Proof6

insideFrom The EditorThe 21st Century Renaissance Man:He is wealthy beyond his wildest dreams.He is an explorer of life. He is a leader.He is erudite.He is able to make the complicated simple.He is in touch with his heart and his mind.He is always in the moment.He is noble.He is a philanthropist.He is passionate and believes in the power of love.He is both a teacher and a student of life.He is a warrior.He is spiritual.He is a boxing glove and a rose. Finally, he is a sub-scriber to Renaissance and so is anyone else looking for the best that life has to offer.Welcome to a maga-zine that reveals the soul behind the wealth.Cheers!!!!John Alan SchwartzEditor In Cheif

insideinsideFrom

Editor

He is wealthy beyond

He is an explorer of life.

He is able to make the complicated simple.He is in touch with his

He is a philanthropist.He is passionate and believes in the power

He is both a teacher and a student of life.

He is a boxing glove

scriber to Renaissance and so is anyone else looking for the best that

Welcome to a maga-zine that reveals the soul behind the wealth.

John Alan Schwartz

Richard Richard BransonBranson

Beyond Beyond HighTechHighTech

Salma Salma HayekHayek

Culinary Culinary Art

Chateau Chateau Magnifi queMagnifi que

Casual Casual Attire

Airbus Airbus A380

Eli BroadBroad

810121417

202427

Vol. 1 / Issue 1

PUBLISHERS / EDITORSJay Nash Cole

[email protected]

John Alan [email protected]

CREATIVE DIRECTORRory Rogers

[email protected]

PRODUCTION ARTISTAdam Lorber

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSJim Schwartz, Alan Black

CARTOONISTSDave Boatman, Jeff Powers

VP ADVERTISINGDaniel Dodd

ACCOUNT MANAGERSAlan Finkelstein, Kathy Green,

Frank Russo

Tel: 310-204-4255 Fax: 310-204-426013321 Beach Ave

Hollywood, CA 90310

RenaissanceMagazine.com

Cover photo by Melanie Shipley

By Betsy Morris

B R E A K I N GB A R R I E R SB A R R I E R S

BransonB R E A K I N G

BransonBransonBransonBransonB A R R I E R S

BransonB A R R I E R SRichard

t is 7 a.m., and Richard Branson has been hard at work for 2 1/2 hours, though you’d never know it by watching him. Barefoot, clad in a navy bathing suit, he is lying in a hammock strung up in one cor-ner of the great room of his Necker Island home, open to the West Indies trade winds and looking due west out over the turquoise Caribbean. He has a black composition book in his lap and the

tip of a plastic ballpoint pen in his mouth. He is writing a letter to the Financial Times. “Hello,” he says, looking up. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

Already this morning, from his hanging perch, he has scanned a pile of faxes and had several phone conversations in an attempt to resolve a thorny disagreement with his Australian partner, Patrick Corp., over their airline, Virgin Blue. He has begun to mend fences with T-Mobile, a Virgin partner and sup-plier. The portable phone in his lap rings, and he takes a mes-sage. It is Monica, over at the Fat Virgin’s Cafe, wanting to know if anybody on the island can share a supply boat today; she’s running out of food. He writes the message on the back of his hand so he won’t forget.

As he works, the rest of the house— a glorious Balinese struc-ture, open to the ocean on all sides, roofed in Brazilian cedar, and decorated casually with mahogany furniture and Bud-dhist statues—begins to stir. Branson’s wife, Joan, fl oats in, wrapped in a white-silk sarong. A couple of bleary-eyed teen-agers wander through and fl op down in front of a big-screen TV at the opposite end of the room; they are friends of Branson’s son, Sam, and they have been up most of the night celebrating Sam’s 18th birthday. Empty bottles of Red Stripe, Bacardi Li-mon, and Sour Apple Pucker, along with bits of fl uttering crepe paper, disappear into the dustpan of an island caretaker who looks more like a mermaid than a maid. The big screen sud-denly comes alive, fi lling the room with the opening strains of Beauty and the Beast. “Sometimes,” Branson says, “I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I’ve hammockjust had the most incredible dream. I’ve just dreamt my life.”

