A fashion magazine seems to have a few roles. The first is to create a record of trends, not just reporting on them but preempting them, as a snapshot of where society is at any given moment. The second is arguably to chart culture itself, and just what the Zeitgeist is.
   If the articles in this May 2021 number of Lucire KSA is any indication, there is a complexity in design right now. Perfume bottles, jewellery and watches in our ‘Luxury Line’ pages at the back of the magazine are an indication: we seem to marvel at the intricacies of complex jewellery right now, and the “in” watch is the skeleton type, where the inner workings are exposed for all to see.
   But it’s not just in these accessories and beauty products; Meg Hamilton’s Paris Fashion Week report reveals layered clothing, tweed coats with knitted patterns, Norwegian sweaters, floral prints and padding. Even Stella McCartney, who delivered punchier colours without as much complexity in the patterns, told of volume with bell-bottom trousers.
   Volume is in, and a fashion historian might point to other times when that has been the case. I won’t explore that in this editorial, but I am intrigued about the reasons. Are they reflections of how we view our lives as being complex? Is the volume something we demand because we need protection from such an uncertain world? Meg’s thesis is quite the opposite: we are emerging from our cocoons, and it’s end of the hibernation forced upon us by COVID-19.
   The reality is that we won’t know for sure till some time has passed and we reflect on the times we live in, and each decade falls into a caricature of its one outstanding trend. It’s why westerners think of miniskirts for the 1960s and Laura Ashley for the 1970s, and the 1980s were the decade of power dressing. The 1990s might be summarized by grunge, and logomania might well dominate the 2000s. These are not accurate constructs: they are shortcuts that we give periods of time to convey a sense of nostalgia or, when it comes to film, to purposely set something in a certain era that audiences can collectively reminisce about. And in so many cases, they are ex post facto justifications of those eras, allied with social and political trends.
   If we were to take a punt on how this era will be remembered, we need to keep those non-fashion trends in mind. And maybe these times will be remembered for their complexity, even if every generation thinks they are living through the most complex period in history. The items you see in this issue might well come to represent this decade, more than the necklines of dresses that revealed instead of concealed that we saw out the 2010s on. Ultimately, however, only time will tell.—Jack Yan, Founder and Publisher

Above: From the Stella McCartney autumn–winter 2021–2 collection.

Artist Linda Gair—sister of make-up artist Joanne, whose work appears regularly in Lucire—is having an exhibition, Homage, from April 29 at the Railway Street Gallery, at 8 Railway Street, Newmarket, Auckland, New Zealand.
   Gair herself has been an art teacher and educator since she turned 50, but has been a lifelong artist. Her works in this latest exhibition are tributes to artists we all know and love—Kahlo, Matisse, Picasso, Rivera, McCahon, Louise Henderson—appearing on a collected piece of plywood, or a bowling ball, or some other found item. These are not replicas, but a postmodern commentary on art and masterpieces, bringing them into three dimensions complete with distortions.
   The official opening takes place on Saturday, May 1, from 12 to 3 p.m., while Gair herself will give a talk on May 8 at 1 p.m., with insights into a number of the pieces and the artists she chose to pay homage to. The exhibition runs till the 18th. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Lucire travel editor Stanley Moss, writing as SMoss, has put together a limited edition volume documenting the presidency of Donald J. Trump, available in both a hardcover collectors’ edition and a smaller paperback.
   Entitled Great Again, the book begins with a cover showing a worn ‘Make America Great Again’ cap discarded on the pavement. Inside are images from the 45th presidency, including press coverage, artwork, memes and other cultural artefacts from the four-year period.
   The large-format version measures 30 cm square and retails for €102, with the price going up to €120 after April 15. The price includes international shipping. Its smaller counterpart measures 20 cm square, and is available at €51 (€60 after April 15).
   They are privately printed in Italy. Both are individually numbered hand-signed by the author.
   They are available only by special order through emailing the author at info@diganzi.com, and will not be made available on Amazon. There are some videos showing the books and their contents at the official page, www.secondguesspress.com/greatagain-book.

