Innholdsfortegnelse for August 19-September 1, 2019 i New York Magazine

1 Vanessa Grigoriadis interviewed 60 friends and colleagues of the First Daughter to find out what the post-presidency will have in store for her and who, at the end of the day, she really is (“Ivanka Aeternum,” August 5–18). The cover, a nod to the Daily News’ 1975 FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD headline, prodded @NicholasGazin to tweet, “I was thinking the other day how Trump has a ‘Ford to New York: Drop Dead’ moment at least weekly and how strange that would be to the people of the ’70s.” Many readers took note of conservative commentator Doug Wead’s assessment of Ivanka, with Cristina Maza tweeting, “Throwing up a little after reading Doug Wead say that very few women in history have been both brilliant and beautiful.” The New Yorker’s…

IN 1953, VIC SEIXAS had a year that most tennis players not named Roger, Serena, Novak, or Rafael could only dream of. He started the season by making the semifinals at the Australian Championships, then took second at Roland Garros, won Wimbledon, and was the runner-up at the U.S. National Championships in Queens. This was before tennis’s “Open Era,” when the sport got rid of the distinction between professionals and amateurs, like Seixas, who could play the most prestigious events but didn’t make any money doing so. That’s why the tournament names look a little funny—the U.S. National Championships became the U.S. Open in 1968—and why Seixas’s dream year didn’t make him rich. Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep each received $2.9 million for winning Wimbledon this year. When Seixas won,…

THESE MICHAEL BY MICHAEL KORS boots are akin to those that stomped down the fall 2019 runway; a reference, Kors says, to his late teens, which were spent stumbling out of Studio 54. Combat boots have been a symbol of youthful rebellion for decades, which explains why designers like Marc Jacobs, who brought back his famous Perry Ellis collection last year, and Miuccia Prada, a onetime member of the Italian Communist Party, continue to recycle them. Their ubiquity on the fall runways in particular, though (Dior, Bottega Veneta, and the Row each had a pair too), could be a sign, at long last, that sneaker fatigue has set in: Last season, everyone from Balenciaga to Prada showed sneakers; this year, there were hardly any to be found.…

LYNN B. GODDESS Retired, Upper East Side Where are you coming from? I’m here every Thursday after my standing 11:30 at Serge Normant. It’s a very well-known salon. What are you buying today? Chanel eyeliner and a bottle of Opium by YSL, which has been my fragrance for 30 years. The second floor has a wonderful array of greeting cards. I’m a Papyrus woman—do you know what Papyrus is? Yes. Well, they have Papyrus here but also have even-higher-end makes. Zitomer is stocked by a woman of taste; that’s why it’s still going strong, unlike Barneys, which is on the block. She is a woman of taste, and the women who shop here are women of taste. Some more than others, of course. THE LOOK BOOK: ZITOMER Are you…

And If You’d Rather Something Cheaper Here are some Strategist-approved picks:…

For luncheonette and diner habitués, the BLT is a year-round concern, about as seasonal as a side of home fries. But a certain subset of Greenmarket-going chefs (and eaters) insists the sandwich should only make its annual appearance when local tomatoes reach their peak. This philosophy is so ingrained at Danny Meyer’s Gramercy café, Daily Provisions, that bacon is demoted from top billing to optional add-on. And that’s not the only way the LT breaks with convention: The bread is crusty ciabatta instead of toasted white. Baby watercress replaces crunchy iceberg. And the star ingredient is peeled and marinated pre-assembly, a technique devised to solve a culinary mystery executive sous-chef Donovan Tian describes thusly: “How do you make tomatoes taste more like tomatoes than before?” On the menu at Daily…

Guy working the counter looks like Eminem in a red vintage or “vintage” T-shirt that’s fraying and has a bald eagle on the back. He has a No. 3–ish buzz cut, and it’s hard to tell if only two of his nails are painted black or if the other eight are just really chipped. Delivery girl with braided pigtails wears a camo pageboy cap with a Rasta flag on the back and drawstring shorts that say “circus” on the front. Her black tank top looks like she cut it herself and covers three tattoos: a quarter note, the Prince symbol, and a chandelier. Her arm party is five bracelets deep. An Asian girl is wearing a ’40s pinup–meets– Saved by the Bell outfit: purple acid-wash shorts with one button undone,…

