Bold-Faced

What is it about Polaroids that makes them so enduringly endearing? How do those white-bordered, air-dried little squares endow the fuzzy faces inside with such glammy glow? Is it the intimacy, the immediacy, the DIY vibe? Any way you blow on it, Ezra Petronio taps into the magic with Bold & Beautiful (7L/Steidl, $60), a new book of Polaroid portraits of the creatives who've entered the sphere of Self Service, the pioneering Paris-based fashion-and-arts magazine he founded ten years ago. The New York native estimates he's clicked the shutter of his original 1970's Polaroid camera 12,000 times, always against a stark background and using up, he guesses, most of the vintage flash cubes left in the world. "The more the years go by," he tells Hint, "the more pleasure people will have from seeing these portraits, as they are a distilled form of social documentation." Here, Petronio picks out his most memorable sessions.

(clockwise from top) Donna Karan, Isabelle Adjani, Sarah Mower

Donna Karan
"In the spa room of her penthouse on Central Park West. It was just after a Vanity Fair shoot with Annie Leibovitz. Each image was preceded by a yoga move and taking in of harmonious breath."

Vivienne Westwood
"Three hours backstage waiting, two and a half minutes with her, four shots. The only white background was in the toilet, meaning toilet use for everyone was blocked by the set-up for two hours. I was forced to sit on the throne to take the images."

Tom Ford
"I was flown to London first class, put up in five-star hotel and given chauffeur-driven car in order to facilitate the image."

(clockwise from top left) Tracy Emin, Hilary Alexander, Serena Rees, Andrée Putman

Tracy Emin
"She showed up with [artist] Ron Wood and a large and ready-for-partying entourage who ended up staying the night."

(clockwise from top left) Marc Ascoli, Ingrid Sischy, Thaddaeus Ropac, Gianfranco Ferré

Ingrid Sischy
"In her home, where the only white wall was in her laundry room. She was in between the washer and dryer."

Gianfranco Ferré
"Two hours backstage waiting in a completely empty room, one minute with him, one shot. He refused to sit down for the picture and left before the Polaroid was opened."

Helmut Lang
"He would only allow his own team to take the picture. I was obliged to send the camera and film for his use."

Louise Bourgeois
"Spent at least one hour in the atelier with her assistant taking down old relics from the walls in order to create a white background for the image."

Diane von Furstenberg
"Taken in the only available space in her apartment, under the original Warhol Polaroid taken thirty years earlier."

Source: Hint Magazine

Diamonds Are A Boy's Best Friend

He's up to his gums in diamonds and gold. He keeps his dazzling cars behind a glass wall so he can see them from his living room. His spare penthouse - in Tokyo's poshest high-rise - is for his galaxy of Star Wars memorabilia.

Nigo is the coolest man in Japan. When Chanel supremo Karl Lagerfeld was commissioned to photograph Tokyo's celebrities for a special edition of Interview magazine, it was Nigo, and his jewel-studded teeth, who appeared on the cover.

"Diamond crazy superstar," Interview said, summing him up in a headline. The magazine's editor, Ingrid Sischy, explained she included Nigo among the Tokyo in-crowd because he was part of the group making "the city such a global force in 21st century culture".

Fashion and popular culture is the source of Nigo's wealth and image. His label, A Bathing Ape, began with clothes but has since spread to shoes, a restaurant, a recording label, rap band, hair salon and toys. Nigo (pronounced nee-go) is not his real name but a riff on "number two" in Japanese.

Almost all there is to the brand is its logo: a stylised ape's head that, if you're into it, is as recognisable as the interlocked G's of Gucci.

As bizarre as A Bathing Ape might sound as a brand name, it is a pinnacle of urban street chic.

Nigo has made his fortune from selling branded T-shirts, brightly coloured sneakers, baggy jeans and thick hoodies. Among the rich rappers and hip-hop camp followers that Nigo counts as his tribe, the clothes and the brand are a status symbol. Worn with the ropes of gold and carats of could-be-zirconia-except-who's-game-to-ask, the clothes are sold from a catalogue (that you first have to buy for more than $10), on the internet, and from a small number of boutiques in Tokyo, London and New York. In Australia it is easiest to find on eBay.

Apart from a single animated billboard in Tokyo, the company does not advertise. It has built up the brand, which started in 1992, from a back-street shop to a retail phenomenon. Fame grew as the right kind of people started wearing the clothes on TV and at concerts.

"We gave [a singer] a T-shirt to wear at his gigs and he did," Nigo told Italian online magazine, Pigmag.com.

"So more and more people started to get to know our stuff. At the time we used to produce about 30 T-shirts a batch. We'd give half to friends and we'd sell the other half. We carried on like that for two years, producing very few of them, giving away half and selling half."

Nigo, 32, is said to be a billionaire. Through gossip from acquaintances, his self-promoting forays in the fashion media, and a recent visit to his office by Japan's tax inspectors, it is evident he has plenty of money.

The interior design magazine Casa Brutus, the Tokyo equal of Architectural Digest, featured one of his homes earlier this year. It showed the designer lazing around on a Versace couch. In one overflowing room there were hundreds of stuffed toys. Simpson-esque portraits gazed down from the walls and there were monogrammed Louis Vuitton towels in the living room. At another house he keeps his cars, a silver Rolls-Royce, a Lamborghini and a Porsche 4WD.

Nigo's office, which tightly controls his image, wanted so many details about the sort of publications The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were, how big this story would be, what page it would be on, what it would say about him, what sort of photograph would be required, that the deadline passed before he agreed. Ultimately he gave permission for a picture from a recent session with Tokyo photographer Becky Yee but his office warned that nothing had better be wrong in the story.