Van Cleef & Arpels has released six Perlée creations, exclusively for the Middle East first, coinciding with the holy season of Ramadan. They are available now in the region, two months ahead of their official global release.
   The new Perlée additions comprise three bracelets and three rings in gold hues. These feature the sweet clover motif, which are Van Cleef & Arpels’ symbol of luck. They also feature a border of gold beads, characteristic of other jewellery in the Perlée range.
   As the jewellery can be mixed and matched, they can suit a wearer’s every mood.
   The Perlée collection débuted in 2008 and draws on the maison’s history. Accented stones and motifs appeared in the 1920s, and it was also during this decade that Van Cleef & Arpels used the round bead setting in the collection. Golden beads became more ample in 1948. From 1963, in the Twist collection, golden beads appeared in more permutations, accentuating ornamental stones such as lapis lazuli and carnelian, and pearls. Bordering golden beads also appeared in Van Cleef & Arpels’ Alhambra collection in 1968. The designs have a direct link to these earlier collections.

Above: The very first site (alphabetically) linked from our Newsstand pages, Annabelle of Switzerland, complete with large lead image and smaller subsidiary ones.

I took a look at Lucire’s Newsstand reviews tonight. This section is a relic of the early dot-com days that Lucire came from (in the 1990s), when people exchanged links with each other to help with their search engine positioning, and, to make the sections look legitimate, you put your favourite websites in there as well. When it came to Lucire, naturally, we included our competitors as a resource for readers. I have to say that we were pretty choosy.
   Each time I re-examine the list, which is probably every couple of years, I’m removing sites. Many have fallen by the wayside over the last 23 years, and some that we link have content frozen in the mid-2010s. They are still good resources, so they’re staying. They might even be a good read for those countries who are still dealing with COVID-19 cases in a very real, confronting way.
   What I did remove throughout the three pages of reviews, however, were the ratings. We used to rate quite a few of the sites on content and design, because when we first started, there was a huge variety. It was a relatively new medium, so people were still experimenting. They were a guide, nothing too serious—though I still remember one New Yorker getting so upset that, if I recall correctly, he felt he had to retaliate by linking Lucire with a negative review. (The low score came in part from home page art that was only tested on certain monitors, and on higher-res ones, its elements didn’t line up, with ghastly results. Cutting up images and have them reassemble on screen was something we all did back then, to cope with slow download speeds.) I suspect all that did was send his readers intrigued about our supposed terribleness our way, who then would have found his review somewhat childish and unreliable, since we were winning awards for the online edition of Lucire. Other than that humorous blip of small-mindedness—which I suppose underlines how elements of New Yorkish Trumpism was there long before the real estate magnate ran for president—the ratings were an accepted feature of the pages for many years.
   The reason for their removal is, sadly, the lack of creativity in web design these days. I’m not saying we’re breaking new ground ourselves, though what you see here was still designed by someone on our team and not part of a template that comes with a web-page service. And don’t get me wrong on that, either: some of those templates are really, really good.
   But we’ve settled into a certain look being acceptable on the web, including mobile devices (which have limited creativity in publishing). As browsers and computers have become more powerful, publishing packages have made use of more of their capabilities. Also a good thing, because this enables more people to make websites. However, this means there is less need for someone to tinker and create something from scratch, because there are great programs that have more than half the legwork done. Then there are those developing templates for these software packages, bound somewhat by the features that form their foundation. That has led to standardization, because, like it or not, there are certain things you must do to make a site work for the range of devices that will be pointed at it nowadays.
   The ratings, then, become meaningless, if so many of the sites reviewed have a similar design concept: big lead image, smaller ones on the home page pointing to the significant articles, similarly sized text (and, in many cases, pretty big text), etc. With fonts now transmitting with web pages, it’s no longer special for a website to have bespoke typography. And with so many fonts available, many have opted to get creative on their typographic choices—which could give us some basis for separating the great from good, but outside of the design world, this seems to be an unfair criterion on which to judge.
   We could still rate for content, but to get in to the directory, the content had to be reasonably decent to begin with.
   While there’s big type on the web, the trend in print appears to be very small body type, so small that it’s uncomfortable to read. I don’t know what’s driven this, since the physiology of the human eye and what point sizes we find legible and readable hasn’t changed, but needless to say it’s not one that Lucire in print has, or will, follow. Trend-wise, I hope that we might get to a more sensible balance again.

Above: A spread from Rolling Stone, November 2020, showing the small type now seen in print.

