Guest Edits
As America turns 250 this July 4th, it seems only fitting to turn to Wes Gordon. The Atlanta-raised designer has spent the last seven years as creative director of Carolina Herrera, one of New York’s most beloved fashion houses, building on its founder’s legacy of fearless, joyful dressing while making it entirely his own. This summer, he arrives with a new handbag, the Mimi and an edit that reads like a very good life: antique mirrors, Christofle silver, children in botanical dresses, and a dog with excellent taste in bedding
Alexander Vreeland grew up sitting in his grandmother’s famously red living room, listening. It turns out that when your grandmother is Diana Vreeland—Harper’s Bazaar fashion editor, Vogue editor-in-chief, and the woman who advised Jackie Kennedy on how to dress a nation, you absorb a few things. After a career at Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani, Vreeland has spent the better part of the last decade stewarding her legacy: editing her Vogue memos into a Rizzoli volume, launching Diana Vreeland Parfums, and ensuring that the Empress of Fashion’s influence reaches generations who never got to sit in that red room. He does all of this, it turns out, with an extremely well-packed carry-on
Photo: © Bruce Weber (Vreelands)
Benjamin Talley Smith has spent years making other brands’ denim famous. The jeans that launched a thousand ShopMy links—at Khaite, Reformation, and Madewell—trace back, quietly, to him. Last year, The New York Times finally said what the industry already knew, calling Smith the most influential denim designer most people had never heard of. His new project, Subject to Change, is a characteristically understated debut: a small, handmade collection of one-of-one bags built from vintage denim he sources and reconstructs himself—the same obsessive craft, finally under his own name. For AIR MAIL, he shares his edit
New York Times best selling author and founder of Men in Blazers, Roger Bennett known to his devoted audience simply as Rog, has spent 20 years telling Americans that soccer was about to change their lives. The British born CEO built North America’s biggest dedicated soccer platform on the conviction that Americans would eventually, inevitably fall for the beautiful game. His new book, We Are the World (Cup), arrives just as the World Cup comes to North American soil. The prophet has been vindicated. The edit is ready. For AIR MAIL, he curates both.
Travel has always been as much about people as places, a distinction Antoni Porowski understands particularly well. The Queer Eye star, bestselling author, and host of National Geographic’s new series Best of the World with Antoni Porowski has built a career around following good stories wherever they lead, often to a memorable meal, an unexpected conversation, or somewhere slightly off the map. For AIR MAIL, he shares the pieces that make summer travel more comfortable, more stylish, and considerably more interesting
Adrian Bartos, better known as D.J. Stretch Armstrong, has spent decades operating as one of downtown New York’s great cultural intermediaries, connecting music, nightlife, fashion, art, and the occasional future legend before everyone else catches on. As co-host of the legendary Stretch & Bobbito Show on WKCR, he helped launch artists such as Nas, Jay-Z, and The Notorious B.I.G. into the wider world. These days, he hosts a monthly jazz night at Nine Orchard, D.J.’s internationally, and is preparing to launch Top of New York Pizza (T.O.N.Y.), a chef-driven slice shop with serious New York DNA. Somewhere in the mix sits tennis, which Stretch follows and plays with the intensity of a man who absolutely owns multiple wristbands and has opinions about Roland-Garros etiquette. For AIR MAIL, he shares the essentials for a proper tennis summer.
Don Johnson has spent the better part of five decades perfecting a very specific American art form: looking impossibly cool while remaining strangely approachable. Between Miami Vice, Nash Bridges, a Golden Globe, a rock-star-adjacent life that includes Hunter S. Thompson stories and engraved guitars from Dickie Betts, and an early belief in Augustinus Bader before the rest of Hollywood caught up, he has managed to build a career that feels less linear than fully lived-in. He is also the father of five children, Jesse, Dakota, Grace, Jasper, and Deacon, which may ultimately be the role that informs this edit most. For AIR MAIL’s Father’s Day issue, Johnson shares the objects that have stayed with him over the years: proper English stationery, velvet dinner jackets, exceptional tea, roses for his wife, and a body oil he swears is responsible for what he describes as “very highly reviewed legs.”
Emma Webster makes landscape paintings for people who suspect nature is no longer entirely natural. The Los Angeles based artist builds her strange, cinematic worlds using a mix of sculpture, virtual reality, 3D modeling software, and traditional painting techniques, creating scenes filled with glowing animals, dramatic skies, and forests that feel faintly haunted. That sensibility is currently on view in Rues and Leaves Themselves Alone, her solo exhibition at New York’s Petzel through June 6, where pastoral landscapes start behaving more like psychological thrillers. For AIR MAIL, Webster shares an edit shaped by the same instincts: atmospheric, transportive, and just surreal enough to keep things interesting.
Chloé Mendel Corgan is a designer and co-creative director of House of Gilles, the New York couture atelier she runs with her father, Gilles Mendel, formerly of J. Mendel, where occasion dressing is treated as a form of storytelling. Her work exists in close proximity to the moments people actually dress for: weddings, celebrations, and everything that requires more than everyday clothes. Her sensibility favors restraint over excess and structure with ease, with an emphasis on hidden construction, lightness in proportion, and a fit that feels deeply personal. For AIR MAIL, she shares an edit shaped by that instinct, grounded in real occasions
Nathan Turner approaches decorating with instinct and confidence, and little interest in rigid rules. His work includes spaces (Mindy Kaling’s office, Amanda Peet, to name a few) shaped by color, pattern, and a relaxed sense of order. A fourth-generation Californian, he brings a sunlit ease to interiors that feel as though they’ve come together over time. A fixture in California entertaining culture and author of I Love Decorating, Turner has built a practice around the idea that homes should feel collected, not composed. Here are the objects and references he returns to when shaping a well-lived-in space
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