Thin thighs...brought to you by Switzerland!

Father of liposuction chews the fat

It’s nearly 30 years since liposuction was first performed by a Swiss doctor at his lakeside clinic in Lausanne.

In an interview with swissinfo, Dr Ulrich Kesselring explains how corrective surgery has evolved over the past few decades, and what the future holds.

The originator of the fat extraction technique is one of the world’s most celebrated plastic surgeons, counting Hollywood movie stars among his patients.

swissinfo: How did you come up with the idea of liposuction?

Dr Ulrich Kesselring: Up until 1976, we had been removing localised fat by making a 4cm incision, typically in the thigh, destroying the fat and then squeezing it out. Then we would rinse the cavity and suck out all the remaining fat. I suggested simply using suction for the whole procedure. At first we used extraction tubes or canulas that were as thick as my thumb, then they gradually became thinner. We remove the fat through a cavity with localised tunnels.I demonstrated the procedure on a course in 1977, and details were published in 1978. In the United States it soon became the number one aesthetic plastic surgery procedure.

Dr Ulrich Kesselring, inventor of liposuction (swissinfo)

swissinfo: Who practises liposuction these days?

U.K.: Everybody from dermatologists to general practitioners. I know of at least two general practitioners who offer liposuction, even though they have no training in plastic surgery. I’m not saying it can’t be learned. But what happens if you have a complication? If you remove too much blood and fat, the patient may bleed to death. If you carry out liposuction on the abdomen you could perforate it. You could also perforate the gut and cause peritonitis.

swissinfo: So how can patients be sure they are in safe hands?

U.K.: Call the Swiss Society for Aesthetic Surgery and they will give you a list of members with their specialities. The fact that a member is on that list is proof of adequate training.

swissinfo: How often do things go wrong during surgery?

U.K.: Not as often as one might think. Other disciplines have more claims. About a quarter of all plastic-surgery claims lead to compensation. We very rarely have any problems in our clinic, as we have well trained doctors.

swissinfo: Do you still carry out liposuction?

U.K.: It is one of the services I offer. But because I have more patients than I need, I can pick and choose what I want to do. I send away 25-28 per cent of the people who come to my clinic, and I tell my young partner he must never operate just to make a fast buck.I tend to take on very favourable cases where the chances of success are high. It’s better for my reputation. If the results are not good, the patient will be unhappy and that’s bad publicity. The patients should not be too old, and they should have resilient skin. It’s no problem if they just want to lose a couple of packages of fat. If they are 10-15 kilos overweight, this is not a job for me. If you take away large amounts of fat, the skin will not be able to do that much shrinking.

swissinfo: What is the most common procedure carried out at your clinic?

U.K.: Probably facelifts. I tend to facelift patients who first came to me for liposuction at the age of 25, then had their eyelids done at 35. There’s another sort of patient who thinks that aesthetic plastic surgery is like buying new clothes. They swap and change from year to year. If people are happy, they tend to stick with their plastic surgeon.

swissinfo: Has the lifting procedure been refined over the years?

U.K.: Yes, it has; but I don’t think we will go much further with the knife. I think the future lies with bioengineering. Look at Botox and how much we have learned about this in the past 15 years.

swissinfo: Why are you concerned about "fillers" on the market?

U.K.: Fillers are injectables we use to change volume or form, mainly around the face. Sometimes the patient develops a negative reaction to the product after a few years. At first the body tries to metabolise it; if it can’t, as with Plexiglass, the body envelops the foreign matter with living tissue, creating a lumpy appearance on the skin, deforming the patient.I believe products should only be sold if they have been tested on human beings for at least ten years.

swissinfo-interview: Julie Hunt in Lausanne

Would the real Switzerland please stand up?

Bringing the cows back home? The Alphorn can be heard up to 10 km away (WerdVerlag)
It’s hard to think of another country whose national identity is so closely associated with myths and clichés as Switzerland.