   Right now the mobile space is getting all the love, hence this standardization, even though I’ve tired of those devices for some years now. We anticipated that the tide would turn with Facebook and removed all the gadgets sourced from that site before The Observer broke the Cambridge Analytica story. I’ve tired of the privacy intrusions by some of the Big Tech websites, even though I have a Google-free Android phone; and I’ve tired of the tiny keyboards and the utterly inefficient ways of entering words on phones, and that includes voice recognition. Technology is here to serve us, not the other way round.
   Therefore, I’m not sure that pandering to the limitations of the smaller screen is the right thing to do, which I know, given the time people spend on their devices in 2021 could be an unwise decision. But maybe some of us have to take those first steps and say: there are better things to do with your day, and better ways of reading that won’t strain your eyes. Look up from your devices. Enjoy life. Find the medium where your posture’s not compromised. Even if the trend is to fixate you to your phones and strain your eyes there, and then to make life difficult for you in print with tiny type that strains your eyes even more. We want to be humane, take part in making your lives better, and not hooking you for every moment possible.
   Another reason this site doesn’t get as much mobile support as others—a reason to knock our own design score down—is that each time we create a version for handheld devices (at the turn of the century, you could download Lucire news on to PDAs like Newtons), the technology is quickly rendered obsolete: either programs are invented that distil the large images and web page layouts into something that the devices can tackle, or resolutions improve, or browsers come with a text-only mode. Worryingly, the means of having smaller devices being able to deal with traditional web pages haven’t appeared as quickly this time, which may point to a dearth of innovation in the occidental online space in the 21st century.
   That is what you get when the technology space is dominated by giants, as it leads to the suppression of innovation, something that isn’t serving humankind one bit. Standardization hasn’t just happened because we all settle: the clever inventions aren’t getting out there because the barriers to entry are high. Big Tech isn’t just about suppressing speech and getting political: it’s affecting our everyday enjoyment and appreciation of online media. YouTube and others have “exit pages” that hinder us from leaving their sites, in an attempt to keep us from departing and score themselves an extra page view that they can record (if we the people do this, the search engines penalize us). They want to keep us where they can watch us, not the other way round.
   I’d love to see that “old-fashioned” innovation return, with great websites that knock our socks off, getting 10 for content and 10 for design again. I’m sure there are clever people out there bucking the trend, and we’d love to hear from them. With all the sites out there, discovering them is as hard as ever, with search engines like Google potentially getting less reliable as their algorithms feed us content that might hook us more than help us, such as giving us political news that appeals to our own biases rather than help make us better rounded people.
   It’s really down to us to get the word out about great sites, businesses and organizations. I realize that most of us can only do this through the services Big Tech provides. You’re probably on this page because you followed a search engine result or a social media referral. But if we want to break free of them, if we want to see great sites and innovation return, then we each need to do our bit, by freeing ourselves from the dominant players that are holding things back. Get those searches from Duck Duck Go, where they’re less biased. Ask yourself whether it’s that vital to share that Tweet, Facebook post, Instagram photo, or social media comment. And, I say this without irony, let us know in the comments of some of those great online destinations that you think deserve to be linked.—Jack Yan, Founder and Publisher

‘Continuation’ editions are a great money-spinner for car companies with a history: offer a classic based on the original plans, and wait for the well heeled collectors to snap them up. Aston Martin has done it with both the DB4 GT and the James Bond Goldfinger DB5, and Jaguar with the E-type Lightweight.
   Now it’s the turn of the C-type, with eight planned, each to be hand-built. Unlike replicas, these fetch a higher price because of their provenance, being built by the company itself. Jaguar claims the C-types are ‘fully authentic’, with the cars to come from Jaguar Land Rover Classic Works in Coventry.
   The cars will be equipped to the 1953 Le Mans winner specifications, with disc brakes, and the 3·4-litre inline six with triple Weber carburettors. The cars will not be road-legal, but can be used in historic racing and on the track.
   Jaguar used a period C-type for the basis of its new manufacturing data, and, of course, it had exclusive access to the original engineering drawings and records created by aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer, competitions’ manager Lofty England, and engineers William Heynes, Bob Knight and Norman Dewis.
   Customers can specify their continuation C-types virtually, too, with an online configurator. These can be shared with the hashtag #70yearsofCtype, with Jaguar planning to feature them on its social media.

Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust

Top: Jaguar’s works C-type racing team before the start of the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours, including Stirling Moss with no. 17. Moss would finish second overall, with Peter Walker. The no. 18 Jaguar C-type of Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton wins the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours.