V O L U M E V I / I S S U E V / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 2 2
P O LO RID ER CU P 2 0 22 · CART IE R QU E E N 'S C U P · SA N TA B A R B A R A PO LO S EAS O N
HAUTE LIVING
THE MEMBERS-ONLY CLUB THAT SOARS 1,000 FEET ABOVE CENTRAL PARK
JEDDAH REDEFINES SUMMER WITH THE JET-SET FESTIVAL YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF
INHERENTLY IMPLEMENTING RESILIENCE INTO DAILY LIFE IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE RETAILERS PAY YOU TO KEEP YOUR RETURNS
IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE MATTRESS
PREMIUM CRYSTAL
THE ELEVATED ART OF SERVING THE PERFECT DRINK
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WOMEN POWER
MEET THE WORLD'S 40 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN 2022 ELLEN DEGENERES - OPRAH WINFREY - MACKENZIE SCOTT - KAMALA HARRIS - JENNIFER LOPEZ - MIA MOTTLEY MERYL STREEP - BEYONCE - VIOLA DAVIS - KETANJI BROWN JACKSON - NALJA BOUDEN - OLIVIA COLMAN - AMANDA NGUYEN - CHRISTINE LAGARDE - AGNIESZKA ŁABUSZEWSKA - FRANCIA MARQUEZ - AYESHA MALIK - KATHY HOCHUL RIHANNA - MICHELLE OBAMA - MELINDA GATES - JACINDA ARDERN - MEGHAN MARKLE - SOOJIN KIM - NANCY PELOSI - QUEEN ELIZABETH II - QUINN - SUZIE TURNER
VOLUME VI / ISSUE VII / JULY 2022
Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher
Joshua Jakobitz Editor-in-Chief
William Smith
Aubrey Chandler
Copy Editor & Philanthropy Contributor
Contributing Photographer
Claire Barrett
Contributing Photographer
Eva Espresso
Lifestyles Contributor
Cezar Kusik
Wellness Contributor
Raphael K. Dapaah
Trends Contributor
Head of Photography
Contributing Photographer
Wine Contributor
Art Contributor
Eric CarrÉ
Michael J. Snell Joey Velez
Brett Chody
Justin "Goliath" Johnson
Brand Representatives
Wellness Contributor
Michael J. Snell - The Hamptons Stanley Pierre-Etienne Caribbean Jessica Foret Wax - Santa Fe K & Co. Media - Los Angeles
Polo Lifestyles is a publication of HT Polo Publishing Co. 995 Detroit Avenue, Suite A Concord, CA 94518
Justin Johnson - Atlanta Contributing Photographers Global Polo Entertainment Eric Carre Nacho Corbolan Matias Callejo Kristian Gonzalez
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Katerina Morgan
Polo Photographer
Content Copyright © Polo Lifestyles 2021 All Rights Reserved. For information or to advertise Contact editor@htpolo.com Read online at www.pololifestyles.com
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GUARDS POLO CLUB The Royal Windsor Cup Indian Empire Shield DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY Coupe PGH - Deauville Charity Cup INANDA POLO CLUB Africa Polo Cup SANTA BARBARA POLO & RACQUET CLUB USPA Intra-Circuit Cup Robert Skene Trophy USPA Silver Cup ASPEN VALLEY POLO CLUB ChukkerTV Cup Craig Sakin Memorial Basalt Handicap Emma Challenge Cup High Alpine Cup Mount Sopris Cup Rocky Mountain Open Carbondale Classic Triple Crown of Polo-Aspen
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VOLUME VI / ISSUE VI / JUNE 2022
SCOREBOARDS & COCKTAILS
POLO RIDER CUP
PHOTOS FROM DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY Page 38 POLO LIFESTYLES EDITORS & CONTRIBUTORS
Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher Polo Lifestyles @haiti_polo_captain
Eric Carré
Photographer EC Photography @ti_carre
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Josh Jakobitz
Editor-in-Chief Polo Lifestyles @joshuajakobitz
Eva Espresso Photographer
Eva Espresso Photography
@eva.espresso
Claire Barrett
Head of Photography
Claire Barrett Photography
@clairebarrettphoto
Michael J. Snell
Lifestyles & Automobiles Contributor @agnello_1
Raphael K. Dapaah Art Contributor Dapaah Gallery @dapaahgallery
Aubrey Chandler Photographer Polo Lifestyles @aubreychandler
Katerina Morgan
Polo Photographer Horse Polo Art Gallery @horsepoloartgallery
Joey Velez
Cezar Kusik
Wine Contributor Polo Lifestyles @cezartastesearth
William Smith
Brett Chody
Trends Contributor Polo Lifestyles @brettchody
Justin Johnson
Wellness Columnist
Philanthropy Contributor
Wellness Contributor
@velezmentalhealth
@willismith_2000
@goliathcoaches
Velez Mental Performance May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust
Goliath Coaches
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NYC restaurants bring back the dress code, page 66
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Opulent properties hit the real estate market, page 93
Inside Chanel's East Hampton enclave, page 161
Resilience - how to leverage it, page 208
WOMEN POWER Every year, the process of compiling the list of the World’s 40 Most Powerful Women starts with an accounting of what’s happened throughout the year: who’s been elected, appointed or promoted to a position of power? Which founders have taken their companies public— to great wealth, great acclaim, or all of the above? And which women have made the greatest strides in using their voice, their resources, or their public platform in creating lasting and meaningful change around the world?
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POLO RIDER CUP
W
HAT A MOMENT TO BE ALIVE. ON ONE HAND, WE’RE PUBLISHING OUR FIFTH ANNUAL EDITION OF WOMEN+POWER, OUR CELEBRATION OF WOMEN HARNESSING THEIR INFLUENCE FOR GOOD. ON THE OTHER HAND, WE’VE SEEN WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES LOSE A VAST AMOUNT OF POWER AT THE HANDS OF THE SUPREME COURT IN THE LAST WEEK.
While all our issues are memorable, I think this one will be especially memorable for me for years to come, as I reflect back on the dichotomy of the times at hand. I have thought about power, where it comes from, how it can be taken away, and what you should do with it when you have it as we assembled, refined and finalized this edition. We think our 2022 Women+Power list not only addresses those questions, but provides some solid answers and solutions. In addition to our Women+Power feature, we have insider access to some of Europe’s best summer polo: Cartier Queen’s Cup (technically in the U.K., not Europe, but whatever) and the Polo Rider Cup. These are two tournaments that can’t be missed. They were both back post-Covid with capacity crowds and intense showdowns. Great Oaks claimed victory in OT at the Cartier Queen’s Cup and Ellerstina emerged victorious at the Domaine de Chantilly. As always, we have some great editorial content. I love this month’s dive into barware, wine glasses and crystal patterns. William Smith has taken over the wine content while our sommelier and regular contributor Cezar Kusik prepares to open his own wine bar in San Francisco. William caught up with some wine experts in Santa Fe, N.M., to discuss presentation, preferences and best practices for serving wine to a group. Coaches Joey Velez and Justin Johnson both took personal approaches to their columns this month with a look at resilience and the blame-game of society, respectively. My biggest surprise (read: delight) was this month’s story on big-chain retailers who are paying us to keep our returns. “Do what you want with them, but don’t return them to our stores and warehouses,” they say. After years of consumers being at the mercy of retailers to accept or reject a return, this is an interesting shift in dynamic. Of course, the responsible thing to do with your unwanted returns would be to find someone or some charitable entity that could use it. But that’s up to you.
Best, Josh Jakobitz josh@pololifestyles.com
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CHOOSE YOUR X. THE BMW X RANGE.
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VOLUME VI / ISSUE VII / JULY 2022
christopherkorey Stay cool all summer with light jackets in fun colors from Christopher Korey
jenniferbehr The must-have accessory of the season: a pearled-headband from our fave headband designer, Jennifer Behr
townandcountrymag
The Royal Family released this portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge page 24
condenastetraveller If your summer travel includes Greece, consider some of the best places for family trips
morgan_froment_photo A Best Playing Pony award is a serious achievement for a welldeserving pony indeed
serhant Properties are hot and interest rates are rising, so pull the trigger on your NYC pied-a-terre
cultgaia Inspired by Athens and the ancient Greeks, Cult Gaia accessories are almost too-hot for summer
nachofigueras Nacho Figueras convinced his friend, Prince Harry, to join him for summer polo in Santa Barbara to local delight
shellona_stbarth It's bound to be a hot summer, so order something refreshing to drink at Shellona in St-Barths
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Click and comment on our choices... Tag @pololifestyles. We will share noteworthy comments with you next month.
denverpoloclub After the rain... at Denver Polo Club, captured by the globe-trotting Erica Gandomcar-Sachs
philipevelynii Beyonce released a long-awaited single prior to dropping her album and rocked British Vogue's cover
stevecordony What's your home gym situation? This al fresco set up can't be beat with some afternoon shade to help
faz3 Pensive and intense describe the mood of this portrait and the relationship between man and horse
polowerk The polo world descended upon Domaine de Chantilly for the final of the Polo Rider Cup
edbyellen Home interiors and accessories for summer dining from the TV mogul Ellen Degeneres
harrywinston Twinkle, sparkle or shine... whatever your preference, get dolled up with treasures from Harry Winston
townandcountrymag
Days at the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the Duchess of Sussex made a surprise visit to pay her respects
globalpolo Ellerstina took home the honors from the second annual Polo Rider Cup in France page 25
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P H OTO GRAP H Y BY H E LE N C RU DE N
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CARTIER QUEEN'S CUP
FINAL: GREAT OAKS LL 9 / 8 PARK PLACE VAARA (IN OVERTIME)
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RIDGERTON STARS AND FASHION WORLD DARLINGS FLOCK TO GUARDS POLO CLUB FOR THE CARTIER QUEEN’S CUP
from across the worlds of TV, film, fashion and more gathering for an elegant lunch and tea in the Cartier enclosure, before watching the Great Oaks LL team compete against Andrey Borodin’s Park Place Vaara side.
The glorious sunshine matched the jubilant mood at Smith’s Lawn in Windsor, where Charithra Chandran, Laura Haddock and Damson Idris looked on as Great Oaks LL triumphed after a nail-biting match
There was quite the parade of period drama stars, from Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran, glittering in Cartier white gold and diamonds, to Laura Haddock, fresh from her success in Downton Abbey: A New Era. Alison Oliver, the breakout star of Conversations with Friends, posed beside the grand floral installations, while Magnus Rausing and Eleanor Wellesley chatted over halibut with beurre blanc and caviar.
Since 2012, Cartier has lent a touch of sparkle to the Guards Polo Club’s premier polo tournament, the Queen’s Cup, hosting a coterie of glamorous guests for the prestigious final. The event returned in all its glory last month, with stars
Both teams were drawing 8-8 during the fast-paced final, until Great Oaks LL’s James Beim scored the winning goal in extra time, securing a second-time victory for his team. Laurent Feniou, Managing Director of Cartier UK, presented team patron Dillon Bacon with the famed Queen’s Cup. Great Oaks LL’s Juan Martin Nero was honored with the Cartier Most Valuable Player award, while Lavinia Ambar, ridden by Hilario Ulloa of Park Place Vaara, was named Cartier Best Playing Pony, after being played for a valiant 10 goals.
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P H OTO GRA P H S BY H E LE N C RU D E N
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CARTIER QUEEN'S CUP
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CARTIER QUEEN'S CUP P H OTO GRA P H S BY H E LE N C RU D E N
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P H OTO GRA P H S BY H E LE N C RU D E N
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CARTIER QUEEN'S CUP
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POLO CLUB DU DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY
POLO RIDER CUP SAISON D'ÉTÉ
FINAL: ELLERSTINA 9 / 7 EVVIVA POLO ST. MORITZ
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY POLO RIDER CUP ORGANIZERS
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E
LLERSTINA POLO CLUB WON THE 2022 POLO RIDER CUP, BEATING EVVIVA POLO ST. MORITZ 9 GOALS TO 7 IN THE FINAL AT THE POLO CLUB DE CHANTILLY, NORTH OF PARIS
In the first chukker, Salvador Jauretche opened the score from a field goal in the first seconds of the chukker, but Martin Aguerre H equaled the match from a penalty goal. Just before the end of the bell, Juan Pedro Chavanne opened his account with a neck shoot for the 2-1. Four more goals were scored in the second chukker for Ellerstina, and the gap increased to 6-1. After the third chukker, which ended 8-2, Lucie Venot
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replaced Tommy Rinderknecht. A fantastic comeback from Evviva Polo St. Moritz in the fifth chukker put emotion into the game, as two goals from Ignacio Kennedy and Martin Aguerre H closed the gap 9-5 goals. In the last chukker, Evviva Polo St. Moritz scored two more goals from Kennedy and Aguerre again, but the final result ended with 9-7 goals in favor of the Argentina team to win the 2022 POLO RIDER CUP. Salvador Jauretche was named the MVP for the tournament, and Ignacio Kennedy, with the pony ‘La Virgen’, won the Best Playing Pony of the match. With 34 goals, Martin Aguerre H was the Best Scorer, and Emil Grabosh was
the Rookie of the tournament. Earlier, the match to decide the third and fourth place between Empire Polo Club of Coachella Valley and Polo Club de Chantilly ended with the victory of Empire Polo Club by 7-4 goals. Adrian Laplacette, who replaced Tito Ruiz Guiñazu and scored six goals, opened the scorer. The first two chukkers ended with a tie result, and Julian Reynes placed Chantilly in front of the score for the first time, but another two field goals from Laplacette resulted in a 4-3 goals at the end of the fourth chukker. Laplacette, in the fifth chukker, increased the gap by 6-3 goals, and Louis Larrige shortened the gap, but another goal in the last chukker from Laplacette gave the win to the American team.