From banks, watches, cheese and chocolate to Heidi, mountains, armed neutrality and the federal railways, even experienced "Swiss-watchers" struggle to distinguish tradition from reality – and myth from marketing.

Photographer Christina Koerte, who was born in Switzerland with dual nationality and now lives in Germany, is probably as well placed as anyone to try to unravel the jigsaw that is Swiss national identity.Her new book – We're Different, Actually – takes seven national myths and clichés and explores them by using different photographic styles to see what they're really "made of"."Switzerland is considerably more complex than [the] clichés suggest, but it takes time and effort to understand this country," she told swissinfo."Visitors tend to be short of time, if not of francs, and the currency for understanding what goes on here is time."

"As Swiss we picnicked at the top of the Matterhorn every Sunday..."
Peter Bichsel, author

Which Switzerland?

Koerte says the first question facing any visitor is simple: which Switzerland? With a surface area of just 41,000 square kilometres, Switzerland is barely one tenth as large as California, or roughly seven per cent the size of France. For its size, though, it boasts an astonishing degree of geographical and cultural diversity, which almost inevitably leads to simplifications and clichés."[Living abroad] I have become increasingly interested in this trivialisation and reduction of a country to such well-worn thought patterns," says Koerte."I wanted to look at the relationship between myth, cliché, tradition and reality. On the one hand, clichés that confirm the cliché and, on the other, caricatures and travesties that serve only as irritants. "Koerte is certainly not the first Swiss to question the deeper meaning of her own national identity. She quotes author Peter Bichsel: "As Swiss, we picnicked at the top of the Matterhorn every Sunday. That's how we got to know the Swiss, and the Swiss us."

The concept is to market the Heidi myth, not the person herself.
Ueli Gyr, contributing editor.

"Heidiland"

Koerte’s approach to the "Heidi" myth is typically different – instead of the standard visual clichés of an unspoilt young girl romping through unspoilt Alpine countryside, she begins with a low-key snapshot of the "Heidiland" motorway service area.This is juxtaposed with an equally drab-looking picture of the Maienfeld region where author Johanna Spyri actually set her famous novel. The area is geographically distinct to the region known as "Heidiland" to many tourists today.No other figure has moulded images of Switzerland to the same extent as Heidi, but the reality is that she is "merely a dream of something that no longer exists" – a phenomenon that contributing editor Ueli Gyr refers to as "Heidisation"."Heidisation stands for comprehensive and active tourist focus, for a process where – though within quality limits – what can be commercialised is commercialised, and where if something can be exploited, it is," Gyr says."The concept is to market the Heidi myth, not the person herself. Time will show how long this can be exploited – but in terms of tourism, there is still a long way to go."

Sweat and sawdust

A more "down-to-earth" Swiss cliché highlighted by Koerte is the peculiar national sport known as "Schwingen" – a type of wrestling on a sawdust-covered floor.She opens the book with a series of pictures entitled "Blood, Sweat and Sawdust", which shows contestants fresh from the heat of battle, covered in appropriate amounts of all three substances.For an outsider, the first impression is that they are common-or-garden wrestlers who have forgotten to change out of their working clothes – they fight wearing jeans covered by loose shorts.And the Alpine cheese makers ("Sennen") who traditionally dominate the sport can be recognised by their blue shirts – and the fact that even the winners have to return to their mountain farms on foot.While the sport evokes national passions intense enough to qualify it for a place in the pantheon of Swiss clichés, it is still little known elsewhere – in stark comparison to Japan’s physically and financially well-padded Sumo wrestlers.

He'd earn more in Japan: a "Schwinger" fresh from the ring (WerdVerlag)

Oh, to be Swiss...

