QUINTESSENTIALLY | Insider | Culture

Insider caught up with Marcus Tancock to discuss his latest venture, EM-N8, which plans to re-define the way we express ourselves.

Designing bespoke emblems, insignias, crests and logos that can be embossed, embroidered or laser-printed on a signature range of EM-N8 items, a visit to their showroom in Hong Kong is the first step on a road to defining brand you.

Insider: Where did the idea for EM-N8 come from?

Marcus: The idea came to me when I was sitting in a management meeting. Wearing my brand new Gucci shirt, I looked across the table and noticed that my IT manager was wearing exactly the same shirt – it was then I realised that with globalisation and the intense commercialisation of luxury brands, it was much more difficult to be unique.

Insider: How does the process work?

Marcus: After entering the showroom, you’re given a 30 minute interview including 20 questions to learn more about you and your history and influences and a visual quiz where you choose your favourite images and icons. The visual quiz covers everything from your favourite landscapes, interiors and art to patterns, fonts, colours and design eras.

From this, our designers can start work on producing up to eight logos from which you choose one or two. Then we tweak those until we’ve created something that you love! That part of the design process takes about six weeks. But after your interview, you go shopping in the showroom with our stylists to select your own, completely unique range of clothes and accessories.

Insider: We really noticed the quality of your items – everything from gorgeous cigar humidors, fashionable belts, completely customisable polo shirts and bespoke suits and shirts – how did your source your items? Is there anything you can’t put a logo on?

Marcus:  At this time, all of our products have been sourced in Italy and everything’s been picked so you can apply your logo to it…some love it wild and colourful, while others like it simple and subtle. We’re gradually expanding our network of artisans and spending time in Japan too. That said, sourcing is somewhat challenging for us as we’re not mass producing and we need to be able to order small and limited quantities for our few select clients.

Insider: What’s been the reaction from your first few customers?

Marcus: It’s wonderful to see the look on their face when we hit ‘bingo’ in terms of creating a super design for them. There’s a great connection and we call it their visual DNA! Also, when our customers come to the showroom for the first time and their faces light up as they really understand the concept – it’s brilliant. Our model is a first in the global market so it takes time for people to properly understand what we do.

Insider: What’s the most unusual request you’ve had so far?

Marcus:  To send the insignia as a JPEG to a tattoo artist.

Insider: You’re launching in January – what can we expect in the year ahead?

Marcus: Expect a wonder-filled year of creativity, plenty of new product development and the extension of EM-N8 in Shanghai and Beijing.

For more information on EM-N8’s bespoke services, please contact Quintessentially.

Winding up the coast of Sotogrande, Southern Spain, NH Almanera is a bewitching haze of pine, eucalyptus and giant palm trees; of sudden vertiginous plunges with tiny red flags that ruffle on pure green fields; of golden sands and pinkish sunsets that fall in the tides along the Straits of Gibraltar. You get closer, and you hear the laughter of those that play good golf, eat good food and know a thing or two about the benefits of deep breathing and dreaming very deeply.

You wake up to views of conifer-lined greens and pearly blue lakes, with mellow horses trailing around fragrant gardens on the fringes of the ocean. You leave your chalet-pad, the one with the king bed and the deep, deep bath, and there is a five-star breakfast waiting, and later there are hydrothermal bubble treatments and yoga sessions at the Elysium Spa. The group I arrive with split off after champagne in the hotel lobby; those professional-eyed types that came to refine their approach shots; those smiling sun-kissed lovers of the mud treatment and tropical rain shower; and those ambiguous, undecided few that catch a buggy ride through the almost perfect silence of Los Pinos, Las Lagos and The Cork Oaks – 27 hole’s of course designed by renowned golf architect Dave Thomas, full of par 3’s and 5’s that hang tight to every hazard in the book.

I marvel as someone swings a club – a really beautiful thing in the winter sun, a thing that obviously requires well crimped shoulder blades to give it the proper edge. To the Spa then…

But I was distracted, and on scoping out the club house and bar, I found that the golf tribe had stopped off to sharpen their blades. Here, everything strikes the eye with the nonchalant gait of the champion; its all dark leathers where you sink to drink the pre-golf martini and talk handicap’s, making out as if you know all about the ‘greens being in brilliant condition’ and the ‘course being just a three iron from the spa’; if not, you might admit that you came to trek horses through the romance of starlit wildernesses, or perhaps, you still don’t know, and you came ‘to just chill’, with a reserved demeanour as you reflect on a solid year, shimmering at the bottom of the glass.