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POLO CLUB DU DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY
POLO RIDER CUP
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY POLO RIDER CUP ORGANIZERS
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POLO CLUB DU DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY
POLO RIDER CUP
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY POLO RIDER CUP ORGANIZERS
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POLO CLUB DU DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY
POLO RIDER CUP
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY POLO RIDER CUP ORGANIZERS
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POLO CLUB DU DOMAINE DE CHANTILLY
POLO RIDER CUP
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY POLO RIDER CUP ORGANIZERS
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SPORT OF KINGS
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SANTA BARBARA POLO page 51
PRINCE HARRY JOINS NACHO FIGUERAS
SANTA BARBARA POLO
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P
THE ROYAL TREATMENT
RINCE HARRY HAS MADE HIS RETURN TO THE POLO GROUNDS IN CALIFORNIA AFTER TRAVELING FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH’S PLATINUM JUBILEE. The Duke of Sussex was spotted competing at the Cancha de Estrella’s Polo
Club in Santa Barbara, in his first sighting since returning home after he, Meghan The Duchess of Sussex, and their children Archie and Lilibet traveled to London in June.
For the polo match, Harry donned the team’s green and white uniform, the same he wore for a match at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club last month.
The prince played with his friend Nacho Figueras’ team, Los Padres, against Dundee II, with the competitors winning the public match.
Meghan, who shared a sweet kiss with her husband at the previous game, did not attend this match.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY HARPER'S BAZAAR
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" C O D A" T O O K H O M E " B E S T P I C T U R E " page 54
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SANTA BARBARA POLO WITH THE DUKE & DUCHESS OF SUSSEX
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY HARPER'S BAZAAR
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES
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IN HONOR OF HER MAJESTY'S PLATINUM JUBILEE
RETROSPECTIVE: THE QUEEN AT POLO P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y T H E R O Y A L F A M I LY
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THE QUEEN AT POLO
P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y T H E R O Y A L F A M I LY
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RETROSPECTIVE: THE QUEEN AT POLO
P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y T H E R O Y A L F A M I LY
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T H E N Y C R E S TAU R A N T S C E N E
CHIC IS BACK ( D R E S S C O D E S T R I C T LY E N F O R C E D )
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HIGH SOCIETY
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FINE DINING
LEAVE THE SWEATSHIRT AT HOME. DINING DRESS CODES ARE BACK.
A
NUMBER OF RESTAURANTS ARE BETTING THAT AMERICANS WANT TO GET GUSSIED UP AGAIN, BUT NOT EVERYONE IS THRILLED ABOUT THE FASHION SCREENING. One unusually warm evening in the West Village, while other New Yorkers were outside walking their dogs in sneakers and T-shirts, a family of five sat primly in the front window of a formal dining room, each of them garbed in a stylish blazer. A couple in a velvet corner booth wore suits — his navy, hers powder blue. Pearls gleamed, freshly
buffed shoes glowed. When a fashionably dressed couple stopped in momentarily for a peek at the menu, the sight was jarring: They were wearing jeans. That everyone was in full feather at this restaurant, Les Trois Chevaux, was no coincidence. They had been instructed to do so the previous day in a text message that read like a manifesto. “At Les Trois Chevaux, we revere the style and finesse that can only be attributed to having New York swagger,” it said. “We expect our guests to arrive in proper dinner attire, and for you to celebrate the style that downtown New York City can bring.”
Lest there be any confusion, details followed: “Blue jeans, shorts and sneakers are strictly prohibited.” Diners were “kindly” requested to wear jackets. For those without a jacket, a vintage Yves Saint Laurent model would be provided. Anything else? “Absolutely no flip-flops,” the chef and owner, Angie Mar, emphasized in an interview. “Something that I feel tremendously is missing from New York over the past five or six years is that old-school flair that I love,” she said. “It is important that we bring that back.” During a pandemic in which many Americans have traded their tailored slacks for leisure wear, dress codes are page 69
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making an unexpected return to the dining room. Over the last two years, several new restaurants around the country have opened with policies on expected attire, some stern (“upscale fashionable dress code strongly enforced,” warns a text from Olivetta in Los Angeles) and some vague (“smart casual or better,” advises Catbird in Dallas). Some are aspirational: “We expect our guests to bring their best,” says Kitchen + Kocktails in Chicago. Others seem to allude to some disturbing prior incident: “Clothing emitting offensive odors is not permitted” at Juliet in Houston. Whatever the particulars, the calculation is the same — a belief that many diners are eager to dress up again after an epoch of record-level dowdiness. “Everywhere we went, people were walking around in sweatpants and T-shirts and their hair was not done,” said Rosea Grady, the general manager at Thirteen, a high-end Houston restaurant founded by the professional basketball player James Harden that opened in March 2021. “We wanted Thirteen to be a place where people put their best on.” A dress code also complements the luxe surroundings, she added. “The building is beautiful. Our wallpaper is from Gucci.” If all this sounds a bit exclusionary, in some places it’s meant to be. “My restaurants are not for everybody in terms of taste,” said Ms. Mar of Les Trois Chevaux, which opened last July with page 70
a menu that runs to lavish dishes like a mille-feuille pastry stuffed with foie gras.
History.” “When we can’t really talk about these issues openly, we struggle through proxies, like clothing.”
Dress codes may also seem counterintuitive at a time when many diners have reacted angrily to other directives — like requests to wear a face mask — and when even some formal restaurants with longstanding dress rules have loosened them during the pandemic. Eric Ripert, the chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin, in Manhattan, said he dropped a requirement that men wear jackets because sharing the restaurant’s loaner coats seemed unhygienic.
Some local governments have even stepped in to condemn dress codes. In the summer of 2020, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution that called on the Atlas Restaurant Group to eliminate its dress code after a Black woman and her son, who was in athletic wear, were denied entry to Ouzo Bay, while a white child dressed similarly was already dining. (The restaurant group apologized and relaxed the code.)
In the last few years, the restaurant business has grappled with issues of equity and inclusion, and dress codes have come under fresh criticism as a covert means of discriminating or treating customers arbitrarily. Last month, the former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted that she had been turned away from a Capital Grille in that city for wearing leggings, and wondered “if the woman who came in immediately after me, who I did not see come back out, was also denied service.” (The restaurant group said that the woman had come in for takeout, but that its president apologized to Ms. Lance Bottoms, and it had updated the dress code and retrained staff on proper enforcement.) “Dress signifies a lot of highly contested issues: gender identity and gender roles, race, class, status,” said Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made
Many restaurateurs point out that their dress policies are broadly worded so they won’t be perceived as racially coded or gender-specific. Some allow more informal clothing like jeans, cropped shirts and miniskirts. “It is not stuffy,” Kim Walker said of the dress code at her Los Angeles rooftop lounge, Bar Lis. “But it cues people, like, ‘Hey, I am going to go home and get a little dolled up.’” Plenty of diners don’t mind. Many embrace the opportunity to spruce up. Priscilla Von Sorella, a fashion designer in Manhattan, said that dressing nicely allows her to express unspoken gratitude for restaurants. “They have really suffered a lot in the last two years,” she said. “Whenever you enter their establishment, especially if it is a nicer establishment, it is a way to show your token of appreciation and a level of respect.”
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FINE DINING
DRESS CODE REQUIRED TO DINE
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ZZZZZZZ VOLUME VI / ISSUE VII / JULY 2022
THE WORLD'S MOST
EXPENSIVE MATTRESS
(AND OTHER EXCELLENT OPTIONS)
OVER 100 ONLINE RETAILERS AND THOUSANDS OF MATTRESS SHOPS PROMISE A BETTER NIGHT'S SLEEP, BUT THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE MATTRESS COMES WITH A 25-YEAR ANNUAL IN-HOME SERVICE PLAN
B
EFORE WE CAN TALK ABOUT BUYING A NEW MATTRESS, YOU’LL NEED A PH.D. IN CHEMISTRY AND ANOTHER IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.
a mattress in a showroom, as if you’re in a Marina Abramović installation. More than 100 online merchants will deliver a mattress to you, rolled up like a Drake’s Yodel in a box the size of a doghouse that a cocker spaniel would feel cramped in.
How else to make sense of the latest concepts in mattress technology—for instance, hyper-elastic polymer, buckling column gel, phase-change molecule fabrics, ballistocardiograph sensors, ice fabric, and 3-D-matrix layers? A master’s degree in marketing and B.S. will also come in handy.
I could not sample every e-commerce mattress. Some companies require a customer to live with the purchase for at least a month before sending it back, and where was I supposed to store an extra mattress, let alone a dormitory’s worth of them? I did obtain, and later un-obtain, a couple of mattresses online. Who’d have thought that I, someone who spent years fastidiously fingering duvet covers to find the right softness, would be throwing caution to the wind and ordering a mattress on my comput-
You will have plenty of time to pursue your degree in mattress studies because you no longer have to get out of bed to buy a new bed. No more lolling on page 74
er? Welcome, mattresses, to the weird new disrupter world, where your neighbors include prescription eyeglasses, used clothes and pets. While I waited for my mattresses to be delivered, I hit some mattress stores. Aside from variations in size and upholstery, all mattresses look alike. Are they? Let’s start with the basic types: innerspring coil, foam, hybrid (foam and innerspring), and adjustable air. Within each category are subcategories. There seem to be more kinds of foam mattresses than there are craft beers from Brooklyn, but don’t be fooled by proprietary terms like “Ambien-injected kosher crypto-foam.” There are only two types of foam: polyurethane, of which memory foam is a subset, and latex.
ZZZ You’re just getting started making decisions, however. What level of firmness do you like? Do you sleep on your side, back, or stomach? When your bedmate tosses and turns, how much does it disturb you (on the Richter scale)? Do you want your mattress all-natural, or will a soupçon of nature do? Do any
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of the following materials alarm you: soy, hemp, horsehair, mohair, coconut fiber, green tea, polylactide derived from sugarcane? Are you for or against heat-conductive copper flecks? Is the amount of “edge support” that your mattress provides a matter of life and death? How much extra are you willing
to pay for latex foam that is flash-frozen before it is baked, or will mere baking suffice? “Which mattress should I get?” I asked Alex, a Saatva “sleep guide” who works in the company’s New York showroom. “It depends on your palate,” he
B Y PAT R I C I A M A R X / S P E C I A L T O P O L O L I F E S T Y L E S
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GETTING A BETTER NIGHT'S SLEEP
said, like a waiter who’d been asked whether he recommends the chicken piccata or the trout amandine. Saatva is an e-commerce company, the parent of Loom & Leaf and Zenhaven, two other big names in direct-to-consumer bedding. Merchandise in the showroom is available for experiencing but not for purchasing. The lighting is subdued, the color scheme neutral; here and there, beige artificial trees are not growing. I surveyed the 13 beds positioned throughout the space. Of the mattresses you can buy online, Saatva was named by Good Housekeeping “Best Overall.” ($1,695. Note: All prices here are for a queen, which is what 47 percent of Americans sleep on.) Dobrin Mitev, the former head of affiliate and strategic partnerships for Casper, advised me to beware of ratings. He left his job last year because, he page 76
said, “I could no longer get behind the mattress industry.” Third-party review sites, he said, generally earn commissions based on how many consumer purchases are made through their links. At Casper, he said, “I was in charge of giving out a pretty penny to affiliates.” This might be why every mattress seems to have received an award for something, even if it’s Canadian Mattress That Tries Hardest or Best Mattress to Have Insomnia On. Back at Saatva, I’m sprawled on the Classic, the brand’s signature model. It is composed of two layers of innerspring—the bottom is a system of interconnected coils that provide support, and the top has individually encased coils that contour to your body. Above the coils is a thin slab of memory foam, for “enhanced lower-back support and durability.” Covering it all, like icing on
a cake, is a marshmallow-y top of cotton quilting. Have you ever lain awake at night, thinking, Well, I suppose I must chop off my arm now, because there is nowhere to put it if I remain on my side? If the answer is yes, your mattress is too firm, a common buying mistake. The mattress best suited to you is the one that keeps your spine in its natural S curve and relieves pressure points (shoulder and hips) by allowing you to sink into the surface just the right amount. In general, firmer mattresses are better for back and stomach sleepers and for people weighing more than two hundred and thirty pounds; softer mattresses are recommended for side sleepers and hummingbirds. Memory foam is the biggest thing in bedding. It was invented in 1966, by Charles Yost, an engineer who’d been
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contracted by NASA to come up with a material to cushion astronauts’ seats during lift-off and mitigate the stress caused by G-force. Memory foam is polyurethane foam. This means that it is slower to change shape under pressure, yet quicker to spring back to its original shape. It should really be called short-term-memory foam. When warmed by your body, it conforms to your contours, giving you a sense of being hugged. Some people feel trapped. Some people like feeling trapped. Because of memory foam’s high density, it absorbs movement, reducing the chance that when your partner rolls over a ripple will be detectable on your side of the bed. Memory foam’s density also means that it tends to feel hotter than a spring mattress, which is airier. To compensate, memory foam is sometimes infused with gel, in capsules or swirls. Does that work? Not really, according to Michael Hickner, a professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “I think a lot of it is marketing and small design tweaks,” he told me. But the main problem he has with foam mattresses is that they do not bio-degrade. The type of foam the planet is rooting for you to buy is natural latex. Made from liquid extruded from rubber trees, it’s whipped until frothy and then baked. The resulting material can be both biodegradable and recyclable. No trees are harmed in the process; for them, it’s like giving blood. Latex is denser and heavier than urethane foam, in addition to being more durable, and often cooler. It has more air flow because of small perforations, which resemble the peg holes of a cribbage board. Latex foam is more expensive. It is also bouncier, which puts it on many Best Mattresses for Sex lists. As with finding a person to sleep with, choosing what you want to sleep on is now largely done online. This was made possible because foam mattresses, unlike the old-fashioned battleships of steel and batting, can be compressed, jammed into a box, and delivered by
UPS to your bedroom. Even hybrid mattresses—foam plus micro-coils—are squishable and shippable. (Saatva is unusual in that it hand-delivers your purchase unfurled.)
wine, he recommended selecting from the middle price range. “You don’t want to buy the cheapest,” he said, but in the mid-range, “There is not that much difference.”