Richard Branson’s life is better than a fairy tale. The 53-year-old corporate bad boy was never supposed to end up like this: the master of his universe, directing a $7 billion empire he cre-ated from scratch as a teenager, from his hammock in para-dise. He is not necessarily the world’s greatest businessman, or the most successful. His empire is spread willy-nilly from bridal gowns and cosmetics to airlines and railways; most re-cently he has jumped into cellphones and consumer electron-ics. His track record is varied, with home runs in records and airlines and fumbles in retail and rail. He’s not the wealthiest businessman around either, although his net worth (estimated by his fi nancial advisors at $2.6 billion) is as hard to pin down as the profi tability of many of his companies. His holdings are mostly private, controlled through offshore family trusts. (All told, Virgin Group says it expects worldwide earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization to be $600 mil-lion this year.)

But if you were able to trade places with any corporate chieftain,

“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”

I

>>

Branson

beyondHIGHTECH

Icon A5PersonalAircraftThe graceful dragonfl y pictured above is an ICON A5, a two-seat sport air-plane aimed at the masses. Designed for ease of piloting, the lightweight personal aircraft is amphibious with retractable landing gear for fl ying off land and water alike. The A5 features

a carbon fi ber airframe, a 100-hp/120-mph Rotax 912 ULS engine (that runs on both auto and aviation gas), and folding wings that allow it to be stored at home and towed on the highway with a trailer. The A5 comes with a plethora of safety features. Included

are a propeller guard, wing angle of attack indicator, and a huge, built-in parachute that helps the entire plane come down a little easier in an emer-gency. It will be available by 2010 at a cost of $139,000. So just keep rolling your money around for a little longer...

>> $139,000>> www.IconA5.com>> Summer 2010

LUVAGLIO’S FIRSTLUXURY NOTEBOOKUK-based bespoke luxury goods Game-Guide-Polo creator Luvaglio has created the fi rst million dollar laptop. It incorporates a 17” wide-screen LED backlit screen, 128GB SSD and a slot loading Blue-Ray drive. A very rare coloured diamond piece of jewellery doubles up as the power button when placed into the laptop and also acts as security identifi cation. Luvaglio’s initial clients will be chosen for selection as they have already established trust with them. Clients will be able to design their own laptop by visiting Luvaglio’s showrooms at two or three well known upmarket stores, whereby their selection of materials, fi nishes and accessories will be available to view and a choice selected.

>> $1,000,000>> www.luvaglio.com>> Winter 2011

THE DRY WATER MASSAGERThis... Dry Water Massager used to be a spa staple of fi ve-star resorts. However, if you’ve got a lot of spare cash lying around things could be different now... The 28 nozzles inside the canopy emulate a shiatsu style massage throughout your body. An aroma diffuser also compliments the full service massage experience with essential oils to soothe and relax. And if all that wasn’t enough, the open-ing inside the face rest lets you view an integrated 7 inch LCD and DVD player as well as providing iPod con-nectivity which you can listen to via the included Bose headphones.

>> $29,500>> www.drywater.com>> Fall 2010

The Sooloos Sound System actually consists of a range of storage, audio and control products. The picture above feature’s the Sooloos “Control:One” Touchscreen panel that lets you select songs to play on your

Sooloos Sound System. To store songs imported into

Sooloos

from your CDs or PC, you’ll have to purchase the “Twinstore”, a liquid cooled and ultra quiet 1 Terabyte mir-rored RAID storage system. Playback of music is achieved via “sources” which are basically digital-analog converters that allow the system to interact with analog speaker systems such as your Infi nite Wisdom Grande speaker set. Sources can be installed

anywhere you need your music played.