Other topics highlighted by Koerte are the Swiss countryside (in a section entitled "Father, Are There Countries Without Mountains?"), some unusual angles on "typical" Swiss products such as alphorns and army knives, and a tongue-in-cheek look at Swiss food and drink.It goes without saying that no book on Swiss myths would be complete without a mention of William Tell – the national independence hero who probably never was.Koerte bases her subversive approach on a well-known book by Swiss author Max Frisch ("William Tell As A Schoolbook") and deliberately goes in search of pictures that "make it hard to imagine heroism".Another section ("Oh, To Be Swiss, Just For A Day") also leaves the reader with more questions and answers about what it means to be Swiss in the multi-cultural society of today.A series of photos shows mostly "foreign-looking" families in "Swiss holiday" mode, with captions identifying them as tourists from Germany, Poland, Sri Lanka and Japan.However, an "alternative" set of captions says they are Swiss nationals from Schwägalp, Frutigen, Grindelwald and Zurich respectively.

Which "Switzerland" is reality? Which do you prefer?

swissinfo, Chris Lewis

The world's most expensive lunch

If you fancy a bite at the Eagle - Gstaad's restaurant of choice for international jetsetters - be prepared for a three-year wait and a £25,000 bill. Alternatively, you could just make friends with Roger Moore

Polly VernonSunday April 18, 2004; Observer

Few places cater to the whims and fancies of the super-rich and famous as consummately as Gstaad. It might have been custom designed for that purpose. The town is ringed by mountains, and therefore inaccessible and zoom-lens-proof; it's exorbitantly expensive, and therefore exclusive. It's beautiful, and therefore judged to be the rightful property of le jet set ; it's snowy and slopey, and so equipped to fully entertain those who could ski before they could walk, and whose idle richness has given them a taste for sporting pursuits of the most adrenaline-addled variety. Beyond this, it has a Cartier shop, a Rolex shop, a Patek Philippe shop, and a hotel that used to be a palace (from which, I am reliably informed 'the whole extravagant hotel lobby scene' was launched in the Thirties when minor European royals and other fascinating people gathered there to disport themselves). Yet, of all the things that Gstaad offers the mindlessly loaded, the Eagle Ski Club - probably the most expensive restaurant in the world - is the most irresistible.

The Eagle is a private members' restaurant located in a sprawling, oddly spartan chalet balanced on the top of a private mountain, Wasserngrat, and is served by a private ski lift - both of which (the lift and the mountain) belong to the club. Although a simple pasta lunch will set you back a relatively paltry £35, it costs £25,000 to gain access to the restaurant and the club, making it possibly the world's most expensive lunch.

But even to get to the point where you're actually handing over that cash, you first have to be invited to languish on a three-year waiting list (applications to join are not welcome), after which, potential members are subjected to a harsh vetting procedure at the hands of the terrifyingly discriminating committee.

Gaining membership is a reason for celebration among the jet set, a social rite of passage for the super-rich. And it's worth it, according to the club secretary, André Girard - if only for the networking opportunities. 'It is not uncommon for us to have four or five kings and queens in the room at the same time, together with film stars, politicians, heads of industry and celebrated financiers. I am in the unique position of knowing that everyone is richer beyond my dreams.' 'Only yesterday,' one regular adds, 'my friend Prince Nikolaos of Greece finally got membership. He threw a party.'

No one epitomises the Gstaad scene in general, and the Eagle Ski club scene in particular, quite as perfectly as Geoffrey Moore. Son of Roger, card-carrying jet setter, self-styled restaurateur, Geoffrey is more James Bond than even his father ever was. Tall, broad and chiselled, burnished copper by year-round exposure to fabulous destination sun, he dresses like a dandy, smokes fags like Sean Connery, is married to the terrifyingly chic Loulou, and speaks the international language of jet set. 'Welcome to the St Tropez of the mountains!' he announces, ushering you into the depths of the Eagle Club, after signing you in with the fierce mistress of the front desk, who made quite sure that, in accordance with Eagle Club rules, you hadn't visited more than three times already that year.