Jason A. Rodriguez 29, actor, dancer, choreographer “I like the distortion and the existence of imbalance—so maybe I can find some balance myself.” Troy Graham 29, graphic designer “By wearing a single dangly earring, it’s my way of saying my sexual preference even louder while saying ‘Fuck you’ to gender norms. I’m trying to tell the world, ‘Hi, I’m a gay witch.’ I think if I were to ever get the other side pierced, I would be entering a more vanilla aesthetic, something I’m not interested in.” Kameron X 25, artist, software engineer “I don’t really attach sexuality to clothing. If I like something, I just wear it. ‘Gay ears,’ ‘straight ears’—that shit is not really real, unless it’s real to you.” Ethan Skaates 24, artist “Asymmetry seems like a…

How They Made It to the U.S. According to Ray Goodman, owner of Trash and Vaudeville. “In 1974, I went to London for an internship. I was a student at F.I.T. and was blown away by what was happening with fashion there. When I opened the shop, I started taking trips back for inspiration. All the kids had these amazing Mohawks and wore Docs, so I decided to bring some back with me to sell. Right away, people were coming in for them; they already had some steam because of the Clash. Within a year, we were bringing in containers at a time. We were the first to have them in the U.S. and were selling so many pairs that the brand offered us the exclusive distributorship in the States,…

FOR 14 YEARS, Ross Alexander lived in a 200-square-foot studio apartment on the Upper West Side. Last October, the interior designer felt it was finally time to be able to walk more than two feet to cross the room (one morning when he woke up, he simply moved his arm and knocked over a lamp, which was the “last straw”), so he found a larger apartment, a rental in a prewar building in Washington Heights. “It’s so much more fun to bounce ideas off someone,” says Alexander (who worked variously for the late Prince of Chintz, Mario Buatta; Robert Couturier; and Robert A.M. Stern before becoming director of product development at Kate Verner + Associates), so he turned to his good friend Brock Forsblom, also a designer, for help. “I…

“I DON’T KNOW if I’ve ever been a meme before,” Michelle Williams says, laughing, when I mention the viral clip of her, as the great Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon, dramatically wiping a tear off her face in the second episode of FX’s Fosse/ Verdon. Her hand travels up her cheekbone, under her nose, back behind her head, and then back alongside her cheek, flicking behind her like a windshield wiper in the final beat as if to rid herself of Sam Rockwell’s Bob Fosse, the legendary choreographer and director, Verdon’s sometime husband and longer- time collaborator, who is trying to smooth over the fact that he has seduced Verdon while his wife is deathly ill. It’s a ridiculously outsize gesture that’s nevertheless fitting for a character whose whole life is…

• No. 10: “Spoke to a friend I grew up with in Brooklyn and we said nothing but ‘Get me out of N.Y.’ But I think we’ll both end up here.” • No. 4: “After work, a bunch of us were chatting about what to do. We named bars and clubs. There was a lot of, ‘Just went there,’ and, ‘Can’t go back there.’ No one could decide on the PERFECT PLACE. We ended up at the closest bar we could find and by 9 p.m., the group had completely fizzled out.” • No. 2: “We were talking about all the married people we know in N.Y. and concluded that we didn’t really know any. Everybody we know who’s really married lives in a different city.”…

TEETH, by conventional wisdom, are best when you’re not forced to think about them. On a good day they’re pain-free, whitish, and useful for eating. But what if teeth were actually tiny porcelain opportunities for self-expression? Right in our mouths?! In 2018, a company called Chrom introduced a temporary tooth polish it says was developed by dentists (so it won’t poison you or dissolve your teeth into liquid). When you’re done, you brush it off with a toothbrush or scrape it off with your fingernail if you’re disgusting like me. Sounds interesting. But as I am a practical woman, my main question is: Where would one wear painted teeth? Makeup artist James Vincent told the Cut that “these teeth work at Coachella, they work out in Bushwick in the club…