>> $200,000 >> www.sooloos.com >> Summer 2011

THE SOOLOOS SOUND SYSTEM

SalmaSalmaHayekHayek& Francois-Henri Penault: a billion dollar love story

HayekHayek is nursing a bottle of Ice Age mineral water between her knees while wildly waving her arms about, joyously re-lieved that after eight years, her beloved Frida is fi nally about to see the light of day. For eight years Salma had been des-perate to bring the Frida Kahlo story to the screen, and she is very clear as to why. “There was something about the woman and the times in which she lived that I just found fascinating,” explains Hayek, who is both star and producer of the movie. “She was never conventional about anything she did, was always herself, which was not easy. She started exploring with women at a very early age and was never apologetic about who she was. Also, the fact that she took all the differ-ent tragedies or diffi culties in her life and made the best out of them, and not only made the best out of them, but did it in an interesting way. From pain, she did art and poetry; from the infi delities of her husband, she found freedom.”

This fi lm tells of Mexican painter and icon Frida Kahlo focus-ing on her tumultuous relationship with husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) and their place in Mexican society. The fi lm evolves into a portrait of Kahlo as a bisexual and communist struggling with an abusive husband, a life of physical pain, the amputation of a leg, and, fi nally, the drug and alcohol abuse that killed her at age 47.

Rather than relate to Frida on a direct and personal level, Hayek simply says that she would like to learn from her, add-ing, that “she’s defi nitely an inspiration” adding that she is working on “trying to take it in.” Hayek immersed herself into the role, including an attempt to shave her upper lip in order to accentuate a specifi cally physical aspect of the character

“but it didn’t work and now, I’m stuck with it,” she laughingly concedes. “I had a shoe that was one centimeter taller than the other one to stress her limping.”

It is this degree of commitment that remains Hayek’s man-tra. Her determination to succeed where others have failed is what impresses one about the Mexican-born actress, who is unconcerned at the so-called ‘race’ to get the Frida tale on the screen. Most notably, Madonna was anxious to try. While Hayek has never spoken to Madonna about the proj-ect, Hayek seems genuinely pleased that the Material Girl was keen to tackle the complex fi lm “Madonna is a woman with very good taste and I think that she truly and honestly admires and loves Frida. I actually think she would like the fi lm.”

Years of working with screenplays that didn’t work, it was fi nally her boyfriend, Edward Norton, who came to the res-cue. “Julie [Taymor] had come on board and now we needed to shape the movie to her taste, to rewrite the movie and do the movie that was Julie’s vision. We had been working with a writer we liked very much, Rodrigo Garcia, who was so talented and such a lovely man. But at the time he was directing a fi lm, so Edward offered to do it.” The key word here is ‘offered.’ Hayek insists she never asked Norton for help. “I would never say that,” she defi antly insists. “For me the most painful part of the process was fi nding a new writer. You don’t know what its like,” she says, her voice rising in frustration. “You have to read 100scripts or samples. I never like any of them. I have to pick 10. Then you meet all of them and you like them all because they’re all so nice and smart

>>

Even after weeks of talking about pet project, Frida, Salma Hayek remains an impassioned presence. The petite, beautiful actress is in a good mood, as well she should be. Attired in a nearly transparent, light yellow blouse with black stitching along the front and collar and black skin-tight pants, she laugh-ingly insists that all her clothes are borrowed. “You think I’m going to spend my money on clothes? No way.” She would rather spend it on art, she says, and she does, including two Frida Kahlo drawings. “I have a small house so I borrow everything except art, that’s what I love.”

CULINARYart

An Olive Grows in WeHoThe latest venture of restaurateur Greg Morris (The Belmont, The Spanish Kitchen), Sunset Strip Cal-Italian The Olive Kitchen + Bar offers midpriced breakfast, lunch and dinner fare in The Grafton’s former BOA steakhouse quarters; the wood utilized in the eco-friendly space was sourced from dead trees, multicolored lamps add warm lighting and an artist-deco-rated chalkboard runs through the various rooms.

THE BRENTWOODThis celebrity-heavy American is open for dinner from 5 PM on Father’s Day, offering its much-loved creature-comfort menu of items like braised short ribs with polenta, penne rustica with burrata cheese and a 16-oz. Kansas City prime bone-in chop as well as a few specials

>> 565 Brentwood Blvd.>> Brentwood>> 310.476.3511

FIVE CROWNSThis Lawry’s sibling offers a two-course brunch from 10 AM–2:30 PM with fi rst-course selections including salad, soup or fresh fruit, followed by options such as eggs Benedict, sesame-crusted halibut, steak and mushroom pie and, of course, prime rib. Fathers will also be presented with complimentary chocolate cigars ($21–$45 depending on brunch entree.

