Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Town & Country

Sir David Adjaye believes in dignity. While his peers put a premium on trendy flourishes, swoops, and jagged angles, the common thread running through the acclaimed architect’s work is minimalism that packs a punch. The project of the 21st century, he told T&C during a pit stop in Miami to curate an exhibit with the artist Theaster Gates, is design with a conscience, the kind that delivers quality of life for the privileged and underprivileged alike. After the Ruby City Art Center in San Antonio (opening this fall) and a skyscraper in lower Manhattan, his next two projects promise the emotional wallop of his National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, DC: the U.K. Holocaust Memorial (a collaboration with designer Ron Arad) and the National Cathedral of…

Inside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, priceless works by the likes of David Hockney and Diego Rivera are practically neighbors. And while there is a curatorial team responsible for how the museum exhibits masterpieces, when it comes to acquiring them, LACMA has a unique way of getting donors involved. Each spring since 1986, the Collectors Committee Weekend has been one of the museum’s most significant fundraisers. Over the years LACMA has bought 228 artworks through the event, which has been described as the American Idol of the art world. “Collectors Committee has gained a reputation as one of LACMA’s liveliest events,” says Michael Govan, the museum’s director. It has also been essential to building the collection. “The committee members choose which works LACMA will acquire,” Govan says. “No…

I told friends I was going to see about some diamonds in Canada. “Is there a museum?” one asked. “On whose fingers?” quipped another. And many joined the chorus: “Canadian diamonds? Is this some new thing?” “I don’t know, is 4 billion years old considered new these days?” is how I wanted to respond. But I understood the curiosity. It was only in 1991 that geologists found evidence of kimberlite, the mineral that diamonds hide under, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, not far from the Arctic Circle, and it wasn’t until 1998 that the Ekati Mine began producing commercial diamonds. It had taken me a while to get here, too. I have been writing about jewelry for almost 20 years and had never really stared into the heart of a diamond…

HOW TO SHOW THE VOLCANO SOME RESPECT ON HAWAII Winter break in the Hawaiian Islands has been a family trip staple for decades (even for the Obamas), but this year skip traffic-laden, condo-crazed Maui for the relatively untouched beauty that is the Big Island. Last year’s eruption of the Kilauea volcano may have scared off some visitors, but the coastal areas were hardly affected and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has reopened for business. Plus, the lava flow has calcified into stunning black rocks—it’s quite a sight to see. The Big Island has always fought hard to retain the kind of authenticity that made Hawaii famous. It’s a little rugged, palm trees are actually scarce, and Mother Nature still commands a lot of respect. There is so much to do, too:…

King Lear may be more than 400 years old, but Shakespeare’s tragedy—the story of a rash monarch blinded by ego and flattery, tangled in a destructive family drama, and brought down by his own bad judgment—seems to be more relevant than ever. After all, it would be hard not to notice the cascade of real-life Lears howling in the storm, lashing out, and cratering the kingdom; Shakespeare could have been chronicling the Age of Trump when he had the Earl of Kent in Act I pondering the catastrophes that come “when majesty falls to folly.” The play has fresh resonance almost everywhere you look, from Brazil (where newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro, who ran on an anticorruption platform, is dogged by an investigation into suspicious financial transactions by his senator-elect…

I’m trying to discern what Salma Hayek’s secret might be. The actress and producer is 52, but she’s just as beautiful as she was when she first appeared onscreen in Desperado 24 years ago—the same high cheekbones, the same lambent brown eyes, the same perfect skin and lustrous hair. Standing five-foot-two, she looks like a Disney princess painted by Frida Kahlo. “I haven’t done an-y-thing,” she says when we meet at a West London restaurant, enunciating the syllables with flair. “I don’t know how to explain it.” Does she, I ask desperately, drink a lot of water? Hayek shrugs. “Sometimes I drink a lot, some days I don’t.” As if to prove this, she orders a bottle of San Pellegrino and barely touches it. It is this same sense of…

