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By Catherine Scott

There are two kinds of people: those who set beautiful tables, and those who are about to. Brandon Davis, founder of E&S Imports

By Maggie Turner

In New York—a city desperate for third spaces—bathhouses have emerged as an intimate way to meet new people. (See here.) But before READ ON

By Barry Blitt

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

By Paulina Prosnitz

“The dog dies in this.” So begins The Best Dog in the World, an essay collection edited by Practical Magic READ ON

By Maggie Turner

As stars descend on Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre this Sunday for the 98th Academy Awards, I can’t help but think of four-time winner READ ON

By Gracie Wiener

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s immortal line perfectly captures how we READ ON

By Elena Clavarino

Jean-Pierre Laffont’s photographs of New York hold a fascinating duality. From the moment he moved there READ ON

By Marcellus Hall

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

By Elena Clavarino

If your idea of a well-set table goes beyond the linen closet, L’Objet’s new Grand Tour collection is worth a look. Inspired by 17th-to-19th-century READ ON

By Rachel Lesage

If you find yourself in the Santa Barbara vicinity, a detour to Bar Le Côte, in Los Olivos, is worth the drive. Born from the same team READ ON

The Prince of Wails’ lawsuit against the Daily Mail was meant to defend his privacy. Instead, it has revealed a carnival of embarrassing texts about “fun weekends of naughtiness” and Harry’s nickname—”H bomb”

By Rosamund Urwin

It is Prince Harry’s last great gamble in his seven-year war with the tabloids. When the Duke of Sussex decided to take on Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, he was fueled by almost three decades of fury at how newspapers had treated his family.

What he perhaps did not envisage was the circus the claim would unleash in the High Court: the release of flirty text messages in which Harry was branded “Mr Mischief” by a journalist; revelations about a meeting on a London roundabout; and eccentric legal analogies involving donkeys. The big question now is, will it pay off? READ ON

Hollywood is embracing content creators in a shaky bid to win back Gen Z viewership

By Naomi Bernstein

After years of giving influencers the cold shoulder, it seems Hollywood’s old guard is now shamelessly poaching talent directly from the Gen Z creator economy. It’s a keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer, you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours kind of symbiotic relationship, where follower counts reign over credit lists.

The shift is becoming increasingly evident across beloved institutions—from Saturday Night Live (see cast members Jane Wickline, of Tiktok fame, and Veronika Slowikowska, of Instagram) to HBO Max’s highly anticipated third season of Euphoria—premiering tomorrow—where TikToker Vinnie Hacker joins movie stars Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Sydney Sweeney.

The root of the problem for Hollywood here is that the READ ON

By Chip Brown

It’s hard not to glance at the list of biographies in the Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series and think that you’d have had a much better chance of amounting to something if you’d been born Jewish, or at least had converted at an early age. Now adding to an imposing lineup that includes Baruch Spinoza, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein, as well as artistic luminaries ranging from Leonard Bernstein to Mark Rothko, the publisher has anointed Stephen Sondheim. Daniel Okrent’s superb new biography, Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy, is a tightly written, emotionally perceptive, READ ON

By Maggie Turner

Nothing brightens your coffee table quite like a book dedicated solely to rainbow-hued art. Rainbow Dreams does just that READ ON

The Amalfi Coast’s crown jewel draws nearly one million visitors a year—but as a high-stakes municipal election approaches, overtourism and allegations of corruption are exposing the dark side of paradise

By Heike Blümner

Positano, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast—which John Steinbeck described in a 1953 essay for Harper’s Bazaar as “a dream place that isn’t quite real and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone”—continues to capture the imagination, even among those who have never traveled there. Its pastel-colored houses stacked against one another along towering coastal cliffs, a sapphire sea glittering below, have become an emblem for life unburdened by the mundane.

But in recent years, reality has caught up to this bit of paradise. Despite appearances, the place is not run on sunshine and limoncello. Tourism has served the town well READ ON

By Paulina Prosnitz

The place is New York; the year is 1939. War is the backdrop of Amy Ephron’s latest novel, a suspenseful noir that travels between READ ON

Once a discreet mark of ownership, the monogram has swelled into an exercise in personal branding. Can it be saved?

By Jennifer Noyes

There was a time when a monogram kept a low profile. It appeared on a cuff, or the corner of a handkerchief, or a pillowcase that had seen better days, and that was that. If you noticed it, fine. If you didn’t, no one felt the need to circle back and point it out.

The custom started, sensibly enough, in 18th- and 19th-century France, when linens were sent out in alarming, indistinguishable heaps and expected to return to their rightful homes. Initials, stitched small and neat in red or blue, kept the peace. They were clear without being decorative, effective without being showy. READ ON

Anna Wintour’s Vogue–Devil Wears Prada mash-up is the last thing we needed

By James Wolcott

It is the most regal of meet-cutes. To the clonk of heels striking the floor, a pair of imperious silhouettes converge upon the same elevator. On the left, Meryl Streep as fashion diva Miranda Priestly, editor of the fictional glossy, Runway; on the right, Miranda’s real-life counterpart, Anna Wintour, the former editor of Vogue and current chief content officer for Condé Nast.

The czarinas enter the elevator together, exchanging polite chitchat that seems to evaporate immediately from their pursed lips. They take each other’s measure as formidable equals, otherwise they wouldn’t engage; neither would acknowledge mere civilians and READ ON

By Jennifer Noyes

If you think all mattresses are created equal, allow Hästens to politely, but firmly, correct you. Handcrafted since 1852, these Swedish READ ON

In 1960, Marlon Brando discovered the island of Tetiaroa while filming Mutiny on the Bounty. Today, his South Pacific refuge is home to a hotel that redefines conservation-minded luxury

By Marcia DeSanctis

By nine A.M. on a February morning, the temperature on Tetiaroa Atoll—a ring of 13 islets, known as motus, encircling a turquoise lagoon in the South Pacific—had already reached 89 degrees. With Connecticut in the icy grip of winter, I felt almost guilty looking out at the ocean, the blinding white sand, and the coconut palms. The day before, I had flown 35 miles from Tahiti to Tetiaroa, both part of French Polynesia, a semi-autonomous territory of France made up of 118 islands. It was here that a remarkable story of conservation and hospitality began, when Marlon Brando first stepped off a fishing boat more than six decades ago. READ ON

As a tentative ceasefire holds, the missile threat Trump invoked to attack Iran comes with an awkward historical footnote—Israel could have helped to build it

By Elaine Sciolino

Among the reasons Donald Trump has given for waging war on Iran is the need to destroy its nuclear program and eliminate its missile threat. But had history turned out differently, Iran’s Islamic Republic could have possessed a vast arsenal of advanced long-range ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads, able to strike targets hundreds of miles away. All thanks to Israel.

