A return to relaxed French mores but this time to a site suited to the Impressionism of summer Saturdays – saturated by sun, softened by leisure, vivid with laughter. Generations of Parisians have escaped the city… Read More
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Monthly archives of “May 2014”
Fez perfection
Twenty-five craftsmen spent two years resuscitating a 600-year-old residence in the ancient medina of Fez, Morocco, a painstaking labor of love led by husband and wife Iraqi architect Alaa Said and Norwegian graphic designer Kate Kvalvik. The result: The Dar Seffarine guesthouse, a seven-room showpiece… Read More
Sienna solitude
Desert islands do not have to be deserts. This incongruity occurred to me as I read about Noma chef René Redzepi’s picks for BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. The septuagenarian broadcast asks luminaries to… Read More
Sink or swim
This is where the bikini made its debut in 1946. For decades, this is where Paris has gone to loosen up (its swimsuit strings). This is the ultimate pool party. Modeled after an ocean liner, Piscine Molitor opened as a public swimming pool in… Read More
Sea level
And so summer begins. The brimming season. In my mountain town, summer brings a frenzy of work and play, strangers and friends. This scene, set at an art-oriented resort on the Italian toe, reminds me to be serene, to… Read More
New troubadours
A musical marathon is happening at the New Museum in Manhattan. Ten male guitarists are playing and singing continuously all day Wednesday through Sunday until June 29 as part of a new piece created by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson… Read More
Truck stop
Twin box trucks are planted in a polo field in my hometown – cabs buried, back doors flung open to the elements. Parallel sentinels, stripped of signage, sharing the manicured expanse with a 43-foot-tall topiary Puppy by Jeff Koons.… Read More
Think twice
Dueling double takes: one expressed in burly wood letters, perched above a waffle joint in Pittsburgh, PA; the other, instigated by kid scratch on cotton, stretched across a chest. Both semiotically subversive, inversive. For four years, artist… Read More
Full circle
On the seventh day in South L.A., the faithful now flock to a resurrected architectural relic. Modernist maverick Rudolph Schindler designed the Bethlehem Baptist Church – his only church – for a black congregation in 1944, “the lone… Read More
Filigree filter
Light, as artist, draws lattice lace on me as I lounge. My hideaway, a limestone palace built in the 15th century beside the (disputed) birthplace of Marco Polo, inspires a reading list rooted in the Dalmatian Coast of… Read More
Wear + Here 