City Chic, Buenos Aires by Belinda Jackson
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There’s a man in a van following me. Which is a bit difficult, really, as I’m on foot, walking along Buenos Aires’ jagged footpaths. He’s just driving alongside me, at walking pace.
“What’s your name? Where do you live? Are you married?” he asks in lazy, South American Spanish.
Finally, I give up and respond in English. Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says with a shrug and a cheeky grin.
The amazing part of this whole exchange is not that I’m being cruised (carousing is a national sport), but that the whole time (and we’ve crossed three sets of traffic lights), not one of the people in the cars he’s holding up beeps their horn or gives him an earful of lip. If they had done so, he would have told them: “I’m. Talking. To. The lady.” Aaaah, then they’d understand. The seduction of woman is paramount.
Buenos Aires is the hair-tossing, lip-pouting, hip-swiveling capital of Argentina. These guys leave the rest of the world in the shade when it comes to the cult of beauty and effortless chic.
With a population half-Spanish and half-Italian, the look is dark-eyed and gorgeous, despite the fact that they'll eat a steak at midnight, breakfast on cakes and pastries, then snack on a sticky caramel spread called dolce de leche. How the hell do they do it, I wonder enviously.
The cult of beauty isn’t just left to the young things, either. I’m obviously devoid of the local skinny gene, and fail miserably on the steak, wine and pastries diet, so I tell my friend Sylvia, a native of BA, or porteno, as they’re called, that I plan to head down to the running track around the manicured gardens of Parque Palermo on Sunday morning.
“Sunday morning,” she drawls with delight, “is where you will find your second husband. Or third. Fourth…”
I haven’t had Husband Number One yet, I remind her.
“Sugar daddy. Anything,” she says with a phlegmy laugh and a dismissive wave of her bejeweled hand. Instinctively, I feel the need to pack lipstick for my jog.
As usual, Sylvia’s right. At nine o’clock the next morning, the gardens are full of buff BA matrons in their best, sparkling white, bling-encrusted trakkies, jangling with gold jewellery and eyelashes that sweep the pavement. The women go one way, the men go the other. And we strut. Big sunglasses, plenty of lipstick, some equally smart tracksuit action from the men (as well as bit of urbane, Marlon Brando-style cigar smoking) and lots of speculative looks. Forget smoky bars for the tired, end of night pick-up. The few cigarillos aside, this is a far healthier way to cruise.
At one turn is a government-sponsored fitness class where the women instructors, in teeny tiny white shorts and firm brown thighs exhort their all-female class to reach to the sky, then pump their arms together across their chests to cause maximum cleavage. And the men stop, clap and call, “Bravo!” every time this move comes up in the sequence.
The natural end to all this exercise is a cortado – a shot of espresso – at the iconic café La Biela, where silver-haired men, a la The Godfather, hold court. People watching is de rigeur, as scantily-clad, leggy beauties tango in vertiginous stilettos led by their men in smart spats and three-piece suits, despite the tropical heat. Beautiful lovers kiss languidly in the many parks, university-educated dog walkers manage armfuls of designer hounds and even the cops are decked out in tight dungarees for maximum traffic-stopping effect. However, they’re seemingly ineffectual as BA’s motorbike and moped riders are too cool for helmets, which are notably absent or perched on top of their heads (never on!), with a fabulous pair of faux designer sunnies and a mini-clad girl with long hair as garnish.
Even the poor, and there are plenty in Argentina, can live in style in BA. The city’s cashed-up founding fathers built their mansions at the mouth of the river Riachuelo, but a wave of yellow fever in 1874 saw them up sticks in droves, leaving the poor to squat in their ornate mansions, washing hung between Doric columns, TV wiring wrapped around intricate iron lacework.
You too, can get into the too-cool action, with the aid of a piece of plastic. BA doesn’t shirk at the term ‘The Paris of the Pampas’: the fashion and shopping are fabulous and cheap to boot. Not for nothing are the wide grasslands full of cattle. There’s steak on every menu and leather bags, shoes and jackets ooze from the open-air malls in every conceivable cut and colour. Beware, the local fashion is for trim and tight, which is an everyday occurrence in Argentina, but will earn plenty of lascivious looks back in comparatively conservative Australia.