Before the Islamic revolution toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1979, Israel and Iran were close strategic partners. During the monarchy, Iran was the only Middle Eastern country to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and Israel—which needed Iran’s READ ON

By Maggie Turner

Before Lena Dunham in Girls and Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha represented the trope of the wayward female creative living READ ON

By Gabriella Maestri

After a six-year hiatus, Morrissey returns with his 14th solo studio album, Make-up Is a Lie. It arrives after several delayed READ ON

By Carolina de Armas

Burberry is bringing back our dearest Lilibet. To mark the centenary of Her Majesty’s birth, the fashion house has teamed up with READ ON

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By Elena Clavarino

In London, the fashion set buys its flowers at Flowerbx—the delivery service and shop at the Chancery Rosewood hotel,

#floorplanporn hashtags are flooding social media and Rosario Candela books are stacking up on coffee tables as Manhattan buyers turn from super-sleek new builds to historic co-ops. Is the age of condos coming to an end?

By Michael Gross

The southern views from the 88th floor of 520 Fifth Avenue, on West 43rd Street, are divine. You face the Empire State Building’s spire and Manhattan’s tapering tip, jutting into New York Harbor, as well as the Statue of Liberty and beyond. But this new condominium features more than a godly cityscape. The 1,002-foot tower also offers a unique vantage point on Manhattan’s evolving real-estate market.

No investment is a sure thing, and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent bid to raise taxes on billionaires—or on high-value homes, or both—is only the latest threat to local property values. But READ ON

You can fill a table with impressive people and still have an unremarkable dinner party—the difference lies in the seating chart

By Jennifer Noyes

There are dinner parties that turn out way better than expected. You walked in knowing no one—or almost no one—and somewhere between the first glass and the last, something clicked. The conversation flowed, you exchanged numbers with a stranger to make future plans (and meant it!), and you went home later than you should have and felt, inexplicably, like you’d been let in on a secret.

And then there are the dinner parties that don’t live up to their potential. The ones that looked perfect on paper, with the right address, the right names, the right food. And yet, READ ON

By Spike Carter

Sometime while watching Wimbledon during last summer’s London heat wave, my wife and I found ourselves agreeing about what READ ON

It’s tempting to think that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was fated to disgrace the royal family. But what if there were a what-if?

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 1979, the pampered, juvenile, and fun-loving second son of Queen Elizabeth II entered Britannia Royal Naval College with the rank of midshipman. By 1981, the youthful Prince Andrew had completed his training in the Royal Marines All-Arms Commando Course and was promoted to the rank of sub-lieutenant.

The following year, Britain and Argentina clashed in the Falklands War. Despite internal efforts to shift Andrew to a safe desk job, he took an assignment in the war zone on the H.M.S. Invincible. Though he would be in harm’s way, his mother agreed with the decision. He flew as co-pilot on Sea King helicopters to decoy Argentinean jets firing Exocet missiles at his ship. One of the Exocets sank the H.M.S. READ ON

The Duchess of Sussex once wanted to be the Gwyneth Paltrow of jam. Now she’s sixth on the bill at an Australian women’s retreat

By Hilary Rose

My first instinct on hearing the news that the Duchess of Sussex has been asked to give a speech at a women’s wellness retreat in Australia was to say, “Ye gods, have they heard her speak?” My second was to wonder, “Has it come to this?” Happily, the woman who’s organizing it, a podcast host called Gemma O’Neill, inadvertently said that for me.

“Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,” she announced breathlessly, has “gone from Oprah to talking on stage with just little old me, Gemma, in Sydney.” Quite so, Gemma, although possibly not a sentence on which Meghan will reflect READ ON

The 27-year-old actress discusses growing up as the daughter of Sopranos director Tim Van Patten; acting opposite her older sister, Grace; and joining Zendaya, Jacob Elordi, and Sydney Sweeney for Euphoria’s long-awaited final season

By Gracie Wiener

Anna Van Patten spent her childhood traveling to ancient Rome, Prohibition-age Atlantic City, and, wildest of all, the New Jersey suburbs—sort of. As the second daughter of the director, screenwriter, and producer Timothy Van Patten, she and her sisters, Grace and June, were raised on the sets of his HBO projects, including Rome, Game of Thrones, and The Sopranos. “Some of my favorite memories are exploring those sets and making up our own little scenes,” says the actress.

Now the 27-year-old is back where she started, spending her days seeing HBO productions come to life—only this time she’s in front of the camera. Next week, she’s joining the cast of Sam Levinson’s READ ON

Christopher Beha, former editor of Harper’s Magazine, talks struggling with atheism, his return to Catholicism, and how Trump is the Antichrist

By Ash Carter

To this sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes dutiful subscriber, Christopher Beha was the best editor of Harper’s Magazine since Lewis Lapham. An accomplished critic and novelist, Beha turns inward in his latest book, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer, to tell the story of his journey from Catholicism to atheism and back. It’s a smart, provocative, and surprisingly timely addition to a very old genre.

Ash Carter: Why did you decide to write this book, and who is it for?

Christopher Beha: Let me say first what I did not write the book to do, which is to offer some definitive case for READ ON

This week, don’t miss a dual portrait of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, a study of Roman emperors through the eyes of everyday citizens, and a look into the collaboration behind Psycho

By Jim Kelly

Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle towered above much of the 20th century, though it can be argued that Churchill’s finest hours were in the early stages of World War II and that de Gaulle’s best years stretched for more than two decades after it. Both held romantic visions of their countries, though de Gaulle was more aware that his was not realistic. What Richard Vinen does so brilliantly in The Last Titans is to show how the differences between these two leaders helped dictate the destinies of their people, and he does so with just the right balance of intimate detail and trenchant analysis. De Gaulle comes across as the cannier of the two, but that may be because he had a sharper sense of tragedy. READ ON

Points programs are destroying the luxury-hotel experience. Can anything stop the freeloaders?

