The Russian émigré Prince Serge Obolensky bestrode New York’s nightlife like a colossus

By Henry R. Schlesinger

Long before TikTok and Instagram, indeed for much of the 20th century, newspaper gossip and society columns regularly announced who had spent extravagantly and who had behaved badly. It was a time when interest in high society matched, or even surpassed, interest in Hollywood actors and Broadway starlets, and Prince Serge Obolensky, a nightlife-and-hospitality impresario, who seemed to know everyone and be everywhere, could always be found among the boldface names.

Born into an aristocratic Russian family, the Oxford-educated, polo-playing prince fought in the Russian cavalry during World War I, then against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. His READ ON

Nina Campbell, the legendary British interior designer, shares her decorating tips, from the importance of lampshades to tricks for mixing patterns

By Jessica Doyle

Sitting in her smart new boutique on Pimlico Road in London, Nina Campbell is reflecting on the changes she has seen after more than 50 years as one of the most influential figures of the British decorating scene. “These days, everything’s got to be new – what’s the new thing, what’s the trend?” she says. “I don’t really believe in trends; I think they’re rather ghastly, actually. I think if you do ­something well, it just endures.”

As well as being a sign of the endurance of her own work and style, Campbell’s latest venture is also something of a return: after training with the decorator John Fowler in the 1960s, she opened her first shop just down the street, at 64 Pimlico Road, in 1970. READ ON

With her homeware brand, Autumn Sonata, the 28-year-old is using her archival-studies degree to turn antique prints into new textiles

By Elena Clavarino

Growing up in Los Angeles, Lilli Elias wasn’t interested in the usual teenage pastimes, like going to the beach with friends. Instead, she went to vintage fairs to browse through antique clothing and connect with old relics. “People being the relics,” Elias, 28, clarifies while laughing. Clothes from the 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, and 1940s usually caught her eye. It wasn’t the garments—it was the fabrics.

Now Elias lives between Los Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam, and runs her own homeware brand, Autumn Sonata, which she started in 2022. Right now, she’s focused on textiles. To create her READ ON

Missy Robbins’s home-cooking essentials, Laila Gohar’s dinner-party tips, the antiquers’ guide to Europe, and more!

Continue to the Interiors Gift Guide …

Only the décor is loud at New York’s latest overpriced and occasionally underpopulated members’ club

By Dana Brown

The ability to form bonds, to connect and create communities, is what set us human beings on a course to becoming the dominant species on earth. At some point, a group of us within a larger community formed a smaller, secondary community based on shared interests: this was the first club.

Clubs appeal to our innate need to be around like-minded people, to feel wanted, part of a tribe, in the comfort and safety of community. The power of inclusion. Then there’s the flip side: the power of exclusion. We’re also a deeply insecure species. Being on the inside READ ON

How the designer quickly took over the fashion world with her irreverent brand, Puppets and Puppets

By Nicolaia Rips

On September 13, in a church gymnasium on East 14th Street, 35-year-old Carly Mark, looking like a Bob Fosse dancer in sheer tights pulled over a printed leotard, jogged out after her New York Fashion Week runway show to awe and applause. Though Mark is from Detroit, she’s the rare, real-deal New York designer. She’s been entrenched in the city’s art scene since she moved to Manhattan in the mid-aughts to attend the School of Visual Arts. From model selection to musical guests (her September show opened with music by Jazz Ajilo, a well-known subway sax player), she infuses her brand, Puppets and Puppets, with the strange spirit of the city. READ ON

Restaurateur Ryan Hardy, children’s connoisseur John Brodie, illustrator Joana Avillez, and others help you find the best gifts for kids of all ages

Continue to the kids’ gift guide …

Lauren Hutton, Ina Garten, Kaitlin Phillips, Alexandra Shulman, and others help you find the best gifts for the woman who has everything

Continue to the Women’s Gift Guide …

Chris Black, Derek Guy, Nick Foulkes, and others help you find the best gifts for men, including barware, watches, outdoor gear, and more

Our Men’s Holiday Gift Guide Is Here! Chris Black, Derek Guy, Nick Foulkes, and others help you find the best gifts for men, including barware, watches, outdoor gear, and more

Globe-Trotter loyalists are their own breed. A trip to the factory, in the English countryside, explains why

By Rachel Johnson

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a globe-trotter is “a person who travels extensively around the world, originally typically in a hurried manner, esp. for the purpose of sightseeing.”

Not in my book, Oxonian lexicographers. “Globe-trotter” means my suitcase.

Ever since I bought an indestructible, navy-blue rectangle for my first sortie abroad with my then boyfriend, now husband, I won’t leave home without one. And I’m far more terrified of checking it than flying.

