A Cultured Life

Seven stories to keep you sharp this month

APC & You
What could be better than your own, personal pair of APC jeans? How about having your initials painted on them by the minimal French label’s founder, Jean Touitou? Jean is painting jeans in Seoul and Japan later this month. Catch him if you can.

Bond’s last Rolex
Timothy Dalton was the last actor to embody the spy while wearing a Rolex Submariner. Now the watch from that film, Licence to Kill (1989), is up for auction, at Fellow’s auction house in Great Britain, on 30th October.

Girls’ nights
Women’s growing spending power at the upper end of leisure travel is prompting more and more luxury hotels to offer female-friendly rooms. The Grange City Hotel, near the Tower of London, offers dedicated security features, while the Duchess rooms at DUKES LONDON in Mayfair have sumptuous bath and beauty selections, female-specific nutrition options, and female-only room attendants.

A very good year
If you’re looking to stock up your cellar, you might want to start checking out the 2018 champagne and Burgundy vintages. A good summer has led to a bumper grape crop – among the finest that many French winemakers can remember seeing – leading many to predict that 2018 will go down as a great year for these A-grade appellations.

Conference call
Looking for the perfect shades for a trip to LA? Try Gucci’s new selection of big-lens, steel-rimmed glasses, which have been inspired by the classic Hollywood press conferences of the 1970s and ‘80s. Just remember to plant a thicket of microphones in front of you, before pulling these specs on.

Pent Hirst
One of the big art-world purchases to emerge from Frieze week wasn’t a single work, but a new artist’s studio. Damien Hirst has spent £40m on a new studio and art complex in Beak Street, Soho, London, and a further £20m on redeveloping the place. Hirst and his lucky cohorts can enjoy bathrooms hewn from Carrara marble, among other haute interior furnishings, while they produce and showcase his new work.

Bowl over?
Has the tendency to post food pictures gone a little too far? Not, according to a new casual pasta restaurant in Manhattan’s financial district. The Pastagram offers fast, easy Italian food, that looks – well – OK on social media. We’re not sure if we’ll be following.