Innholdsfortegnelse for issue 22 i The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR WE ALL KNOW that change is constant, but we don’t often pause to reflect on the moments that mark new beginnings. In our “Renewal” issue we’ve done just that, pulling together stories that highlight the experience of starting over — or perhaps keeping on — to create something truly exceptional. From radical creative and ecological projects to people and places in states of transformation, these stories capture the hopefulness, pragmatism, boldness and challenges that go with forging new paths into the future. The actor Austin Butler has walked a long road to become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand artists. In “The Careful Crafting of Austin Butler” (page 82), the Oscar-nominated “Elvis” star — who takes the lead in the director Jeff Nichols’s upcoming release, “The Bikeriders”…

STANDING TALL AT 9 Rue de la Monnaie, a two-minute poodle-walk from Pont Neuf in Paris’s First Arrondissement, is a striking Art Nouveau and Art Deco-inspired building that is home to one of the most celebrated department stores in the city. Samaritaine is named for the biblical “Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well”, a nod to the pump house that once sat on the land. The site’s retail heritage began in 1870, in the form of a small stall selling flowers and fashion. Its owners, Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ, commissioned the Belgian architect Frantz Jourdain to expand it into a department store, with Jourdain’s friend the architect Henri Sauvage adding the Art Deco extension between 1922 and 1928. Closed for 16 years due to structural concerns, the store reopened fully…

HERE’S CHEERSPEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS AUSTRALIA TO SAY THE food and drink scene in Bangkok is vibrant is a bit like saying the ocean is wet: true, but far from adequate to describe the depth, the colour, the dynamism, the diversity and the sheer funky deliciousness of it all. This place is Shangri-la for lovers of flavour, and while Thailand’s food has tantalised the tastebuds of the world for a generation, the still youthful and less lauded cocktail culture here is equally exciting. Much of the international attention on Bangkok’s bars tends to focus on rooftop venues — places that, while boasting views perfect for the ’Gram and travel mag listicles, typically offer mediocre, overpriced cocktails. But down on ground level, amid the crazy traffic and overwhelming jumble of street stalls,…

AUSTRALIA WHEN THE KISSING Cabinet was unveiled at Tolarno Galleries during Melbourne Design Week in May, it eluded classification. The latest collaborative output from the Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum and the French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur, it appeared as a towering blue-grey box until a gentle spin revealed a mesmerising interior of curvaceous forms and secret compartments rendered in the centuries-old craft of straw marquetry. On closing, the shapes converged to resemble a kiss, which left questions on the lips of many. Is it a kinetic sculpture? An extraordinary storage solution? In the end, does it really matter? The captivating work took more than three years to create and was snapped up by an individual collector for $280,000 before it was even finished, heralding a new era for collectible…

THERE IS A certain timelessness about Yamba, a seaside town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. Its ageless beauty is preserved, in part, by the people who know the place best. Consider the charming Yamba Cinema, perched on steep Coldstream Street. Its blue and yellow frontage is weathered, but a “$3 CHOC TOP” sign signals that it is still very much in operation. Despite the installation of plush new seats, little has changed since the cinema’s establishment in 1980 by Merv and Elaine Cousemacker. This is likely because it has been safely passed down to their daughter Debbie McCredie. Just outside Yamba is another linchpin of the community: Angourie Cafe & Wine Bar, which was founded by Angie Williams, who grew up on the same street (it’s…

OVER THE PAST two decades, a number of internet terms have jumped the barrier from the digital realm into real life, changing the way we use certain words. When I was a young boy, “hash” described a rarely used button on the telephone. A “troll” lived under bridges in fairytales. “Spam” came in a can, or in “Monty Python” sketches. And “catfish” was an animal that lived in the far-flung lakes of North America. Now we have “hashtag” (for cross-referencing topics of conversation), “trolls” (bigoted bullies), “spam” (junk), and “catfishing” (faking one’s identity to deceive somebody). The language has mutated, as language inevitably does, but none of these redefined words bother me as much as “content”. Not too long ago, “content” was largely associated with social media. Content creators made…