By Mark Ellwood

Several years ago, at a confidential meeting hosted by one of the world’s top hotel chains, a manager launched into a rant. He ran one of the chain’s flagship ultra-luxury properties and was facing a constant, unfixable problem: guests staying for free on points.

“These folks showed up with coolers full of their own food, and had everything removed from the mini-bar so they could put it in there,” he said. “Their sole goal was to stay in the hotel, and spend as little as possible, making sandwiches at the breakfast buffet”—included in the rate—“then stashing them in napkins READ ON

The alleged vandalizing of geotubes installed to prevent beach erosion is exposing fault lines between the island’s affluent summer residents and year-round locals

By William D. Cohan

Burton Balkind, known to many as just “Spruce,” is the president of the Nantucket Coastal Conservancy, a highfalutin name for a grassroots, volunteer nonprofit on the island that has given itself the task of monitoring the mostly pristine beaches that surround it. Nantucket, of course, has become a premier summer playground for many of America’s richest and most powerful, from Stephen Schwarzman to Eric Schmidt to David Rubenstein. “We have great arts and culture, and we have amazing restaurants and a beautiful harbor,” Balkind, who has called Nantucket his home for the past 25 years, tells me. “But, really, the draw to Nantucket is our beaches, and I feel like one of the most important things we can do as a community is protect our beaches.” READ ON

Prediction markets are courting controversy—and allegations of insider trading—by taking bets on the Iran war. Gambling on human life may be venal, but it isn’t new

By Stuart Jeffries

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran compound was reduced to rubble by an Israeli strike, at the end of February, a Polymarket user called magamyman netted around $553,000, having bet that the Supreme Leader would no longer be in power by the end of March. Other speculators had cashed in by successfully predicting when the war would start. “It’s insane this is legal,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy posted on X. California Representative Mike Levin noted that magamyman bought in on the position when the probability of a strike was at 17 percent—just 71 minutes before the news broke publicly.

Making money by predicting the deaths of human beings one has READ ON

By Carolina de Armas

Asked to describe my perfect date, I concur with Miss Rhode Island’s inspired take in 2000’s READ ON

With the arrival of warmer weather, two new coffee-table books revisit the late Martin Parr’s wry pictures—and the environmental warning simmering beneath them

By Elena Clavarino

Nothing escaped Martin Parr. The British photographer, who died last December at 73, swept across the world with a macro lens, capturing his subjects from uncomfortably close range, in brash, saturated color. Viewers often leave his exhibitions unsure whether to laugh or cry. “Remember I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment,” he said. “That’s part of my mantra.... If you want to read it you can read it.”

Parr was born in 1952, in the prosperous town of Epsom, Surrey. He looked forward to weekends in West Yorkshire, where his grandfather, the amateur photographer George Parr, taught him the READ ON

In an interview, the Oscar-nominated—and LaGuardia-educated!—actor dismissed ballet and opera as art forms “no one cares about.” How could he forget where he came from?

By Sarah Hoover

I had high hopes for Timothée Chalamet. I thought he was sophisticated, a city kid—a hustler who knew how to take the subway at age 7 and buy drugs at age 12 and who probably snuck into MoMA at age 14, without paying, of course (he needed the money for drugs, you see), to witness some of the ways that his forefathers and mothers changed culture for the better and made beautiful and enduring objects that transmute human truths.

What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t see any of this coming when, in a recent interview with Matthew McConaughey, Chalamet said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though like no one cares about this anymore.” READ ON

By Rich Cohen

Up here, on the surface, Tom Junod’s book In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man is about his father, Big Lou Junod, a stylish, larger-than-life, Paul Bunyan figure who, in his son’s eyes, could whip any man and love every woman. It’s about the truth behind the façade, the old man’s philandering and vow-breaking, and what a boy raised by a false god can do with such a legacy.

But down below, in the depths, it’s about America, how the glamour of the 60s gave way to the 80s, the READ ON

It’s 1977. You’re a Hollywood screenwriter working on a script with Sean Connery. Are you going to tell him his ideas are dumb?

By Michael Elias

Eve Babitz got an assignment to write about Spago and invited me to join her. It was the original Spago on the hill above Tower Records where Wolfgang Puck made veal schnitzels for Billy Wilder, and movie stars fought for reservations. The maître d’, Bernard, led us to a prized window table. Eve faced the door with a view of entering V.I.P.’s, while I looked down on the Viper Room.

Just as the smoked-salmon pizza arrived, Eve grabbed my hand. “Sean Connery just walked in. Don’t turn around. Stars hate it when you stare.” I didn’t stare, but I thought about the time Michael Ovitz arranged for me and my partner to write a screenplay with 007. READ ON

An exhibition in Paris collects more than 230 works created by the French artist in his last decade, when illness confined him to a life in bed that sparked a spectacular burst of creativity

By Nicholas Fox Weber

In one of the last self-portraits Rembrandt painted before he died, in 1668, he is laughing heartily. His humor suggests that the only way to face the ultimate is to be as alive as possible. Cézanne’s final version of The Card Players (1894–95) presents us with a moment in which mental concentration and human bodies, thought and matter, merge. In all of art history, however, there is no greater fusion of ethereality and immortality than in the work produced by Henri Matisse during the last 13 years of his life. The spirit of his colors and the forcefulness of his lines are boundless. READ ON

Three concurrent exhibitions pay tribute to the Austrian artist whose radical explorations of self defied the strictures of the male-dominated 20th-century art world

By Patricia Zohn

You might have found her standing or sitting or even stretched out on a canvas on the floor, downloading every bodily sensation, eyes wide shut to capture the evanescent colors inside her eyelids before she began to paint. Through these and other radical methodologies, the Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) channeled her perception of a moment and made the invisible visible. Just now, her art is the subject of three concurrent exhibitions: “Flow of Paint = Flow of Life,” at the Hamburger Kunsthalle; “Honey, You’re a Wonderful Model,” at the Des Moines Art Center; and “Maria Lassnig,” at Petzel, in Manhattan. READ ON

A coffee-table book and exhibition re-create a 1999 album of the photographer’s most experimental work, collecting never-before-seen images and their handwritten pencil annotations

By Carolina de Armas

Helmut Newton needs no introduction. But we’ll give him one anyway. He was born Helmut Neustädter in Berlin in 1920 to a Jewish family. His father owned a button factory, which the Nazis took from him in the 1930s. After Kristallnacht, in 1938, Helmut’s parents fled to Argentina while he waited for his passport. Within a month, he was able to hop a ship to China, which ended up in Singapore; the authorities there sent him to Australia, where he enlisted in the army.