There are some things you should know about Harry Winston. First, few people can even say what he looked like; his face was never in the picture. Google it: There he is with his back to the camera in his New York salon. There are his hands, cradling some precious treasure. It was a security and insurance thing, but it was mythmaking too. Also: The man who founded his namesake company in 1932 and went on to be known as the King of Diamonds established his legend with an emerald, a 2-carat stone he discovered in a pawn shop, to be exact. The eagle-eyed Winston saw something in the 25-cent green trinket on the counter no one else had recognized. He bought it and sold it for $800 soon afterward.…

“I can put you in a more uncomfortable chair if you’d like,” Ala Isham says, archly, as we sit in her living room overlooking the ocean on the island of Antigua. Her residence is less a house than a series of elegant pavilions she and her husband Ralph Isham built (“slowly, very slowly”) a hundred feet above what she calls their “Robinson Crusoe–type” beach. Anchored in the members-only Mill Reef Club, a 60-year-old private resort and WASP establishment redoubt (early members included Dean Acheson, Thomas Watson Jr. of IBM, and former British prime minister David Cameron’s father), it is named Pelican Ridge. Ala is a formidable, you-can’t-believe-she’s-60 blonde. Her look, and that of her surroundings, is polished, confident, and relaxed, without a hint of self-doubt. Leaning back on a pillow…

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I came to the office makeover meeting straight from an appointment with jeweler James de Givenchy, so when the people from One Kings Lane asked what I wanted my office to look like, I pulled out my phone and showed them images of his chocolate lacquer walls, rich orange suede vitrines, and oversize gilded mirrors. Also, one enormous red spinel and a brightly colored ceramic ring. I wanted that palette, but mostly I wanted to feel in my office the way I had felt when I was there: surrounded by the elegance of New York but cocooned away from the cacophony of Midtown. I also needed a working desk and a swivel chair, and shelves for all my books, and a place for editors and designers to meet and brainstorm…

ART Creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien pick pieces driving current sales. “Millionaires bid at auction,” Levien says. “Billionaires have been through the day before.” We’d wager on seeing a Hockney in Taylor Mason’s office. POWER DINING “Our characters know the difference between Nakazawa and Shuko,” Koppelman says, “so we know also.” Might Chuck Rhoades be the first person to eat at Thomas Keller’s new TAK Room in Hudson Yards? PRIVATE JETS Bobby Axelrod flew in a Gulfstream V until a real-life billionaire wrote in to say they had it wrong. “Only a billionaire would know that a G5 is a starter plane,” Koppelman says. Our recommendation: Upgrade to a 650.…

I was at Charlie Bird, the wine-centric, hip-hop-soundtracked bistro in Manhattan, with a small group of wine professionals this past November when the subject of Roberto Conterno bobbed to the surface. All of us had recently been to Piedmont, Italy, to visit the winemakers of Barolo and Barbaresco, and no appointment had been more coveted than one with Conterno, whose winery sits near the top of the hill in the town of Mon-forte. “How long did you get with him?” one wine importer asked a sommelier. “Maybe an hour and a half,” the somm replied, although the way his eyes darted away from his interlocutor suggested that he might be exaggerating. Another somm said, “I heard that Jackson’s team had to cool their heels for, like, two hours, waiting for…

HOW TO SLEIGH YOUR WAY TO DINNER IN MONTANA Few things say winter-cozy quite like a ranch in the snow. The Douglas Fir House at Big Sky’s newly renovated Lone Mountain Ranch has four bedrooms and its own sauna, and the ranch has 53 miles of nordic ski trails. In the evening, a horse-drawn sleigh ride to an oil-lit cabin for a feast of prime rib makes for a family dinner to remember. But save a few nights for the five-star Ranch at Rock Creek, where the ice skating and hockey pond comes with a hot chocolate–stocked warming hut. Wildlife bonus: Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley is “America’s Serengeti,” and February is the perfect time to spot wolves (it’s their mating season), elk, and bison against the whiteness. TO BOOK SAM HIGHLEY,…

ITALIAN WEEK PALM BEACH Italian cuisine, music, and fashion are the focus during Palm Beach’s annual Italian Week, March 21-24. Spend Friday evening at the opera and the following afternoon enjoying sips and shopping along Worth Avenue. Sunday’s closing event with Il Circolo at The Breakers Palm Beach is not to be missed. Your senses will not be disappointed. WORTH-AVENUE.com ORVIS The Orvis Tech Chambray Work Shirt offers technical performance with casual style. This moisture-wicking UPF 30 shirt works as hard as you play. Quick-dry mechanical stretch fabric gives you the reach you need whether you’re casting for that elusive rainbow trout or loading the truck. ORVIS.com BERMUDA: GET LOST OUT HERE The turquoise waters and pink-sand beaches of Bermuda are home to more than beauty. They’re home to a…

