“I’m always the director, even when I’m the audience. Felix Gonzales-Torres taught me that. It’s a specific way of watching and I love to look.”
The AIR SUPPLY Experts’ Guide to the Holidays
Hosting is an Artform with Martine Syms
The artist, filmmaker, and “conceptual entrepreneur” has exhibited at MoMA, directed the feature-length film The African Desperate, collaborated with Prada, and shot Rihanna for a Louis Vuitton men’s campaign. Syms grew up in Altadena, California, and splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. She likes her holidays laced with cyanide and lip balm
Martine Syms
Holiday Cult Classics
The Nonconformist Christmas
Limited Room at the Inn
Make Your Guest List, Check it Twice
“I have a hard time with a dinner for ten. It costs a ton of money and I don’t cook like that. But if I did, we’d start with chips and caviar.”
A December to Remember
Pick Your Poison
“I’d serve a nice bottle of Domaine Gérard Villet Chardonnay Cuvée Orange Arbois (2014) and cyanide. We’d all wear matching black jeans.”
To Give and to Get
Shop Martine’s Holiday Picks
Olivia von Halle
Bella Ivory Camisole Set
$405
“I’m fascinated by the guest who never leaves because, Why are you still in my house? When What are you doing tomorrow? doesn’t work, I put on my pajamas—or take something off.”
Kindred Black
Sleeping Beauty
$225
“My hosting style hangs on the skin like a scented oil. You’ve got to be close to smell it.”
Bowers & Wilkins
High-Performance Floor-Standing Speakers
$4,500 per Pair
“No matter what happens at dinner, we will all be dancing to Orbital’s Belfast at full volume afterwards.”
Alice Mushrooms
Party Trick
From $59
“I judge people for bringing a lame. Unless the lame has drugs. Then they can stay for an hour.”
Mikio Sankey
Esoteric Acupuncture Volume VI: Antahkarana Celestial Fullness
$119.99
“When does the exhale become an inhale?”
U Beauty
The Plasma Lip Compound
$68
“After everyone’s gone, what remains is the feeling that I need to reapply my lip balm.”
Mercedes-Benz
Robert Downey Jr.’s 1970 280SL Pagoda Coupe Roadster
$185,000
“The truth that comes out when I host: There’s a reason I drive a Mercedes coupe.”
Holiday 2025 Gift Guides
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