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Simultane offers a range of exquisitely-designed gifts to ensure that you have an extra-stylish Christmas this year

Brighton fashion boutique Simultane – home to award winning designer Sarah Arnett – is brimful of Christmas goodies. Here’s a selection of the absolutely fabulous range of gifts and garments in store this season.

Spring/Summer 08

The Sarah Arnett label has gone from strength to strength and is now available in 18 countries in some of the world’s finest stores. The Spring/Summer 08 collection will be available instore from mid January. But for a sneak preview, check out Sarah’s website.

Tiergarten

These delightful Swiss candle holders include a mouse, a horse and a marmoset. Each costs £90 and they make a wonderful and imaginative addition to any stylish home.

Sarah Arnett

Sarah has created a new Christmas Wrap dress this season. Priced at £150, it’s great for any occasion. There is also 20% off selected party dresses in store – perfect for that Christmas party or New Year extravaganza. Plus great gifts including kimonos, scarves, cushions and notebooks, all featuring Sarah’s fabulous prints.

Cardigan

The creation of Brighton designer, Kate Jenkins, this lovely knitwear includes scarves, corsages, wraps and Kate’s ingenious new creation – a three-in-one shawl, scarf and shrug. A perfect present at £95.

Creed

Established in France in 1760, Creed fragrances have been worn by presidents and princesses. George Clooney, Ava Gardner, David Beckham, Julia Roberts and Grace Kelly are just a few of the names to have chosen to wear these iconic scents. With 18 scents, Simultane has one of the largest collections of Creed fragrances in the country.

Sarah Arnett Bride

Sarah’s bridal collection is loved by press and customers alike. Sarah has recently introduced a number of new dresses to the range which now starts from £900. Appointments can be made by contacting Sophie at the store.

Tocca

This renowned New York label offers sumptuous bodycreams and delightful travel candelinas – perfect for that winter weekend away and a fabulous stocking filler.

Cire Trudon Candles

Maison de Cire Trudon, first founded in France in the 17th century, was the original candle supplier to the Palace of Versailles. These pure vegetal candles offer an incredibly complex and engaging range of scents. At £35, each comes in a beautifully crafted Italian glass holder.

Buba

With fabulous bags, purses and wallets handcrafted from the finest leather and suede, this London label is proving a huge hit with the fashionistas. Starting at £90, each piece is unique and so offers a truly individual present for the lucky recipient.

Simultane (Sarah Arnett) 52 Ship Street,
(next to the old Post Office)
Brighton BN1 1AF
Tel: 01273 777535
www.saraharnett.co.uk

In an age when most of us buy what we need as we need it, why not splash out on a touch of luxury

Luxury, whilst breathing an air of extravagance, need not mean expensive. A luxury is not necessarily costly, it merely means that it is a non-essential. It can be as simple as a bar of quality soap, it can be as flamboyant as precious jewels. But to really qualify as a luxury, the gift must be something special, something above and beyond your normal life and a thing of quality or extravagance.

Luxury is for each of us a very personal thing. I have a love of designer jewels, expensive cologne and bespoke shirts, others luxuriate in spa treatments, make-overs and sophisticated underwear, for some it is art or objects of natural beauty. You can even luxuriate in glamourous novelties or techno toys, items that normally you might deny yourself the pleasure of.

Luxury is in the eye of the indulged. This christmas why not treat a loved one, a friend or even yourself to something truly indulgent and luxurious.

Dutchtub

Dutchtub is natural decadence, a portable hot spa bath costing £2995 that uses no chemicals and is heated by wood. Dutchtub is not just a question of luxury but of the quality of the experience, a fusion of innovative design and the simple pleasures of water and wood.

Visit www.dutchtub.com
call 0800 0121795 or email rb@dutchtub.com.

North Laine Photography

‘Bella’ – Framed photo print by Roger Bamber (signed 70x50cm mount) Having won scores of awards over a 40 year career (including Press Photographer of the year, twice), Roger (whose images are regularly featured in The Guardian Newspaper) has an amazing archive available at Brighton’s favourite independent gallery. Luxury items, yes – but not at an exorbitant price at £150.

North Laine Photography Gallery , Upstairs at Snoopers Paradise, 7-8 Kensington Gardens. brightonphotography.com

Yamamay

Add a touch of luxury to your Christmas wardrobe with our stunning gold collection. Bra £21.50, G-string £8.90, Stole £28.90. Also available in Black and Silver, the Glamour collection is just one of many stunning designs available this Christmas at Yamamay.

Yamamay, 57 Western Road, Brighton,
01273 727503, www.yamamay.com

Oliver Woo

An Oliver Woo gift voucher is the ultimate luxury gift for Christmas. Every garment made is an Oliver Woo original and is designed by you with the aid of their experienced design team ensuring that your suit or shirt is effortlessly individual. Working button holes, hand picked stitching, lined and bound trousers are all standard and add to the uniqueness. With a wide range of leading brand fabrics such as Zegna, Holland Sherry, Marzoni and Harrisons of Edinburgh, your imagination is the only limit.

97–99 Trafalgar Street, Brighton, 01273 686622
2 London Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN1 1DQ Tel: 01892 511122

Simultane

Jo Wood. Created by Jo (wife of Ronnie) Wood, this natural organic range of soaps, body dews and lotions is exclusive to Simultane in Brighton. Exquisitely packaged, prices range from £10 to £45.

Simultane, 52 Ship St (next to the Old Post Office). Brighton.
Call: 01273 777535

This week Katie dips her toe into the music biz and waxes lyrical with singer Joe Lean

With effervescent pop symphonies and incendiary live shows, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong are causing a major buzz on the music scene. They’re coming to Brighton to support Kaiser Chiefs, so I caught up with singer Joe Lean for a quick chat.