'This place,' Moore stage-whispers, 'is more private than you can imagine. If you really, really don't want to be disturbed, you come here. Put it like this, even the police can't get in. Especially the police can't get in.' He turns away. ' Vin chaud, mes chers ?' he asks of his set, who are assembled on the Aiglon terrace of the Club, hanging around what's generally known as the 'Moore table', after the management specially erected a wind break beside it to protect Roger and Geoffrey from the ravages of the weather. ' Vin chaud pour tous !' he concludes, ordering a jug of the Eagle's signature mulled wine.

Jamie Barber and his wife Claire are relatively new to the Eagle Club scene. You can tell, just by looking at them. They wander round the chalet more tentatively and less proprietorially than Geoffrey, getting terraces and connecting wooden stairways mixed up, forgetting the name of the maître d', smiling a bit nervously when the staff catch their eye, wondering where the loos are. They visited the club for the first time last year, they explain, and they aren't yet members. 'Ummm, no. Not yet, anyway.' Nor are they as integral and established a part of the Gstaad crowd as Geoffrey and Loulou Moore. Their tans aren't as mahogany, they can't point out the notable members of Gstaad society who are lunching in the main restaurant, wave a greeting at them, before offering whispered biographies of the 'that guy owns the whole of Mercedes Benz', variety, as Moore and his wife can. Their lifestyles aren't as relentlessly international, and their schedules aren't as free-form. 'We only flew in yesterday from Luton on EasyJet,' Barber explains. 'We're flying out again on Sunday for work on Monday.'

They are, however, essential to the current incarnation of Geoffrey Moore as entrepreneur and restaurateur. Five years ago, Jamie Barber was Geoffrey Moore's lawyer, and trying very hard to release Moore from the string of contracts that tied him to a multi-million-pound spy-themed restaurant project, because 'the theme restaurant trend was obviously dying'. He managed it, after some intensive wrangling, and then happened to mention to Moore that he rather fancied getting into the restaurant business himself.

Over a coffee at the Farmers' Market in Chelsea, Barber and Moore came up with a plan for Hush, a multi-tasking, super-aspirational restaurant, café, and bar/club. 'A lifestyle, really.' They even came up with the name. Within a year, they found capital and a venue (a hidden courtyard just off New Bond Street), and launched Hush, to some acclaim and fervid celebrity interest. Building on the enduring success of that first venture, they have subsequently opened Hush's Swiss outpost - in Gstaad, naturally enough - and also Shumi, 'London's only modern Italian trattoria', which, they say 'is much more about food, and less about lifestyling than Hush'.
'Since Shumi launched, I actually dare to call myself a restaurateur,' says Jamie, flicking snow off an Aiglon terrace bench, and settling himself down in front of a mug of vin chaud . 'I know things now. I'm... we're obsessive about the ingredients. Geoffrey and I sourced the olives that we use in the restaurant's olive oil, we know which flights our produce comes in on, we know the personal histories of who farms what for us.' Geoffrey nods with considerable satisfaction, then decides it's time to have a look at today's menu. He himself will have Penne à la Geoffrey, his own pasta recipe, (pesto, buffalo mozzarella and warmed-through but essentially raw tomatoes; now a regular fixture on the Eagle Club carte). But he thinks you'd probably like bits and pieces from the help-yourself buffet bar, and ushers you upstairs to mingle with the buffet-happy club VIPs.

En route, he furnishes me with the finer details of Eagle culture. Eagle Club etiquette, it transpires, is rigid and complicated. 'There's a natural pecking order as to who gets the best tables,' Moore explains, as he leads the way through the various bars and dining rooms, pointing out the portrait of the current president (Comte de Razes), the ex-presidents (Vicomte Benoist d'Azy and the Earl of Warwick), and the founding committee members, which hang on the walls. 'I'm a life-member,' he adds (which means he can nominate prospective new members), 'and of course, Sir Roger is, too. He's on the membership committee, even. So I have some natural seniority, but I still have to fight for the good tables. Oh, meet Pino...' He breaks off to introduce me to a deferential, softly spoken Swiss German. 'Pino runs the place,' he explains, then adds, in a melodramatic aside: 'He was butler to the king, you know.'