Tiny, chic boutiques abound in the Palermo district, which itself is divided into divisions – Hollywood, Soho, Alto, Chico, and Palermo Viejo, or old Palermo, where local designers churn out everything from streetware to ball gowns, handmade shoes and soaps, or dear little chocolate bon bons whose voluptuous scents lure the rich from their eeries come Saturday morning to coo over the glass counters.
The robust European café culture revels in venues in the best old-school Euro-style with Gran Café Tortoni, established in 1858, undoubtedly the granddaddy, with its red velvet curtains, stained glass ceilings and waiters in black suits. The breakfast pastry of chocolate con churros is a hot favourite, though the queues and bookings desk killed the ambience for this caffeine-deprived traveller.
Elegant portenos take afternoon tea in L’Orangerie, in the city’s top hotel, Alvear Palace, the last home of Christina Onassis before she overdosed and passed on. Far from turning the hotel into a social pariah, her death lends the property an air of beautiful tragedy, with the purveyors of elegance, Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Nina Ricci, clustered nearby. Meanwhile, rock-star glamour finds its home at uber-designer Philippe Stark’s Faena hotel – all piano black and red leather, or the elegant Four Seasons Hotel, whose separate The Mansion is a seven-suite building that puts up the likes of Antonio Banderas and Robbie Williams, who managed to turn the too-cool-for-school schoolgirls into melting, screaming heaps outside the hotel during his stay.
Mansions aside, small boutique hotels are all the rage in BA. The seven-room, self-described ‘bourgeois bohemian’ Bobo Hotel in the design precinct of Palermo Soho has a cocktail bar that attracts the young and the beautiful, while the friendly 11-room 248 Finisterre, kitted out in early 20th century furniture and an outdoor spa tub, is the pearl of Las Canitas, a relatively tourist-free zone with an up and coming restaurant strip near the capital’s polo grounds.
On my final night in town, I decided to celebrate with a last supper in traditional Argentinean style – more steak, more malbec, at midnight in one of the city’s flash wine bars, Gran Bar Danzon. The industrial-designed space had tables and also dining at the bar – great for single travellers used to being whacked down near the men’s busy urinal. The music was pumping and sommelier Leandro led me by the hand through the enormous wine list, with loads by the glass for the vino curious.
It was so superb, I celebrated with a drink at nearby Milion, a late-night bar set in a shabby, boho four-storey belle epoque mansion, with fairy lights in the garden and sweeping staircases designed for making an entrance. I’d been in BA long enough now to understand…ladies and gentlemen, that’s not a set of stairs, that’s a call to action. So practice your hair toss, lubricate those hips and work that staircase. Sashay, BA.
Breakout: Fatal attraction
Death is the climax of drama, and Argentineans do it with spectacular hand wringing, bosom heaving and heart-rending weeping. If in doubt, visit Recoleta cemetery, built in 1822 and one of the world’s most beautiful graveyards, on par with Paris’s Pere Lachaise. The cemetery is a city within the city, with above-ground mausoleums that emulate the families’ homes, resplendent with chandeliers and elaborate iron lacework. Lashings of snow-white Carrera marble is carved into a weeping angel that sobs disconsolately against tombs, a beautiful virgin opening the portal into immortality or the likeness of a mother and her infant son, whose bones rest beneath their effigies. It’s all so beautifully tragic.
Recoleta cemetery is the final resting place of Eva Peron (aka Madonna, who played her in the movie Evita), who died young and beautiful in 1952. Poor Eva had many resting places, as her corpse was stolen and passed around amongst her politician ex-husband’s enemies like a trophy, and even did a stint in the front room of a Madrid mansion with General Peron and his next wife, Isabelle, who returned Eva to her homeland, to be buried 12 meters underground to deter further kidnapping. She is buried under her maiden name, Duarte, which causes lots of tourists to wander around completely lost till they find the black marble mausoleum covered in devoted, patriotic inscriptions.
“To be buried here, you need to have a background, which she never had,” says Silvia. “She wanted to demonstrate that you can buy your background.”
Such devotion requires plenty of pesos, and many of the families who have inherited the plots are either selling them or have let them decay into disrepair, which of course only adds to the air of tragic grandeur. Other notables who rest here include writers, generals, sculptors and BA’s founding fathers. Regardless of their ranks, their sun-warmed tombs are garnished by squadrons of malevolent cats, who are cared for by the cemetery staff. Recoleta cemetery, Junín 1790, Recoleta, opens daily 7am-6pm and has free English tours.
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