QUINTESSENTIALLY ASIA Magazine - Winter 2012

In this issue

The dragon has had his season, and now the snake comes to take his place. A new lunar year begins, and the earth spins closer to its fate. For sentient beings, there was once great fear about the future. Famines, floods and eclipses seemed to be the work of magic; a volcano the mouth of an enraged dragon, an earthquake the product of an ogre’s fist. And then came science, and with it rationality and logic. The Gods who had once been revered in the hope they would protect humanity from evil now seem, to most, like comic relics of a superstitious age. And yet the human worship gene has not been turned off and thus the dedication we once reserved for deities is now showered on unobtainable bags, couture dresses, privileged royalty, powerful politicians and even the c-list winners of minor talent competitions like Strictly Got Factors, or whatever it’s called. Is it just coincidence that advisers (or is that acolytes?) to the chief executive at the world’s most successful luxury conglomerate call him Jupiter Stator behind his back? And thus, because we know luxury is not worth having unless it’s explored with some measure of intellectual rigour we devote this sixth edition of Quintessentially Asia magazine to the concept of worship. As a theme this might seem an odd choice for a periodical that’s devoted to sybaritic pursuits but that’s the point. Many of our modern day pleasures seem to stray into worshipful territory. Thus in The Second Coming we explore the new spiritual leader at Dior and ask whether his work will raise the game at the most august Parisian fashion house to Jovian heights. In Cave Crusade we consider why so many non-religious millionaires from Hong Kong and elsewhere are suddenly making pilgrimages to the remote Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang and in Root and Branch we consider one artist’s pious devotion to the making of transcendent wooden sculptures. Beyond physical artefacts of dedication, we enter the temple of high fashion in the company of a chrysalis in Chimera Time, a bold visual essay on the transference of power, a process that is at the heart of all worship. Believe what you will, the Gods are still among us. It’s just that these days they are much better dressed. Come, enter our temple.