Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Town & Country

“She is still considered, even by the severest critics, to be an artist of muscle and discipline: fervent, candid, exhilarating, and arguably the greatest living actress/musician in North America,” T&C wrote of Lena Horne in 1995. Throughout a career spanning 70 years, the legendary performer made enormous strides on screen and stage, starring in classics such as Stormy Weather and The Wiz and recording iconic hits from “I Got Rhythm” to “At Long Last Love”—all while breaking barriers as a Black woman in a predominantly white industry. Last fall Broadway paid homage to Horne (who died in 2010) by naming a theater after her—the first venue in Broadway history to honor a Black woman. It was a joyous celebration attended by New York governor Kathy Hochul, NYC mayor Eric Adams,…

If you listened carefully during the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried and the implosion of his cryptocurrency empire—the exchange FTX and the hedge fund Alameda Research—you might have heard the squeak of a spigot closing. A year ago Bankman-Fried founded the FTX Future Fund, a grant and investment–making organization to “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.” The group said it would distribute “at least $100 million,” maybe up to $1 billion in 2022, aimed at causes like pandemic prevention, nuclear disarmament, and the “safe” development of artificial intelligence. These existential preoccupations align with the ethos of “effective altruism,” a philanthropic movement that has swept through the Bay Area, picking up acolytes like the Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoff-man; Palo Alto’s favorite prophet gerontologist, Aubrey de…

Once the iron gates clank closed behind you, it’s already too late. Whether a prep school is located on a winding road heading toward Malibu or on one that leads to a remote campus in New England, seclusion is always at play in its portrayal. Cut off from the world at large, students can encounter almost anything before outside authorities catch on, and no matter the academy, secrets can always be hidden away, for a price. Is it any wonder these institutions are the sets for this season’s most chilling novels? Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards, is set in the 1980s at the Buckley School—the L.A. academy the author attended—where students lead lavish lives filled with privilege and partying. The book follows a (somewhat) fictional teenage Ellis and…

It was over brunch that my aunt Heidi Katz dropped the bombshell. “I’m going to go gray,” she said. “I’ve been coloring my hair since I was 26, when I had so much gray people thought it was frosted.” After peak Covid, when her husband colored her hair so often he developed tennis elbow, she’d had enough. But making the decision is only step one; the actual act of going gray is more emotionally fraught. “As a baby boomer, I want to remain forever young, so the thought of going gray is like, Whoa,” she confided. “When you work in a youth-obsessed industry where everyone is either Botoxing or filling everything,” you can feel an enormous pressure to stay young-looking, says veteran beauty editor Jane Larkworthy, who eschewed her trademark…

“I grew up with Yale as my frame of reference.” So recalls one graduate whose father attended the elite institution on the GI Bill. As a kid, this man—for the sake of this story we’ll call him Alex—grew up driving to New Haven to tailgate before football games at the Yale Bowl. “That was where my parents entertained.” Alex attended a prestigious private secondary school in New York, where he did very well. And so, he said, “I didn’t even think about it: I’m going to Yale. “It was more naivete than entitlement, really. It was the early ’80s. I never seriously thought about going anywhere else.” Thirty years later, when Alex’s eldest child applied to Yale, he similarly assumed the school was an option. His child was a strong…

The Rosetta Stone is one of those historical artifacts that has turned, over time, from object to symbol. The original stele was claimed by Napoleon’s troops when they occupied Egypt in 1799 and then taken by the British as one of the spoils of war when they defeated the French in 1801. The inscriptions on the block were the code to translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the name endures now as a metaphor for any key that can unlock hidden knowledge. To see the actual Rosetta Stone, you have to visit the British Museum in London, where it has resided behind glass for the last 220 years. But just as Britain’s largest museum was preparing to mark the anniversary of the deciphering of its most popular attraction, cries for the…

