the process changed the history of the resort town.
After Viertel’s discovery, surfers were quick to scout out the many surfable waves around Biarritz: from the mouth of the Gironde river to south of the Landes region. Fifty years on, Biarritz is the undisputed European capital of surf. Whether it’s slow wavelets for beginners or monstrous offshore reefs for the pros, the area has something for everyone. Here Sterling asks three surfers where to head when you’re in town with your board.
In a converted country barn in Billingshurst near London Gatwick, Charlotte Vøhtz’s 15 employees are busy packing parcels of organic beauty products. Deliveries of aloe vera shampoo, mineral lipsticks and Vøhtz’s best-selling mandarin, orange and myrrh toothpaste will soon be winging their way to addresses all over the UK and beyond. The atmosphere is relaxed although it’s clearly a busy day.
“We’re a bit like a family here. It’s very important for us to have
fun and also to have a good workplace relationship with each other. I
want everyone to be happy while they’re at work,” says Vøhtz. This very
Danish attitude towards business is typical of the caring philosophy
behind Green People, the company that Vøhtz began in an attempt to
improve her own daughter’s eczema condition.
Vøhtz moved to England 13 years ago from the north of Zealand in Denmark, with her husband and daughter Sandra. They were looking for a change of scenery and to explore a different part of the world. At the time Sandra, then two years old, was suffering from a multitude of skin allergies and severe eczema. Vøhtz says she tried everything to stop Sandra’s itching, but the treatments always seemed to produce allergic reactions. Even the so-called natural products were no good.
“I met this professor in herbal medicine who
thought that Sandra was a victim of our polluted
world,” says Vøhtz. “Today there are man-made
chemicals in everything and it’s really difficult to
avoid them. He told me that that’s why so many
children are born with allergies these days. So
I tried to find natural and organic products that
I could use on Sandra, but back then there wasn’t
much of that sort of thing around.”
Vøhtz took matters into her own hands and started making her own 100% natural and organic products. With 11 years’ experience in nursing and training in pharmacology, acupuncture and herbal medicine, she had all the basic knowledge she needed to be able to create such products. She also went back to basics, drawing on the beauty tips of her mother and grandmother. “I’m from a family where organic products and alternative healthcare were always on the women’s agenda. My mother used seaweed as a body scrub and my grandmother always had healthy grated carrot and raisins in lemon juice on the table instead of cake.”
Vøhtz began treating Sandra with her own products. Among the early treatments she created, she had particular success with a hawthorne and artichoke formula containing some 16 herbs. At the same time, she eliminated all chemical-based products in their home. Finally Sandra stopped scratching and her allergies and eczema cleared up. Vøhtz’s experiment had worked, and she began to look at ways of marketing her xreatments.
She set up Green People from her home in Horsham, selling the products by mail order and later expanding to online sales. Next, after considerable perseverance, she managed to get her goods on the shelves of health shops across the UK. “I kept bringing my products into the local health store in Horsham to show the owner what I had to offer. One day, when I stopped by as usual, he promised that the next time I came in, he’d buy something. As he didn’t say when that next time had to be, I went for a walk around town and came back. And then he had to stand by his word,” she says with a big laugh. That first order was for £120 (€168).
The company has since gone from strength to strength and has now reached a turnover of £3m (€4.2m). Today, Vøhtz sells her products in more than 500 shops UK-wide, online and – a major coup – she’s also working with the upmarket supermarket chain Waitrose.
The majority of products made by Green People include fairly-traded ingredients and are certified organic. This is no mean feat, as the UK organic certification standards are known to be among the strictest in the world.
“A lot of products are described as natural and organic without actually being so,” Vøhtz explains. “A product can be called natural when in fact it only has to contain 1% natural ingredients. Most traditional beauty products contain up to 70% water and are filled with chemicals and synthetic ingredients. At Green People we have worked very hard to find all the ingredients for our products in an organic version.”