The first of the new mattress disrupters, a Tennessee startup called BedInABox, appeared in 2006. The C.E.O. and founder, Bill Bradley, had been inspired by Magniflex, an Italian bed-maker that, since 1986, had been offering compressed, vacuum-sealed mattresses stuffed into duffel bags. Like Popsicle, Taser, and Zoom, the brand name BedInABox became synonymous with the category of product. But the hegemony of traditional retailers with a physical presence wasn’t threatened until Casper arrived in 2014, with just one mattress style, and launched a social-media campaign that made tugging a foam rectangle out of a box look like the most fun anyone could ever have.
Did I mention that it’s almost impossible to buy a mattress that is not on sale? March through May is the best time to buy, according to Bob Vila’s Web site, because new product usually arrives in June. But everything is negotiable. Chris Regan, who manages the mattress-testing program at Consumer Reports, estimated that mattresses have a markup of 40 to 50 per cent. Haggling usually works, unless you are dealing with a company with fixed prices, such as a warehouse club.
In 2010, by some accounts, less than one percent of mattress purchases in the United States were online; in 2018, the slice was 45 percent; and since the start of the pandemic it’s certainly grown even larger. Virtual buying has a lot to recommend it: the mattresses are generally cheaper, owing to lower operating costs and more competition; there’s a lot more product to choose from; and the return policies tend to be more generous. But can you reliably pick the right mattress sight unseen? Not automatically. However, if you try out some models in an actual store or two, you should do fine. I asked one mattress-store employee what makes it so special. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s a trade secret.” Manufacturers often boast of a “proprietary formula,” which could be as meaningful as adding a dash of salt. Dobrin Mitev believes that price does reflect quality. “At least at Casper, the more expensive models had a more complex structure,” he said. “More layers, and each layer had a different function.” Comparing mattresses to
At Hästens, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. The company’s most preposterously priced mattress, a king-size Grande Vivius, costs $539,000 (bed frame included). When Drake bought one, in 2020, it was merely $400,000. For non-Grammy winners, there’s a waiting list. Handcrafted by a team of artisans in Sweden, each mattress takes up to 600 hours to assemble and stitch and is wrapped in checked cotton ticking. If you buy one, even the company’s humblest ($19,575), a pair of “sleep doctors” will come to your house twice a year for 25 years to flip, rotate, and massage your mattress. No, these mattresses are not stuffed with caviar or antimatter or $539,000 dollars in unmarked bills. In addition to steel (for the springs), wool, cotton, and flax, they are made from more than a dozen layers of hand-teased South American horsetail hair. Horsehair fibers are hollow, a Hästens executive explained, which means that they enhance the mattress’s ventilation system. (Horses sleep standing up; make of that what you will.) Although the mattresses have a warranty of 25 years, the executive clarified, “We won’t replace it if your dog rips it apart.” Not long ago, joined by the person with page 77
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whom I share an old but good-enoughfor-now mattress, I tried out a few Hästens models during a private sleep consultation. This was arranged by a Hästens employee, Kristel Kalm (real name), a lanky former tennis pro from Sweden. She’d offered to send a car for us, but we made the three-block journey on foot. In borrowed goose-down Hästens booties ($200), we chilled on a king-size 2000T mattress ($61,780). The lights were dim and candles burned, mimicking the ambiance of a séance or a facial. I wish I could tell you that Hästens mattresses are uncomfortable, because then you wouldn’t even think of spending the equivalent of a year’s college tuition on a bed. But they are extremely comfortable, somehow simultaneously dense and pliant. Oh, well, sleep is as good as college for your brain. In truth, the more mattresses I slept on, the more I couldn’t tell them apart. The Avocado innerspring and latex, topped with wool sheared from Himalayan Gaddi goats that, according to the brand’s Web site, “Graze on organic
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pastures [where] a frigid mountain stream runs downhill and peaks over 20,000 feet loom high above,” was also great ($2,299). So was the DUX 6006, which has as many as 4,200 interconnected coils and a removable top pad for extra cushioning, if that’s your thing ($10,430). Ditto the Sleep Number 360 p6 Smart Bed, which contains two airfilled bladders, so that the inflation and deflation of each side can be adjusted on their own, to accommodate the preferences of you and your bedmate ($3,099). And, for anyone who needs biometrics regarding each second of her slumber, the SleepIQ Technology found in every Sleep Number mattress is designed for you. The Casper Nova Hybrid ($2,295) is awfully cozy, and I also like the Casper Original, both the all-foam ($1,295) and the hybrid foam with springs ($1,695). Staring at the ceiling in Bloomingdale’s, listening to the Four Seasons sing “Oh, what a night” over the sound system, I wanted to answer “Both” to the salesperson’s question: Which is more comfort-
able? Some of this confusion is deliberate. Jerry Epperson, an investment banker who specializes in the furniture and mattress fields, told me, “We’re an industry where five companies do 60 to 70 percent of the manufacturing.” He named them: Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Serta, Simmons and Sleep Number. A manufacturer often sells the same product to various retailers. The retailer then slaps on a proprietary name, deeming the mattress an exclusive. Mattress people call this practice “the name game.” Amid all the shadiness and hyped marketing, how to choose? Whether you buy online or in person, sample enough mattresses to figure out whether you prefer memory foam, latex, innerspring, adjustable air-filled, or some combination. Don’t buy any mattress that doesn’t come with a trial period. Keep the mattress pristine during this time. Read the fine print on the return policy to avoid surprises. Some policies allow only exchanges. That’s not for you. You know that mattress tag? Removing it can void the warranty.
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THE TWO-MONTH LONG FESTIVAL YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF
JEDDAH SEASON S
DESIGNED TO ATTRACT THE HIP, JET-SET CROWD
AUDI ARABIA HAS BECOME A TRAVEL HOT SPOT IN RECENT YEARS AS GLOBETROTTERS CONTINUE TO SEEK OUT AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES THAT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLICATE ELSEWHERE—LIKE JEDDAH SEASON. page 82
This two-month-long festival, running from May to June, is the epitome of Saudi opulence and Arabian culture, with over 2,800 exciting events ranging from entertainment to sports to culture and food. For many world travelers, Jeddah Season is the stuff that dreams are made of; a two-in-one opportunity to participate in a massive, global event while also discov-
ering one of the most promising travel destinations in the Middle East. With a vast topography, diverse culture, and an amazing line-up of world-class events every year, Saudi has swiftly established itself as a bucket-list-worthy destination, and now’s the perfect time to experience the Kingdom for yourself. One of the best things about traveling to Saudi is timing your trip to line up
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with one of the exhilarating, luxurious events that take place several times throughout the year, upping the ante of the standard visit. Many travelers choose to visit Saudi during May and June for this very reason. Jeddah Season, which has already attracted 2 million visitors from across the globe in less than a month since it’s been running, is enough to have visitors booking flights. What makes this event so special is its winning combination of variety and authenticity. In short, Jeddah Season has every type of entertainment a traveler could ask for with a uniquely Arabian flair.
WORLD-CLASS ENTERTAINMENT No matter what your taste, Jeddah Season has a show, game, or venue to suit your sensibilities. For the music-obsessed, Jeddah season offers a diverse mix of performances across several stages—everything from stellar soprano performances by Magda El Roumi to energetic K-Pop performances to lively performances by a trio of well-known Egyptian rap stars, among many others. Nightly theater shows offer a chance to delve into the deeper side of the arts,
while a performance by Cirque du Soleil Fuzion, tailored exclusively for Jeddah Season 2022, offers mind-blowing acrobatics. Thrill-seekers have plenty of options to get the adrenaline pumping during Jeddah Season, too. Exhilarating games and sporting events take place throughout the event alongside several interactive sporting opportunities, like paddle boarding and jet ski riding at Jeddah Waves. If that isn’t enough to satiate your appetite, then try to escape a “zombie invasion” at City Walk. You can also get page 83
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out there to experience the breathtaking marine life of the Red Sea at Jeddah Yacht Club’s scuba diving trip, or take a private jeep tour at Jeddah Jungle.
CULTURE AND CUISINE Navigate through ancient doors and take Instagram-worthy photographs at the UNESCO-listed Heritage Site of Al Balad, also known as “Historic Jeddah”, which is undoubtedly the oldest and probably the most interesting place to visit in the city. From there, you can sit in a café while enjoying authentic
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Arabian music, or sample a handful of delectable local dishes. If you stick around long enough and get to know the restaurant owners, you might even have the chance to learn their secret recipes to take home with you. Speaking of food, Jeddah is a haven for culinary enthusiasts from around the world offering authentic cuisine that is distinct to the Kingdom. Explore the city to get your hands on a wide variety of Arabian food at City Walk’s Petite Café, or get a taste of exquisite Mediterranean flavors at Obo. If you’re looking for
something more high-end, venture to Jeddah Yacht Club’s Karamma for a perfect mix of modern cuisine with Arabian ambiance, City Walk’s Kabana, on the other hand, offers an elegantly decorated Afghan cuisine with a contemporary twist. The most difficult part of your trip might be choosing from all of the incredible restaurant options—or you can simply try to sample them all. We wouldn’t blame you.
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SAUDI ARABIA'S JEDDAH SEASON
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HIGH SOCIETY
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BY K AT H E R I N E M C L A U G H L I N / S P E C I A L T O P O LO L I F E S T Y L E S
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M E M B E R S - O N LY
SKY HIGH
CENTRAL PARK TOWER'S PRIVATE CLUB SOARS 1,000 FEET ABOVE NYC
C
ENTRAL PARK TOWER IS ALREADY BREAKING RECORDS. STANDING AT 1,550 FEET TALL, WITH 131 FLOORS, THE SKYSCRAPER IS THE TALLEST RESIDENTIAL BUILDING IN THE WORLD. BUT THAT’S NOT THE STRUCTURE’S ONLY CLAIM TO FAME: IT’S ALSO THE HOME OF THE WORLD’S HIGHEST PRIVATE CLUB.
Spanning three floors in Central Park Tower, Central Park Club boasts 50,000 square feet of lavish amenities, including a residential lounge, screening room, 60-footlong outdoor swimming pool, private park, and fine dining options. Designed by Rottet Studio, the peak of the private club is the 100th floor, where members can find a grand ballroom, a private bar and restaurant with menus from Michelin-star chefs, and a wine and cigar lounge. All of these amenities are made that much more luxurious by the 360-degree views of Central Park, both the Hudson and East River, and the Manhattan skyline. “When a view is as stunning as this, the interior design needs to introduce you to the view, not overpower the view,” Lauren Rottet of Rottet Studio said. “Though the interiors are far from minimal, they are also not over-cluttered or decorated.” page 89
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The interiors of the 100th floor are fluid, though cohesive. In the lounge, pearl- and sapphire-toned structured furniture is met with polished finishes from coffee tables, consoles, and a grand piano. Gold accents round out the space, evoking a modern Parisian aesthetic.
materiality from the bar and a geometric ceiling provide subtle continuity from the lounge. “We wanted to create an environment of classic, timeless luxury, where each room had its own unique feel but was part of the greater whole,” Rottet added.
Similar motifs return in the bar area, though this time to create a moodier noir theme. Indulging in Art Deco opulence, black and gold interiors define the darker space, while satin-like
“Central Park Tower’s 100th floor is unlike anything else in the world,” said Gary Barnett, founder and chairman of Extell Development Company, the firm that developed Central Park Tower.
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To further enhance the one-of-a-kind experience, the luxury skyscraper partnered with Colin Cowie, a lifestyle advisor and author, who will act as the building’s exclusive lifestyle curator and event planner. Cowie took a five-sense approach when crafting the mood inside the club, including designing formulated ambiance changes, including lights that adapt as the sun sets, music that increases in tempo as the day matures, and a rotation of custom seasonal scents.
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MONEY MOVES
TOP GLOBAL PROPERTIES I N PROSPEROUS ERAS OF THE PAST, SPRAWLING ESTATES EMBELLISHED WITH LONG, WINDING DRIVEWAYS, GUEST COTTAGES AND AMENITIES WERE BUILT AND HANDED DOWN THROUGH THE GENERATIONS.
Some, like a 1920s “castle” in San Diego or Linden Hill, a property nearly the size of a French village along Philadelphia’s Main Line, were designed by celebrated architects of their time. Rarely have these legacy homes come on the market—until now. While the residences’ vast acreage and square footage were initially considered assets, in recent decades many homeowners with smaller families didn’t necessarily need the space or want to maintain such grand holdings. But Covid-19 changed some clients’ crav-
ings, says Sean Matthews of Compass Real Estate in Santa Barbara. “That level of buyer is now looking strategically for a property that suits those pandemic-generated needs for privacy and safety.” One of his listings, the $109 million Rancho Cariñoso owned by the descendants of an oil tycoon, is zoned to stable horses, something that is hard to come by with a new build.