I wanted to talk golf, I really did, but what do I know? And so my next stop was moments away at the Sotogrande Golf Academy, where I stood with other startled amateurs as some suave gent who we knew was a professional hit it 400 yards on his knees while telling us about hip and forearm placement; he soon had the sun-kissed spa-hards hacking the ball out of the turf and then I managed 250 yards, and thought it a good time to celebrate with what one euphoric chap said was ‘the most fun you can have with bubbling mud on your back’ – a beauty treatment that made me shiver as if my whole body was floating above itself in the scented Jacuzzi afterwards.

After a five-course lunch in the Club (Andalucian hams and cheeses and gourmet sensations that need no prior adjective to tempt the palate), I caught up with the ‘real’ golf, the victors standing off to the side, looking just a little too confident to convince me to take up my new swing just yet. Instead, I walked a little distance to find the horse whisperer, a Nordic-looking ex-Polo player called Ferdie with a gilded smile that makes these rare South-American breeds dance over high white gates, and canter Flamenco style to the sound of his clicking jaw as my white beauty stopped and chewed the wild flowers of twilight.

You could cycle to Gibraltar; Marbella is forty five minutes away, and from my horse, now cantering down the hill in search of her stable, through the mistiness, I could see the exotic souks of Tangier across the sea, and decided that the next day I would catch a boat and make it back in time to take on the professionals.

Telephone: +34 95 6582000
Email: almenara@sotogrande.com

Website: www.nh-hotels.com/nh/en/hotels/spain/sotogrande-cadiz/hotel-almenara.html

NH is currently offering a 5% discount on the best available rate. Please note that this is subject to availability.

Monarch offers year-round flights to Gibraltar from London Luton and Manchester airports with fares, including taxes, starting from GBP 38.99 one way (GBP 69.99 return). For more information or to book, visit www.monarch.co.uk.

Ah, Christmas. Season of peace, prosperity and goodwill to all men, right? Hardly. My own experience of the days between 24th and 31st December tend to be a mixture of extreme mind-numbing boredom, interspersed with too much eating and drinking (cue hangovers and indigestion), and, if you’re very unlucky, some apocalyptic family rows to shake things up in between the endless repeats of old films and unfunny festive specials of ‘comedies’.

Thankfully, the National’s top-flight staging of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1980 comedy Season’s Greetings comes as a pleasant alternative to pantomimes. Superbly directed by Marianne Elliott (whose 2006 RSC Much Ado About Nothing was a particular favourite of mine), the top-flight cast raises what would otherwise be an enjoyable but unexceptional piece of festive biliousness into the realms of comic bliss.

The set-up is straightforward. Neville and Belinda Bunker (Neil Stuke and Catherine Tate) are holding a festive party for people including Neville’s former colleague Eddie (Marc Wootton) and his pregnant wife Pattie (Katherine Parkinson). Meanwhile, incompetent doctor Bernard (Mark Gatiss) is preparing his annual puppet show, much to everyone’s dread, his drunken wife Phyllis (Jenna Russell) is on the sauce and a young novelist (Oliver Chris) is getting hormones flying. Oh, and psychotic Uncle Harvey (David Troughton) has a gun and a knife strapped to his leg…

Obviously, things go very, very badly wrong indeed, to frequently hilarious effect. The scene that made me laugh hardest was when Chris’ earnest young novelist tries to explain to Phyllis that he isn’t gay, and that novelists are no more likely to be homosexual ‘than train drivers, for instance’, which leads to much beautifully acted and articulated confusion. There’s an undercurrent of pain, rejection and suffering that makes this a far more enticing prospect than many similar works, as when Parkinson’s character looks down at her drunken husband, passed out, and says ‘I had to fight for that’, but most of the appeal comes from very talented comic actors bringing splendid nuance to their roles, even if Gatiss’ hapless simpering does seem to recall The League Of Gentlemen’s Dr Chinnery slightly too much for comfort.

Nevertheless, a highly enjoyable evening, and one that will hopefully retain its mix of punch and poignancy until the end of its run in March.

Until 13 March. National Theatre, SE1 www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Farce is a comic form uniquely difficult to pull off on stage. From one of its most famous early examples in English theatre – the gulling of Malvolio in Twelfth Night – its success on stage (it’s very seldom particularly entertaining to read) depends entirely on timing, performance and staging. I’ve done everything from wept with laughter at particularly well-handled situations to sat stony-faced at productions that just fail to ignite at all.

Richard Eyre’s new production of Feydeau’s A Flea In Her Ear, thankfully, is closer  to the first category than the second. It is helped by Eyre’s fluent and pacey direction and his ensemble, which features the estimable Tom Hollander, fresh from his enormous success in Rev, and a fine supporting cast including the likes of Lisa Dillon, Jonathan Cake and Tim McMullan.