Charlotte Vøhtz is clearly passionate about
her business, having worked hard to create
products that don’t have anything to hide in their
list of ingredients. But she also stands up for
her faith in organic and ethical living in other
aspects of the business: “I try to run my company
in a green and ethical way, so that everything that
we use, from furniture and paint to the Microbanfree fridge are natural and eco-friendly. It can be
really difficult to live up to our organic lifestyle
ideals, but we love the challenge and we always try
our level best to do so.”
Charlotte Vøhtz’s new book Naturally Gorgeous: Essential Health and Beauty Secrets is out now on Ebury Press, £9.99 (approx. €14).
For more about the company and to order products, see www.greenpeople.co.uk
magnetic north
In recent years Copenhagen Fashion Week has gone from marginal outpost to major date on the calendar. So what’s drawing the fashion pack north? Sterling investigates a Scandinavian success story.
words by C.A. Ferro
In recent years Copenhagen has emerged as the fashion capital of northern Europe. Copenhagen Fashion Week (CFW) started in 2005 and the biannual events – held in August and February – now draw more than 50,000 visitors from all over the world. While Paris, Milan, New York and London continue to be the global leaders, the Danish capital intends to take its place as the world’s fifth biggest fashion week. Barcelona, Tokyo and Berlin, to name a few, are all vying for position, but Copenhagen has had a good head start and Scandinavian fashion is on a roll.
CFW offers three simultaneous clothing trade fairs. Copenhagen International Fashion Fair (CIFF), held at the convention hall Bella Centre, is the biggest with everything from work clothes to high fashion, including togs for kids. Then there’s Copenhagen Vision at Øksnehallen for high-end established and budding Danish designers, and Gallery, the newest platform, at Copenhagen Forum, which features mostly Nordic and a few international houses. Gallery began a year ago and has managed to collect the leading design houses from the Nordic region under one roof.
There’s also an alternative fair, openhagen Unfair, a showcase for edgy streetwear and art. For a glimpse into the future, CFW hosts a competition for students from the Nordic design schools: Designers’ Nest, at Øksnehallen, lets the students show what they’re working on and gives visitors to CFW a peek, at what will be hatched in the next few years.
The proliferation of events, along with the international interest, shows just how far Copenhagen has come as a fashion capital in the past decade. Before Copenhagen Fashion Week was created in 2005, the event was billed generically as the Fashion Fair and drew very little international interest. Now it’s growing fast. In 2007 the Fashion Week was about 10% bigger than in 2005, a figure that reflects the growing number of buyers, exhibition space, and attendees. “Ten years ago we were strictly national,” says Peter Sabroe, head of exhibitions at Bella Centre.“Now we’re on the fashion world’s map.”
Under one Nordic roof
According to Copenhagen Fashion Institute, which
organises CFW, some 29,000 people visit CIFF. 26,000
attend Vision and almost 10,000 go to Gallery. Most
visitors check out two or more of the fairs. More
than half of them come from abroad, with Germany,
the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan and France
being the top non-Nordic countries represented.
“The short week makes it a quick and easy stop on the fashion week route for international buyers and the press. And CFW is both a fashion week and a fashion market week,” notes Anne Christine Persson, head of communication at Copenhagen Fashion Institute.
With more than 50,000 square meters of exhibition space, Copenhagen is the largest collective fashion fair in Europe. The simultaneous three fairs host 1,360 exhibitors representing 2,823 brands. On top of that, a range of brands is exhibited at showrooms all over town. “They say that 500 buyers from around the globe are the ones who move and shake. We’re focusing on them,” says Christian Gregersen, who started and owns the Gallery concept. “If 50 of them come, we will be happy.”
Clothes sizing is another draw for the Danish capital, as many sites in southern Europe tend to create and show apparel for the more petit physique. The clothing at the Copenhagen fairs covers all sizes, but most importantly, clothes that fit taller people.