PICKING THE DESIGNERS The five companies we worked with on this project—Kate Spade, Collina Strada, Hunting Season, Zero + Maria Cornejo, and Rachel Comeywere selected in part because they have already been experimenting in this area. The Cut provided each of them with enough material to make a garment or an accessory of their own design. This was no simple exercise. As Comey explained, her line is working to make conscious choices—sending waste fabric to be recycled and reused, making the garments locally, using sustainable fabrics—but that it’s hard to figure out the best route. “There are many fabrics now on the market, and it’s hard to find accurate information about their actual ecological effects,” Comey said. “I wish the CFDA or another large organization would build some regulations or…

“Weed (sealed in a jar for the smell), which is an old habit from high school (when I was trying to hide it from my parents) that has evidently not died.” —Emma G. “The Norwegian version of Kit Kats. My mother-in-law brings these once a year. I stash them away so my spouse can’t find or eat them. There are three packs in there currently.” —Amanda S. “Secret cigarettes.” —Maggie R. “I have all my kids’ baby teeth in there. There are about 15 of them. Just loose, on the right side.” —Jason L. “Crumpled up old airplane boarding passes from the time my husband and I did long distance for many years.” —Lior P. “Overdue library books.” —Alison G. “A teeny-tiny plastic baby I got in a Fat Tuesday…

IT’S A WEIRD TIME to be a liberal billionaire. Almost all of the Democratic presidential candidates have sworn off help from super-PACs and made a big show of rejecting cash from a wide range of potential donors: lobbyists, corporate PACs, and pharma execs included. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have ruled out headlining closed-door fund-raisers altogether. But that doesn’t mean the moguls of the left aren’t watching the race closely. Some rich progressives are looking at ways to sway the primaries, and others are biding their time until a nominee emerges. Still, while Hillary Clinton had decades-long relationships with some of the party’s biggest contributors last time around—like investor Haim Saban, who has sent Democrats tens of millions of dollars over the years and stayed in close touch with Clinton…

The Leather Softener Vintage-Heads Love Melissa Howard, the owner of Stock Vintage, primarily sells boots from the 1920s to the 1970s. “If the leather is dry, as it often is when you buy vintage, get a leather dressing called Pecard. It’s an old American company, and it contains no harsh chemicals. You just dip your hands into it, massage it all over the boot, let it seep into the skin for two days, then wipe it all off with a cloth. I deal with vintage-shoe nerds, and all of those guys love this stuff.” How to Prevent Combat-Boot Blisters “I wear Docs constantly, and the only thing you need is Body Glide Foot Anti-Blister Balm. You rub it on your heels, and it forms a barrier between your skin and…

Where Did It Come From? Italian architect Ettore Sottsass designed the wavy-edged, six-foot-tall, pink-neon-lighted Ultrafragola mirror (a take on traditional mirrors made of gilded wood) in 1970; it debuted at the Eurodomus 3 in Milan later that year. The piece, which is still produced in Florence from its original mold, has become emblematic of the 1980s Memphis design movement, which in recent years has had a major resurgence. Keith Johnson, the president and director of Urban Architecture (the first authorized Memphis furniture distributor in the U.S.), says he believes Sottsass designed the Ultrafragola as an homage to women and femininity. “Ultrafragola translates to ‘ultimate strawberry’ in Italian,” he says. “And if you mention a woman’s ‘strawberry’ in Italy, everyone knows what you’re talking about.” Why It’s So Appealing “It’s a…

Concept, technique and execution, and overall inventiveness add up to a very decent 82. BITES IDEAL MEAL: Escargot or frogs’ legs; beef-tongue sando; salmon tartare; an assortment of skewers including duck à l’orange, lobster, lamb, chicken wing, pork belly, and spring leeks; profiteroles with ginger and matcha. NOTE: The bar serves only batched cocktails, but you can get a slightly more diverse selection of moderately priced wines (try the excellent Séléné Beaujolais by the biodynamic vintner Sylvère Trichard) to go with your skewers. OPEN: Dinner, Wednesday to Sunday. PRICES: $4 to $9. ➔ See The Thousand Best at grubstreet.com for 999 more great places to eat and drink.…

