Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Town & Country

I really liked Vassar, but maybe I should have gone to Tulane. These are thoughts you have after you meet four different people at one cocktail party who explain that the reason they live in New Orleans is that they went to college there, and, well, it was just too hard to leave. And it’s a fantasy you let yourself indulge in after you have hosted an evening for David Netto’s François Catroux book at Sara Ruffin Costello’s 1860s house in the Garden District, where you eat shrimp étouffée off a ping-pong table in a dining room done up by Bryan Rafanelli (who, the week before, had finished decorating the White House for Christmas) and sit outside by the pool with a French 75 in the middle of winter getting…

ARTS & CULTURE Through April 23 Sunday in the Park with George Jake Gyllenhaal revives the title role at Broadway’s newly restored Hudson Theatre. March 17 Whitney Biennial The vast survey is in the new downtown museum this year. Let the Instagram wars begin. March 10–19 TEFAF Maastricht Old Masters, contemporary art, and fine jewelry, all under one roof in the Netherlands. March 29 The Al Thani Collection The Qatari royal family’s stunning jewelry collection is on view at the Grand Palais in Paris. March 9 The Glass Menagerie Sally Field plays a fading Southern belle in the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s classic. March 21 Olga Picasso Paris’s Musée Picasso dedicates an exhibit to its namesake’s first wife, a ballerina. March 11–17 Aspen Institute The cost to attend the…

SCREEN WRITER Along with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion co-wrote screenplays for such films as Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born and The Panic in Needle Park. MODEL In 1989, Didion appeared with her daughter in advertisements for the Gap. Twenty-six years later Céline tapped her for a campaign shot by photographer Juergen Teller. CELEBRITY CHEF In 2015, Didion’s personal cookbook was sold at a fundraiser. It included recipes for borscht, crème caramel, and a chicken hash she once served to Patti Smith. PLAY WRIGHT Didion adapted her own memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, into a 2007 Broadway play starring Vanessa Redgrave.…

Amma Asante has always dreamed big. As a 10-year-old in London, she wrote to the newly engaged Lady Diana Spencer offering to be a flower girl, and while she didn’t make the wedding party, she did receive a handwritten reply from the future princess. These days she’s not penning fan letters, she’s writing and directing films. Her latest directorial effort, A United Kingdom, tells the true story of an African prince and the white British woman he marries (played, respectively, by David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike); it’s in theaters now. Here Asante, who directed 2013’s award-winning Belle, opens up about her process for our peek inside the habits of a creative mastermind. How do you prepare yourself to be creative? I need to be in a very comfortable space, like…

San Francisco THE DESTINATION: Legion of Honor. THE EXHIBITION: “Monet: The Early Years” (February 25–May 29). WHY IT MATTERS: This is the first U.S. exhibition dedicated to the painter’s earliest works. STYLE BRIEF: Japanese denim and cashmere hoodies—to look casually expensive and environmentally aware. WHERE TO STOP ALONG THE WAY: The Ken Fulk–designed Leo’s Oyster Bar, in the Financial District, for an unforgettable seafood tower. HOW TO GET THERE: The agile and exceptionally luxurious Cadillac CT6. Marfa, Texas THE DESTINATION: Chinati Foundation. THE EXHIBITION: Untitled (Dawn to Dusk), 2016. WHY IT MATTERS: Robert Irwin’s permanent, freestanding structure (above) recently opened after more than 15 years in the making. STYLE BRIEF: Suede and leather in the colors of the open road, for true American style. WHERE TO STOP ALONG THE WAY:…

Social Calendar: L.A. Now that you’ve mastered the dress code, here’s where to earn your West Coast art cred. MoCA GALA The April 29 event will honor Jeff Koons. Creative black tie highly encouraged. LACMA COLLECTORS COMMITTEE On April 21 donors will gather for two days to vote on new acquisitions and enjoy private dinners from celebrity chefs. LA CIENEGA DESIGN QUARTER: LEGENDS Three days of events (May 9–11) in L.A.’s design district. Party-hop in the CT6.…