This is because when Ivo and I met at a London airport way back when, we carried identical Globe-Trotters. (It was a romantic skiing weekend in Megève, France. British Airways lost the suitcase, and I’ve never forgiven the airline.) It was then that I knew things between us would turn out fine. READ ON

Graydon Carter and Maison Valentino toasted AIR MAIL’s London List at Upstairs at Langan’s

By Ashley Baker

London, a high-tea type of town, was overdue for a rager. On Tuesday night, the American insurgents delivered it when our only–in–Air Mail crowd—Nicky Haslam and Nikolai von Bismarck, Gene Gallagher and John Lahr, James Fox and J. J. Martin—joined Graydon Carter and Maison Valentino at Upstairs at Langan’s to celebrate the London List, the 25 talented young people who are brightly lighting up the scene here.

For honorees such as Luke Edward Hall, Charlie Porter, Rejina Pyo, Nicola Dinan, Eliza Clark, and Archie Henderson, who towered over them all, it was a homecoming of sorts. The group had previously gathered at Langan’s back in September, when Dafydd Jones and Coco Cottam photographed them for the November 11 issue of READ ON

In 1964, a little shop appeared on the most bourgeois street in Kensington. Somehow, it became a happening, and fashion has never quite recovered

By Alexandra Shulman

There was a time when fashion was fun. Great fun. A time before the conglomerates turned fashion into the enormous global business of now, and before the carousel of pre-collections, cruise collections, ready-to-wear collections, and micro-collections became an exhausting treadmill for designers. And nothing was more fun than Biba.

Named after the Polish designer Barbara Hulanicki’s little sister, Biba was one of the world’s most successful brands in the 60s and 70s. But nobody would ever consider it anything as dreary as a brand. Biba was a happening, a mood, a way of life. Damson lipstick and palm fronds, aubergine tights and leopard-print sofas, lacquered-wood counters and glowing globes of light—Biba was a supernova smashing into the dreary London of the time. READ ON

There are many who believe Nicky Haslam is the last bastion of good taste. His tea towels can help you elevate yours

By Stuart Heritage

For six decades now, Nicky Haslam—often called “the best-connected man in Britain”—has found himself bang in the center of everything. This is something that’s made thumpingly clear to me as I sit with him outside Clarke’s restaurant in Notting Hill. The restaurant is closed, but Nicky knows the owner and she has put a table out for him.

The moment comes during an excited tangent about Jeremy King’s plans to reopen La Caprice. Out of nowhere a fight breaks out on the sidewalk, just a few feet away from us. “Come here and say that to my fucking face, READ ON

Meet the 25 irrepressible young talents lighting up the scene

Greta Bellamacina

poet and actor

At 13, Greta Bellamacina was acting in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. At 24, she was short-listed as the Young Poet Laureate for London. Soon after, she co-founded New River Press with her now husband, the artist and poet Robert Montgomery. She’s directed a film (Hurt by Paradise), appeared in ad campaigns for Prada and Chanel, and graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, and she will appear in the film Tell That to the Winter Sea, which she co-wrote along with its director, Jaclyn Bethany. A brainiac It Girl—but with none of the attitude—she will publish a new poetry collection, READ ON

Downtown New York gathered in Chinatown for the first major exhibition of the work of Daniel Arnold, which marries street photography and fine art

By John Ortved

Going out in downtown New York of late, one of the scarier questions you can be asked is “Where?” The options have become, shall we say, limited. It’s less a problem of gatekeeping than geography—the southern regions have been so overrun that spots in FiDi, such as T. J. Byrnes, are hosting miscellaneous art parties.

A recent Friday provided a respite, and an easy answer to the question: the photographer Daniel Arnold’s show—his first major exhibition in the city—at New York Life Gallery, in Chinatown. What a relief not to have to search out downtown, when you know where all of downtown will be. READ ON

For 50 years, Solari has quietly ruled over Milan’s fashion scene with her eponymous store, revered by everyone from Gianni Agnelli to Valentino

By Elena Clavarino

Pupi Solari’s eponymous clothing store, nestled in Milan’s quaint Piazza Tommaseo, is on the opposite end of town from ritzy Via Montenapoleone, where the city’s stylish sciure flock to buy the latest in high fashion. Yet a certain in-the-know crowd has shopped there for half a century.

Solari, 96, used to live next door, in Casa degli Atellani, which shares its courtyard with the Cenacolo Vinciano, home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Up until recently, she operated a boutique in the nearby coastal city of Genoa as well, and sold men’s and women’s clothing in both shops. READ ON

To prepare for a cashless future, the Royal Mint is re-training its workers to make fine jewelry instead of coins

By Daisy Dawnay

Run by the Treasury, the Royal Mint first and foremost produces the U.K.’s coins, which they’ve been doing since the year 886. But these days, with the proliferation of digital banking, fewer and fewer people keep spare change rattling around in their pockets. Coin production is an industry in decline, and so to safeguard its future, the Royal Mint is evolving into other fields.

Today, the home of The Royal Mint, in Llantrisant, near Cardiff in South Wales, is a flurry of activity. Some of its coin-makers are being re-trained to produce fine jewelry for its new luxury brand, READ ON

In France, a dated but widely enforced law is enough to leave some swimmers feeling more than a little exposed

By William D. Cohan

Many would argue that the French are the world’s best connoisseurs and masters of detail. If you need evidence, look no further than the baguettes, butter, and jam, the café au lait, the vintage wines, and the luxury fashion brands.

