THE GOATS OF ST MORITZ
St Moritz, Switzerland – 2023
The great contradiction of St Moritz is that for all its glamour, wealth and club culture, it is a surprisingly inclusive place. The town is homely and welcoming before it is snobbish and elitist. For the cynics, this is unimagina...
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THE GOATS OF ST MORITZ
St Moritz, Switzerland – 2023
The great contradiction of St Moritz is that for all its glamour, wealth and club culture, it is a surprisingly inclusive place. The town is homely and welcoming before it is snobbish and elitist. For the cynics, this is unimaginable, but it is the reality and it is part of the fabric that makes the town so magical.
The artisans and farmers of the Engadin are accorded no less respect simply because they don’t shop at Gucci or lunch at the ski clubs in the mountains. The joy and happiness of living in this amphitheatre is not a tiered system. It envelopes the whole community and the community is better for it.
These thoughts were not far from my mind when I invited a goat and some farmers into the shoot at the famous Renaissance Bar at Badrutt’s Palace. They are as much a part of the Engadin community as the technology and finance titans who sip espresso martinis and smoke cigars on the old swivel chairs at the bar.
I wanted to centre this story around Brigitte Bardot glamour. After all, she is an integral part of St Moritz’s history. The girls in the frame - Nadine Leopold and Frida Aasen - were magnificent and styled wonderfully by the team and then we just had to fit in the lead staff of Badrutt’s and a few local bar regulars who may or not be GOATS in their own world. It was chaos but then again, that bar is never that orderly.
This will always be a bar I want to go to. It’s an Agatha Christie set where everyone is innocent until they are not. It is theatre at its Alpine best and one-dimensional resorts like Courchevel cannot compete.
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