WE’RE 17 DAYS out from Erdem Moralioglu’s autumn 2024 womenswear presentation at London Fashion Week, and the designer is thinking aloud. “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to about it,” he says of being inspired by Maria Callas, the iconic ’50s-era opera singer-turned-tragic recluse, to create the collection. “I’m happy I have my coffee.” The day is just beginning in London, where Moralioglu, who designs under the mononym Erdem, is based and speaking today via Zoom. But talk of Callas conjures visions of lands even further afield — the United States, where she was born, and Greece, the birthplace of her parents. “I love the idea of looking at some very specific performances that she did in the early ’50s,” he says, “and the relationship between her and her Greekness,…

IT’S 10.15PM ON our second day at sea when the first cracks appear. We’re sailing through the Denmark Strait towards East Greenland on the world’s only luxury icebreaker, the French-flagged Le Commandant Charcot. The captain navigates the ship through the first of the pack ice, the hull breaking through just as a spoon cracks into the brittle caramelised crust of a crème brûlée, shards breaking off. We don our parkas and rush outside to take it all in. All the superlatives. Cameras are clicking; Swarovski spotting scopes are utilised. Ice landscapes unfold. By morning, the crust has thickened. Now like slabs of honeycomb, the ice chunks are crunching and shattering into pieces. This is what I knew before I boarded the Ponant vessel on the 10-night Inuit Spring of Ammassalik…

Bookended by World War I and the collapse of the stock market, the 1920s were a brief and combustible period of glamorous mythmaking. Case in point: the gauzy origins of the attention-grabbing cocktail rings that many a flapper wore on her right-hand index finger, supposedly to signal to a speakeasy bartender that she was looking for a pour of the real stuff. By the late 1950s, a new generation of Hollywood starlets and Stork Club patrons had rediscovered the enormous bijoux, and the New York City-born jeweller Harry Winston, mostly known for his spectacular diamonds set in platinum, began hatching plans for coloured cocktail rings of his own. Recently, the house’s designers unearthed in their archives never-used sketches he made during that era; to bring them to life, they added…

WHEN THE DESIGNER Anthony Vaccarello joined Yves Saint Laurent as creative director in 2016, he brought his signature aesthetic to the half-century-old, billion-dollar French fashion house. His “simple clothes, but with a sexy effect”, as Donatella Versace described them, have been admired and adored by women the world over. The designer’s latest It bag for the brand, Bea, is no different. Designed in the Saint Laurent atelier, a 17th-century hôtel particulier (grand townhouse) on Paris’s Left Bank, Bea has already been spotted at large, slung across the shoulders of It girls including Hailey Bieber, Zoë Kravitz and the singer Rosé. It’s easy to see why. Crafted from soft deerskin leather and available in black, Light Musk and Blanc Vintage colourways, Bea features a leather tab closure and Saint Laurent’s signature…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, in partnership with the accommodation platform Airbnb, the French designer Mathieu Lehanneur transformed the Musée d’Orsay’s storied clock room into a rentable bedroom. On July 26, guests enjoyed singular views of the Olympic Games opening ceremony on the Seine River through the enormous glass clock face, in a space outfitted with Lehanneur’s designs: wood panelling, a “floating” bed, two curvy sofas, a pair of undulating side tables — and a punching bag. Lehanneur also designed the official Olympic torch, the Olympic cauldron and the Torch Relay cauldron for the XXXIII Olympiad, all showcased to the world. Crowned Maison & Objet’s Designer of the Year for 2024, Lehanneur has seen his work appear in Paris’s Centre Pompidou (where he installed a children’s creative studio space), the Museum of…

THAT SET KILLED. The joke annihilated the crowd. Language associated with stand-up comedy has traditionally favoured aggressive terminology, a trait that is encouraged in men, but actively discouraged in women. Even the act itself — standing centrestage, fearlessly broadcasting your opinions, thoughts and observations — is one that women have traditionally been barred from. And let’s not get started on the pervasive belief that women are inherently not funny. Fortunately, the tide is turning. Female comedians’ success in television show writing rooms is now translating to stand-up comedy, and with the stories as varied and multifaceted as the women themselves, audiences are laughing harder than ever. Here, four female comedians let us in on the joke. THE INFLUENCER Jenny Tian Four years ago, she considered giving up stand-up comedy —…