But it’s not just the shift in mindset that’s influencing purchasers’ desires this past year. “Inflation is definitely a driving factor in today’s luxury market. Sophisticated, ultrahigh-net-worth buyers understand that real estate is still one of the best hedges against rising inflation,” Matthews says. And “zoning changes, stricter building regulations, mixed with supply-chain issues lead to rising building costs. The more expensive it is for developers to build, the higher the price tag. That’s what makes
these large legacy estates so special— whether it’s the amount of land, the exclusive location, multiple structures or the rare amenities, in most cases, these properties could never be duplicated again.”
However, some sellers, such as Linden Hill’s owners—who purchased the magnificent estate built by the heirs to the Campbell Soup fortune—are getting creative. They’re keeping the main house on one $8.5 million parcel and selling the substantial surrounding acreage off as four other individual lots, using zoning revisions to their advantage. A smart legacy.
POOL: APOGEE HOUSE, VAIL, COLO. Suspended over the side of a Colorado mountain, this spectacular, glimmering pool stretches across 75 feet. Its underside and one end are made of crys-
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tal-clear acrylic, allowing swimmers to gaze down at a flickering firepit below. Or to look across at the snow-capped Gore Range mountains in the distance. A crane hoisted the three massive sections over the top of the house—in thick snow—and ever-so-gently lowered each one in place. This stunning lap pool is arguably the headline feature of the $40 million Apogee House, an ultra-modern 8,800-square-foot architectural gem minutes away from Vail Village and its world-class skiing. Completed in 2019 from a design by local architect Hans Berglund, the glass-filled home also features over 6,500 square feet of heated decking, along with a glass-sided roof deck.
from the late 1920s, the 67-acre spread features a stately, 14,400-square-foot, 20-room main house set around an elegant courtyard, a turreted caretaker’s cottage, a horse stable, a 10-car garage, two swimming pools, a barn and an array of outbuildings. For bird enthusiasts, one of the home’s highlights is its whimsical stone aviary with a tiled roof and wrought-iron cages. Since 1992, the estate has been owned by venture capitalist and entrepreneur Bob Burch— brother-in-law to fashion designer Tory Burch. With the entire property having languished on the market since 2013, Burch is now splitting the estate into five roughly 10-acre parcels, with the exquisite main house listed for $8.5 million.
Listed by Dan Davis/LIV Sotheby’s International Realty
Listed by Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty
LEGACY PROPERTY: LINDEN HILL, PHILADELPHIA, PENN. Home for more than half a century to Campbell Soup heir John T. Dorrance— he invented the concept of condensing soup—Linden Hill is like a quaint French-Normandy village air-lifted to the outskirts of Philadelphia. Dating
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PENTHOUSE: THE WOOLWORTH PINNACLE This condo soars 727 feet above Manhattan’s bustling avenues and occupies a formidable five floors of the neo-Gothic pile that is the Woolworth Building. The unit’s actually eight stories high, with double-height ceilings and at the very peak, a stunning
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408-square-foot observatory terrace offering views across the skyline, the Hudson River and all the way to the Atlantic. Inside, the 9,680 square feet of space was intentionally left unfinished by developer Alchemy Properties to provide a prospective buyer with a blank canvas. Much of the architectural character was preserved, but one change Alchemy did make was the addition of 125 windows set into the $79 million penthouse’s exterior terra-cotta tiles to flood the interiors with light. To spark the imagination of potential buyers, Alchemy commissioned elaborate renderings from leading interior designers Thierry Despont and David Hotson that show some incredible possibilities. The Woolworth Building dates to 1913, when it was the trophy HQ for Woolworth’s Five & Dime store empire. The conversion to the Woolworth Tower Residences has seen floors 29 through 58 transformed into 32 loft-like condos.
URBAN MANSION: A FRENCHSTYLE CHICAGO CHÂTEAU It was the dream home of car-insurance tycoon and confirmed Francophile Richard Parrillo and his wife, Michaela: a tasteful 25,000-square-foot French château on one of Chicago’s ritziest
boulevards. In 2005, the couple acquired more than eight city lots on North Burling Street, close to Lincoln Park, and proceeded to spend a reported $65 million creating this three-story, 18-room, six-bedroom urban oasis. They spared no expense on features such as the exquisite exterior stonework, delicate wrought-iron detailing, elegant gardens with multiple fountains, a reflecting pool and a hand-forged antique garden pavilion. And, in that pre-supply-chain-problem era, they went the extra global mile for the pièce de résistance: tons of crunchy gravel for the driveway shipped in from France. Inside, the $45 million home is full of artisan-crafted chandeliers, detailed wood paneling and hardwood flooring. A sweeping marble staircase in the entry hall is a masterpiece of black-and-gold-leafed ironwork, while a vaulted-ceilinged basement wine cellar comes with a genuine Louis XIII fireplace. Listed by Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty
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CELEBRITY HOME: BAZ LUHRMANN & CATHRINE MARTIN’S NYC TOWNHOUSE Tony Award-winning writer/director Baz Luhrmann and his four-time Oscar-winning set- and costume-designing wife, Catherine Martin, are renowned for their wild, colorful, theatrical decorating style—think Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby. And that’s definitely on display at the power couple’s much-loved Manhattan brownstone—listed for $20 million—in a leafy corner of Stuyvesant Square, one of New York’s oldest parks. Many of the rooms are decorated in vivid hues— crimson reds and emerald greens—with bold-patterned wall coverings, most designed by Martin. Built in 1850 for a Brooklyn-based merchant, the townhouse is unusual in that its frontage spans 28 feet, allowing for spacious rooms. The couple bought the five-story property in 2017 and undertook a top-to-bottom makeover that included converting the uppermost floor into a “creative studio,” where Luhrmann is said to have written the script for his upcoming film Elvis, starring Tom Hanks. Listed by the Corcoran Group page 96
HISTORIC: CORONADO CASTLE ESTATE, SAN DIEGO, CALIF. Blending a landmark, century-old property with contemporary interiors calls for extraordinary care and imagination, and that has been brilliantly carried out in Coronado Castle Estate, a MoorishSpanish classic designed by architect Richard Requa and built in 1925. The three-bedroom, 14,142-square-foot residence across from the beach in San Diego was renovated between 2017 and 2020 to restore the polish of its elaborate tiling, intricate ironwork and stained-
glass windows, among other details. To accommodate a modern lifestyle without altering the home’s architectural integrity, the owners added a 7,000-square-foot basement that features a movie theater, a golf simulator, a gym and a bar. An inner courtyard includes a pool and lush Moorish gardens with fountains and 100-year-old olive trees. The $39 million home is that rare property with a foot in the past and in the present, yet it’s prepared to enter the future with its beauty, charm and livability undiminished.
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PALACE: PATIÑO PALACE, CASCAIS, PORTUGAL In 1968, this $26.5 million estate hosted the legendary “Party of the Parties,” with A-listers among the 1,000, champers-swilling guests including the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Henry Ford II and a roster of Rockefellers and Rothschilds. They no doubt splashed in the Roman-sized swimming pool, kicked back in the Hollywood-sized screening room or got lost in this 36,000-square-foot, 14-bedroom palace high on a hill above Cascais, near Portugal’s capital, Lisbon. This is the beyond-spectacular Patiño Palace, built in the 1950s as
the summer home for Antenor Patiño, Bolivia’s billionaire “King of Tin,” who amassed a fortune after inheriting his father’s tin-mining business. Two of the home’s many highlights include a wood-paneled library inspired by the world-famous Biblioteca Joanina in nearby Coimbra and the huge bankstyle vault, built to house Mrs. Patiño’s vast jewelry collection. Listed by Portugal Sotheby’s International Realty
PRIVATE ISLAND: LITTLE WHALE CAY, BAHAMAS Who doesn’t crave living on island time, chilling on your private beach, swim-
ming in the gin-clear water, fishing off your own dock? Checking all those boxes is Little Whale Cay, a 40-acre slice of paradise that’s part of the Berry Islands chain in the Bahamas, just north of Nassau. What sets Little Whale apart is its 2,230-foot runway, capable of accommodating a twin-engine plane. Prefer to arrive by boat? The island has its own protected harbor, plus there’s a helicopter pad and seaplane ramp. First owned in the 1930s by Canadian industrialist Wallace Groves, it was bought in 1985 by Brit Peter Austin, who converted three buildings into rental properties, catering to 14 guests. It’s on the market for $35 million.
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2022
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WOMEN POWER
MEET THE WORLD'S 40 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN
C O M P I L E D A N D E D I T E D BY J O S H JA KO B I T Z
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WOMEN+POWER
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ELLEN DEGENERES
ITH TEARSTAINED CHEEKS, ELLEN DEGENERES SIGNED OFF HER CHATSHOW FOR THE FINAL TIME, ENDING A DAYTIME TV JUGGERNAUT THAT HAD LASTED 19 YEARS.
The guest list for the final show included Billie Eilish, Pink and Jennifer Aniston, making her 20th appearance – a run that dates back to the syndicated chatshow’s debut. It also saw DeGeneres’s brother, Vance, and her wife, Portia de Rossi, well with emotion as the audience gave the 64-year-old host one last standing ovation. There’s no doubt DeGeneres leaves a massive hole in daytime lineups, with her smallscreen crown now left for Drew Barrymore and Kelly Clarkson to fight over. The legacy her show leaves behind is one for the books. It was a risky move that took the brilliant comedian, whose soaring career stalled after she came out as gay, and remade her as the undisputed queen of daytime TV. In the 1980s, you would have been hard pressed to name another female comic besides Roseanne Barr who had as much heat as the Louisiana-born DeGeneres, whose personable, observational style had many
calling her the “female Seinfeld”. In her maiden appearance on the Tonight Show in 1986 a mulleted DeGeneres cracked up the crowd with family stories delivered with the most efficient language, in the driest tone. And the jokes were often at her expense. (“My parents were extremely cruel to me,” she joked. “I remember, I was coming home from kindergarten … Well, they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I’d been working a factory for two years.”) After her five-minute set, host Johnny Carson waved her over to the open seat next to him, the ultimate stamp of approval, and told her she was welcome back any time. After that anointing, DeGeneres’s career followed the classic star-making blueprint of that decade. First came the headlining club gigs, then coveted spots on high-profile TV comedy specials, then cameos in Coneheads and other slapstick films. Finally in 1994 ABC built a sitcom around her called Ellen, about a neurotic LA bookstore owner, that also featured a pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven. The show was a ratings hit and a critical darling that earned DeGeneres three Emmy nominations. In 1997, at the height of her pre-daytime popularity, DeGeneres came out as a lesbian to Time magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey Show; then on DeGeneres’s own sitcom, her character came out – to a
therapist played by Winfrey, and to a love interest played by Laura Dern. The sitcom revelation, the first of its kind on network TV, put to rest years of audience speculation and network suspicion about Ellen’s on-screen character. The show title – the Puppy Episode, chosen expressly to throw off the scent – indeed wound up surprising 42 million viewers, the most ever for the series. The episode was celebrated in the LBGTQ+ community, but was also the focus of immense backlash. JCPenney and Chrysler were among the biggest sponsors to pull ads. Jerry Falwell christened DeGeneres “Ellen DeGenerate” and joined other prominent right-wingers in a public letter denouncing the episode. One group ran a full-page advert in Variety charging ABC with promoting homosexuality. In a 2019 interview, Dern recalled cops sweeping the soundstage for bombs during rehearsals and said she struggled to find work for almost a year afterward. DeGeneres herself was subject to death threats. Even Anne Heche, the actor who had a very public relationship and breakup with DeGeneres during that time, suffered collateral damage. page 105
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After the puppy episode, the show was backed for another season, albeit with parental advisory warnings as ABC tried to walk the line between appeasing critics and supporting DeGeneres, who doubled down and kissed a female co-star in another landmark episode. But ultimately the middle ground caved in. In 1998, a year after DeGeneres came out, Ellen was canceled – a decision, she said, that caught her blindsided. She rebounded at CBS with the Ellen Show (another series in which she played a lesbian) only to wind up canceled after 18 episodes, five of them unaired. But just because the show is over doesn’t mean DeGeneres’s career can’t keep chugging along. In her 2018 Netflix comedy special, Relatable, DeGeneres showed she still has her stand-up chops, as well as good inroads with the streaming giant. She also showed her edgier side, that’s been mostly off our screens since the 80s, with jokes about her cosseting wealth and frustration at having to dance for fans. Without the weight of daytime TV on her shoulders, DeGeneres is free to be as nice or as mean as she likes.