A fragrance that evokes a garden seems like an automatic crowd pleaser, and it very often is. Hermès knows this, of course, and has a popular line devoted to the idea, the Jardin collection. Each of the five scents refers to a particular place or idea that provided its makers olfactory inspiration, from a fantastical Chinese meditation garden to the roof of the Hermès boutique on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. When it was time for the house’s perfumer Christine Nagel to craft her first garden scent, the consensus choice was one of the surest bets on this green earth: an English garden. But Nagel had something else in mind: an actual garden of Eden. “Three years ago I read about an English aristocrat who created a garden, Monsieur…

Sparks fly inside the Shed. Specifically, in the McCourt, the performance hall whose retractable shell is the signature flourish of the 200,000-square-foot structure’s flexible design. The building, recently named in honor of former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, is encased in Teflon-based polymer “pillows” cross-hatched with steel; the pillows are only partially inflated during construction, and the material puckers as men in the baskets of cranes graze its corners. It’s a Friday afternoon, and the sun is creeping behind the Hudson River as Alex Poots, founding artistic director and CEO of the Shed, the multidisciplinary arts center set to open here April 5, stands on the building’s eighth level looking down on construction workers milling about like helmeted ants. The 4,000-ton chassis retracts telescopically on six-foot-tall wheels to transform the…

In the basement of a cast iron building in Tribeca, costume designer William Ivey Long is plotting outfits for a finale. In a room crowded with fabric swatches, beading samples, and nearly a dozen corkboards covered in sketches, the six-time Tony winner is completing costumes for a brand new closing number for Beetlejuice, the Broadway-bound adaptation of Tim Burton’s 1988 film. As I sit beside the textured and embellished black-and-white-striped suit the show’s devilish title character will wear each night, Long explains that the musical, which earned mixed reviews in a trial run at Washington, DC’s National Theatre last year, is adding new songs and tweaking its script before it opens at the Winter Garden Theatre on April 25. “We go to these cities to get a reaction, both our…

FRIENDS Last year Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg hosted Bradley Cooper on their yacht, Eos. In January, Les Moonves escaped the scandal surrounding his ouster from CBS on David Geffen’s Rising Sun. LOVERS Where better to announce a budding romance than aboard your yacht? (See Jacqueline Kennedy on Aristotle Onassis’s Christina O and Princess Diana on Dodi al Fayed’s Sakara.) OTHERS In 2016 an escort named Anastasia Vashukevich took videos of herself with Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Prikhodko and oligarch Oleg Deripaska aboard the latter’s yacht. Later that year Deripaska was charged with corruption.…

FAMILY HUB REFRIGERATOR Released in January, this WiFi-enabled fridge features distinct voice recognition for each family member. WINE COLUMN Though only 24 inches wide, this wine column holds 100 bottles in three discrete cooling zones. Bonus: The door is push-to-open, in the (likely) event the host’s hands are full. DUAL-FUEL RANGE A pizza mode is de rigueur in top-notch convection ovens, and this 30-inch model also packs in a pastry mode for a one-two punch at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.…

Blame it on gyrating markets, extreme weather, and hyper-partisan politics. In these vexing times comfy, cocooning furniture is having a moment. As part of her 2019 forecast, interiors trendwatcher Michelle Ogundehin noted that “in this acutely digital age, as physical, sensory beings we have a primal need to surround ourselves with surfaces that thrill our fingertips or tempt our toes.” Tactile comfort, more than ever, is in. For the collecting cognoscenti, when it comes to make-you-want-to-melt-into-them furnishings, nothing tops the Ours Polaire (French for polar bear) sofa and armchair conceived by French designer Jean Royère in the late 1940s. Elegantly rounded and incomparably cushy, these zaftig icons were upholstered in a soft woolen velvet reminiscent of plush toy fabric. “The Ours Polaire furnishings are an alcove, a nest,” says Emiliano…