In 1926 the economist George Taylor propounded the theory that hemlines rise along with stock prices. Seventyfive years later Leonard Lauder coined the term “lipstick index” when cosmetics sales soared during the 2001 recession. Whether correlated to the market or not, this season’s handbag sizes are extreme. Hermès and Valentino showed chain bags so tiny a phone would never fit in one; Balenciaga and Céline debuted daytime totes so large they would exceed TSA carry-on regulations. Ferragamo saw both sides and rereleased its Sofia bag in a range of soft leathers and exotic skins in small, medium, and large.…

BEAUTY, HEALTH, AND WELLNESS Real oud—an exceedingly rare and expensive wood resin created when Southeast Asian aquilaria trees are fighting off infection—has been lusted after in the Middle East for ages. But its smell (animal and musky are the polite descriptors; barnyard and fecal are others) has been gaining acceptance in the West, with fragrances by Tom Ford and Kilian Hennessy featuring it. Now oud is moving out of its ingenue phase. Instead of making it the focus, perfumers are putting it to work this spring to amplify wellworn notes and lure the nose into a state of surprise. Diana Vreeland’s Wildly Attractive uses oud to ground lemony orange blossom, and it adds richness to Robert Piguet’s candylike Oud Délice. Phuong Dang’s Obscure Oud, meanwhile, evokes milky berries and floral…

For the debut of its personalized haircare line, System Professional chose the Lanserhof Tegernsee, the picturesque German outpost of one of the world’s leading medical spas. Known for favoring colonics over caffeine (fortunately, I had just indulged in a Bavarian feast at the equally breathtaking Schloss Elmau resort), Lanserhof regularly hosts the Delevingne sisters; now Poppy (far left) and Chloe (below) are brand ambassadors for System Professional. “It has transformed my overprocessed hair,” Poppy says. Clients meet a stylist and answer a series of questions, which leads to a custom regimen chosen from the 56-product line. It was determined that my fine, flat hair (top) needed the repair shampoo and rootboosting mask, which left my tresses silky smooth and voluminous for days to come. Wunderbar, indeed.…

PISCES FEBRUARY 20–MARCH 20 You can get plans on more solid ground this month, proving that you’re not a dreamer but a doer. But with Venus moving backward in your financial angle, it may be hard to wait out inevitable delays. Stay focused on your aims, as ups and downs typify the period from the 12th to the 25th, and never doubt that you’ll achieve what you’ve set out to do. ARIES MARCH 21–APRIL 20 March looks to be a turning point for clarifying your aims. Remember, though, that with Venus retreating in your sign from March 4 until April 15, you’re bound to be up in the air emotionally. What’s important is for you to get centered, tie up loose ends from the past, and focus on the future…

What does a woman look like? For most of the history of art—that is to say, the history of the world—women didn’t get to decide. The fact that it was men who showed us what women looked like (because we see people as we have been taught to see them) isn’t surprising. What is, however, is how similarly females were depicted, across centuries and across cultures. Whether it was an Edo-era woodblock printer in Japan or a Renaissance painter in Italy, the woman of the artist’s imaginings was elusive, her gaze lowered or dreamy and unfocused. Her anatomy—all that the artist didn’t have—was rendered lovingly, longingly. But her thoughts remained hers: Her face was opaque, a testament to woman’s fundamental otherness, her unknowability. (Think of Ingres’s odalisque, her expression shuttered…

Right after I moved to California for graduate school in 1964, students at Berkeley staged huge demonstrations to demand the right of political advocacy on the campus. All that fall, most of the faculty turned out to defend what became known as the Free Speech Movement. But then three students and six other demonstrators were arrested for saying a forbidden word and displaying it on a piece of paper on the Berkeley campus. They aroused little local enthusiasm, and one had just shown up from New York, but, hey, it was spring, and they were quickly dubbed the “Filthy Speech Movement.” Some of the university’s Regents demanded the expulsion of the students. At an academic dinner party, a curious faculty wife asked the other guests what word was written on…