For the details of his life story, it is, as he presents it, a series of well-timed impulses and lucky connections.

His fascination with popular culture dates from childhood when, at 12, he got his first pair of Levi 501s. At 16, he bought a mixing board and started DJing and then made a half-hearted effort at fashion college where he fell in with a well-connected crowd.

"I didn't go to school very much," he reportedly told pigmag.com. "I used to go clubbing with them every night. I felt lucky just to know them and they turned out to be crucial for my future."

Nigo's marketing genius was to realise rich, vain and spoiled young men could, with careful cultivation, become just as brand obsessed as their female counterparts. But there is also something daringly ironic about taking ill-fitting street fashion that can be a bit threatening to those outside the hip-hop tribe and glossing it up. Nigo says he is leading his customers by the nose.

"It's a comment on kids in Tokyo today," Nigo said, according to an interview with Metropolis, a Tokyo magazine. "They're shallow; they take things for granted, and they're not street savvy. It's sort of ironic for them to be wearing my clothing. I'm trying to show how they are incapable of being independent minded. They have no plans, no goals, because they're just too comfortable. Like bathing in lukewarm water."

There is a double meaning in his phrase "bathing in lukewarm water" because, in Japanese bath-house slang, this is described as being "a bathing ape".

The seat of the Nigo empire is in the same Tokyo neighbourhood as Prada and Cartier. After a recent renovation, it is a triumph of mirrors and abstract ceiling paintwork. Up a stainless steel staircase that lights up like a neon rainbow, the shoe "gallery" feels like a spin inside a lava lamp. The shoes travel around on a small conveyer, the sort they use for sushi trains.

The customers, mostly young men wearing knitted beanies pulled down hard over their ears, are living the dream. The soundtrack is Teriyaki Boyz, Nigo's band, and the racks are arrayed with limited edition T-shirts bearing the Ape Shall Not Kill Ape commandment on the tag. The sneakers that Nigo designs with Emmy-award winning New York rapper Pharrell Williams are called Ice Cream. "Ice, as in jewels; cream, as in cash," explains one buyer.

The pair also collaborated on a range of sunglasses for Louis Vuitton. After a falling out with Reebok they took back the shoe businesses and are working on their next big thing: The Billionaire Boy's Club. The second label is meant to scoop up even more of the money dropping out of the pockets of young men who wear their hats sideways.

Though there is an upscale collector's line of A Bathing Ape, the brand's main range is pricey but not heart stoppingly so. A logo T-shirt is ¥6000 ($67), a sweatshirt ¥12,000 and shoes above ¥20,000.

The clothes are not really worth that much, but it's all about the logo. The key to the success of the brand seems to be that customers buy heaps of stuff. This week, one shopper, already kitted out from head to toe in the brand, walked up the stairs for a late evening spree, while another headed for the exit carrying two suitcase-sized shopping bags full of new shoes. Where was he going? Straight to the Bathing Ape café where the monkey logo appears on everything from the chopstick wrappers to the paper on the sugar cubes. Sweet.

Just A Little Bit...

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Jimmy Choo Hits Paris

Plenty of people would like to be in Tamara Mellon's shoes - not just as a young and glamorous president of Jimmy Choo, but in the delicately girlie creations that fill the stores.

With perfect serendipity, the British company opened its first storein Paris last week (a luxurious little shoe box of a place), just as the Cameron Diaz movie "In Her Shoes" hit town. Its story line is about two sisters (Diaz and Toni Collette) who have nothing in common except their shoe size. But while sober sister wears sensible footwear, the Diaz character is outfitted in an dizzying array of Jimmy Choos.

"We were involved from the beginning - and it was a lot of fun," said Mellon, who said it was always a dream to open a Paris store to add to the 31 boutiques created since Jimmy Choo was founded in 1996, partnered with Equinox holdings in 2001 and then taken over by majority shareholder Lion Capital last year.

A space came up "in the magic corner," a small storefront at 34 Avenue Montaigne, that Mellon describes as "one of the greatest fashion streets in the world." The Jimmy Choo CEO, Robert Bensoussan, carved just 50 square meters, or 538 square feet, out of what was formerly a caretaker's lodge in an apartment block. The space has now been transformed into a boudoir, in beige, tinged with pink, crystal chandeliers sparkling and with mirrors to enlarge visually the small area. In the boutique inspired by 1940s glamour, the shoes are delicate and girlie and partnered by handbags, bold or discreet.

This Jimmy Choo Paris store follows a Madrid opening earlier this month, with Tokyo, Bangkok and a second Dubai shop to follow in the coming months. What does the movie tell Mellon about shoe business?

"It is that old saying that you can always tell someone by their shoes," says Mellon.

So was she wearing the bright blue beribboned high heels with which Diaz walked the red carpet?

"I'm either in four inches high or in flats," says Mellon, and her choice for a chilly November day were cozy, flat, fur-lined boots.

Tights, Camera, Action!

When you're covered head-to-toe—hello, winter puffy coat!—it's not quite as easy to express your inner 'nista. Thankfully, designers are giving you a leg up on standing out from the mass-market masses with a kicky array of bold, head-turning tights. From Zac Posen's hip herringbone to Eley Kishimoto's avant-garde, Art Nouveau black-and-white swirls, not to mention the eye-popping neon signs of fashion life from cheeky Brits FrostFrench and Paul Smith, there's something for every style sensibility, provided you're not working that whole “shrinking violet” shtick.