Town & Country May 2023

1954 A GALAXY OF JEWELS In honor of T&C’s sixth annual jewelry awards, we’ve unearthed this gem (pun intended): the cover of our November 1954 issue, featuring a constellation of pearls, diamonds, rubies, and gold photographed by Edgar de Evia. This mélange of important pieces—a Seaman Schepps coral pin, a gold and sapphire powder box by Schlumberger, plus some Harry Winston and Verdura—was meant to serve as a “solution to the gift problems of the gentlemen of the family.” Seventy years later we remain deeply committed to that mission—and to celebrating the mavericks and creative talents of high jewelry. So much so, in fact, that for the first time since 1954 we’ve dedicated our cover to these one-of-a-kind treasures. And this year’s winners are……

None of us, unfortunately, though that won’t stop everyone from trying, as you will see throughout our May issue. This Cartier high jewelry necklace, however, has a pretty good shot at immortality, or at least a life span of 100,000 years. There are archaeological findings in museum vitrines to back that up. And it’s not just diamonds that live forever—also 150,000-year-old snail shell beads discovered in a cave in Morocco and a 70,000-year-old chlorite bracelet picked up in Siberia. The Hellenic gold and quartz bangles (circa 330 BC) I often visit at the Met look good enough to wear out tonight, if they’d let me. We celebrate the lasting aspect of the art of jewelry in every issue, and especially in our annual T&C Jewelry Awards. Do they glitter? Do…

WHERE ARE WE GOING? For a certain crowd, art is more than a salve in tough times; it can also be a measure of just how tough those times are. A hemline index for the one percent, if you will. Nowhere is this more apparent than in New York in May, when the deep-pocketed converge for a vortex of fairs (Frieze, TEFAF) and megaticket marquee auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips. What recession? WHAT ARE WE WEARING? In the competitive sport of art collecting, you have to commit to the hustle. Attend every VIP preview and collector cock-tail party. Be impeccably dressed—style is taken more seriously here than at NYFW—and on time. You don’t want to lose a Richter because you were late, do you? A Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso will keep…

Remember the sounds of pre-Covid New York? I hear crescendos: the Philharmonic at fortissimo, the approaching A train, any good cocktail party around 7:15, and—perhaps the most avid sound of the busy city—the lunchtime gabble of business and gossip in a crowded restaurant. Three years of forced retreat in the Berkshires had made me a stranger to all that music. I tended my vegetable garden and wrote a cookbook, mostly alone except for FaceTime hangs and Zoom meetings. So the sound-scape at Le Rock, when I walked into the Rockefeller Center restaurant at the lunch-time peak earlier this year, was the sound of being alive once again, IRL. My lunch date—a writer, mother, philanthropist—had just flown in from Costa Rica. I had come down for a conference. Our rendezvous led,…

“California is a fine place to live,” the comedian Fred Allen once quipped, “if you happen to be an orange.” But in recent years aspects of the stereotypical California lifestyle have invaded the Big Apple. Much has been made of the proliferation of juice bars, the legalization of marijuana, and the growing number of car owners in the city. In January the New York Times asked, “Is New York City turning into Los Angeles?” Between May 27 and October 8, how-ever, the tide will turn. That’s when “Art Is for Everybody,” the first L.A. museum exhibition of the quintessentially New York work of Keith Haring, will be at the Broad, bringing with it art from the subway, ephemera from Haring’s Manhattan studio and Pop Shop, and programming inspired by the…

Looking at his dreamy eyes, square jaw, and perfectly coiffed hair, it was obvious that Luis Daniel Galvez, Mr. Cuba, would win. But if there was any doubt, his answer to the final question—What have you learned from this experience?—sealed the deal: “I learned that…acting from the heart, acting from the soul, is the only thing that is going to open every door.” It certainly opened one for him: Minutes later he was awarded the title Mr. Supranational 2022. For more than 100 years beauty pageants have largely been the purview of women emerging teeth first from a cloud of Aqua Net to compete for rhinestone tiaras. But as these contests have slowly faded from relevance—neither Miss America nor Miss Universe is even televised anymore—an offshoot has been quietly ascending:…