BERNHARDT For those who appreciate modern expression and artisanal elements, consider Bernhardt Interiors. Their metal arts pieces are hand-formed, hand-cast, hand-finished, and totally unique—furniture designed as contemporary art. Shown here: Smithson Credenza, Antoni Chair, and Circlet Cocktail Table. BERNHARDT.com NEW YORK DESIGN CENTER The New York Design Center is the premier resource for fine furnishings. Featuring The Gallery at 200 Lex powered by Incollect offering 33,000 square feet of antiques and 20th-century design as well as Access to Design™, a program helping consumers navigate the design process. NYDC.com HANCOCK & MOORE Eschewing the notion that leather is relegated to neutrals only, Hancock & Moore injects color into a crisp white room with pops of green, blue, and purple on the Harper Tufted Sofa, Surge Chair, and Tulip Chair, respectively, proving…

From 10,000 feet away or 10 yards, fashion at the moment is preoccupied with escapist wishes and streetwear dreams. It can feel like a stylistic binary, catering only to Alessandro Michele’s maximalists at Gucci or Virgil Abloh’s hypebeasts at Off-White (and Louis Vuitton men’s). Is everyone suddenly splitting their days between queuing up for overbranded sweatshirts and splashing out on fringed hoods and fountain-like tiaras? What, this old thing? It’s enough to leave a woman who loves fashion but prefers to wear her clothes—not the other way around—feeling invisible. But, lo, she hasn’t been forgotten. It’s just that the girl carrying Mickey Mouse’s head as a handbag is a real attention hog. Consider this: The day before the spring Valentino show in late September, creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli held a…

HOW TO ROLL LIKE A MOGUL IN NEW MEXICO Ted Turner is the second-largest landowner in the USA, and Vermejo Park Ranch, the biggest slice of his empire, has just been reinvented as a family-friendly retreat. Bison, elk, and black bear roam the 565,000 acres, so you’ll feel as if you have a national park at your disposal. There’s a nature tourism program, and you can create any active, outdoorsy itinerary you desire. The younger set can ride horses to one of the 17 lakes (others can go by truck), and you can fly-fish after a picnic lunch, or go on a guided hike. You can stay in the opulent, seven-bedroom Casa Grande (Turner’s former house) or Costilla Lodge, an eight-bedroom log home on a hill that has an enormous…

What can a pair of pulsating, high-waisted ski pants do for you, really? Maybe take the place of a dozen masseuses trained in the fine art of water retention, relieve that heavy ankle feeling after a long flight, and ease digestion? For starters. The Ballancer Pro has become a go-to recovery fix for pro athletes, as well as celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Zac Efron. It is the latest version of an old-school spa remedy: the lymphatic drainage massage. Except instead of being done manually by one person to drain excess fluid in the body, the massage is given by a pair of programmable, inflatable pants that extend from your stomach to your ankles. Using 24 overlapping air chambers and various pressure settings, the pants relieve post-workout joint pain, ease…

The first thing I did was beg them not to buy it. The prospective owners of this house, the lady specifically, have been my friends for more than 30 years, and with old friends one can get emotional. It may be a bad business decision, but I want them to have the best. The bottom line was that I didn’t know if they would be up for a major project, and that’s what this was: a great site overlooking the ocean, but a big, awful house. Thinking I had succeeded in convincing them, I began referring to the dark and ponderous lower level as coffin storage. Several months later my client and her husband let me know, from London, where they live most of the year, that coffin storage was…

2 PM FRIDAY THE WELCOME PARTY Kick off the weekend—and channel Slim Aarons—with a poolside fête. 8 PM FRIDAY THE REHEARSAL DINNER The run-through is complete, and all logistical details are confirmed. Now it’s time for a little fun. 9 AM SATURDAY THE BRIDAL SUITE A sumptuous silk robe—and a pair of Manolos in a serene baby blue—will help calm wedding day nerves. 10 AM SUNDAY THE BRUNCH It’s your first full day as a Mrs. Play the part in an elegant, ladylike ensemble. 11 PM SATURDAY THE AFTERPARTY Sequins, diamonds, and feathers keep the spotlight on you under spinning disco lights.…