The writers, photographers, artists and stylists who have brought you these stories from around the world
Writer Steve King has worked for The Economist, Vanity Fair and is currently now editor-at-large of Condé Nast Traveller. For Beyond he writes about wearable technology, a subject he was able to research recently in his (current) favorite city, Shanghai. When he’s not exploring urban environments, he’s trekking in such empty spaces as the Simpson Desert in Australia (the country of his birth) and the Samburu District in northern Kenya (former home of his wife).
The Australian-born, New York-based fashion photographer Daniela Federici, who created our fashion story in Washington, D.C., has worked for some of the world’s biggest brands, from Chanel to Coca-Cola, and styled personalities from Lenny Kravitz to Chloë Sevigny. The place she’d most like to be is Capri, with its “whitewashed houses, cascading bougainvillea, lemon groves, blue skies and deep water. It is quite unique; no wonder Emperor Tiberius chose to live on the island instead of in Rome.”
Fashion designer Georgina Chapman, who writes about her favorite vintage shop for Beyond, travels extensively, when she’s not in her Marchesa studio in New York or the Westport home she shares with her film-maker husband Harvey Weinstein. She started exploring the world at 19 and has since lived in Thailand, trekked in Peru, and been on safari in Africa: “When the plane landed on a dirt strip, we were surrounded by giraffe and zebra, and when we stopped for wine, there were about a dozen lions around us.”
The sought-after illustrator is employed by publications worldwide to capture personalities with his paintbrush, from Paris couture beauties to designers such as Paloma Picasso and the legendary model Carmen dell’Orefice, about whom he writes for us. His dream trip? “Sailing ten minutes from Franco Zeffirelli’s former villa in Positano to Da Adolfo, a nearby restaurant, where I would feast on mozzarella on lemon leaves with Callas and Nureyev, Taylor and Burton, all of whom stayed at the villa.”
Few men have seen as much of the world as this award-winning travel writer, who has encountered headhunters in Borneo, witch doctors in China and bandits in Uganda, on his journeys aboard icebreakers, camels, canoes and motorbikes. For us, he explores Rome, the city he calls his second home. “Rome is the best city in the world through which to meander,” Stewart says. “There is beauty and probably a masterpiece or two around every corner. And always a perfect café from which to admire it all.”
Two years ago this Travel+Leisure correspondent traded her home in New York for Bangkok (about which she writes in this issue) and has quickly become a local, even commuting by motorcycle taxi. Favorite travel experiences, she says, usually involve eating, whether that’s steak at Botswana Butchery in Queenstown, New Zealand or fresh blue crabs in Krabi, Thailand – although watching the sun set at Simatai West on the Great Wall of China is pretty high on her list, too.