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MIA MOTTLEY
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HE FIRST FEMALE PRIME MINISTER OF BARBADOS MIA MOTTLEY HAD AN EVENTFUL 2021. In November, she made a strong impression on the world stage, admonishing the leaders gathered at the COP26 U.N. Climate Conference by saying, “When will we as world leaders address the pressing issues that are cause our people to worry—be it climate or vaccines? When will leaders lead?” Four weeks later, she led her island out of the British monarchy and into its new life as a republic, installing Sandra Mason as its first local head of state. “We believe that the time has come
for us to claim our full destiny. It is a woman of the soil to whom this honor is being given,” Mottley said. Now as co-chair of the UN SecretaryGeneral’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Advocates Group, Mottley is advancing a bold economic and financial agenda that not only would assist her country, but arguably all communities around the world vulnerable to climate change. Speaking at last month’s Global Citizen NOW thought leadership summit in New York City alongside her fellow SDG co-chair Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, Mottley highlighted the gross unfairness at the core of the world’s financial systems. This being the
scenario in which the countries most in need, including Barbados, are not able to access the financing needed to sufficiently respond to both urgent crises, such as pandemics and natural disasters, as well meet longer term climate and development goals. In contrast, larger and wealthier economies are able to access trillions on a whim to stimulate their economies when disasters strike. Mottley’s frustration at the unresponsiveness and inflexibility of the global financial system, which includes Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank, is shared by leaders and finance ministers across the Global South. In short, “complacency is the enemy of progress in modern society,” Mottley noted. page 107
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BEYONCÉ T HERE IS SOMETHING WONDERFUL ON THE HORIZON, A PARADIGM SHIFT, THE RUMBLINGS OF WHICH FIRST APPEARED TWO WEEKS AGO WHEN BEYONCÉ KNOWLES-CARTER MYSTERIOUSLY DELETED ALL THE PROFILE PICTURES OF HER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS.
At midnight on June 17, we received confirmation that Queen Bey would release her seventh studio album, Renaissance, at the end of July. Then last night, around 9:30 p.m. central time, she graced us with the first single, “Break My Soul,” a house bop that is both pro-boogie and pro-rest. We’re officially in Beyoncé rollout season, and my God, what a time it is to be alive. Beyoncé doesn’t do it like the other girls; specifically, she doesn’t say much. She vary rarely does press, and if she does,
it’s photo-heavy and copy-light, as in her recent British Vogue cover story. It featured just two direct quotes from the superstar. The profile mostly served as a vehicle to deliver Easter eggs, juicy little details about Beyoncé’s texting style (“excellent and lengthy”) and the quality and amount of new music on the horizon (“a thrilling abundance of it”). Readers were left to do what Beyoncé fans have grown to love doing: read between the lines, and scan the pretty pictures for visual clues to prepare ourselves for whatever’s coming next, knowing all along that it’s still going to be a surprise. The British Vogue shoot, in which Beyoncé was dressed as a stunningly wealthy club kid, gave us the first hint that Beyoncé’s house-music era has begun. “Break My Soul” cemented as much with its sample from Robin S.’s 1993 hit “Show Me Love,” the song largely credited with bringing house music to mainstream audiences.
Beyoncé doesn’t do anything for purely aesthetic reasons, so her house era is inherently political: not only is she reminding us that house music—and EDM, its whitewashed global counterpart—was born and bred in Black and queer spaces, but she is also attempting to both capture and mold the current zeitgeist (Drake is apparently also trying to revive house music). No one reads the room like Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, who is no doubt aware of something Complex said about house music in a recent history of the genre: it “succeeds at democratizing the dancefloor: a new, culturally significant and uniquely connective sound for a radical and significant time in popular culture.” In addition to “hellish” and “awful,” the past two and a half years could certainly be described as “radical and significant,” making Beyoncé club music the perfect soundtrack to this summer.
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KAMALA HARRIS
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HEN SHE WAS SWORN IN AS VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN JANUARY 2021, KAMALA HARRIS BECAME THE NATION’S FIRST BLACK WOMAN – AS WELL AS FIRST WOMAN OF SOUTH ASIAN DESCENT – TO HOLD THAT POSITION.
month, in response to the most recent horrifying display of gun violence in Uvalde, Tex., she and Biden administration officials launched a task force dedicated to fighting online harassment and abuse.
Given the complexities of the pandemic, compounded with insecurity and rapidly rising levels of gun violence, she has dived right into work. Earlier this
The task force will address issues including prevention of online abuse and services for people who are targeted. It is scheduled to issue recommendations
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“The Internet is an essential part of life in the 21st century,” Harris said, but for many — particularly women, people of color, and people who are not heterosexual — “the Internet is a place of fear.”
for the federal government and private companies in 180 days. “All of us have a responsibility to stand together to support those who have gone through this, and also recognize they shouldn’t have to be alone fighting on this issue,” Harris said. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to an abortion to American women, Harris called on outraged voters to exercise their rights at the polls, as well as called on Congress to codify abortion protection into law.
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OPRAH
LEVATING OTHER WOMEN IS AN OPRAH TRADEMARK, SO HER LATEST PICK FOR HER BOOK CLUB, 19-YEAR-OLD LEILA MOTTLEY OF OAKLAND, CALIF., SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE TO READERS. The surprise, however, came for Mottley, who only discovered the inclusion of her
novel, Nightcrawling, during a Zoom call that she thought was with her editor and publicist. Little did she know that Winfrey would join the call to announce that her book had been chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.
a video. “And the writer describes the book as an ode to the precarious and vulnerable world of teenage Black girls and her extraordinary empathy and her gorgeous writing reminds us that, yes, she’s also a poet.”
“This novel takes on some harrowing and really important things: poverty and injustice, corruption, prostitution, sex trafficking, all written by a woman who was 17 at the time, a young girl,” Winfrey told “CBS Mornings” in
Upon learning of Winfrey’s selection on that Zoom call, Mottley became emotional. “It was surreal,” she told “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday.
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MACKENZIE SCOTT
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HREE DECADES AFTER WORRYING ABOUT MAKING RENT, SHE IS NOW GIVING AWAY BILLIONS — ALL WHILE TRYING TO KEEP HERSELF OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT. The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott once recounted, in a television interview, a Chinese folk tale sometimes known as “The Lost Horse.” The story is about the reversals of fortune a farmer experiences after his prized stallion runs away. It can also be read as a summary of her philosophy. “You never know where it’s going to end up. Good luck, bad luck, it’s not the way that we really need to look at things,” she told the television host Charlie Rose in 2013, after relating the parable to him. The hardships we experience “are the things that we’ll look back and be the most grateful for,” she said during the interview. “They take us where we need to go.” Her own life has taken sharp turns that have shaped her choices, including her extraordinary leap into philanthropy, page 112
which in under three years has exceeded $12 billion in grants. A privileged child, she left a Connecticut boarding school after her family declared bankruptcy. In college, a loan from a friend helped keep her from dropping out. That allowed her to carry on studying creative writing under the acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison, who would become her mentor and help her achieve her own life’s goal of becoming a novelist as well. And as a recent college graduate, working in recruitment at a financial firm, she married the man in the office next to hers, Jeff Bezos, and moved to Seattle to help him pursue his dream of an online retail empire — one that would make each of them among the wealthiest people in the world even after their marriage dissolved. A few months after their divorce was finalized in 2019, a new shell company was quietly set up in Delaware called Lost Horse. Soon, representatives from Lost Horse were calling nonprofits around the country about multi-million-dollar donations from an anonymous giver.
The secret benefactor turned out, of course, to be Ms. Scott. Her sudden spate of giving has now reached 1,257 groups, from little-known charities to mainstream organizations like Habitat for Humanity, which last month received $436 million, her largest known gift. The $12 billion in grants she has announced add up to more than the total lifetime giving of the late Eli Broad and his widow, Edythe, renowned for their generosity in Los Angeles, not to mention far richer couples, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Her ex-husband, Mr. Bezos, has pledged $10 billion to combat climate change. Forbes in January calculated that he had paid out $2.1 billion in charitable giving so far. But as Ms. Scott’s fame for giving away money has grown, so, too, has the deluge of appeals for gifts from strangers and old friends alike. That clamor may have driven Ms. Scott’s already discreet operation further underground, with recent philanthropic announcements akin to sudden lightning bolts for unsuspecting recipients.
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WOMEN+POWER
JACINDA ARDERN Abroad, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand remains a leading liberal light. During a recent trip to the United States, she delivered the commencement address at Harvard, cracked jokes with Stephen Colbert and met in the Oval Office with President Biden. At each stop, she highlighted her successes in passing gun restrictions and handling the pandemic. Ardern built an international profile as a progressive feminist and a compassionate leader, which stood out all the more as a wave of right-wing populism swept the United States
and other countries. It has allowed her to amass unusual star power for the leader of a small country. In her first term, she won widespread praise as she guided her country through the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque massacre and through the emergence of the pandemic. Within days of the mosque shootings, she announced a sweeping ban on military-style weapons. And after the arrival of the coronavirus, she took swift action to eliminate the virus through lockdowns and border controls, largely preserving normal life.
ANGELA WILLIAMS
Angela Williams received her J.D. and masters in divinity, and early in her career worked simultaneously as a lawyer and ordained minister. In 2018, she became the first Black female president and CEO of Easterseals, the page 114
country’s largest nonprofit devoted to disability advocacy. And now, she has an even bigger job: in September, Williams was named the president and CEO of United Way, the world’s largest privately funded nonprofit. She will be its first
female and first African American CEO, and will lead mission-critical work helping some 48 million people protect their health and economic security.
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MARY BARRA GM’s CEO since 2014, Mary Barra is the first woman to lead one of the big three automakers in the U.S. She has invested billions in electric vehicles, self-driving cars and a ride-share service called Maven. In spring 2020, she shifted GM’s production lines to help Ventec Life Systems make critically needed ventilators. GM has consistently scored highly in gender equity reports; in 2018, it was one of only two global businesses that have no gender pay gap.
NALJA BOUDEN Najla Bouden Romdhane: A geology professor by trade, Romdhane took office as Tunisia’s first-ever female prime minister in October. Though she has some political experience—she was named Tunisia’s director-general in charge of quality at the Ministry of Higher
Education in 2011—political observers are questioning how much authority Romdhane truly wields: Romdhane was appointed to her position by a president who came into power by suspending parliament and seizing control for himself.
ÖZLEM TÜRECI BioNTech co-founder and immunologist Özlem Türeci, is a newcomer this year not simply because she co-founded a biotech company, but also because of her role in leading the company’s development of the mRNA Covid vaccine, in partnership with global pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.
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JENNIFER LOPEZ
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J
ENNIFER LOPEZ HAS LIVED MORE LIVES THAN MOST CELEBRITIES. SHE’S BEEN A DANCER AND A MOVIE STAR AND A POP SINGER AND AN ENTREPRENEUR AND A REALITY-TV MAINSTAY AND PART OF THE REASON FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOOGLE IMAGES. She’s been box-office gold and box-office poison. She’s considered one of the most influential Latina celebrities in America, both revered and denigrated—though not always in equal measure. Consider it a minor miracle, then, that Halftime, the Netflix documentary about Lopez’s career, has room to trace more than 30 years of fame as well as follow her in the months leading up to her performance at the 2020 Super Bowl. Like other celebrity-endorsed portraits, Halftime feels both candid and safe. The director Amanda Micheli’s interviewees include only Lopez and members of her team—her parents, her manager, and, yes, Ben Affleck— and the behind-the-scenes footage comes across as familiar. Yet Halftime isn’t entirely a hagiography. After the Oscar nominations overlook her magnetic performance in Hustlers, Lopez laughs off the snub, but Micheli tracks her expressions as she rehearses for the Super Bowl afterward, her intensity betraying her frustration. Micheli applies a hazy filter to many of her shots, giving them a tunnel-vision-like quality that suggests that Lopez is driven by a desperate, hyper-focused need to be admired—along with an extraordinary fear of
failure. Halftime reveals that Lopez understands herself to be a perennial underdog, destined to be taken less seriously than her peers. In doing so, it exposes the grotesque nature of the modern fame cycle: Stars are born, then torn apart, then cheered on as they put themselves back together again, because the downfall-to-comeback loop is perpetually entertaining. Lopez has been vilified and vindicated so many times that rebirth has become her strength, the secret to her longevity. According to Halftime, however, every reset takes a fresh toll. Indeed, Halftime is most compelling when Lopez tells one narrative while Micheli slyly suggests another. Lopez puts up a seemingly invincible front: She admits that she had low self-esteem and thought about quitting Hollywood when the mockery of her crescendoed in the early 2000s, but she discusses these moments almost as learning opportunities for the J. Lo brand. Yet Micheli captures the cost of that persistence. In one of the documentary’s most fascinating scenes, a doctor visits Lopez after she starts feeling ill. The performer, who says she rarely gets sick, dismisses her symptoms until he diagnoses her with an upper-respiratory infection. “I’ve been a little depressed, I’m not going to lie … I’ve just been working long hours, and I’m away from the kids,” she says warily. “It all just makes me a little bit sad.” She then pivots the conversation back to lighthearted territory, as if eager to change the subject. “Did you see my movie?” she asks, referring to Hustlers. “It’s fun. It’s a little dirty story, but you’ll like it.” page 117
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M
ERYL STREEP HAS BEEN MAKING HEADLINES FOR DECADES. OFTENTIMES, THEY’RE ABOUT HER WORK: HER MANY, MANY AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS, HER CELEBRATED PERFORMANCES, HER UNPARALLELED CAREER. BUT THEY’VE ALSO COME FROM HER ACTIVISM. SO, WHEN page 118
STREEP’S GOLDEN GLOBE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BECAME A POLITICALLY CHARGED MOMENT, IT SHOULDN’T COME AS A SURPRISE — SHE’S LONG PROVED HERSELF TO BE ANYTHING BUT SILENT WHEN IT COMES TO POLITICS. Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the 2017 Golden Globes, Streep took her time on stage
not to discuss her career, or her favorite roles, but rather, the state of the country. Without mentioning Donald Trump’s name — or the words “president-elect” — once, she took a hit at him, in particular, calling out the moment when Trump mocked a disabled reporter on the campaign trail. “It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter,” she said. “Someone he
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MERYL STREEP
outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And
when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. Okay, go on with it.” The Equal Rights Amendment died went the ratification deadline passed, just three states short of the 38 necessary having signed on. Streep encouraged Congress to revive it: She sent all 535 members of Congress a personalized letter, appealing to them to resurrect the ERA.