Location also plays an extremely important role in making CFW a fashion hub for Scandinavia. A growing number of houses from Nordic countries other than Denmark have begun to exhibit in Copenhagen – such as Acne Jeans, Gant, SOS and Sand from Sweden, or Noa Noa from Norway – which adds one-stop shopping appeal for buyers.International brands can be found everywhere else,” says Gregersen. “Now international buyers have a place to see the very best that the Nordic region has to offer. Copenhagen is the place to see it all.”
Promoting the city and the clothes
To be sure, the city fathers are behind CFW as it brings in
tourism revenues. “Hotels, tourist offices and transport
companies work together,” says Sabroe. “Buyers can use it
as a kind of mini-vacation.” Exact figures for tourism
revenues related to the event are not available, but
estimates say the amount is in double-digit million euros.
CFW has been a factor in boosting Danish export
revenues from clothing sales, and a prime focus of the
event is the home-grown designers and houses. In 2006,
total Danish clothing exports rose by 9.3% from the
previous year to around €2.5bn. Further revenues are
logged from indirect exports, that is, Danish design
sent from producers abroad directly to customers. The
range of clothing runs the gamut from raunchy
streetwear to haute couture.
Trendspotters have singled out Copenhagen, and
the Danes in general, for their look – and not just that
of fashionistas. The relaxed yet classy clothes sense of
your average local certainly adds to the city’s cachet as
a fashion centre. Danes’ natural feeling for style and
design, coupled with the ease of Copenhagen as a place
to work and socialise in, project an overall image that’s
been a great benefit to CFW.
“From our experience, visitors enjoy coming to the fashion week. As the city is relatively small and cosy, there’s a relaxed atmosphere and the week offers many interesting shows, fairs and events,” says Persson.
It seems the whole city gets bitten by the fashion bug each time CFW rolls around. Some 30 shows are held at various venues throughout the week. Giant video screens around the city broadcast all the shows live, as well as interviews with esigners. Posters are everywhere. And of course, there are the parties – lots of them. It’s not hard to see why this particular fashion week is growing in popularity and size each year.
Copenhagen Fashion Week AW08 takes place 6-10 February. For further information visit www.copenhagenfashionweek.com
What the designers say
I see the growing interest as a result of a big, and now well established, group of designers who all started up in the mid-90s. We have worked hard and long for many years, and the fashion world has finally recognised us. Copenhagen is the Nordic capital when it comes to design. We are steaming head and it is our responsibility to grow and work harder to establish our brands even more internationally.” Malene Birger – chief designer at By Malene Birger (above)
There are many good designers now, so Copenhagen is an interesting place for Nordic houses, a base so to speak. So much is done for CFW that fashion really gets under your skin. We can see the value and will do more PR work for the next one. Plus Scandinavian design is particularly strong at the moment. It’s creative, but reflects a clean look that’s in. As to Danish fashion, it’s very approachable – you can just slip into it and walk out of the house.” Frederikke Hviid – chief designer at Danish design house Whiite
In terms of fashion, Scandinavia is suddenly exotic. Before, nearly everything came from the south of Europe. So this is the right place to exhibit our four annual collections. Gallery has been very good at promoting the event to international buyers and the press. We have great expectations, and were fully booked with buyers at the August fashion week.” Tina Zahll – brand manager at Copenhagen-based KingQueen
Scandinavia is an important market for us, but this event draws a lot of international buyers, so we’re excited about that. Everybody speaks about a Scandinavian look, and fashion is definitely now a part of what was once primarily furniture or architecture. I believe the Scandinavian look is more relaxed, though there is a sort of north-south mutual inspiration in fashion.” Pontus Björkman – head of sales at Swedish leisurewear house Acne Jeans
It seems like people are happy, and they’re coming from all over the planet so there’s something here to attract them. I think we’re on the edge of a big breakthrough.” Albert Hatchwell Nielsen – chief designer at Danish streetwear house Alis
I met a lot of other designers and international buyers. It was truly exciting and a valuable opportunity.” Christian Helmer – a Danish design student who showed at Designers’ Nest
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