Geoffrey Moore is fluent in precisely this kind of Eagle-related trivia, because he's been coming to the club for most of his life. 'It was David Niven that introduced my parents to Gstaad,' he says, grandly. 'And David and Sir Roger did a film together, of course, and then my parents starting coming here regularly, and finally got a chalet. So there was my dad, and Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, and Peter Sellers who had a chalet here too, and they all started coming to the Eagle because the service was so good, and the staff were marvellous and friendly and remembered everyone's names. Oh, those were wonderful times! Truly wonderful times! And I went to Le Rosey [Gstaad's international school] and skied, and... oh, wonderful times!'

Roger Moore is currently in town. He, Valentino, and Roman Polanski are the biggest celebrities on the Gstaad slopes this week. You catch glimpses of Moore senior and his supremely groomed wife Kiki, in and around the chalet that Geoffrey and Loulou take each season, or driving off in an impressive Jeep to an unspecified destination. Roger waves and smiles, dispenses charisma and tells incredibly indiscreet stories about people like Michael and Shakira Caine and Andrew Neil and Pamella Bordes, which have punch lines like: 'And so she said, "My dear, I'm from Lahore !"'

The continued presence of celebrity in Gstaad is, obviously, central to Geoffrey Moore's experience of life. It makes you wonder (as you pick at the good - though not £25k worth of good - Eagle buffet of garlic griddled courgette and roasted peppers, and aubergine and parmesan melt) how important celebrity endorsement and celebrity clientele is to in Hush and Shumi.

Jamie shrugs, noncommittally. Geoffrey toys with his penne reflectively. 'Put it this way. If you're in a restaurant, and George Clooney's at the next table, then you know you're in the right place. Celebrities and royalty. It's what makes the world go round. Although...' Moore pauses, and thinks a little more. 'You know, a few weeks ago, Gordon [Ramsay] was in Shumi, on the table next to Sir Roger and me, and after the meal, he came over and shook our hands and said: "Guys. You've got a shit-hot restaurant here." And that meant so much to us. So much more than our friend, Prince so and so or whoever, saying something similar.'

Hush Gstaad is the third and final element in the Moore-Barber restaurant empire. Two years ago, Geoffrey and Jamie were approached by a local property developer about opening a Swiss franchise. 'It made sense, because I know the town so well,' says Geoffrey. 'And the funny thing about the Hush Gstaad building, is that it used to house a bakery. And when I was at Le Rosey, I used to come and buy doughnuts at cost from the baker, and then sell them for a profit on the dorm!' Partly because of this, mostly because Jamie knew it made sense from a business perspective, they jumped at the opportunity.

Hush London and Hush Gstaad are very different propositions. 'Although,' Jamie admits, 'quite often, we see the same faces in both. And in Shumi, and the Eagle Club. There's definitely some crossover.'

'Some of them are from Le Rosey,' adds Geoffrey, a touch furtively, because that would suggest that an element of his clientele is a bit underage. ('We let them in, once they're four foot ten or over,' says Jamie.)

While Hush London is a slick metropolitan affair - big, styled, accomplished - Hush Gstaad is rather more haphazard. Moore and Barber are keen to point out that it's a franchise, and therefore they don't have the kind of control over it that they'd like. And so, if the cocktails aren't quite what they should be - over sweetened and inexpertly prepared - and if there are some quite magnificent examples of mistranslated English on the menus, it's only to be expected. But there's a cosy charm to the place none the less. The restaurant's full ('It's the only place in Gstaad where you can't get fondue,' says Jamie); and the closest thing Gstaad gets to disaffected youth is in evidence, skulking around in the club area.