After the war, Neustädter returned to Melbourne, changed his surname to Newton, set up a photography studio, and married his life partner June Browne, an actress better known by her stage name, Alice Springs. Newton began shooting theater and fashion, and did industrial photography. READ ON

Why my father risked everything for a malfunctioning, multi-million-dollar jeweled egg—only for it to destroy his business, his family, and his life

By Serena Kutchinsky

As a child, I grew up surrounded by beauty. Before I could read, Dad taught me to recognize precious stones, pouring glittering piles onto his desk and letting me examine them through a loupe. I remember the bright clatter as gems spilled from the tiny, white paper packets he kept tucked inside his suit jacket. After he died, my connection to that world, which had shaped my earliest memories, fell away.

Years later, I set out to track down his greatest creation: a multi-million-dollar jeweled egg that had destroyed our family. At first, I was driven by a single READ ON

On the heels of Taylor Frankie Paul’s Bachelorette blowup and Summer House’s own Scandoval, one writer goes inside the reality-TV franchise that puts them all to shame

By Valeriya Safronova

Last month, Disney’s ABC canceled the upcoming season of The Bachelorette just days before its scheduled premiere after TMZ published a video of its star, Taylor Frankie Paul, physically attacking her boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, in February of 2023. Paul, who, alongside Mortensen, rose to fame for starring in Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault in August of 2023. Filming for Season Five of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has halted amid revelations that a domestic-assault investigation into the pair is ongoing.

Paul has dominated the headlines for the past READ ON

By Maggie Turner

Fortnum & Mason does not need a goose from Aesop’s fables to have a golden egg

On the 37th floor of a Fifth Avenue tower, the 31-year-old Moldovan sushi chef and Masa alum is leading Manhattan’s most exclusive new omakase counter

By Jennifer Noyes

Thirty-seven floors above Fifth Avenue, a Moldovan chef is serving some of the rarest Wagyu in America to 12 people at a time. The setting is Yūgin, an omakase counter tucked inside Coco’s at Colette, a private members’ club in Manhattan’s General Motors Building. The beef is Omi Wagyu from Shiga Prefecture—the oldest Wagyu lineage in Japan, dating back more than 400 years—access to which Eugeniu Zubco spent years cultivating. In New York, he’s encountered it only once before: during his decade at Masa.

Zubco isn’t Japanese. In the omakase world, that still matters. He doesn’t pretend otherwise. READ ON

For decades, the Huntington Hotel was San Francisco’s hideout for everyone from Marlene Dietrich to Truman Capote. After a five-year blackout and a grand renovation, its neon crown has flickered back to life

By Ben Ryder Howe

Is San Francisco a world-class city? It’s a question its residents hate, and with good reason. San Francisco has more private wealth than Boston, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., combined, and its G.D.P. is larger than Dallas’s. Many consider it America’s most beautiful city. But if it is a world-class city, what is its world-class hotel? The hotel that doesn’t just provide a place to bed down but reflects the city’s grandest vision of itself—a Carlyle or Claridge’s or, in the case of a smaller city like San Francisco, a miniature grande dame like the Beau-Rivage Genève. READ ON

A new coffee-table book traces the artist’s humble beginnings in China, the exiles and travel bans he endured, and the radical works he created along the way

By Carolina de Armas

“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” That’s Ai Weiwei, summarizing both his life and his work. The Chinese contemporary artist is the son of a so-called enemy of the state. His father, Ai Qing, was a poet who was also a member of the Communist Party, and yet he was exiled to a labor camp in “Little Siberia” in 1958, after defending colleagues accused of “anti-party sentiment.”

A vocal critic of authoritarianism, government corruption, and human-rights abuses, as well as a staunch defender of freedom of speech, Weiwei has never had difficulty getting his points across. His most revered installations were blunt in their messaging. In 1995, his photographic series READ ON

Buddhist monks are fighting, hibernating bears are biting, and other strange stories from around the globe …

By George Kalogerakis

In Palm Beach, Florida, Donald Trump celebrated week three (and counting) of the war he has unleashed by taking to the links. Quiet time to reflect on the latest dispiriting mess he’s inflicted on the world? More likely it was to process the speech his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, had just made at the White House for Women’s History Month: “As a visionary”—how about that, two in one household—“I know success is not born overnight.” (Or, rather, “borne over night,” as the official White House transcript has it.) “Often alone, at the top, I follow my passion, listen to my instinct, and always maintain a laser focus. In solitude my creative mind dances—filling my imagination with originality.” READ ON

By Joe McKendry

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

Trendy new members’ clubs are taking over Manhattan, but some young men are opting for the city’s Gilded Age mainstays instead—trading flashy perks for old-school allure

By Andrew Zucker

For some time, Manhattan’s private-club scene has experienced vertiginous growth. Mario Carbone launched a Hudson Yards joint, ZZ’s Club, in 2023; chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten descended upon the Meatpacking District to open a point-one-percent-filled catacomb, Chez Margaux; Sunset Tower proprietor Jeff Klein descended upon the city last year to open one of his San Vicente clubs in the former Jane Hotel (disclosure: I am a member); even Kith, the clothing brand, joined the trend with Kith Ivy, a $36,000-initiation-fee hideout that opened a few months ago near Hudson River Park.