But there are certain French peccadilloes that are bound to leave the unconvinced slightly dumbfounded and asking themselves, Really? For instance, one of the finest swimwear brands, Vilebrequin, is made in France (though it now happens to be owned by an American buyout firm). The bathing suits are well made, stylish, and can take a beating. They’re also not READ ON

At Crowley Vintage, in Brooklyn, Ralph Lauren designers and Gen Z–ers alike appeal to the past and are rewarded with the togs of their WASP fantasies

By Michael Hainey

What happens when Gen Z–ers, hopped up on TikTok videos, come for their favorite young fogey?

“It’s a bit like locusts,” Sean Crowley says one afternoon on the third floor of the reconstituted Dumbo, Brooklyn, warehouse that is home to Crowley Vintage, which many fans of traditional Anglo-American men’s clothing consider to be the greatest source for secondhand between London and Tokyo.

“It took me an hour to make sense of the mess of all the sweaters here,” he says, nodding to a treaty table piled 10-high with an array of cream, cable-knit tennis sweaters—something the Duke of Windsor READ ON

Go from shoddy to well shod with a pair of adult shoes! Spend an evening at the movies (but not in a multiplex)! And more, in our column on how to live …

By George Hahn

BIG-BOY SHOES

When I was growing up, my main objective was to expedite youth as quickly as possible. If I had gotten an electric shock every time I engaged in under-age drinking, smoking, and driving, I could have fit into an ashtray. The desire to dress like an adult was part of it, and I couldn’t wait to ditch my Keds for my dad’s handsome Florsheim wing tips.

As middle age sets in, I’ve avoided the desperate impulse to recapture lost youth or get jiggy with the kids by adopting their generation’s footwear. Sneaker culture never grabbed me, though READ ON

After Thursday night’s premiere of AKA Mr. Chow, a documentary directed by Nick Hooker and executive-produced by AIR MAIL Co-Editor Graydon Carter, guests including Victor Garber and Griffin Dunne gathered to celebrate the inimitable restaurateur at—where else?—Mr. Chow

By Nathan King

When it comes to restaurateurs, there may not be anyone more thoroughly modern than Michael Chow. The Mr. Chow founder’s knack for re-invention, not to mention his catholic range of interests—food, art, architecture and design, film—betray a profound self-awareness and a burning desire to be progressive. He’s a man with a deep respect for his heritage but a contempt for complacency. Chow, in short, is always moving forward.

Which is why it should make total sense that the premiere of a new documentary about him, AKA Mr. Chow, directed by Nick Hooker, took place at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on Thursday evening, followed by an after-party at none other than Mr. Chow, on 57th Street. READ ON

On Tuesday, Gay Talese, Maureen Dowd, Maggie Haberman, and other journalistic swells gathered at a book party hosted by AIR MAIL Co-Editors Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley in celebration of the writer’s new book, a history of The New York Times

By Nathan King

If this week’s book party for Adam Nagourney began with a question as to why a New York Times writer is chronicling the history of his own paper—long regarded as a bastion of journalistic excellence and secrecy—it ended with a clear answer: the paper is just too damn big for any outsider to fully grasp. In writing about the people who write about the Times, the word that seems to be used most often is “Kremlinologist.” But perhaps a more apt designation (especially at this point in history) would be “savant,” because to know all the personalities responsible for the newspaper is to be a certified genius. And that’s to say nothing of the other media barnacles the leviathan attracts. READ ON

At Lost Worlds, in Queens, the hidebound Stuart Clurman is making leather jackets to bygone specifications. And his throwback customers—rockers and actors among them—love him for it

By Michael Hainey

A lot of people remember Love Story for Ali MacGraw’s beauty. More than a few for its theme song, by Andy Williams. And yeah, pretty much everyone remembers it for that last line.

Stuart Clurman remembers it for something else.

“The sheepskin coat that Ryan O’Neal wears? What some people call the Marlboro Man [jacket]? That is actually a classic Sawyer—that’s the company in California that used to make them. I was in graduate school when I saw that movie, and after it was over, all I wanted was that coat. But I couldn’t afford it. I was a nobody kid from the poor side of Queens. So, years later, when I had the chance, I made one. That coat changed my life.” READ ON

Valentino and AIR MAIL hosted a glamour-rich party at Claridge’s in honor of the Editor of AIR MAIL LOOK

Who can say no to dinner at Claridge’s, especially when Linda Wells is in town? On Wednesday, September 20, AIR MAIL and Valentino invited 20 of London’s most dynamic women to the private dining room of the Foyer restaurant to toast the Editor of AIR MAIL LOOK.

The evening began with champagne and canapés in the Fumoir, one of Mayfair’s most intimate watering holes since it opened, in 1929, and with a toast from Wells’s AIR MAIL LOOK deputy, Ashley Baker. Wells, dressed in a pink Valentino gown (Greta Gerwig would’ve approved) discussed theater with television producer Sabrina Guinness (her husband, READ ON