SADIE STEIN On the eve of a new production of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare’s memorable play about highsociety deception, Stein recalls a long list of famous scam artists in “IMPOSTORS AMONG US” (page 190). “Our almost unwilling attraction to the impostor is fascinating,” says the author, a contributing editor at the Paris Review. “Perhaps we can see parts of ourselves in both the mark and the criminal in all these stories.” RICHARD FARLEY “It has been with us since the times of Woodrow Wilson,” Farley says of the charitable deduction, a tax break that President Trump has threatened to all but eliminate. In “PARTY CRASH” (page 74), the Wall Street Wars author parses how the change would alter giving patterns and which charities might be most affected. JAMES…

Frankenstein’s monster isn’t known for his moves. From his first appearance, in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, to Boris Karloff’s embodiment in the 1931 film Frankenstein and in countless representations since, the monster is eternally a stiff, shuffling hulk, more likely to lumber away from pitchfork-wielding townsfolk than perform an arabesque. That’s what makes the idea of Frankenstein, a ballet opening this month at the San Francisco Ballet, so intriguing. Of course, this story has been onstage before. There was the infamous 1981 Broadway adaptation that opened and closed on the same evening and, more recently, Danny Boyle’s well-reviewed 2011 production at London’s National Theatre. But what makes this Frankenstein, which is the creation of choreographer Liam Scarlett, worth noting is that this time the monster can dance. (And not the…

Treasure ISLAND Compared with tony Worth Avenue, the Royal Poinciana Plaza was the more mundane of Palm Beach’s retail destinations. But a sleek renovation featuring new stores and restaurants is changing that.…

Of all the misgivings one might have about the new president, the fact that he’s a teetotaler would seem minor. Some of my best friends don’t drink, although most of them arrived at that choice after long and arduous experimentation with intoxicants, like the second president Bush. That appears not to be the case with President Trump. In this, as in so many other areas, Donald J. Trump seems to be breaking the mold; many of our most illustrious presidents belonged to the cult of Bacchus, beginning with the father of our country. George Washington, like most of the Founding Fathers, was extremely fond of Madeira, the fortified wine from the mid-Atlantic island of the same name. Washington ordered the stuff by the pipe, a pipe being 126 gallons. He…

Alessandra Balazs Growing up at hotels like Château Marmont and the Mercer, the actress daughter of André Balazs has always been surrounded and inspired by art—a passion visible on her new travel blog, LiveASuiteLife.com. Artist: Sculptor Raúl de Nieves. “His show at MoMA PS1 had a playfulness that immediately engaged me.” Public Art: Rachel Whiteread’s “Cabin” on Governors Island, and Kathryn Andrews’s “Sunbathers” on the High Line. Show: The Whitney Biennial (March 17– June 11), “to discover new artists.” Gallery: “Kate Werble Gallery’s program is smart. Their show ‘Sexting,’ about body image in a selfie world, was wonderful.” Shop: “1stDibs—I recently bought a dining table!” Begum Yasar As director of Upper East Side gallery Lévy Gorvy, she curates postwar and contemporary art exhibitions. Artist: “I curated Brazilian-born New York artist…

FRENCH CONNECTION Brigitte Bardot wore gingham in lieu of white for her 1959 wedding to Jacques Charrier. The marriage lasted three years—the pattern was not to blame.…

“I was always a tomboy,” Lauren Hutton told Town & Country in a 2013 cover story. “My real life was never modeling or acting—it was doing interesting shit and learning.” It was that irreverence, evident in her personal style, that earned the gap-toothed beauty the title “fresh American face of fashion”—and what women like Gigi Hadid, who is 52 years Hutton’s junior and who walked the Bottega Veneta runway with her, are learning to appreciate. S.B. HISTORY LOVER In the 1980 movie American Gigolo, a Bottega Veneta clutch got closer to Hutton than Richard Gere did. This season it’s rechristened the Lauren 1980 bag.…

Have YOU HEARD? CERTAIN EARRINGS EXPRESS A STYLE SO BOLD IT’S ALMOST AUDIBLE The Almine Rech Gallery in Manhattan opened in October with “Calder and Picasso,” an exhibit of more than 50 works by the two masters side by side that was presented as a “creative dialogue” between the artists. A similar two-pronged discussion was happening on spring runways. Alexander Calder’s work included one-of-a-kind pieces of “wearable art” that have become collector’s items, and his presence as inspiration was clear in the almost mobile earrings at J.W. Anderson (above) and Proenza Schouler. They were often worn as mismatched pairs, a sartorial symbol of civilized debate we hope will prove prophetic. Investment PROPERTY A NEW JEWELRY STUDIO SELLS EVERYTHING BUT THE ROOF. Nina Runsdorf’s Upper East Side apartment and atelier share…