But as the new guard of hospitality impresarios dot the READ ON

By Eric Hanson

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

On the show’s 20th anniversary, one zillennial goes behind the scenes of the Disney Channel juggernaut that launched a 13-year-old Miley Cyrus and captivated a generation

By Carolina de Armas

Perhaps the only people who know (or, frankly, care) that Hannah Montana is having its 20th anniversary this Tuesday—an occasion Disney is marking with a live-interview-concert special with Miley Cyrus, the show’s star, hosted by Call Her Daddy podcaster Alex Cooper—are “zillennial” women. This micro-generation, of which I’m a card-carrying member, was born between the early 1990s and early 2000s. We arrived in a world re-shaped by tragedy and the Internet boom, came of age during a financial crisis, and chose as our standard-bearer—ask your twentysomething niece or daughter but, good God man, hopefully not your girlfriend, lest you be pulling a Leo DiCaprio!—a 13-year-old pop star in a platinum-blond wig. READ ON

By Elena Clavarino

Who says Easter eggs are only for children? Behold a worthy prize for your adult (or sophisticated youngster) egg hunt: a handcrafted READ ON

Forget Patagonia—the world’s best fly-fishing may just be hiding in the Spanish Pyrenees, where one legendary outfitter guards a “Destination X”

By David Coggins

Fly-fishing, like international espionage, prizes access, inside information, and closely guarded secrets. The stakes are lower, but its practitioners still take the endeavor very seriously. The highest currency in the angling world is the river nobody knows about—the kind that inspires speculation about the dream equation: plenty of trout and few people.

Now imagine you and I are enjoying a civilized drama at a bar, and we discover a mutual interest in the piscatorial arts. As the evening progresses, I would lean over and say conspiratorially, “Yes, Patagonia is great, but have you ever fished in Spain?” You might respond, “Are there trout in Spain?” I would nod knowingly. There are indeed trout in Spain; in fact, it’s one of angling’s great unknown destinations. READ ON

By Pico Iyer

Colm Tóibín writes what could be called emotional thrillers, so swift and intimate that you can’t stop reading, even though the only mysteries they’re investigating have to do with loneliness and loss. His celebrated novels take many different forms—plunging us into the predicament of a young Irish woman torn between two homes and loves (Brooklyn and Long Island), reimagining with visceral power the stories of Agamemnon (House of Names) and the Virgin Mary (The Testament of Mary), stealthily exploring the secret lives of Henry James (The Master) and Thomas Mann (The Magician READ ON

By George Pendle

With its blend of satire, gossip, and serious investigative reporting, the storied British magazine Private Eye is unique. (It was one READ ON

By Gracie Wiener

As the world around us transitions out of winter heaviness to the airy and light spring, so does my daily perfume. Violette 30

Sunday roasts, sticky toffee pudding, and porn-star martinis hinted at Anglomania’s return to New York nightlife. Now the pubs are arriving in force

By Cami Fateh

When the British steak-house chain Hawksmoor opened in New York, five years ago, they had to explain what a Sunday roast was. “Imagine Thanksgiving dinner, but you’re having it over lunch, and it’s not turkey,” said Evyn Block, the steak house’s U.S. brand director.

Fast-forward to now, and the quintessential pub meal needs no introduction. This winter saw a series of Sunday roasts staged at the city’s fashion-set haunts—People’s and Jean’s, the latter of which co-hosted one alongside Barbour. But the recent Britification of the New York nightlife and dining scenes—now marked by a fresh wave of pub openings—does not stop there. READ ON

By Tobias Grey

By any measure, Zac Brettler was a precocious kid. He was “scarcely out of diapers” by the time he had memorized the lyrics of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Going Back to Cali” and could regale his family with a word-perfect rendition. At five, he had the wit of a pint-size Groucho Marx. When asked by an older girl to read something, Zac didn’t miss a beat: “I didn’t bring my glasses,” he replied. Not only did Zac not wear glasses; he couldn’t yet read. By 10, his upper-middle-class, Jewish parents, Rachelle and Matthew Brettler, were astonished to hear him advising relatives to upgrade the family car to a Mercedes. In READ ON

By Max Carter

Robert Ivermee’s new study, Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India, is an exquisite stew of oxymoron, irony, and idiosyncrasy. Failures are seldom glorious. Despite all appearances to the contrary—in fiction, general histories, and popular imagination—the French outlasted the British in India. And yet, their project in South Asia might be filed under the incongruous and justly restricted genre of “loser imperialism.”

Elizabeth I granted the English East India Company (E.I.C.) charter on December 31, 1600. It would be another six decades before the French imitated their rivals, forming the Compagnie des Indes in 1664. Their READ ON

This week, don’t miss a roadmap to saving America’s public high schools, a cartographer’s analysis of the Dark Ages, and a guide to coping with our most difficult emotions

By Jim Kelly

How do we go about making better citizens, Americans who know their history and the value of participating in our democracy? James Traub engagingly delivers the clear-eyed and persuasive answer: start with our high schools, and ideally by instilling a love of great books and the study of what constitutes character. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, our goal should not be to be happy but to lead lives that are useful, honorable, and compassionate. Traub visits public schools across the country, interviewing teachers and students, most notably at what he calls the “classical school,” where Latin is taught and READ ON

David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, discusses his new drama, about the C.I.A.’s infamous LSD experiments—and reveals why he hasn’t written any television since Tony’s final scene

By Stuart Heritage

Last week, a plush London hotel became a temple to HBO Max. Pictures of Carrie Bradshaw lined the corridors, HBO Max cushions dotted every chair in sight, and a heaving roster of A-list talent – Lisa Kudrow, Noah Wyle and Steve Carell – were poised and ready to hustle for the streamer’s UK launch.

However, you could argue that this whole circus was constructed because of one man. A few decades ago, HBO was a little-seen backwater of sport and standup. One show propelled it to the forefront of prestige television. That show was The Sopranos. The man who created it is David Chase. READ ON

Meet the marginal but persistent anti-royal activist behind the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

By Jacob Furedi

Graham Smith is an unlikely heir to Oliver Cromwell. He used to work in I.T. support. He plays badminton. He lives in Reading, a commuter town 25 minutes from London. For the past two decades, however, the 51-year-old has also been the chief executive of Republic, arguably the most influential anti-royal group in the land—although, in a country still broadly fond of its monarchy, some would argue that is not saying much. The job mostly involves researching the royals’ finances, with the occasional protest thrown in.