>> 5864 7th Ave.>> San Francisco>> 510.760.0331

This fast-growing burger chain is offering a “Burgers for Dads” promo-tion on Father’s Day. To get the free burger, dad must be accompanied by

a paying guest and say, “I want the BFD!” (limited to one per customer, standard burgers only).

>> 2452 West Ave. >> Kansas City >> 456.345.6780

THE COUNTER

>> 8462 Sunset Blvd.>> West Hollywood>> 323.654.4600

art

midpriced breakfast, lunch and dinner

steakhouse quarters; the wood utilized in the eco-friendly space was sourced

ChateauMagnifique

Mon FrenchChateauMon FrenchChateauChateauMon FrenchChateau

>>

The Chateau de Cormatin rests on the foundations of a French medieval fortress built in 1280 by Henri du Ble. Both the chateau and its spectacular gardens are open to the public and are a popular tour for canal and barge boat passengers cruising along the Saone River in France.

The du Ble family can trace its noble French lineage back to the year 1000. A barony was acquired through a mar-riage in 1560 and Antoine du Ble further enhanced the family’s prestige by stra-tegically throwing his support behind Henri IV.

The new king brought Antoine fi nancial and social rewards, enabling him to re-build Cormatin. The new chateau was reconstructed using the existing feudal plan. The design - square with a tower at each corner – was both a practical and security feature.

As with many other French chateaux, the ramparts were later destroyed dur-ing the reign of Louis XIV. This indicated to the King that the nobility had no plans to revolt against his authority. The chateau’s slate roof not only showed the wealth of the du Ble family, it also announced their affi li-ation to the French Royal Court, as this material was the choice of royal residences.

Read more at Suite101: Travel to Burgundy & Tour Historic French Chateau de Cormatin http://france-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/travel-to-burgundy--tour-historic-french-chateau-de-cormatin#ixzz0rYKZCltv


The du Ble family can trace its noble French lineage back to the year 1000. A barony was acquired through a mar-

riage in 1560 and Antoine du Ble fur-ther enhanced the family’s prestige by strategically throwing his support behind Henri IV.

The new king brought Antoine fi nancial and social rewards, enabling him to re-build Cormatin. The new chateau was reconstructed using the existing feudal plan. The design - square with a tower at each corner – was both a practical and security feature.

As with many other French chateaux, the ramparts were later destroyed during the reign of Louis XIV. This in-

dicated to the King that the nobility had no plans to revolt against his authority. The chateau’s slate roof not only showed the wealth of the du Ble family, it also announced their affi liation to the French Royal Court, as this material was the choice of royal residences.

Read more at Suite101: Travel to Burgundy & Tour Historic French Chateau de Cormatin http://france-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/travel-to-burgundy--tour-historic-french-chateau-de-cormatin#ixzz0rYKZCltv


Trousers: Tina BernsteinGolf Shirt: Balcony Hotel, Florence, ItalyFootwear: Mark SilversteinPutter: Feel Golf

Casual AttireCasual Attire

GOLF

Polo Shirt: Perry JacobsRaquet: Tina Bernstein

Ball: Balcony

for the Renaissance

Man and his Leisure

Persuits

TENNIS

Wool Trousers: Perry JacobsCashmere Shirt: Tina BernsteinLeather Jacket: Mika ShinaFootwear: Craftsmen

FLY FISHING

Sports Shirt: Perry JacobsTrousers: Tina BernsteinFootwear: Mark Jacobs

Automobile: Ferari

MOTORING

AirbusA380Flying Th e Wealthy Skies

The A380 Family starts from a baseline passenger aircraft with a capacity of 525 passengers in a three-class confi guration, seated over two spacious decks, and with a range of 8,300nm / 15,400km. Two and a half years into its commercial service life, the young A380 fl eet of 30 aircraft has met all its commit-ments, and is even exceeding expectations at its four initial operators: Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Qantas, and most re-cently, Air France. The same is expected for operation of the type by Lufthansa – which has recently taken delivery of its fi rst A380.