Hush Gstaad also has a satisfyingly kitsch fashion kick to it. In the basement of the restaurant, next door to the club, in the (defunct and converted) nuclear bunker that all Swiss buildings have by law, is a boutique. The boutique is ex-broker Loulou Moore's day job. From here, she peddles unseasonable ranges of bikinis and jewel-encrusted kaftans, beachwear and thong sandals, most of which are made by friends (' Melissa Oderbash, Arianne de K... honestly, almost all my friends are designers!') and bought by other friends. 'When they've finished skiing here,' Loulou explains, 'people will go straight to the sun.'

As successful as Loulou's fashion enterprise is, there isn't much evidence of Melissa Oderbash's chic and diaphanous kaftans on the streets of Gstaad right now. But then, it is five degrees below freezing. Rather, Gstaad chic embraces long-haired yeti boots (in black or white) over super-tight salopettes or jeans for the girls, and a great deal of fur for everyone. Rabbit is particularly popular this season. 'You do see plenty of women who wear pearls under their ski suits,' whispers Claire Barber. (Geoffrey Moore, it should be said, has a ski look all of his very own. He favours a lemon yellow pashmina over a red and white checked shirt which probably defines 'dapper', Prada sport sunglasses - which he never, never removes - and a Goldeneye film set 'crew' bomber jacket.)

Gstaad at night is a relatively subdued affair. Unlike almost every other town frequented by le jet set (St Moritz, St Tropez, St Barts, the Hamptons, upscale Miami, etc) Gstaad is not in the business of accommodating debauchery.

'There are a lot of parties in the private chalets,' explains Loulou. 'But they are not very wild. Or there are parties on the slopes! We ski down, holding torches, and meet at the bottom for a caipirosca! That's wonderful. But we need to be up and skiing the next day, so...'

So bedtime comes relatively early in Gstaad. Even if you're the son of James Bond, or his best mate and business partner. A bit more vin chaud, some raclette or wiener schnitzel and generally, it's all over by midnight. But then, of course, all the real Gstaad action - the social wheeling and dealing, the flirting and the mingling - has happened over vin chaud and Penne à la Geoffrey in the Eagle Ski Club.

It really does cut both ways!

So the Swiss do love their rules and they can be pretty anal...but there are several good flip sides to this. One, when they do cut loose, they know how to have a really good time (more on this one later), and two, when you want something done well, you can count on that happening in Swizzyland.

I had the best pedicure of my life last week. I have been trying to crack the code on where to go for a pedicure in this town, and even resorted to doing it myself, but I'm not very good at it so I was still hankering for the real thing. I just couldn't find anyone who knew where to go and I never saw any ads for pedicures or anything. I started to think they just weren't popular here. But then! A friend of mine injured her foot about a month ago and had to go to a podiatry office to get it worked on. There wasn't a doctor of podiatry at the office, but two licensed podiatry nurses/technicians of some sort (very common kind of thing here - people get a ton of training and certifications for jobs at all levels). Anyhow, it was clearly more than a medical office as there were pictures of painted toenails and a selection of nail polish on the shelf, like you'd see when you go to pick your nail polish out at a nail salon. Turns out, these medically certified folks are the ones who do the pedicures in der Schweiz.

So, I made an appointment and when I got there, I was shocked - it was very medical looking and so clean and pristine, it was unbelievable. The techs were both nice young women, one of whom spoke English, and they both were dressed in spotless, pressed white scrubs (made it look even cleaner there). The room I went to for my pedicure looked kind of dental - a very high tech chair, some moveable special light/magnifying glass, and a large cabinet, which turned out to be drawers full of medical instruments and equipment. At least one of the drawers was an actual autoclave. I had little worries of getting any infections from germs or dirty equipment at this place. She also had a power tool, very similar to a dental drill, that she used with various attachments to do some of the harder work (like buffing/grinding). She used at least one type of scalpel on me - to literally shave off callouses and the like. And she painted my toenails beautifully and gave me a great foot massage. All in about 55 minutes for CHF 77.00. I will definitely be back for more. And if any of you want to experience this as well...well, come for a visit and I'll hook you up.