“I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality — for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself — by actively supporting the equal rights amendment,” she wrote. “A whole new generation of women and girls are talking about equality — equal pay, equal protection from sexual assault, equal rights.” And she took time to remind Senate members that such an amendment wouldn’t only benefit women. “The ERA is not just a women’s page 119
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rights issue; it will have a meaningful benefit for the whole human family.” With the letter, Streep sent each member of Congress a copy of the book Equal Means Equal by Jessica Neuwirth, president of the E.R.A. Coalition. Sadly, Streep received only five replies to her package. In 2015, Patricia Arquette took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Boyhood. At the end of her acceptance speech, Arquette made an impassioned plea for pay parity, saying, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.” No one was more psyched about this statement than Streep, who cheered in her seat and could be seen yelling, “Yes! Yes!” alongside an also-excited Jennifer Lopez.
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Long before Clinton launched her 2016 campaign, Streep was a big fan. She gave a speech at the 2012 Women in the World summit about her admiration for Clinton — and recounted their similarities. At the National Board of Review gala in 2014, Streep delivered another epic speech, this one, in honor of her friend and fellow actress Emma Thompson. She shared many reasons she admires Thompson, one of which says something about herself: “She’s a man-eating feminist, like I am,” Streep said. In a PSA for Draw the Line, a campaign for protecting reproductive rights, Streep was brought in as the “big guns” to encourage people to spread the word about the campaign. After all, when you need to get something done, you call Streep.
Clearly, Streep is passionate about women’s rights — so much so that she was appointed the national spokesperson for the country’s first National Women’s History Museum. And in 2010, she pledged a whopping $1 million to the cause. If Streep is taking the stage at an awards show, chances are, she’ll speak about women’s rights. She’s quick to praise producers who create varied, challenging roles for women, and who support female-led films. She’s always doling out compliments to her fellow actresses on their exceptional performances. She frequently discusses her own grandmother, who didn’t have the right to vote, as one of her inspirations. Basically, if you find yourself in conversation with Streep, it’ll be a lively, poignant one to savor and remember.
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RIHANNA
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HEN ROBYN FENTY, KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS RIHANNA, LAUNCHED FENTY BEAUTY IN 2017, SHE SOUGHT TO CREATE A COSMETICS COMPANY THAT MADE “WOMEN EVERYWHERE (FEEL) INCLUDED.”
A perhaps unintended consequence: The beauty line has helped her enter one of the world’s most exclusive ranks: Billionaire. Rihanna is now worth $1.7 billion, Forbes estimates—making her the
wealthiest female musician in the world and second only to Oprah Winfrey as the richest female entertainer. But it’s not her music that’s made her so wealthy. The bulk of her fortune (an estimated $1.4 billion) comes from the value of Fenty Beauty, of which Forbes can now confirm she owns 50%. Much of the rest lies in her stake in her lingerie company, Savage x Fenty, worth an estimated $270 million, and her earnings from her career as a chart-topping musician and actress. While Barbados-born Rihanna isn’t the only celebrity to capitalize on her
social media presence—she has 101 million followers on Instagram and 102.5 million on Twitter—to build a beauty brand, she is the most successful beauty entrepreneur to do so. Fenty Beauty, which is a 50-50 joint venture with French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH (run by Bernard Arnault, the world’s second-richest person), launched in 2017 with the goal of inclusivity. Its products come in a diverse range of colors—foundation is offered in 50 shades, including harder-to-find darker shades for women of color—and are modeled in its advertising by an equally diverse group of people. page 121
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VENUS WILLIAMS
ITLE IX HAS IMPACTED SO MANY WOMEN, BUT IT WAS A MOVEMENT IN LIFE AS WELL AS IN SPORTS AT THE TIME. BECAUSE OF LAWS LIKE TITLE IX, MORE OPPORTUNITIES AND MORE OPENINGS WERE CREATED FOR WOMEN IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE. IN SPORTS GENERALLY, IN COLLEGES AND IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS, TITLE IX OPENED DOORS. Early on in my career there were definitely moments that opened my eyes to inequality between men and women, like disproportionate court times. I saw how many women’s matches were on center courts at combined events for women and men. When you’re relegated to a side court, you notice that. Experiencing prize money that wasn’t equal was incredibly significant. No man had to experience that, but every woman did. That was pretty glaring until I became the first woman to receive equal prize money at Wimbledon in 2007. But I don’t think I ever had this idea to disrupt female power, it was about embracing it and creating opportunities that help other women to embrace their power. A lot of that impact can be created just by doing something positive with your own life.
I was always of the opinion that it didn’t matter what people thought of me as an elite female athlete. What matters is that women keep going, keep excelling and keep improving. When we have a platform to do that, no one can stop us. I think it’s important for women to embrace our femininity as it fully is. That’s anything from how you feel or how you dress to how you express yourself. I don’t think we have to hide, we can fully embrace our femininity and let it shine. There are always going to be people who are saying something. My attitude is that it’s good if people are talking, because it means something is happening. Let them keep talking, let them say that we might not be good enough as women, because we know that we are. Those who say we can’t, those are people who have placed limitations on themselves, and we don’t have to accept that. The most important thing is that we as women understand that and that we’re encouraging the next generation; that mothers, fathers, siblings and teachers are telling women they can achieve. My mom spent so much time on the court with us from a young age. People didn’t necessarily see or understand those moments, but they definitely happened. My character is also so close to my mom’s and if we’re talking about genetics; she was a fantastic athlete. She’s a strong, powerful woman, and she didn’t allow any weakness. So she taught us to BY VENUS WILLIAMS
be strong and confident, and she gave us the tools to do that and led by example. She still does to this day. I’ve never seen her get beaten or succumb to anything. She always overcame everything. My mom always says, “Play not to lose.” People go out there playing to win, but she likes to reverse the theory. I love that one. She would also tell us that you don’t have to ask for something, you can go out and get it yourself. That definitely stuck with me; that you have to make it happen for yourself. Don’t expect anyone to give you anything, don’t be asking for anything, go out there, make it work and make it happen. At this point in my life, it’s so exciting to bring others up with me and to have the opportunity to help other people learn from my experience and gain more knowledge. After that, I get ready to roll again to do my best to make sure that women are equal in this world. It’s important that none of us tire out because there’s a lot of work to do. And each person can do their part. So whether you’re mentoring women, whether you’re an athlete young women are watching or whether you’re a parent, everyone is touching the lives of women and girls. So we all need to play our part.
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KARINE JEAN-PIERRE
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HITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE OFFICIALLY TOOK THE PODIUM IN MAY, BECOMING THE FIRST BLACK AND OPENLY LGBTQ WOMAN TO HOLD A POSITION LONG DOMINATED BY WHITE MEN AND WOMEN.
She signed on as the administration faced a national infant formula shortage, the overturning of Roe v. Wade , soaring inflation and high gas prices, the ongopage 124
ing war in Ukraine, gun violence, and declining poll numbers for the president.
which was particularly helpful following the reversal of Roe.
White House communication staff said Jean-Pierre deserves praise for her first month on the job. They described her as quick and decisive behind the scenes, crafting the White House responses to national tragedies such as the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex. Several noted her political experience will be a boon to the administration as midterms draw closer. And another official said that Jean-Pierre has given the administration someone who could speak authoritatively about issues affecting Black women,
“She’s here precisely because of her respect for the indispensable role of the free press in our democracy,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said. “She is proud of her briefings — which often run longer than the modern average and have included multiple Saturday gaggles. She loves the back and forth with the White House press corps, and her door is always open for any feedback its members are interested in giving directly.”
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TRINA LIANG LIN ity as the world urgently transitions to net-zero targets. According to a UK Aid report, female consumers will control US$15 trillion of global consumer spending by 2028. A recent PwC report states that women influence 70 per cent of brand purchasing decisions. This includes not just household products but increasingly higher valued products such as financial investments, property and vehicles. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report states that women are shown to be effective consumption change agents for families, communities and businesses.
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USINESS LEADER AND SOCIETY STALWART TRINA LIANG-LIN HAS JUST BEEN ANNOUNCED AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE NEWLY SET-UP SOCIETY WOMEN IN SUSTAINABILITY AND ENVIRONMENT (WISE), WHICH IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION THAT AIMS TO ENSURE A STRONG, EQUAL VOICE AND REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE
AREA OF SUSTAINABILITY IN SINGAPORE. Its efforts will primarily be focused on UN Environment Programme’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 12, which promotes responsible consumption and production patterns. WISE will act as a lead focal point for greater green participation, inclusiveness and visibility of women involved in the sustainability space – as consumers, investors and professionals – to bring concerted gender action to sustainabil-
Liang, also added, “Women’s voices must be heard and amplified as the world rapidly transitions to a new green economy. Fem-fluence or women’s consumer influence is fast re-defining global production decisions in not just traditional spaces such as household goods but also in higher value products such as ESG investing too. Women professionals in the sustainability space are also making their mark in more visible and impactful ways making core decisions and redefining key business targets for their organizations.” During the WISE launch event, there was a panel discussion on “Fem-Fluence and Sustainability”. The female economy represents a market more than twice the size of India and China combined. Empowered women – with access to accurate information – can help decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, increasing resource efficiency and promoting sustainable lifestyles, thus playing a key role as the world transitions to a net-zero economy. page 125
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JUSTICE KETANJI
BROWN JACKSON
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ITH A 53-47 VOTE, THE U.S. SENATE COMPLETED THE ASCENSION OF JUDGE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON TO THE NATION'S HIGHEST COURT IN THE LAND.
lens of a defense attorney to deliberations can help reframe the way other justices view certain cases, especially, she says, criminal ones in which legal disputes over unlawful searches and seizures, protections against self-incrimination and other rights of the accused come into question.
Jackson is the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and the first justice to have previously been a federal public defender. Of course, Jackson’s elevation does nothing to change the ideological balance of the court, but her presence will represent a tectonic shift for the Supreme Court in other ways.
“Typically, in criminal cases, you’re talking about fourth, fifth, sixth amendment rights, 14th amendment rights,” Redmon says. With Jackson, “you have someone who’s intimately familiar with that.”
The first thing to keep an eye on is her dissents. “Dissents are extremely important because they’re a reminder to the public and the court that there’s an alternative approach,” says Fatima Goss Graves, the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “They are sometimes guiding posts for future decision-making.” Taken together, Jackson’s background as the first Black woman and first former public defender to sit on the Supreme Court means that she’ll bring a new perspective to judicial opinions, and some legal experts suggest it could even help her to influence her colleagues. University of Georgia law professor Melissa Redmon says that bringing the
Even if she doesn’t sway the ultimate decisions rendered by the court, Jackson can convey her point of view in dissents that may have greater influence in future cases or with other branches. Graves points to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who told the New Republic in 2014: “My dissenting opinions, like my briefs, are intended to persuade. And sometimes one must be forceful about saying how wrong the Court’s decision is.” When Ginsberg dissented in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 2007, in which Lilly Ledbetter accused her employer, Goodyear, of paying her a lower salary because of her gender, Ginsberg wrote in a minority opinion that it was up to lawmakers to change the injustice of gender pay discrimination. By 2009, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and it was the
first bill former President Barack Obama signed into law. Verna L. Williams, the dean of the law school at the University of Cincinnati, adds that Supreme Court dissents can also give litigants clues for how to argue a similar case down the line. “Sometimes in the dissent, you might pick up a nugget,” says Williams who served as lead counsel and successfully argued Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education in 1999 which established that school boards can be held liable for failing to intervene in student-on-student sexual harassment is some instances. Jackson will be joining Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor on the liberal side of the court, both of whom are also notable for their dissents. Williams worries that their identity could lead to their dismissal by some. “There’s the danger that their voices will be further marginalized, because, well, they’re the lady liberals in the minority,” she says. For the first time, the entire liberal wing of the bench will be made up of women, two of them women of color. But the experts suggest that Jackson’s opinions will have an important impact not only as the first and only Black woman on the court but as one of two Black justices serving at the same time for the first time.
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WOMEN+POWER
VIOLA DAVIS W
HAT COMES TO MIND WHEN YOU THINK OF THE WHITE HOUSE? MAYBE IT’S THE PRESIDENT; MAYBE IT’S THE OVAL OFFICE. AFTER WATCHING SHOWTIME’S NEW ANTHOLOGY SERIES, “THE FIRST LADY,” OUT APRIL 17, YOU’RE LIKELY TO THINK OF THE WOMEN WHO HAVE INHABITED THOSE HALLWAYS OVER THE YEARS.
“The First Lady” focuses on three of those women, who used the office of first lady to effect change. The cast transforms into a host of real-life figures from three eras in the 20th and 21st centuries. Leading the star-studded cast is Viola Davis, playing Michelle Obama; Michelle Pfeiffer, playing Betty Ford; and Gillian Anderson, playing Eleanor Roosevelt. The intimate series takes audiences behind-thescenes to the executive residence of the White
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WOMEN+POWER House, where the first lady and president reside. In doing so, we see the role these prominent figures had in shaping American culture — and how the role of first lady shaped them. In addition to showing how they approached being first lady, the 10-episode series will put a spotlight on their closest relationships. Deadline reported that the storylines are «so intimate, it›s as if the White House walls were talking.»