Republic has no headquarters, so I meet Smith outside the Green Park tube READ ON

With their prospects drying up faster than Meghan can make her jam, the Sussexes’ latest Netflix cash grab is a polo series set in Wellington, Florida

By Kate Mansey

It is a “sexy sport” filled with “dirty sweaty boys … riding” according to a 2024 documentary about polo by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Viewers, however, were not enthralled with the Netflix program, Polo, which ranked only 3,442 out of about 7,000, with approximately 500,000 views. Yet, Prince Harry and Meghan will return to the subject when they produce a drama for the streaming platform.

Set in the town of Wellington, Florida, known as the winter equestrian capital of the world, the as-yet untitled project will follow two rival polo teams and their families. Francisca X. Hu, best known for her work on the television series READ ON

By George Kalogerakis

The last time we checked in on Alynda Segarra, two years ago, their band Hurray for the Riff Raff had just released The Past Is Still Alive

By Spike Carter

A martini, to me, is only ever made with gin. A new brand of vodka has me convinced, however, that a juniper-less martini can READ ON

By Jennifer Noyes

If your Easter basket leans more haute couture than supermarket chocolate, the Dandelion Signature

By Gabriella Maestri

First released in 1991, Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” is having a major resurgence after being featured in the premiere of READ ON

By Barry Blitt

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

By Jim Kelly

Nicholas Lemann is not one for small topics. He wrote about the great Black migration from the rural South to the urban North in READ ON

Horses was the hottest restaurant in L.A., until co-owner Liz Johnson accused her husband and partner, Will Aghajanian, of murdering their pets. Three years later, he breaks his silence

By Kelly Loudenberg

On May 17, 2023, the James Beard Award–nominated chef Will Aghajanian entered Vesper, a dimly lit cocktail bar in Bangkok’s Silom district, and ordered a martini. Then he ordered another one, and slouched forward, crying. He knew what was coming. “Are you O.K.?” the bartender asked.

After more than a dozen martinis, he returned to his hotel and slept through a steady hum of phone alerts under his pillow. He awoke to a text from his new girlfriend, who had planned to meet him in Thailand for vacation: “I read the stories. We need to talk.”

The news broke in the READ ON

By Paulina Prosnitz

Li-Lac Chocolates has been a New York mainstay since 1923, when a Greek immigrant named George Demetrious first READ ON

By Jeanne Malle

The concept of an edible Louis Vuitton handbag would be funny if it didn’t look so good. First released for Easter last year, the chocolate READ ON

To the world, Audrey Hepburn was the image of Hollywood glamour and grace. But my mother’s personal life was a far more tragic tale

By Sean Hepburn Ferrer

When my co-author, Wendy Holden, and I sat down to plan the book about my mother and lay out the bare bones and milestones of her life, we were faced with some gargantuan decisions. My mother was a deeply private person. This is the reason she never made Hollywood her base. Instead, she opted for the bucolic environment of the Swiss countryside. Mainly because Switzerland is a neutral country, a must for a woman who was forged by the fires of the Second World War. But also because she could live a normal life there, out of reach of the tabloids and devoid of the vacuous accoutrements that Hollywood stars have long had to submit themselves to on a daily basis. READ ON

From the stone façades of East Sussex to the wood shingles of Rhode Island, three new coffee-table books capture the child-like wonder of cottage living

By Carolina de Armas

There is such a word as “cottagecore.” An Internet-born term—later popularized on TikTok—it describes a romanticized vision, often that of an upper-class city dweller, of rural life. Milkmaid dresses. Wildflowers. Homemade bread. And, yes, a cozy cottage. It’s an aesthetic that Nancy Meyers mastered in The Holiday, a movie whose English-countryside setting has served as a blueprint for the online trend. But the escapist fantasy goes way back. As the snobbish Robert Ferrars says in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, “I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them.” Three new coffee-table books round out that picture. READ ON

By Gabriella Maestri

The Google description for Mexico City’s San Ángel Inn is “posh take on tacos,” but the restaurant’s storied history goes beyond that READ ON

Russia has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and lost much of its influence in the region. This month, the capital went weeks without Internet

By Andrew Ryvkin

Moskvichka, a lifestyle publication run by one of the Kremlin’s most notorious propagandists, Kristina Potupchik, just published a review of Ava, a new restaurant overlooking Red Square that serves crab doughnuts, a scallop-and-strawberry salad, and a white-chocolate-and-sour-cream cake wrapped in edible gold. What the magazine failed to mention is that the view from Ava has changed drastically in the last couple of weeks.

F.S.O. (Russia’s secret service) officers in full military gear are stationed around the Kremlin. A masked gunman is perched on Lenin’s tomb. First-time diners who have trouble finding the restaurant will have to ask directions from READ ON

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

By Barry Blitt

This item was originally published on airmail.news. Read on Air Mail →

Juda Engelmayer has carved out a lucrative niche defending the indefensible, including Sean “Diddy” Combs and Harvey Weinstein. But there’s one client he wouldn’t represent—Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

By Megan Agnew

“Yes, yes, Harvey, I know,” said Juda Engelmayer as he opened the door of his office, wireless headphones in, phone in hand, rolling his eyes theatrically. “Yes, Harvey, I’ll try.” From the 72nd floor of the Empire State Building, Engelmayer has created a niche: the publicist who takes on clients so nuclear that no one else will touch them. The “Harvey” on the phone was the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who calls him most days from prison. Taking the job was a “calculated” decision, said Engelmayer. “I thought it was a good way that I could propel myself and make myself a better-known PR person.” READ ON

Are there such things as “girl books” and “boy books”?

By Carolina de Armas and Paulina Prosnitz

It’s an image that has been mocked and satirized incessantly on the Internet: a mustachioed, twentysomething man on the subway pulls out his book, cracks open the creaseless spine, and stares intently down at the page, one hand pensively tapping his chin—the very picture of erudition. You catch a glimpse of the cover—it’s The Sun Also Rises. (If you’re unlucky enough to go on a date with this man, he may ask if you’ve heard of it.)