Between the unfortunate duck lips of yesteryear and the plumped-up pouts favored by today’s social media sensations, lip injections have long received a bad rap. “People are frightened of lips,” says Elizabeth Houshmand, a Dallas-based dermatologist. “If you have no volume in your face and then you have these giant lips, it’s just not pretty.” Last year the FDA approved Juvéderm Volbella XC, a hyaluronic acid–based lip filler that blends different molecular weights of the naturally occurring compound to increase fullness and lessen the appearance of fine lines around the mouth for up to one year. So while millennials may favor overly augmented lips à la Kylie Jenner, the ability of injectables like Volbella to enhance lips in a way that is neither overdone nor obvious is appealing to women…

I have a friend who used to work for an international cosmetics company. One day a new product, sent from headquarters, arrived on her desk with instructions to see if it could be sold to American men. The item: a compact. “This was not as crazy as it seemed,” she told me recently over lunch in Midtown. In the Asian country where the cosmetics firm is based, it’s not unusual for men to take out a compact in public and dab away the shine. “American men are really hung up,” she said. “You guys and your outdated masculinity. So behind the times.” It’s been 15 years since Mark Simpson, writing on Salon, popularized the term metrosexual, which he defined as a man who “has clearly taken himself as his own…

The first time I made any money of my own, I took it straight to the beauty counter and bought myself a lemon-scented cleanser and a skin-scrubbing brush. I was a 13-year-old babysitting machine, and I was on a mission. A few years later, I moved on to Clinique’s efficient three-step system, which in my mind is skincare’s gateway drug.1 From there, it was Erno Laszlo black sea-mud soap and Mario Badescu facials, upping the ante with each new treatment and each new paycheck. Hello, my name is Linda, and I am a skincare addict. While makeup is getting all the millennial love in beauty today—with contouring creams, highlighting compacts, eye-shadow palettes, and lip kits selling like mad—I’m here on the other side of the divide to celebrate skincare. Remember…

The Waterhouses may just be Britain’s most visible family since the Delevingnes. While patriarch Norman Waterhouse is a noted London plastic surgeon, and one daughter, the model and actress Suki Waterhouse, has become an international It girl, these days it’s 22-yearold Imogen who seems poised to become the next big thing. (Younger siblings Maddi, a model, and Charlie, a designer, may not be far behind.) The London-based Imogen has seen her star rise in the last year, having appeared in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals as well as in campaigns for such brands as Tommy Hilfiger. And while her two professions seem to go hand in well-manicured hand, the Oxford School of Drama grad says each requires something unique. “With modeling you have to look good in front of the camera,”…

All that is left is the art—the Aubusson tapestries, the Sèvres tureens. When you pass into the courtyard of the Musée Nissim de Camondo, home to one of the world’s most exquisite collections of 18thcentury objets d’art, what you notice first is a pair of marble plaques on the wall of the porte cochère. The first one is grand; unveiled when the place opened in 1936, it commemorates the museum’s namesake, Nissim de Camondo, a young man of 25 who died fighting for France in the First World War and whose father Moïse donated the family’s legendary collection to the nation in honor of his fallen son. The second plaque is smaller, almost an afterthought. Added in the 1960s, it reveals that in 1944, eight years after the museum opened,…

It’s said that those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. For the director Bartlett Sher, repeating the past—often eight times a week for months or years at a time—is less a curse than a calling. For Sher the past is both prologue and something to be reckoned with on its own terms, an approach that has made him one of American theater’s most influential figures. In the plays, musicals, and operas he has helmed—among them recent revivals of South Pacific (for which he won a Tony) and Fiddler on the Roof and a production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone that was the first Broadway show Barack Obama saw as president—Sher has honored history while mining it for timeless and universal truths: the scourge of bigotry,…