LYNN MARTIN
Unlike some of the other stars of “The First Lady,” Davis is playing a person who can actually watch the show — and she reportedly feels the pressure. During a CTAM panel in Feb., Davis said the thought of Michelle Obama watching her portrayal of her “keeps her up at night,” per Deadline. “You don’t want to insult them by your portrayal,” she said. While there is ample information available about Obama, including her recent memoir, Davis knew she had to take creative liberties with the part. “I don’t know how she lays in bed with Barack or how she disciplines her children. There are small minutiae that I can just take creative license with and hope that I’m not insulting her with it. That’s what you have to navigate as an artist,” she said. Based on Obama’s comments about “The First Lady,” Davis’s fears should be assuaged. Obama told Entertainment Tonight that she thinks that Davis is «the greatest.» “I feel that I’m not worthy,” she told ET. “I wish I could be better to live up to the character that Viola has to play, but it’s exciting.” Lynn Martin: Former New York Stock Exchange president Stacey Cunningham handed her leadership baton to Lynn Martin, the former head of the Intercontinental Exchange’s fixed income and data services segment, a division that employs 2,500 people and generated $1.4 billion in revenue for the first nine months of 2021. Martin’s appointment to the NYSE became official in January, making her one of the world’s most-powerful women. page 129
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WOMEN+POWER
OLIVIA COLMAN
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EARTSTOPPER IS NETFLIX’S LATEST STREAMING HIT SERIES ABOUT SELF-DISCOVERY AND ACCEPTANCE, AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET ANY CUTER, THE STREAMER SHARED A BLOOPER REEL OF THE CAST SINGING, GIGGLING, AND HAVING ALL SORTS OF FUN AFTER MESSING UP THEIR LINES.
“You asked, we heard you,” the official Netflix U.K. account tweeted on May 5. In the LGBTQ+ high school drama adapted from the web-comic by Alice page 130
Oseman, high school jock Nick (Kit Connor) and outcast Charlie (Joe Locke) meet, become fast friends, and fall in love. While Nick and Charlie’s love story is sweet, the series also tackles deeper issues like navigating one’s sexuality and coming out to a parent. One of the most emotional moments in the eight-episode season that made viewers tear up happens in the finale when Nick comes out as bisexual to his mom, played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman, whose character lovingly accepts her son as he is. But the behind-the-scenes footage of the touching moment might elicit an entirely different reaction from fans of the show. After Nick comes out, the scene requires
Colman to wrap her TV son in an embrace and thank him for telling her. But right after she does, she turns to Connor teary-eyed and completely forgets her lines. She says, “I can’t remember my words.” As someone from the crew hands her the script, she tells Connor the reason why. “I’m so overwhelmed with your little face,” she admits. The rest of the two-and-a-half-minute compilation features another cute scene between Colman and Connor where they’re driving in the car. When they hit a little bump on the road, Colman starts making funny faces. “Ran someone over,” Colman quips. Referring to her on-screen son’s nemesis, she adds, “Hopefully, it’s the bully.”
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WOMEN+POWER
I
N 2016, AMANDA NGUYEN CELEBRATED A MAJOR VICTORY WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA SIGNED THE SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS’ RIGHTS ACT INTO LAW.
Helping to craft the legislation, which reforms the handling of sexual assault evidence-collection kits on the federal level, was her way of fighting back after learning in 2013 that her own rape kit was set to be destroyed. The CEO of the nonprofit civil rights organization Rise didn’t stop there; Nguyen, 30, has gone on to help establish similar laws in 40 states to date, and has taken her movement to the U.N., where she’s leading an effort to pass a resolution that would protect survivors around the world. Polo Lifestyles: You are one of the most hardworking and clearheaded people I know—a natural leader. I wanted to know if, growing up, the younger you was as confident and quick to take action. Amanda Nguyen: I grew into the traits I have as a means of survival. I realized very early on that I often was the only woman or the only AAPI in the room. My younger self was nervous. I was learning—I still am. And I hope that one day I can be fully confident. Polo Lifestyles: I want to take it back to undergrad, when your career as an activist began—back to you finding out that your rape kit was on its way to being disposed of. What did you learn in that period?
AMANDA NGUYEN
Nguyen: There was no standardized process to hold onto this evidence, to what could be my justice. That’s when I realized there was something seriously wrong. It felt like a second betrayal, one that was worse than the rape itself. We are told to go to the criminal-justice system and seek this help, but the system is deeply flawed. I remember walking into my local rape crisis center—the waiting room was filled. That moment changed my life because I realized there was a choice I had to make: fix the law, or accept it.
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I
CHRISTINE LAGARDE
T WAS WHILE SITTING ALONE IN A LONDON HOTEL BASEMENT THAT CHRISTINE LAGARDE ENGINEERED A FIX TO THE EUROZONE’S MOST ALARMING DEBT TURMOIL SINCE THE PANDEMIC STRUCK.
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With a mini-heatwave mounting outside, and seemingly armed only with a coffee pot and her customary iPads, the European Central Bank president took just two-and-a-half hours to galvanize governing council colleagues into action during an emergency June 15 video call. Their response – a two-pronged pledge to counter market speculation – was enough to quell a nascent Italian bond
crisis without a single extra euro having yet needed to be spent. A decade after her predecessor Mario Draghi, also in London, stemmed far worse debt turmoil, Lagarde’s actions leading to the decision to underscore the shift in ECB philosophy on markets is one that is likely to be touted at its annual retreat this week in the Portuguese resort of Sintra.
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WOMEN+POWER
AGNIESZKA ŁABUSZEWSKA
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INCE FEBRUARY 24, MORE THAN TWO MILLION UKRAINIANS HAVE FLED THEIR COUNTRY.
The sea of people is a historic refugee crisis, the kind of displacement Europe hasn’t experienced since World War II, with many Ukrainian citizens leaving in a hurry with a single suitcase and no
direction to head other than away. The majority of those looking for shelter are women and children, given that men between the ages of 18 and 60 are barred from leaving the country in case they are needed to fight invading forces.
question has become not only how to welcome refugees, but also how to meet their needs. Day-to-day work is being done by citizens opening their homes and creating a patchwork of programs and volunteer efforts to provide any assistance possible.
More than 1.4 million refugees have gone to Poland. With larger Polish cities now packed with extra people, the
These volunteers come from literally every profession and phase of life. As many have noted, it’s hard to not get inpage 133
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volved when the evidence of war is literally right outside your front door. They call Ukrainians their brothers and sisters — and after explaining their shared history of violent suppression, make it clear that it’s more than a trite phrase. And finally, they insist that they’re not special for putting in the work. Located at the Palace of Culture in the Warsaw city center, Agnieszka Łabuszewska’s Cafe Kulturalna is a natural gathering point for people looking to grab a drink with friends, sit down to a meal, or even see a local band perform. But as owner Łabuszewska explains, it’s also now the center of operations for a massive food-delivery project. Along with her employees, many of them Ukrainian, Łabuszewska spends hours every day making vats of soup with any ingredients she can source before dropping them off at train stations, bus stations, and anywhere else where the incoming refugees might need a hot meal. It isn’t easy — like every business page 134
owner, she’s taken a hit over the last few years. And in a city where every resident seems to be taking part in welcoming refugees, resources are stretched thin. But she credits the power of Facebook for helping her organize volunteers and supplies in a hurry, like when she posted a cheeky message about wanting soup thermoses for International Women’s Day instead of flowers or candy — and got them in droves. “Before the pandemic, we were just posting pictures of our holidays, and birthday cakes for children, and happy cats,” she says. “It all disappeared. Now, we have to communicate very quickly. And we are desperate to get the things that are needed for somebody else.” Why it was natural for her to help “I’m deeply interested in the changes of the world, and I feel responsible for making the changes. The work must be done to make a better world. So, Cafe Kulturalna was never only a club and
restaurant, but it was always a place to take part in social activities, like actions around women’s and civil rights, diversity, or LGBTQ rights in Poland. I try to train all my employees in these attitudes of tolerance and prejudice-breaking in combating stereotypes against groups subject to discrimination. I was always helping refugees, many years before the war, because these are not our first refugees in Poland. I was a part of the action a few years ago, ‘Refugees Welcome,’ because Poland has never been very keen on letting refugees into our country. So, when this war started two weeks ago, I realized immediately that we would be part of a system helping refugees, mainly women and children, running away from the war in Ukraine. And also, Kulturalna is located very close to the central train station. So, we just see it with our very eyes; we see these people arriving by trains. It was very obvious, being a part of a circle of people who are trying to help. I just asked myself, what do I have to give? What are my resources? I can feed them. So, we cook huge pots of warm soup, and we bring them to train stations and other places in Warsaw that have people who need to be comforted by a warm meal.” “I tell my daughter that when you don’t know what to do, and when things are bigger than you can imagine, just find a gap that you can organize, and organize a microcosm. And all these microcosms sum up to something big. At the beginning, it was just me and my team; we were just cooking with what we had. We had a lockdown here that lasted for almost a year. And I still had people employed here during the pandemic. I left the pandemic on the edge of being bankrupt. So, I was so happy that the pandemic is slowing down, and the spring will come, and we will start having guests here and money that we need to cover our debts after the pandemic. And it didn’t happen because the war started. So now, we are just like soldiers. We are just automatically wanting to help these people. And we are not thinking about the end of the pandemic and pain. Seventy percent of my time now is organizing a system of helping the people that are coming from Ukraine.”
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MEGHAN MARKLE
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HEN PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE WERE SERVING AS WORKING ROYALS AND REPRESENTING THE MONARCHY IN A FORMAL CAPACITY, THEY REMAINED TIGHT-LIPPED ON ANY ISSUE THAT COULD BE DEEMED TOO POLITICAL— THOUGH WHAT EXACTLY CROSSED THAT LINE WAS UNCLEAR. PRINCE CHARLES’S FOCUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE, FOR EXAMPLE, HAS BEEN DEEMED APPROPRIATE FOR DECADES.
But now that she has stepped away from that official royal role, Meghan is making a decidedly political statement, sharing her reaction to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in a new conversation with Gloria Steinem, moderated by journalist Jessica Yellin. Describing her reaction to the ruling restricting abortion access as “guttural,” Meghan spoke about how the reversal of Roe v. Wade is already affecting women’s lives and bodies. “Women are already sharing stories of how their physical safety is being put in danger. Women with resources will travel to get an abortion, those without might attempt to give themselves one at tremendous risk,” she said. “What does this tell women? It tells us that our physical safety doesn’t matter, and as a result that we don’t matter. But we do. Women matter.” The Duchess of Sussex also reflected on the impact the ruling will have on the Black community. “Women of color and especially Black women are most impacted by these decisions because most of us don’t have the same access to health care, economic opportunity, mental health resources…the list goes on. It’s difficult to overstate what this decision is going to do to these communities,” she said. And she called for men to support reproductive rights. “Men need to be vocal in this moment and beyond because these are decisions that affect relationships, families, and communities at large. They may target women, but the consequences impact all of us. My husband and I talked about that a lot over the past few days. He’s a feminist too,” she said, speaking, of course, about Prince Harry. “His reaction last week was guttural, like mine. I know that for so many women right now, there is a sentiment of despair. But again, we have to band together and not wallow. We have to do the work.” page 136
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FRANCIA MARQUEZ
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HAT HAPPENED IN COLOMBIA SUNDAY, JUNE 19, WAS SEISMIC. NOT JUST BECAUSE GUSTAVO PETRO, A FORMER GUERRILLA, FORMER MAYOR OF BOGOTA AND CURRENT SENATOR, BECAME THE TRADITIONALLY CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY’S FIRST LEFTIST PRESIDENT BUT ALSO BECAUSE OF HIS RUNNING MATE, FRANCIA MÁRQUEZ, THE ENVIRONMENTAL FEMINIST WHO WAS ELECTED TO SERVE AS COLOMBIA’S FIRST BLACK VICE PRESIDENT.
“This will be a government for those with calluses on their hands,” Márquez said after the Sunday victory. “We are here to promote social justice and to help women eradicate the patriarchy.” In a country that has been ravaged by decades of civil war and extreme inequality, Márquez’s story is an inspiration for all Colombians who have been marginalized and ignored. As NBC News reported, “Marquez grew up in a remote village and had a daughter when she was 16. To support her, she cleaned homes and worked at a restaurant while studying for a law degree.” Marquez became a fierce defender of the AfroColombian community, leading campaigns against hydroelectric and mining interests. In a country known for its mi-
sogynist, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous culture, Márquez has faced a barrage of death threats. Still, she soldiered on and is now the country’s next vice president after running with Petro under a Historical Pact coalition that contains mostly leftist voices from the far left and the center-left. Despite Colombia’s conservative sectors pushing the narrative that Petro and Márquez will take Colombia so far to the left that it will become the next Venezuela or Cuba, and conservative lawmakers vowing not to cooperate with the incoming administration, there is a new hopefulness in Colombia that follows years of violence, divisive politics and the catastrophic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
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AYESHA MALIK
USTICE AYESHA MALIK MADE HISTORY WHEN SHE WAS SWORN IN AS THE FIRST FEMALE JUDGE ON PAKISTAN’S SUPREME COURT, WHERE SHE WILL SERVE ALONGSIDE 16 MEN.