Feydeau’s play might, in the wrong hands, seem dated, but here it managed to amuse and compel throughout. Revolving around a stuffy businessman who’s having difficulties satisfying his wife, who believes he’s an adulterer and constructs an elaborate trap for him as a result, it has a carefully paced first act before a frenetic second act where farcical momentum is at last gathered, as the central characters are all trapped in a hotel of ill repute, ran by a manic Basil Fawlty-esque proprietor with military pretensions.

Hollander, doing manful duty in a dual role as the businessman and his lookalike, a drunken hotel valet, is superb, perhaps predictably, but all the cast are extremely strong. I especially enjoyed Cake’s swaggering would-be Casanova, whose romantic pretensions keep being undone by his incompetence. The Old Vic has been producing some genuinely great work recently, such as the fine revival of Noel Coward’s Design For Living, and I look forward to Anne-Marie Duff in Rattigan’s Cause Celebre and Kevin Spacey in Sam Mendes’ new staging of Richard III next year. This will serve as a marvellous Christmas treat until then.

Until 5 March. Old Vic, The Cut, SE1. www.oldvictheatre.com

There seems to be a sense of snobbery about fashion that it’s always skin deep and never art in its own right. The curators of the ‘Aware’ exhibition have highlighted the interchangeability of fashion and art and have come up with what might be described as the thinking person’s wardrobe.

Critics have suggested that this forced marriage of fashion and art is a contrived attempt to trade on the fact that more people read fashion magazines than go to art galleries. This may well be true, but it didn’t stop me going down to get up close and personal with some Alexander MacQueen.

As an unashamed fashion lover I was pleased to see that I recognised the names of some of the artists as well as the designers, albeit this is probably due to their celebrity rather than their artistic credentials. Ironically it was the pieces created by artists that I deemed the most wearable. A cape adorned with eyes by famed eccentric Grayson Perry was a lot closer to ready to wear than a dress constructed from wood by Yoshi Yamamoto.

Standout pieces include a dress by Susie Macmurray, which from a distance sparkles with beguiling seduction only to reveal itself to be made from sharp needles upon closer inspection. A highlight was a chance to view a red, lace, veiled dress from Alexander McQueen’s Joan collection. His 1998 show is was a landmark in fashion history and looked completely at home being displayed as art.

Fashion fans will be delighted by the exhibition and sceptics will be pleasantly surprised. Never has art been more in fashion and the marriage of the two looks set to carry on well into the future.

‘GSK Contemporary – Aware: Art Fashion Identity’ runs until 30 January 2011 at The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens.

Herald Angel. Fringe First. Oliviers. These are just a few of the awards won by Black Watch over the past four years. Written by Gregory Burke and directed by John Tiffany, Black Watch was not expected to run for more than a week when it opened in a disused drill hall at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. Now in its fourth year, it has established itself as one of the most significant plays of the past few years.

Black Watch tells the story of the famed Scottish regiment’s deployment to Iraq in 2004 through the eyes of six squaddies, returned from their second tour. The cast is made up entirely of native Scots (expect strong accents), with a starring turn from Jack Lownden, who is magnetic as the protagonist, Cammy. The Barbican Theatre has been transformed to accommodate the performance, with steeply banked seats flanking the stage, echoing the feeling of being at a military tattoo. The set is minimal, with the director choosing to use mime and dance to translate the story.

The story unfurls through a series of interviews, conducted by a journalist (Keith Fleming) in a Fife pub and continues to flit seamlessly back and forth from Fife to Camp Dogwood in Iraq. Innovative staging and welcome musical interjections set Black Watch apart from other verbatim accounts of terrible occurrences. The use of a pool table as both an armoured vehicle and a fox hole provides a deft link between the two scenarios.

Despite touching on the controversy surrounding the Iraq war, Black Watch is not an anti-war or political play, but about friendship. Burke cleverly avoids sentimentalising the characters’ plight with his use of black humour. The young and energetic cast, led by the clownish Fraz (Jamie Quinn) ensure that the audience never forgets that these are just a group of working-class lads, looking for some life experience. The most truthful line, “I fought for my mates” is almost the whole point of the play.

It would be impossible not to be moved by this tale of friendship and heroism. The message you come away with is good regiment, bad war. As the boys’ morale in Iraq wears thin, the effects on the men now sitting in the Fife pub become clear. They have been left emotionally scarred and with an underwhelming feeling that they don’t know what they were fighting for. Black Watch is truly must-see theatre.

Black Watch is on at the Barbican Theatre until January 22nd 2011. www.barbican.org.uk