About 90 minutes north of Palm Beach there is a sight that is rare in the state of Florida: an idyllic oasis safe from anything remotely flashy or tacky. There are few cars or cryptocrats, if any. There is only Windsor, a secluded village in Vero Beach cradled by a barrier island along the Atlantic coast. Some 30 years ago a Canadian couple named Hilary and W. Galen Weston touched down on this spot, where subtropical and tropical climates collide, and acquired 472 acres of land. “It was still citrus groves and bungalows, dirt roads and wooden walkways, totally unspoiled. We thought we could make it into something very special,” Hilary recalls. And they did, developing a residential community that was named after their home in Windsor Great Park, near…

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Let’s start here, with the issue of T&C you’re holding in your hands, the first in what will be our 177th year. We were founded in 1846 by two enterprising young editors who wanted to make a magazine that would, as they stated in their editors’ letter, “instruct, refine, and amuse.” Our mission remains the same. We hope there are always lessons, refinements, and yes, fun, for you in these pages. (We take the amuse part very seriously.) We enter 2023 with tales of legacy college admissions, investigations into the search for lost artifacts and the value of family jewels, an assembling of your winter wardrobe, a quick trip down to a new Florida clubhouse, and a tribute to the fierce lifelong love between mothers and sons. Allison Williams is…

THE NEW KID Did he transfer from Andover or a juvenile detention center? It’s never easy starting at a new school, but it’s a lot more difficult when your arrival coincides with the start of a killing spree. THE JOCK Strength, speed, and access to those creepy equipment sheds can make athletes prime suspects in prep school horror stories. Is that mud on your field hockey skirt or a splatter of blood? THE POPULAR GIRL Regina George never killed anyone, but maybe she just didn’t have the chance. Charm and charisma can easily disguise the fact that the prom queen and Carrie have some unsettling things in common. THE TEACHER Older, wiser, and always a bit mysterious, teachers at prestigious academies are a natural fit for prime suspect status when…

1 APPRAISE IT “The value of jewelry is subjective,” says Russell Zelenetz, a partner at Stephen Russell. Have the pieces valued for estate tax purposes rather than for insurance, which may have a higher estimate. 2 GET TECHNICAL Giving jewelry to an heir while you’re still alive, as opposed to bequeathing it, will result in very different tax implications. Better yet, consider a trust. 3 OR JUST SELL This option takes care of another problem that often arises when it comes to the family jewels: everyone fighting over who gets what.…

“Estée always told me less is more—more is not always better. One statement piece of jewelry is all you need.”—Aerin Lauder, Town & Country, February 2020 Hair by Charles McNair at See Management. Makeup by Paco Blancas for Nars at L’Atelier NYC. Nails by Megumi Yamamoto for Essie at Susan Price NYC. Model: Delfina Morbelli @theindustryny.com. Casting by Alicia Bridgewater for Castingbya.com…

WHERE ARE WE GOING? Even 60 years after the debut of Where the Wild Things Are, few children’s books capture the imagination like Maurice Sendak’s classic. The tale, of a boy who discovers a magical world of monsters, turned him into a legend, but Sendak had long been a prolific artist. In the first retrospective since his death in 2012, more than 150 works are at the Columbus Museum in Ohio. THROUGH MARCH 5, COLUMBUSMUSEUM.ORG WHAT ARE WE WEARING? In the spirit of timeless icons, Harry Winston’s Avenue collection pays homage to New York’s Art Deco history, its geometric silhouettes and renegade spirit recreated in pink sapphires and diamonds. Heirlooms to inspire a bit of childlike wonder—and perhaps open the door to a different kind of magical universe? Consider this,…

Bozoma Saint John made her name in the C suite, working as a top executive at such companies as Netflix, Uber, and Endeavor. But when it came time to write her memoir, Saint John didn’t go in for the boardroom bromides and self-hagiography that tend to plague books by titans of industry. Instead The Urgent Life ($29, Viking) tells a more personal, and far more compelling, tale of love and loss, delving into tender topics like the suicide of her college boyfriend, the death of a child born prematurely, and her late husband’s harrowing battle with cancer. Saint John’s story is often not a happy one (“death hovered always,” she writes), but it’s told from the perspective of a survivor who has learned to appreciate the people and time she…

