Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2016 i Town & Country

1964 BOLD STROKE With her professed penchant for water aerobics, Hillary Clinton would have found a happy pool partner in former president Lyndon Johnson, who, Town & Country reported, liked to “swim 10 or more lengths of the White House pool” after a little exercise in the gym. (Hillary is also a yoga fan—a fact that may or may not be confirmed by her deleted e-mails.) In a Trump White House, however, the pool would more likely be used for entertaining; the Donald, no stranger to Big Macs, credits his good health to “shouting and screaming and having fun with everybody and making America great again.”…

ARTS & CULTURE October 27–30 San Francisco Fall Art & Antiques Show Some 60 dealers will converge on the West Coast to showcase their finest offerings in line with this year’s theme: animalia. Through January William Merritt Chase The underrated Impressionist (and Parsons founder) gets a tribute at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. November 3 Josef Albers David Zwirner’s NYC gallery presents the abstract artist’s geometric masterpieces. November 13 Steven Shearer A solo exhibition of the painter’s signature works portraying adolescent malaise, at the Brant Foundation in Greenwich. Open now Paisley Park Prince’s estate in Minnesota is now a museum. Go soak in his musical genius. November 19–27 John Hardy To celebrate the jeweler’s first flagship store in NYC, artisans from the line’s Bali workshop will be showing off ancient…

The filmmaker Paul Haggis looked out the window of the van as it made its way though Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. “That’s a river, if you can believe it,” he said, pointing at a ditch so thick with garbage that two barefoot children crossed it easily, following a feral pig over heaps of plastic and styrofoam. Susan Sarandon, sitting a few rows back, said, “Can you imagine being a mother here trying to keep your kid healthy?” The two were in town to celebrate the first graduation ceremony at the Academy for Peace and Justice, which was founded in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake by Haggis, Sarandon, and Artists for Peace and Justice. Father Rick Frechette, a Passionist priest who was already running a series of field hospitals and…

IAN SCHRAGER His Edition Hotels brand has 15 sites in development. The West Hollywood outpost, his first on the West Coast, opens in 2018. EDITIONHOTELS.COM KELLY WEARSTLER The ever fashionable designer gets back into the hotel scene with Proper, a new extended-stay property on Sunset Boulevard. PROPERHOTEL.COM/HOLLYWOOD NICK JONES The Soho House founder’s newest members-only club opened this summer in Malibu, on a pristine stretch of Billionaire’s Beach. LITTLEBEACHHOUSEMALIBU.COM…

DESIGN NUCLEUS Pop Art icon Yayoi Kusama is known for her bountiful and subversive use of the spot motif, clearly evidenced in her current takeover of Philip Johnson’s Glass House. THROUGH NOVEMBER 30…

The Buccellati earrings known as Hawaii (a reference to the islands’ welcome garland) were designed in the 1930s. Since then these handmade pieces have become the jewelry equivalent of a black couture dress: not quite basic yet somehow essential. I bought a pair about 10 years ago, and they have become part of my jewelry uniform. Their lightness is key—I can wear them for hours without ever feeling the urge to take them off—and so is the subtle jingle they make with every nod or hair flip. And just as I was preparing to invest in a pair of yellow gold Hawaiis in the recently introduced extra large size, Buccellati put out the classic with spheres in diamond, lapis, onyx, and jade. I’m running in circles. «…

It sounds, on the face of it, like some kind of Ab Fab–esque spoof: A group of Trappist monks spend their days in the remote Czech countryside making and packaging high-ticket skincare for a major global brand. But it’s no parody; these are the over-the-top means behind Fresh’s Crème Ancienne. It’s by virtue of these means—a bit mysterious and as resolutely impractical as any couture creation—that each jar feels like a rare little discovery. And though the austerely packaged cream has, compared with its triple-digit skincare brethren, flown mostly under the radar, it has still managed to amass a cultish following that swears by its timehalting effects. The words etched on each jar—“Made by hand in a monastery”—rang through my head as I made my way to the fabled Czech…

.COM FOR ADDITIONAL READINGS BY KATHARINE MERLIN, GO TO TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM SCORPIO OCTOBER 24–NOVEMBER 22 Winona Ryder Because Saturn is currently voyaging through your financial angle, getting your life on a more secure path may become something of an obsession. This month, though, the Sun in your sign focuses attention on new endeavors, and the full Moon in your relationship angle on the 14th urges you to be aware of partners’ needs. With Venus linking up with Pluto, you can take business and personal relationships to a new level if you don’t run away from difficult encounters. SAGITTARIUS NOVEMBER 23–DECEMBER 21 Jennifer Connelly The Sun in Scorpio until the 21st is all about stepping back and doing some artful strategizing. You’ll be entering a new cycle this month, and Saturn’s presence…

MEDIA MACHERS From Hollywood to hard news, these names control the conversation. ELLISON Between megaproducers Megan and David, the siblings nearly have a monopoly on Hollywood blockbusters. Dad is Oracle founder Larry. B R A G G I N G R I G H T S Megan spent $40 million on five West Hollywood buildings to house her empire. SULZBERGER The fifth generation of the New York Times clan includes editors A.G. Sulzberger (son of the current publisher) and Sam Dolnick, a cousin (pictured), plus senior VP of product David Perpich, another cousin. D I N N E R P A R T Y T R I V I A Adweek proclaimed Perpich the likely heir to the throne. MEYERS-SHYER Filmmakers Nancy Me y e r s a n d…

PRINCE PHILIP DUKE OF EDINBURGH Queen Elizabeth II’s husband is the grandnephew of the last tsarina, Alexandra Romanov, and great-great-grandson of Nicholas I. His DNA was used to identify the murdered Romanovs’ remains. His descendants, including princes Charles, William, and Harry, are therefore related to the Romanovs as well. GRAND DUCH ESS MARIA VLADIMIROVNA The great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II lives in Spain and is the Imperial House of Russia’s official head. GRAND DUKE GEORGE MIKHAILOVICH Vladimirovna’s son will become head of the Imperial House on his mother’s death. He recently started Romanoff & Partners, a consulting firm specializing in politics and public affairs. PRINCE MICHAEL OF KENT His grandmother was first cousin to Nicholas II, and he was one of the living Romanov relatives whose DNA was used to help…

Come Thanksgiving the election will be over, but the tense political debate will not. When the family ties are close to fraying, the quickest escape is to the butler’s pantry. Do yourself—and your relatives— a favor by stocking the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining table with something besides heirloom dishes. A makeshift bar is ideal—all the better if it comes with canapés and a comrade in arms.…

Only New York made sense for the June wedding of classical singer Natalie Coyle and publicist Zafar Rushdie. It’s where the groom’s father, the novelist Salman, lives, and the Londonbased couple have spent many weekends there since they started dating, in 2010. For their 160 guests, most of whom flew in from all over the world, they planned a three-day itinerary of golf at Chelsea Piers, a cocktail party chez Salman, and a cruise on the Hudson. The reception was a cheeky nod to Britain and America. At the entrance to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (following the ceremony at St. Ignatius Loyola, on the Upper East Side), a Shakespeare impersonator read sonnets (with background music provided by a Juilliard-trained harpist), while a living Statue of Liberty stood nearby for selfies.…

Not content just to be one of the most sought-after choreographers in the world, Benjamin Millepied constantly seeks new arenas to conquer. This fall Millepied’s reinterpretation of Fokine’s Daphnis et Chloé will open the American Ballet Theatre’s season, while L.A. Dance Project, the California company Millepied founded in 2012, will tour the world, and Art Form, his digital platform for artists, will launch this winter. Here, he opens up about his process for our inaugural peek inside the habits of masterminds. How do you prepare yourself to be creative? I read every day, everything from fiction to news. A hard copy of the New York Times gets delivered every morning. What place is most conducive to your work? America. There is great dancing in Europe, but I’m a product of…

Fictional barrister Elle Wood’s college counselor famously warned her that “Harvard won’t be impressed that you aced History of Polka Dots.” Sorry, Ivy League, but in this case we’re siding with Carolina Herrera, Marc Jacobs, and Michael Kors, who moved the motif into this season’s core fashion curriculum. GLOBE TROTTER The polka dot’s popularity soared in the 1950s. Screen legend Ingrid Bergman wore the print during a visit to Venice with her husband, Italian director Roberto Rossellini. SIDEWALK GALLERY Jewelry designer Michelle Elie earned her social currency on the arm of artist and collector Mike Meiré. In head-totoe prints, she’s a work of art herself.…

Cherry, scarlet, burgundy, brick: No two reds are exactly alike. Nor, this season, are they made exclusively for the mouth. When painted around the eyes, Urban Decay’s orange-tinged metallic red brings out shades of green in the iris. When dabbed on cheeks, Chanel’s dusty ruby blush sends color rushing back to the face. And when a red is slashed across the lips, there is no statement more powerful. That is, until, there is something to say.…

THE NEW MULTITASKER Nannette de Gaspé, a Montreal-based banker and investor turned beauty entrepreneur, is introducing a suite of completely dry sheet masks for the face, hands, and neck. Instead of being soaked with serum, these beige Japanese textiles are “printed” with oils, plant extracts, and peptides. The Brits have already gone mad for them, as have those who swarm Colette in Paris. De Gaspé says each mask contains 87 percent active ingredients and has been clinically proven to increase hydration and decrease the appearance of wrinkles. J.R. THE DECOLLETAGE SMOOTHER In her late twenties former beauty publicist Gigi Howard began to notice that the lines she often woke up with on her décolletage stopped going away on their own, thanks to years of side sleeping, sun, and general aging.…

It’s an odd place to begin, but perhaps the only place: with Dakota Fanning talking about Charlie Sheen. We’re seated on the terrace of the Sunset Tower in West Hollywood, and Fanning, dressed in a black slip dress and embroidered Alberta Ferretti mules, is talking about one of her first jobs: an episode of Spin City when she was six. “Charlie Sheen gave me a signed headshot,” she says. “I think it said, ‘Keep it real.’ But real was spelled reel, like a film reel.” She laughs at the specificity of the memory, and maybe also at this crazy town, where a six-year-old might covet an autograph from Charlie Sheen. “I loved Charlie,” she says. “He gave all of the kids a headshot. That was a really nice thing to…

Up a winding road from the improbably but aptly named town of Eden, Utah, is the Summit Skylodge, a boho-chic ski chalet meets yurt at an elevation of 9,000 feet. There, on a Friday night in June, I’m talking to a thin, heavily bearded 33-year-old app company owner and hotelier named Rameet Chawla, who is telling me about the boutique hotel he wants to open in upstate New York in a month and a half. “We haven’t closed the deal yet,” he says, “but the day after we close, I’m opening.” Chawla, who is clad in slim-cut pants, a long button-down shirt, and a fedora, is one of 50 attendees at Summit Series’s Summer Solstice weekend, a gathering of mostly twenty- and thirtysomethings who, over the course of three days,…

JANINE DI GIOVANNI The author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria spoke to American Pastoral director and star Ewan McGregor for “PASTORAL’S PRESENT” (page 146). “Talking about this heartbreaking story was unlike the work I do in Iraq or Syria,” Di Giovanni says. “But it was awesome.” CAROL VOGEL A veteran arts reporter, Vogel couldn’t believe that the grandsons of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder had never collaborated. In “MASTERS OF ART” (page 153) she writes about an upcoming exhibition curated by the descendants. “I’m eager to see how the two artists subconsciously influenced each other,” Vogel says. “I’m surprised an exhibition like this has never taken place.” PETE WELLS The New York Times restaurant critic offers pointers to T&C readers in “CRITICAL ERRORS” (page 132)—even…

Cecily Brown is exceptionally aware of the power of images. One of the first things the British-born artist says when I arrive at her studio is that she’d prefer to have this article illustrated exclusively with pictures of her work (sorry!). “Magazines always say they’re going to show the paintings,” she says with a sigh, “and then there’s a picture of me.” This tendency may be the outgrowth of a notorious magazine profile from back in 2000, which featured a spread of the petite brunette sprawled across her studio floor, midriff peeking out. The story announced the painter as one of New York’s next great art stars, and it wasn’t wrong. Just a few years out of art school, Brown had already been picked up by megadealer Larry Gagosian and…

An explicit new biography, James Patterson’s Filthy Rich (LITTLE BROWN, $30), is the book everyone will be reading but nobody will want to be seen with. It details the legal woes of the formerly high-flying financier, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor, and it reminds us that even at his lowest Epstein had friends in high places, including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz. Who were the others? Read on. BILL CLINTON The former president reportedly took more than 26 trips aboard Epstein’s private Boeing 727, including one weeklong trip to Africa along with actor Kevin Spacey. GHISLAINE MAXWELL The daughter of publishing magnate Robert Maxwell once dated Epstein. They stayed close, though she has been accused of (and denied) acting more like a madam. STEPHEN…

When it comes to online shopping, whether for daily necessities (Amazon) or a future spouse (Tinder), we’re all consumed by choice. “It’s the biggest luxury there is,” says accessories designer Nancy Gonzalez. She should know: Her eponymous, highly coveted handbags are offered in more than 300 shades of crocodile. So it should come as no surprise that for her first shoe collection, hand-crafted in Italy from Colombian hides, the prolific designer has created no fewer than 25 different styles, from ballerina flats to strappy sandals. The options, however, all serve a fundamental aesthetic. “There are beautiful, extravagant shoes on the market, and I buy many of them,” Gonzalez says. “But a gorgeous shoe with clean lines is hard to find.” AVAILABLE IN NOVEMBER AT BERGDORF GOODMAN…

“My first watch was a family watch, a present from my mother,” says jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez Fendi. Her mother, Silvia Venturini Fendi, has a similar timepiece heritage: “My first one was like a talisman, passed on from generation to generation.” This month the pair fuse their horological experiences with the family eye for quality and design in their first official collaboration: a capsule collection of jeweled watches called Policromia. “I’ve always been fascinated by watches,” Delfina says. “For Policromia we imagined a surreal goddess living in a faraway world.” (Not surprising for a jeweler whose pieces have included Dalíesque earclips.) And the two designers are Fendis, so the geographic inspiration of the new watches comes as no surprise. “The elements and materials,” Silvia says, “celebrate Rome and its eternal…

In AD 529 the Emperor Justinian set forth a code of civil law that established a clear set of rules for the citizens of Byzantium, including a clause outlining what jewelry they could wear. A gold ring was legal; emeralds were not. Justinian wanted to keep those sacred green symbols of power for himself and, presumably, for his bijoux-loving wife, Theodora, who can be seen draped in stones of various hues—including emeralds—in the towering mosaic that looms over the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. Luckily, the jewelry police have slacked over the centuries. Otherwise I might never have beheld the 46-piece Emeraude en Majesteé collection, presented by Van Cleef & Arpels in Geneva in June. “It can be freeing, working with a constraint,” says Van Cleef ’s president, Nicolas…

When it came time for Christian Louboutin to debut his longawaited perfumes to journalists from around the world, he chose a place close to his heart: Lisbon, a city that has become his second home. It’s a convenient one: The green-tiled maisonette he’s renovating in the Portuguese capital is just a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Paris. “There is something very sweet here and something quite wild, too,” Louboutin says. “It’s all there, in contradiction.” The same could be said of the three Louboutin fragrances. Bikini Questa Sera is a sun-baked jasmine and tuberose, Tornade Blonde a light and woody floral, Trouble in Heaven an intoxicating iris. But in describing them, he speaks less about ingredients than about emotions. “I didn’t have flowers in mind, I had attitudes,” he says. As for…

So, you’re a critic! Congratulations. Come on, don’t be modest. The sooner you admit it, the better for everyone. If you have used Amazon, Trip-Advisor, OpenTable, Facebook, or some other venue to weigh in on goods or services, you have written criticism. If none of those outlets has incubated the next Pauline Kael, this has less to do with the subject matter than with the way it’s handled: the operatic anger. The orgiastic praise. The pointless anecdotes, the personal details, the irrelevant data. And, if the site is Yelp!, the exclamation points, OMG, the exclamation points!!!!!!!! Some of the flaws that make online reviews so deeply irritating or useless come from attempts to conform to a house style. Others could be avoided if the reviewer would just stop and ask,…

Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel American Pastoral is a monumental attempt to untangle loss, betrayal, and the fragile bond between parents and children. It’s also a brutal look at terrorism wrought by someone who wasn’t radicalized in some far-off land but in a bucolic, affluent American enclave. For Ewan McGregor, the 45-year-old Scottish actor who directs and stars in the new film version of the book, these contradictions are what made the project so appealing. I have been a fan of Roth’s for most of my life. I’ve spent most of my adulthood in Europe, but I was born in pre-riot Newark, New Jersey, as was Roth, and my parents went to the same high school he did. American Pastoral’s protagonist, Seymour “the Swede” Levov, leaves that Newark to raise…

JANUARY WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM Date: January 17–20, 2017 The Draw: An annual who’s who of international influence, the WEF—which is usually just called Davos, for the Swiss town where it’s held—is prom for global power players. The People: From Prince Charles to Bono and beyond, anyone who’s anyone has done Davos. The Problem: Lax security. In 2016 a dozen Swiss soldiers posted at the WEF were disciplined for using drugs during the forum. MARCH ASPEN INSTITUTE Date: March 11–17, 2017 (it’s held 10 times per year) The Draw: This nonprofit tackles issues from education to the environment through conferences, seminars, and policy programs. The People: Board members include Madeleine Albright and Katie Couric. The Problem: Nothing—unless you believe those websites claiming it’s a front for the Illuminati. APRIL TED Date:…