But it’s a phenomenon that goes far beyond just the Performative Bro. It’s the Lit Girl from your liberal-arts college who READ ON

At Fowlescombe Farm in South Devon, Scandinavian design and Michelin-caliber cooking meet rare-breed sheep, companionable goats, and just enough English-countryside mud underfoot

By Ashley Baker

Nestled across 450 acres in a very happy valley on England’s verdant southern coast, Fowlescombe Farm would appeal as much to old-guard aristocrats as to a retired accountant from Muskogee—and seat them at the same table without either party feeling out of place. Located in South Devon, a three-hour train ride from London, the property has 10 primarily one-bedroom suites, along with an airy, open kitchen and informal dining room. Its status as a luxury hotel, however, is simply the latest chapter in a very long story.

Established as a farm in 1537, the property’s original manor house READ ON

By Carolina de Armas

Oval eggs are overrated—or so La Maison du Chocolat would have you believe. Doing away with the READ ON

A Chinese tech firm has the goods! An explosively fun model-rocket company! An app for the speed-curious! And more …

By Jonathan Margolis

the Honor Magic8 Pro

Apple’s successor in tech wizardry has arrived

It is still emphatically the case that Apple makes the best phones, computers, and most everything else. But it’s the fast-moving nature of technology—to borrow Dorothy Parker’s witticism about actors—to go from tour de force to forced to tour.

Look at Nokia, Ask Jeeves, Palm, Compaq, Yahoo, and BlackBerry. It could well be the case that Apple, too, will fade, within 20 to 50 years. When people ask me which tech brand will dominate the near future, I generally tell them I don’t know—but its founder is probably 15 years old and growing up in China. READ ON

The screenwriter of the Academy Award–winning film Argo, which dramatized the daring exfiltration of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran during the 1979–81 hostage crisis, on what’s at stake in Iran today

By Chris Terrio

At a social event a few years ago, I was introduced to a former high-ranking official in the Obama administration—and when I say “high-ranking,” I mean about as high as it gets. When we were left alone for a moment, this person—who had been formal and reticent throughout the evening—touched my wrist in a gesture of unexpected intimacy, then leaned in to quietly thank me for writing the 2012 film Argo.

I was puzzled and must have looked it. The former official went on to explain that the film had proved useful in negotiations, when the administration was trying READ ON

In an exclusive excerpt from the River Cafe impresario’s forthcoming book, Wes Anderson, Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, and others talk all things food, from microwave dinners to caviar

By Ruthie Rogers

My father was a Billingsgate Fish Market porter and a big gambler. He never brought home steak, it was too dear. But he used to nick a lot of fish. So for 15 years, I ate fish—every kind of fish you could imagine. —Michael Caine

I grew up in the aftermath of World War II. We were rationed, so bacon was usually a no-no. We’d be given a tiny bottle of orange juice, which you diluted and poured into everyone’s glasses. —Elton John

Cooking in Liverpool, in my working-class family, there was not much variety. —Paul McCartney READ ON

Organized by his son, Christopher, an exhibition at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi traces Mark Rothko’s career—and his enduring ties to the Italian city—with more than 70 paintings

By Tobias Grey

Writing from the French Riviera in the spring of 1950, Mark Rothko confided to his friend the sculptor Richard Lippold, “I am still looking for the fabulous, which they say I will find in Italy.” Rothko was 46 and in the middle of a five-month European tour. Organized by his wife, Mell, the trip was meant to help him recover from a nervous breakdown brought on by his mother’s death, in 1948. His work, too, had recently—and momentously—changed. Rothko was now painting his breakthrough color-drenched abstractions. READ ON

With its glory days as Brazil’s Hollywood long behind it, the northern city of Recife is having a film renaissance, powering productions such as the Oscar–nominated The Secret Agent

By Elena Clavarino

In the opening scene of The Secret Agent, a fugitive living under the alias “Marcelo” drives along a sunbaked road through Brazil’s backcountry before pulling up at a gas station. The camera lingers, luxuriously, on the dilapidated roadside. Opposite the pump lies a dead body, haphazardly covered with half a sheet of cardboard and encircled by black flies. When Marcelo asks about it, the gas-station attendant shrugs. A station employee shot a thief three days earlier, he explains, then disappeared. He had called the police, but no one came. “Now it’s starting to smell,” he says. Ironically, two officers READ ON

After discovering a knack for comedy at Juilliard, Ben Stiller’s 23-year-old daughter is now starring alongside Lisa Kudrow in the third and final season of The Comeback

By Paulina Prosnitz

In her first year at Juilliard, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Ella Stiller auditioned for the part of Lady Percy in the school’s production of Henry IV. She was cast instead as Falstaff, Prince Hal’s buffoonish companion. “I was humiliated,” says Stiller, who was 19 at the time. “I cried when I found out I had to do it…. All I wanted was to feel cool and sexy and like I’m becoming a woman. And they cast me as the ugly, old, drunk, fat guy.”

It’s not surprising that, as the daughter of actors Ben Stiller ( READ ON

In an interview, the friends behind Everybody Loves Raymond and Osteria Mozza discuss Max & Helen’s, their new L.A. diner where everyone—from Steven Spielberg to Timothée Chalamet—has to wait in line

By David T. Friendly

It’s another sunny weekday on Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles, and at noon, the estimated wait time for a table at the new diner on the block is at least an hour. Welcome to Max & Helen’s, the very happening and very small 40-seat hot spot from the TV producer and host Philip “Phil” Rosenthal, who created Everybody Loves Raymond and Somebody Feed Phil, and the legendary restaurateur Nancy Silverton, the force behind Osteria Mozza and Campanile. It’s a family affair: the diner is named after Rosenthal’s parents, and his daughter, Lily, runs operations with her husband, Mason Royal. READ ON

My father, George Plimpton, was chivalrous, charming, and always a little out of reach

By Taylor Plimpton

George Plimpton was having dinner with Kurt Vonnegut and James Lipton at Elaine’s one night, and he departed first. Through the window, they could see my dad step onto his bicycle and pedal away into the night. “There goes the last gentleman,” Vonnegut said.

I was raised to be a little gentleman myself. At St. Bernard’s, the New York City private school that my dad had attended with Peter Matthiessen, I learned proper grammar, Latin, and how to shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye.