“I had imagined the Second World War as punishment specifically designed to deprive me of my father, had counted up my errors and, with an egocentricity which then approached autism and which afflicts me still in dreams and fevers and marriage, found myself guilty.” This is how Joan Didion describes her first visit, as a child in 1942, to the South. When she returned almost 30 years later, on a road trip with her husband through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, she took notes. “At the time,” she writes, “I had thought it might be a piece.” Those notes now constitute a new collection, South and West: From a Notebook (KNOPF, $21), out this month, which pairs that draft alongside one from another trip for an assigned article that never happened,…

It’s ironic that Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of one of the world’s most important institutions of 20thcentury art, was an Old Masters guy. That didn’t change until 1930, when he was 69 and his friend Hilla Rebay brought him to Vasily Kandinsky’s studio in Dessau, Germany, igniting a fervent retirement hobby. Soon Guggenheim was inviting guests to his apartment in the Plaza Hotel to marvel at his growing collection of Chagalls, Picassos, and Delaunays—and his many Kandinskys. In 1937 he would create the foundation that would become the Guggenheim Museum. Now, 80 years later, an exhibition, “Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim,” is on view at the Manhattan museum to honor its namesake and five other patrons (founding director Rebay, Solomon’s niece Peggy Guggenheim, Katherine S. Dreier, Justin K. Thannhauser, and…

Another Art Basel Miami Beach has come and gone. But this year, in addition to all the Instagrammable installations and the hot concert tickets (Madonna and Bon Jovi both played at the Faena), the city that is home to such notable collecting families as the Rubells, Lindemanns, and de la Cruzes is also experiencing a real estate boom. Some of our favorite fashionable properties include the just opened Fendi Château Residences, which are within walking distance of the tony Bal Harbour shops; Missoni’s first branded residence (2019); the Estates at Acqualina, with lobbies designed by Karl Lagerfeld (2020); the Residences by Armani/Casa, where purchase of the penthouse comes with a free trip to Italy (2019); the Surf Club Four Seasons, completed last month at the hands of architect Richard Meier;…

Last year Bonhams sold Dorothy’s iconic blue and white gingham dress for $1.56 million. Further proof the pattern hasn’t lost its magic: American designers Michael Kors, Carolina Herrera, Rosie Assoulin, and Thom Browne combined colors, various scales, and contemporary silhouettes, cementing gingham’s place as a modern classic. FAMILY LINES Gloria Vanderbilt, with sons Carter and Anderson, in Southampton, 1971. URBAN GRID Amal Clooney on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.…

Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean did not ask about the four Cs before she bought the Hope Diamond from Cartier in 1911. All the Washington, DC, heiress wanted to know was whether she could reset it. (Yes, and she did.) It wasn’t until 1953 that the Gemological Institute of America issued its system for grading stones based on color, cut, carat weight, and clarity. The criteria are familiar to anyone who has bought a diamond since, but is that all there is to it? It always seemed too simple a recipe, especially since the seductive power of diamonds long preceded those Cs. “Beauty, the mystery that cannot be measured,” says Andrew Coxon, a veteran diamond buyer and expert and now the president of the De Beers Institute of Diamonds. We were…

The world has many so-called golden triangles, cultural and commercial hubs that define nearly all major metropolitan areas. In New York there’s Tribeca (the Triangle Below Canal Street), with its residential lofts that set a trend for city living, not to mention the original Nobu. In Milan it’s the area bounded by Via Montenapoleone, Via della Spiga, and Via Gesù, three streets that house the flagship boutiques and headquarters of the world’s largest fashion companies, including palazzos Versace, Brioni, and Marni. In India, however, where everything is bigger, “the golden triangle” refers to three cities: the capital, New Delhi; Agra, home to the Taj Mahal; and Jaipur, home to the Gem Palace. DESCRIBING MUNNU THE GEM PALACE AS JUST A JEWELRY STORE WOULD BE LIKE SAYING THAT THE TAJ MAHAL…

Once upon a time, runway shows were attended by fashion editors who furiously scribbled away in the front row. Three swoops in a like-minded direction and one could see the tone of a season take shape. Now that the iPhone has replaced the sketch pad, illustration is an art form, coloring a hobby. Still, a rich subject—like Carolina Herrera’s spring collection, drawn here by Hayley Sarno—never goes out of style.…