DE51GN

Time magazine has churned out this year’s most eagerly awaited list of 100 most influential people from various fields including politics, cinema, art, design and science to name a few.

Most important of all, Dubai’s very own international icon Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and ruler of Dubai, makes it to the list for his charisma and unparalleled vision of turning a desert city into a world-class metropolis.

Here is De51gn’s selection of top five, no top six from the world of art, design and social and cultural phenomena, in no particular order.

French Vogue Editor-in-Chief Carine Roitfeld, the ever sophisticated Parisian who takes Anna Wintour head-on in style supremacy. Hedi Slimane, the former chief designer for Christian Dior says of her, “She is influential without even knowing it. By choosing influence over power, she has effortless credibility.” Is the devil…ooops… Anna Wintour listening?

The intellectually-inclined agent provocateur of fashion and an avid photographer– Karl Lagerfeld is a natural choice for this list. He is one of the few fashion designers who are able to integrate art, design and architecture so effortlessly. Says his good friend Zaha Hadid, who Lagerfeld invited to design the Chanel Mobile Art installation, “Before Karl, we all looked to couture for inspiration and direction. Now, through his work, fashion originates from the street, the media–anywhere.” We totally agree.

Pritzker Prize-winning controversial architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) based in Rotterdam, has projects spanning the globe from the US to China, including several in UAE. Koolhaas, who is as prolific a writer as he is an architect, evokes sentiments similar to that of Le Corbousier– incidentally one of Koolhaas’s heroes. When he isn’t investigating traffic patterns of Lagos, he can be found in the enviable company of Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, who have asked the architect to design the Prada Art Foundation in Milan. And by the way, this is not the first time he has made it to the list.

Takashi Murakami is the Japanese artist who put the Manga on couture catwalks. His collaboration with Louis Vuitton has inspired other fashion labels to follow suit. Good friend Marc Jacobs, creative director of Louis Vuitton aptly describes the latter as “a cool skater kid, an eternal teenager.”

If not for Mark Zuckerberg, the baby-faced founder of social networking site Facebook, we would have no social life and no means to connect with random friends across the globe; let alone kiss them, hug them, kick them and poke them. Facebook is a web phenomenon like no other; it is a sub-culture. It also happens to make Zuckerberg a billionaire at the tender age of just 23.

How can Steve Jobs, the face of cult brand Apple, who made nerds look cool with Macbooks and gave us the best music accessory of all times– the iPod, not be on the most influential list?