I first heard about the Guadalupe Valley from Anthony Bourdain, who had recently returned from a visit and was raving about the food he had encountered in the northern Baja region. He thought I would be interested in the nascent wine region east of the coast. “It feels like Tuscany,” he said. It took me a decade to follow his advice, and in that time the Guadalupe Valley, about two hours south of San Diego, has become a wine, as well as food, destination. The valley, surrounded by rugged mountains, holds cool ocean air that makes it inland, and while the summer daytime temperatures hover in the mid-90s, the nights are surprisingly cold. This big shift is propitious for wine grapes, which after a day of ripening get cooled down,…

You might say it was filial piety that brought Olivier Reza into the fold of his father Alexandre’s business. Reza Sr. had built a reputation as one of the greatest gem collectors of the 20th century—for years he helped fortify the coffers of such maisons as Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Cartier, before joining their glittering stables on Paris’s Place Vendôme with the opening of his eponymous brand’s first store in 1981. But by the mid-aughts the legendary jeweler to the rich, famous, and royal had become too sick to carry on. “There was nobody to take care of it, so I took it upon myself to preserve the brand,” Olivier says. “And when I looked at the heritage, it was very difficult to turn my back on it.…

Take yourself for a walk in most cities and you will see—regardless of weather or terrain—dogs in sweaters. Dogs in boots. Dogs in raincoats. Dogs riding around in strollers (literal “fur babies”). You will certainly pass a doggy daycare spot, where the home-alone crowd gathers for group slobber sessions during human work hours, and where pets may also—especially if the establishment has “spa” in its name, as many do—be treated to pawdicures (their term, not mine), massage therapy, and personal training sessions involving canine-calibrated treadmills or heated lap pools. Even before the pandemic, during which more than 23 million American households adopted a pet, the traditional boundaries between man and beast—and the distinctions in the care and feeding thereof—had begun to erode. As Sophie Dahl recently put it in an…

On the day the Duke of Sussex, now a resident of Santa Barbara, revealed the cover of his memoir last October, another royal “spare” was in Uganda, meeting families at a settlement for refugees fleeing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the following day’s newspapers, there was no mention of Princess Anne visiting the camp with Save the Children, the charity she has championed for more than half a century. But, had anybody noticed it, the juxtaposition of “spares”—that perennially fraught role in any dynasty—was illuminating. In her youth Anne, who was once third in line to the throne, resented intense media interest in her private life. She too had a reputation for being prickly. She endured trauma, not least an armed kidnapping attempt in 1974. And she…

AQUARIUS JANUARY 21–FEBRUARY 19 This month power struggles may be going on around you, but rather than being tempted to compete, you’ll be in a mood to face facts and get on with business. Most important, you’ll be able to figure out which path to pursue to set your plans in place. Others will soon become more receptive to what you have to offer, so don’t hesitate to speak your mind. DAVID WEBB ($36,500), DAVIDWEBB.COM PISCES FEBRUARY 20–MARCH 20 With Mars shooting forward in an important part of your chart, you can finally get going with plans that have been on hold for too long. The first 10 days of the month hold real potential for meetings of minds and promising agreements. Venus in your sign is heightening your charm…

Hide the boarding school brochures and shore up the trust funds, because the evil stepmother is back. The sinister archetype, who has been spotted mistreating poor Snow White and tormenting the twins in The Parent Trap, has returned to the spotlight—and she hasn’t changed her ways. From turns onstage (in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new Bad Cinderella, on Broadway now, and the touring revival of Into the Woods) to time onscreen (take Amy Adams in her recent fractured fairy tale, Disenchanted), pop culture’s go-to reprehensible relative has found herself in the public eye once again. But is the idea of stepmother as nefarious force past its prime? I’ve had a few stepmothers of my own, and I can say I’ve loved having someone older—and decidedly not my own mom—as a mentor…