My father, who would have turned 99 this week, didn’t do much READ ON

A fable for our times (with apologies to Shel Silverstein)

By David Kamp and Joe McKendry

Once there was a guardrail …

and it

looked after

a

little boy.

And every day

the boy

would come

and

he

would

kick

its

beams

and scream at it

and curse at it

and tell the rail

that he would own it one day.

And the guardrail,

having guarded the boy

and protected the world from the boy,

was happy.

But time went by.

One day the boy came to the guardrail.

And the rail said, “Come, Boy, kick me again

and I shall stand strong against you

and remind you of what is right and what is good.”

“I am too big to have guardrails,” said the boy. READ ON

The biographer of the pre-eminent Texas chronicler recounts an infamous encounter with Ken Kesey’s gang of LSD enthusiasts, later immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

By David Streitfeld

Most novelists lead quiet lives, just them and the typewriter. Larry McMurtry strived for this ideal, but things just kept happening to him.

Movie stars such as Diane Keaton and Cybill Shepherd would fall in love with the Texan writer. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama celebrated him and his work. Someone would randomly pick up one of his books in a bookstore and decide they had to make a movie out of it right now, which is how Paul Newman came to make his classic Hud, an adaptation of McMurtry’s novel Horseman, Pass By, in 1963.

“If I have a genius for anything, it’s for being found,” the writer once told a friend. READ ON

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Atlanta playground created by the Japanese-American artist, the High Museum of Art showcases his first retrospective in 25 years

By Peter Saenger

“I am not a designer,” said Isamu Noguchi in 1949, even though he was in the middle of a career designing furniture, lamps, ashtrays, a cemetery, bridge railings, parks, public spaces for skyscrapers, and groundbreaking sets for the dances of Martha Graham. He explained that design tended to imply an accommodation to “quixotic fashion,” while he saw himself, a sculptor, as dealing with “fundamental problems of form.” READ ON

Well-heeled Hamptonites are bridling at a proposed horse-riding complex—complete with a giant manure pit—amidst their multi-million-dollar estates. Will the neighs have it?

By Ashley Baker

E

very morning on Scuttle Hole Road in Bridgehampton, some of the luckiest yogis on the planet gather beneath a canvas tent so artful it could have been modeled on a Taiwanese lantern. There they hover in crow pose amidst 28 vine-covered acres.

This is Channing Daughters, a respected vineyard founded in 1982 by the late Walter Channing—a financier, artist, and former husband of Stockard Channing—which has since become a center of gravity for the East End of Long Island. In addition to its wines, the estate hosts breath work sessions, ecstatic dance, concerts, craft fairs, and yoga classes that draw a steady procession of devotees throughout the year. READ ON

A.I. shopping assistants can find you anything. What they can’t give you is taste

By Jennifer Noyes

In the early 2000s, I saw a woman on a street in Milan wearing a skirt I couldn’t explain. Black taffeta, deconstructed, with cutouts and layers that fell in a way that felt slightly wrong but also very right. I didn’t know enough yet to identify what it was. It felt like Comme des Garçons, but not quite.

It haunted me. I asked friends and colleagues, pulled archive references, and looked at old runway photos. The more I looked, the more I learned what I didn’t want—and what I did. Years later, I walked into Linda Dresner and saw READ ON

In the rugged heart of Kenya’s Laikipia Plateau, Sosian Lodge offers a rare, high-octane alternative to the traditional safari

By Susan Rigetti

In central Kenya, far from the Masai Mara, lies the Laikipia Plateau, a vast, arid bushland set at 6,500 feet. Dotted with ranches and private conservancies, it is often overlooked by camera-toting visitors chasing the Great Migration. And as one of the last strongholds of the African wild dog and the Grévy’s zebra, it remains among the country’s most compelling safari destinations.

The place to stay is Sosian Lodge, a working cattle ranch comprising 24,000 acres, several hours northwest of Mount Kenya. Getting there is an adventure in itself: after a flight into Nairobi and a transfer to READ ON

This month in mysteries: a return of Tana French’s retired cop, Cal Hooper, and a debut thriller about a female detective investigating a strange cold case

By Lisa Henricksson

Given the chaotic and scary place we Americans now find ourselves in, perhaps you’ve fantasized about relocating to another country where they speak English with a charming accent and don’t start a war every couple of weeks. Like, say, Ireland? If so, you might want to read one or all three of the books in Tana French’s Cal Hooper series before doing anything rash. Her latest, The Keeper, wraps up the struggle of her hero, a laconic retired American cop, to settle into Ardnakelty, which may be the least welcoming community in Ireland. Potential émigrés, beware.

French is one of our most gifted crime-fiction writers, and in the first two Hooper books, READ ON

From Met Gala ensembles to personal treasures, an archival exhibition in Provence pays tribute to the elegantly extravagant editor André Leon Talley, whose influence lives on

By Amy Fine Collins

When Paula Wallace, president and co-founder of the Savannah College of Art and Design, proposed to André Leon Talley that the school create an exhibition devoted to his wardrobe, the redoubtable fashion editor exclaimed, “It must be done!” In fact, since that conversation, SCAD has mounted three such shows, each entitled “André Leon Talley: Style Is Forever.” The first opened at the SCAD Museum of Art, in Savannah; the second at the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, in Atlanta; and now the third opens on Wednesday at the university’s study-abroad campus, SCAD FASH Lacoste, in Provence, France. READ ON

Eric Freymond stole millions from the original Bond girl and bilked an heir to the Hermès fortune out of billions. Was the Swiss wealth manager the greatest fraudster who ever lived?

By Marianka Swain

Where is 007 when you need him? Ursula Andress, the Swiss actress who was immortalized on film as the original Bond girl, has been “devastated” by the loss of $22.5 million of her $25 million fortune, which she claims is down to her late wealth manager, Eric Freymond. Nicolas Puech, heir to the luxury fashion brand Hermès, has also accused Freymond of costing him billions by selling off Puech’s 6 percent stake in his family’s company.

Andress, who recently turned 90, told Swiss-German publication Blick in January: “I’m still in shock. I was deliberately targeted. For eight years, I READ ON