The original “A3XX” concept promised a lot – now the A380 de-livers. Indeed, the A380’s economic effi ciency already allows airlines to boost profi tability, stimulate demand and grow mar-ket share, while the A380 popularity with the travelling public has led to signifi cant capacity growth and higher load factors on major routes.

In short, the A380 is clearly delivering the lowest fuel burn and operating cost; it is fl ying higher, further, and quieter; it is

achieving greater revenue and profi ts by attracting passengers with its more spacious, more comfortable, and quieter cabin, resulting in higher average load factors; it has been seen to have the ability to increase its operator’s market share.

Over 5.5 million passengers have already enjoyed the unique experience of fl ying on board the all-new A380, between 17 major airports worldwide. The A380 programme has garnered 234 fi rm orders from 17 customers, while the in-service fl eet has accumulated over 140,000 revenue fl ight hours in around 15,000 commercial fl ights. With seating capacity ranging from 400 to more than 800 passengers, the A380 is an essential part of the solution to sustainable growth, doing more with less: alleviating traffi c congestion at busy airports by transporting more passengers with no additional fl ights and at much lower cost.

Singapore Airlines took delivery of the fi rst production A380 on 15th October 2007 and now has 10 aircraft in operation on routes from Singapore to Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Paris,

>>

secondACT

EliBroad

A Family ApproachA Family Approach To Philanthropy To Philanthropy

After creating shareholder wealth by providing vital homebuilding and retirement savings services through the two Fortune 500 companies he created—KB Home and SunAmeri-ca, Inc.—Eli Broad and Edythe, his wife of 54 years, are now devoting their time, energy and resources to philanthropy.

As the child of immigrant parents, Eli Broad was instilled with the values of hard work, education and the dream that anything was possible. He and Edythe both attended Detroit Public Schools, and then he attended Michigan State University, graduat-ing with a degree in accounting and becoming the youngest CPA in the state’s history.

While working for two years as an accountant, Eli Broad saw his homebuilding clients making much more than he was, and he and Edythe’s cousin’s husband decided

they, too, could build houses. Eli Broad and Donald Kaufman founded Kaufman and Broad with the simple idea that if they built houses without basements (the widespread use of gas heating rendered basements to store coal unnecessary), they could offer homes with mortgage pay-ments that were lower than the rent for a two-bedroom apartment. The fi rst weekend in 1956, they priced their houses at $13,740. They sold out that same weekend and were in business.

Kaufman and Broad grew rapidly, becoming the fi rst homebuilder to be traded on the American and New York stock exchanges. Realizing that the homebuilding industry was cyclical, Eli Broad looked to diversify the business, and in 1971, Kaufman and Broad acquired a small life insurance company for $65 million that they eventually transformed into a retirement savings empire. With

the merger of SunAmerica into AIG in 1999—at the sales price of $18 billion—Eli Broad stepped down as CEO and turned his attention to full-time philanthropy.

The Broads had created a family foundation in the 1960s as a way to support their charitable interests and causes. But with their fi nancial suc-cess from the sale of SunAmerica, the Broads focused their charitable giving in a new style of investing that was more akin to their business acumen: venture philanthropy. An entrepreneur at heart, Eli Broad has applied his same spirit of creating new enterprises to the family’s ap-proach to philanthropy.

Today, The Broad Foundations, which include The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation, have assets of $2.1 billion. Their mission is to advance entrepreneurship for the public good

in education, science and the arts.

Eli Broad has held numerous leadership roles on boards around the country. He was the founding chairman and is a life trustee of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, is a life trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and at the California Institute of Technol-ogy, and he is currently a trustee of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Eli Broad is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1994 was named Chevalier in the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the Republic of France. In 2004, he became a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution by appointment of the U.S. Congress and the President. In 2007, Eli Broad received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

The Broads have lived in Los Ange-les since 1963.

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