HTSI editor’s letter: how to reset yourself this summer

Minutes before leaving for the airport last month, en route to Lanserhof’s latest outpost on the tiny German island of Sylt, I took a rapid antigen test. Disaster. Not for me the delights of the state-of-the-art medical spa and Frisian retreat, nor the prospect of the clinic’s fabled “cure”. The result was positive. Out of the suitcase came the stretchy leggings and haute-slob loungewear I had packed in anticipation. Out went my dreams of sculpting a smoking-hot bikini bod. A mild and boringly asymptomatic case of Covid scuppered my anticipation, and a five-day quarantine period in Kilburn beckoned instead.

In spite of such personal disappointment, however, I was grudgingly delighted that my colleague Rosanna Dodds was able to undertake this most gruelling of assignments, heading off to the sandy archipelago at a moment’s notice to offer herself up to the expertise of the Lanserhof team of diagnostic experts, personal trainers and practitioners of gut health. I was even more grudgingly delighted to find that the piece she turned in was infinitely better than anything I could have written in any place.

It’s the month to reboot the system and return us to our luminous best

Sylt holds a curious position in the national imagination. A coastal resort that many liken to the Hamptons, the region has been a sandy summer destination for wealthy Germans for the past 60 or so years: quiet, discreet and fragrant with privilege, it has been a bastion of genteel living that has this year been awakened, both by the arrival of a new cohort of tourists taking advantage of cheap summer toll fees to the island, and the arrival of a world-class spa resort on its famous dunes. Rosie found an island in a state of slight adjustment to the incomers as it emerges as a more conspicuous presence on the global travel stage. No doubt it will resettle shortly; after all, the loamy environment rarely stays in one place for very long.

Susanne Kapoor’s house in Lipari, off the coast of northern Sicily, is surrounded by volcanoes, though the only explosive details in her tranquil sanctuary are found in the vivid chevron tile details that decorate the floor. The former wife of artist Anish Kapoor, Susanne bought her summer house in the wake of their separation, and her Lipari retreat is as much an expression of aesthetic independence as it is anything else. Fiona Golfar went to visit her with artist Tarka Kings (creator of the floor art) to find out why Susanne was so irresistibly drawn to the island.

High summer is for many readers the time when we can finally recharge and relax. Many of you will be on holiday while reading this; it’s the month to reboot the system and return us to our luminous best. Even so, few will achieve the enviable luminosity of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, our cover star and model, who this month celebrates her first year as a beauty founder and business entrepreneur. She has also had a second baby. As you do. 

Rosie’s ambitions put her among a new generation of celebrity-founder businesses – she joins Tracee Ellis Ross, Alicia Keys, Scarlett Johansson and Harry Styles among those hoping to take a bite out of an industry projected to be worth $135bn by the end of 2022. Having spent so much time as a guinea pig for various make-up artists in the course of her work as a model, Rosie has been immersed in “research and development” in all things cosmeceutical for the best part of her career. That she should have developed a highly successful line of hypoallergenic and non-comedogenic products should come as no surprise. 

@jellison22