Hey Joe, how are you?
I just woke up!

I’m actually messing about on your Myspace page at the moment – is that you online?
Yep, that’s me. I’m in the studio with computers lying around.

Has MySpace been important in your success, like it was for The Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen?
No not really. We’re not part of that scene and I don’t really like it. There’s an air of mystery that today’s pop stars just haven’t got, but actually I’m a fan of, and we’d like to keep it like that.

We didn’t have too much of an Internet presence before we signed. Actually we didn’t even have any fans before we got signed. It was all just completely unexpected. We didn’t form the band for any premeditated reasons; really we just started the band because we wanted to hang out.

We aren’t going to see you on any nights out with Jordan in Heat magazine then?
Well, I don’t know… I haven’t met her yet but she does seem pretty cool!

So you say you ended up in a band because you wanted to hang out? I did read that somewhere…

I think I know the article you mean. It was quite derogatory; it said something like “Generic, indie, posh band formed by boys who formed a band just because they wanted to be in a band.”

“We just started the band because we wanted to hang out”

Yep, that’s the one!
Yeah well, what better reason is there to be in a band other than just because you want to be in one! We were a group of mates who wanted to be in a band and I asked my mates if they wanted to hang out with me a bit more – turns out they’re pretty good at playing their instruments.

We just formed the band to hang out and we did a show. Then we got offered a single deal after our first sound-check, then a publishing deal after our third gig and a record deal after our fifth gig. It was just luck really.

But when you got signed so suddenly, did you have material ready to go?
Yeah, because we’re prolific writers anyway. We write a lot of stuff and we don’t find writing difficult. We’re also pretty interchangeable; some people write some bits then others will write other stuff. We’re always bringing up a combination of different ideas. It’s predominantly a five-piece-writing group.

Your single ‘Lucio Starts Fires’ came out on Young & Lost Club on 8th October. What now?
We’re putting the finishing touches to our album, and it’ll be out in April. We did the single with a real pop producer. But the album has a much more raw sound. It’s more of a live album – we jut wanted to go in and play.

How’s the tour been going – you’ve been supporting Dizzee Rascal?
We’ve been fans of Dizzee since he came out so it was amazing to support him, but it certainly put hairs on our chest –for us skinny indie boys to have to come out and play to a 2,000 strong grime crowd!

How did they respond?
It went down well y’know. It’s representative of how our generation actually feels, that we’re into everything and anything.

See Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong on Sunday 16 December at the Brighton Centre, supporting Kaiser Chiefs

Jo travels to Bethlehem for the unveiling of Santa’s Ghetto – the awareness-raising art event

Here is Celebcity’s Christmas message – brought to you from Manger Square in Bethlehem.

Regular readers of this column may be aware of the work of graffiti artist Banksy – he did a lot of his early work in Brighton. His Kissing Coppers on the Prince Albert is famous worldwide and if you look along the seafront you’ll come across many more pieces of his art.

Every year I work on a thing called Santa’s Ghetto – a temporary shop of affordable contemporary art including Banksy’s latest work – which traditionally takes place at a secret location in London that is disclosed at the last minute.

This year, however, the Ghetto moved to a real ghetto – to Manger Square in the city of Bethlehem, hemmed in by the Israelis’ segregation wall in Palestine.

As the reputed birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem used to be one of the major tourist attractions of the world, but since the Israelis cut it off, hardly anyone goes there and unemployment is now 70 per cent, with the standard of living very low. The people behind the Ghetto wanted to raise awareness of what’s going on there, while the money from all art sold goes directly to local children’s and art-based charities.

My job was to make sure the world’s media knew why the artists were there, and why it’s important to go to Bethlehem to see the show. I also wanted to see for myself what the situation was like.

Flying out with Brighton artist Antony Micallef and Emma from the office, we boarded the flight to Tel Aviv with some trepidation, not knowing what to expect entering what is really a war zone.

Our cover story was that we were tourists going to Tel Aviv, as visitors who say they’re going to Palestine are usually sent back on the next plane. But, instead, we made our way through the 25ft wall and four heavily armed soldiers at Checkpoint 300, (the sole crossing between Bethlehem and Jerusalem) and headed for Manger Square.

Bethlehem is a Palestinian city with more than 35,000 residents. Most are of Muslim faith but there are still some Christians who live there. The Church of the Nativity in Manger Square used to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but that has now been reduced to a trickle. We were the only ‘Westerners’ there. To make the point, our hotel had 700 rooms. Just 20 were taken.

I then began a series of media tours – with Sky News, Reuters, BBC, Associated Press, the Times, and not forgetting Bethlehem TV – of the segregation wall, on which 12 artists from around the world had produced new work to coincide with the opening of Santa’s Ghetto.

All the correspondents are based in Jerusalem and couldn’t believe what we were doing as it was so dangerous. They were all keen to give us safety advice along the lines of how to react when faced with an angry soldier with a gun pointing at your head. It proved useful, as during one tour with the BBC’s Paul Wood a soldier opened a window 30ft away in one of the many watchtowers on the wall and pointed his machine gun straight at us. Welcome to Palestine and an everyday occurrence for the people who try and live there.

The show’s private view was, not surprisingly, a more sedate affair than usual, but was graced by the Mayor of Bethlehem and artists whose work was on display, including Palestinian Souleiman Mansour, Paul Insect, Peter Kennard, Eric the Dog, Faile and Kelsey Brooks – and a real donkey with a sculpture of Mary sitting astride.

If you are interested in buying original art, having an amazing experience and raising money at the same time, the show is open until Christmas Eve.

For more information, check out the show’s online store, www.santasghetto.com

Jo Brooks is director of Brighton-based PR company JBPR Ltd
01273 622555, www.jb-pr.com