IT HAS BEEN 25 YEARS since Friends premiered on NBC, but it still occupies a wide swath of pop culture. Last year, Netflix reportedly spent $80 million to stream the show through 2019. (Next year, it moves to HBO Max.) Pottery Barn has introduced a Friends collection, including a $1,099 apothecary table. This fall, there will be a Central Perk pop-up in Soho. In his new book, Generation Friends, which looks at the making of the show, Saul Austerlitz decodes the heart of its enduring appeal, writing that “Friends’ comic minimalism was conjoined to a soap-opera maximalism. It … compelled us to stay glued to our screens by the promise of emotional revelation.” Included in Austerlitz’s book are these candid snapshots of the cast.…

Aida , August 24 The Met retired Franco Zeffirelli’s three-decade-old swords-and-sandals production last spring, and the director died in June, so Anna Netrebko’s performances as the proud Ethiopian princess constitute the end of an epoch. Dialogues des Carmélites , August 27 A tour de force of intense characterization, this production of Poulenc’s martyrdom opera shouldn’t be missed. Karita Mattila dies with a diva’s panache, Isabel Leonard lets wildness peek through the poise, and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin keeps the whole thing hurtling toward the guillotine. La Fille du Régiment , August 31 Pretty Yende and Javier Camarena flirt, cavort, toss high C’s by the fistful in this spirited production.…

THERE IS AN HOUR of my life I lose every day to Instagram. It’s always alone, usually after dinner or sometimes during middle-of-the-night bouts of insomnia, and reaches some kind of crescendo, like ordering $30 shoe inserts that promise to make high heels less painful (so convincing in the ad!) or doing a deep dive into this woman who is an ex of a friend of someone I grew up with. She posts stills of outfits from The Talented Mr. Ripley and odd, witchy-looking grapes. For this, she has around 20,000 followers. I become one of them. At first, I’m just curious about the logistics of her life. There seems to be an inspiring amount of #influencer content that doesn’t really align with her follower reach. She tags every single…

SINCE HER INAUGURATION, when she promised to impeach Donald Trump, Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib has proved herself to be perhaps the fiercest of the progressive freshmen “Squad,” refusing to hold back whether she’s taking on the president or her own party. On being told she needs to “wait her turn” to change things in Congress: I say, “Is there a line?” I really want to change people’s lives immediately. On meetings with her mentor, California congresswoman Barbara Lee: I meet with her every month. I love that she understands why I’m angry and allows me to embrace it and to use it for good. On showing emotion at work: I’ve cried in the legislature. I think my residents have seen me be real. Every time I even talk about the…

HOW DO YOU DRESS for your mastectomy? The surgery itself is easy, actually. During the cutting, you’re wearing nothing at all, unconscious and strapped to a table in a martyr’s pose, arms out in a T, while an OR crew that looks like the cast of a reality show bustles around doing God knows what. But after. What do you wear when your body no longer resembles itself? The mastectomy veterans who became my sister-guides universally recommended the Brobe for the immediate recovery. These advisers were invaluable in so many ways, but at the Brobe I felt I had to draw a line. If maternitywear is an indignity to styleconscious women, then mastectomywear is far, far worse, and within that realm the Brobe reigns supreme. Nothing more than a wraparound…

EXACTLY one year ago, a passionate Twitter debate burst forth over the term partner— can straight people use it to describe their significant others, or must they stay in their lane and stick to boyfriend and girlfriend? The discussion was short-lived but surfaced a salient point: There aren’t enough terms in English to describe nonmarital relationships; it seems strange that we’d use the same word to describe both the person one gets a hickey from at age 13 and the person one has lived with for several years in adulthood. At the time of this online disagreement, I was newly out of a long-term relationship and faced with a similar conundrum but reflected in a fun-house mirror: what to call everyone I was “seeing.” Absolutely no one was my boyfriend,…