Her accomplishment — which followed a particularly contentious nomination process — is being celebrated by government officials and human rights activists as a defining moment for the country and its male-dominated judiciary. “As the first woman judge appointed to the apex court in the country’s judicial history, this is an important step towards improving gender diversity in the judiciary, where women reportedly account for only 17 percent of judges overall and just under 4.4 percent in the high courts,” the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in a statement, adding that these disparities are structural and require more investment in women. page 138
Pakistan is the only South Asian nation to have never had a female Supreme Court judge, according to Human Rights Watch. Malik, 55, completed her basic education at schools in Paris, New York, Karachi and London, then earned degrees from the Government College of Commerce & Economics in Karachi, Pakistan College of Law in Lahore and Harvard Law School in the U.S. She’s also taught banking and mercantile law at various colleges, served as pro bono counsel for NGOs focused on poverty alleviation and contributes to publications including the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts. And she’s a mother of three. Malik appeared as an expert witness in family law cases in England and Australia involving issues of child custody, women’s rights and constitutional protection for Pakistani women. She developed a reputation for integrity and discipline on the court, where she
helped deliver several landmark verdicts on major constitutional issues, according to The Indian Express. In 2021, for example, the court outlawed the invasive and medically-discredited virginity test performed on women who reported rape or sexual assault, with Malik writing in the 30-page opinion that the practice “offends the dignity of the female victim” and discriminates on the basis of gender. Despite her credentials, Malik’s journey to Pakistan’s highest court was not an easy one. She was appointed to the position last year but was voted down, the BBC reports. This year — when she was nominated to fill a seat made vacant by another judge’s retirement in August — the nine-member commission approved her appointment by a 5-4 vote. The process came to an end when Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed administered Malik the oath at a ceremony broadcast on TV.
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JUSTICE & NIA FAITH
USTICE AND NIA FAITH BETTY ARE THE FOUNDERS OF RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE, AN EDUCATIONAL AND ACTION-ORIENTED PLATFORM FOR PEOPLE PASSIONATE ABOUT MAKING A CHANGE.
Nia initially launched Révolutionnaire as a dancewear company when she grew tired of not being able to find dance apparel that matched her complexion. She wanted to change the conversation
and perception around what was considered a “nude” shade, and save herself and others the time and money spent on dyeing apparel in an effort to make it work. After selling Révolutionnaire’s inclusive apparel for two years, Nia teamed up with her sister Justice to expand the brand, turning it into a digital platform for social impact that engages young change-makers and gives them the tools, information, and networking opportunities needed to put their plans and goals into action. With the platform launched in June 2021, Révolutionnaire now focuses
on food and housing insecurity, environmentalism, racial equity, anti-gun violence, and criminal justice reform. While Nia and Justice successfully managed to alter the platform, they haven’t left apparel behind. Last year, Révolutionnaire launched their first product in partnership with Roots, their “Dreams Fuel Revolutions” t-shirts, selling out in less than 24 hours. The second installment of their partnership involved a release of updated Roots classics: sweats, t-shirts, a weekender bag, and award jacket, all with Révolutionnaire’s brand colors and messaging.
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NANCY PELOSI
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OUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI DID NOT GET TO WHERE SHE IS BY MISREADING THE PUBLIC MOOD. She understands how unpopular support for upending Roe v. Wade is. And she has vowed to make conservatives face the consequences of radicalism. In a Dear Colleague letter released on Monday, Pelosi wrote that she intends to bring several abortion measures to page 140
the floor. First, she will bring legislation that “protects women’s most intimate and personal data stored in reproductive health apps” to address fears that such information “could be used against women by a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion.” Pelosi is certainly right that Americans are worried about the government or big business accumulating data on them. Second, Pelosi will bring forward legislation that makes clear, “Americans have
the Constitutional right to travel freely and voluntarily throughout the United States.” The targets here, of course, are red states aiming to reach beyond their borders by punishing women who seek abortions in other states. Third, Pelosi will once more force a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which she describes as the “landmark legislation to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.”
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KATHY HOCHUL The 57th governor of New York is the first woman in history to run the state. Hochul took over in August after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a bevy of sexual harassment allegations and immediately got to work, implementing a series of universal masking mandates for certain scenarios in New York state and announcing a $539 million homeowner assistance fund for New Yorkers at risk of foreclosure or displacement. Her gubernatorial tenure could be short-lived: she’s up for re-election in November 2022 and facing stiff competition from New York attorney general Letitia James and New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams.
ROSALIND BREWER
Rosalind Brewer: The former chief operating officer of Starbucks took the helm of Walgreens in March and is currently the only Black woman running an S&P 500 company. Brewer is a longtime champion of diversity in the workplace. page 141
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MICHELLE OBAMA
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S THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO EVER HOLD THE COVETED TITLE, THE WOMAN BORN MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON IN CHICAGO, IL, WAS PUT UNDER A MICROSCOPE ALMOST FROM THE MOMENT HER HUSBAND, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, TOOK OFFICE. Fortunately, however, Mrs. Obama handled the newfound pressure with her trademark grace. “Being the first Black anything is gonna be hard,” she told Robin Roberts of “Good Morning America.” “I knew, as the first Black first lady, I couldn’t presume anything … I’d have to earn my grace.” Today, Michelle Obama has more than “earned her grace.” As AfroTech previously reported, she’s earned a $70 million net worth, inked a separate deal with Spotify for her own podcast, hosted voter drives to encourage young people to vote, and even got inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. And that’s just the beginning. But where Mrs. Obama really shines is in her ability to influence markets. More than just being a “pretty face” to look at, and endorse products, Mrs. Obama is a veritable business powerhouse. Vanity Fair revealed an estimate that said in the eight years that she was First Lady, Michelle Obama drove more than $2.7 billion to the “retail sector.” “In 2010, New York University business professor David Yermack, calculated that Obama’s fashion choices alone have driven $2.7 billion to the retail sector,” Vanity Fair reported in 2016. What’s more, the outlet also said that companies saw “a 2.3 percent stock gain when she dons their products—
five times that of a typical celebrity endorsement.” When Barack and Michelle Obama’s Spotify deal was announced back in 2020, the NASDAQ reported that the streaming company’s stock jumped by five percent on the day of the announcement. “Spotify’s total monthly active users and premium subscribers both increased by 31% year over year, to 286 million and 130 million, respectively, in the first quarter,” the report said. Throughout the entire time that President Barack Obama was in office, First Lady Michelle Obama had quite the impact on fashion. Jackie Kennedy may have popularized pillbox hats and capes, but David Yermak of the Harvard Business Review points out that only Michelle Obama was actually able to move markets with her fashion choices. “The stock price gains of the companies whose clothes she wore in public appearances—29 brands in all—are cumulative abnormal returns. That is, the returns cannot be attributed to normal market variations,” he wrote. “Some companies that sell clothes that Obama frequently wears, such as Saks, have realized long-term gains.” Further, according to the Harvard Business Review, Michelle Obama’s effect on the market is based on a two-fold observation. One, she wasn’t paid to wear designers — and observers can therefore put more “trust” into her tacit endorsement than, say, in a fashion spread’s tacit endorsement. And two, Mrs. Obama doesn’t just wear unaffordable haute couture. Rather, she pairs couture pieces with prêt-à-porter pieces (like, for instance, from J. Crew), which makes it more accessible to the average consumer. page 145
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MELINDA GATES
HEN MELINDA FRENCH GATES GRADUATED FROM HER ALLGIRLS’ CATHOLIC SCHOOL IN DALLAS, SHE EMBODIED A GREAT SENSE OF SELF.
She had been nurtured and mentored by women and teachers, those who told her, “You can do this; you can do anything,” when she expressed an interest in computer science. She was confident and at peace with the woman she was becoming. page 146
It wasn’t until she walked into classrooms at Duke University filled with men – she was often one of maybe three female budding computer scientists in the room – that she began to doubt herself. Those insecurities continued to fester when, 23 and fresh out of business school, she walked the halls of Microsoft, a place that had “a pretty brash culture,” as she describes it. French Gates had to dig deep to rediscover her strength. She read “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brene Brown. She remembered her humble upbringing,
working for the family’s real estate business, mowing lawns and cleaning ovens in rental properties. She focused on what she could control – her parents’ legacy of working hard to attain success. Today, French Gates, 57, has found her peace again. Her grace, compassion, selflessness and empathy are palpable. She doesn’t look at her worth in terms of the billions of dollars she has amassed; her worth is helping others find theirs. “I think so often society puts things on
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of color can take the jobs they want in society?’”
women, puts things on people of color, and you don’t see those role models in those high positions – a woman or a person of color – so you don’t have to have something to look up to. A young man looks up and he sees in any industry, he sees other men. He sees three dozen different archetypes of men. And he says, ‘I don’t want to be like that guy, but I want to be like that guy.’ We don’t have that as women.” French Gates has taken her philanthropic endeavors to the next level as a global advocate for women and girls. She has committed to donating most of her wealth in her lifetime. In 2015, French Gates founded Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company that seeks to advance
social progress for women, families and people of color across the United States. Her recent targets: national paid leave, economic empowerment and employment for women, mental health of young people and gender equality. “The goal really is to create societal change for women and people of color,” she said. “I really feel like we need to accelerate their power and their influence. And I feel like right now, during this pandemic, we’re seeing finally in the United States jobs starting to come back, but women are not going back to their jobs nearly at the same rate as men. A lot of that has to do with the burden they have of care-giving. And so I feel like this is a moment to say, ‘Look, how do we fix that system? And how do we make sure that women and people
French Gates is no stranger to philanthropy. In 2000, she helped create the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest charitable organizations worldwide, with an endowment of nearly $50 billion. She and Bill Gates divorced in 2021, after 27 years of marriage, but she remains a co-chair of the foundation. French Gates speaks eloquently about the end of her marriage. It clearly caused her deep pain, but it’s also what makes her relatable. “We all have low moments,” French Gates said. “I’m not happy every day. You turn on the news and you think, oh my, gosh, what’s going to happen next? I would say probably, though, for sure, my lowest moment in life was when I finally reached the decision that I knew I needed to leave my marriage. That wasn’t something I ever thought would happen to me. It certainly wasn’t what I thought on the day I got married, but I realized for myself, I needed to make a healthier choice, and that was just a very, very sad day.” page 147
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MICHAELA JAÉ RODRIGUEZ
OT LONG AFTER LANDING A BEST ACTRESS EMMY NOMINATION FOR POSE, A HISTORY-MAKING FIRST FOR A TRANSGENDER PERFORMER, SERIES STAR MJ RODRIGUEZ, 30, DROPPED THE NICKNAME IN FAVOR OF GOING BY HER FULL NAME, MICHAELA JAÉ RODRIGUEZ.
“People have called me Mj ever since I page 148
was a child because I got it from SpiderMan, but at this point in my life, becoming a grown woman, I need people to see the person that is behind Mj. I want them to know that there’s more to me than just the characters I play,” she says, referencing her Pose character Blanca and the upcoming Apple TV+ comedy series on which she’ll star opposite Maya Rudolph. “That was why I am now going by Michaela Jaé. I want people to see who I truly am.”
Rodriguez, who next stars in LinManuel Miranda’s tick, tick … BOOM!, was recently named Advocate’s Person of the Year. She posed for the mag’s cover and is also featured on the cover of the new issue of Latina. She added to THR that she hopes to telegraph the type of performer she is through acting work as well as with the forthcoming release of a music EP following the recent debut of her single, “Say Something.” She added: “It’s time to get to know me as an artist.”
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WOMEN+POWER
SOOJIN KIM T
HE WORLD OF ENGINES, OIL, AND EXHAUST HASN’T HISTORICALLY BEEN DOMINATED BY WOMEN, SO YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT SOME OF THE TOP-PRODUCING LUXURY CAR SALES RECORDS BELONG TO WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES. It was within this luxury automobile industry that Soojin Kim first made waves on the East Coast, becoming a household name among collectors and aficionados of classic, super-powered and rare models. She’s traveled the world over, attending Concorsos and product launches at the invitation of the world’s most-prominent distributors. And fairly recently, she decided to make a major career shift from sales to philanthropy. Bringing that same energy to community projects, she’s tackling goals and breaking through red tape at break-speed. When we spoke by telephone a few weeks ago, she was prepping for a meeting with local leaders to move upcoming projects along. With a family legacy of philanthropy throughout the Kim generations, she co-launched the First City Project in the Glen Cove neighborhood on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y. in 2017 combining two passions: automobiles and art. “First City Project (FCP) Collective seeks to become a catalyst for cultural energy in the city of Glen Cove by developing public art and cultural activities to celebrate our community, bring positivity and artistic vibrancy to the neighborhood, and engage the town’s youth through parks, recreation and arts programs,” said Kim. FCP received its non-profit status earlier this year, solidifying Kim’s decision to pursue non-profit work. “I find so much more satisfaction in doing good rather than bringing home a big paycheck,” she said. page 149
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WOMEN+POWER
SIILA WATT-CLOUTIER page 150
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“T
HERE IS ALWAYS REASON TO HOPE,” SIILA WATT-CLOUTIER SAYS, WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF THE WORLD. “THE PANDEMIC IS TEACHING US TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY — THAT’S POSITIVE.”
It was around this time that Siila began to feel a pull toward helping people. “The government-run residential school system was hard and we were 200 Inuit kids together,” she says. “I had to become a model of survival, so I drew my strength from what I learned from my grandmother and mother. I wanted to help others and be of service to my community.”
As an Inuit leader and one of the world’s most recognized environmental and human rights advocates, Siila has spent her career shining a spotlight on the ramifications of global climate change on communities, especially for Indigenous Peoples. She’s encouraged leaders and individuals to evaluate how their policies and actions have impacted their citizens. She says the COVID-19 pandemic has given everyone the reality check needed to realize the way we do things — whether in business or culturally — needs to change.
Not one for mathematics or science, and more of an introvert than an extrovert, she moved back to her hometown when she was 18 and began a career in education, first in Kuujjuaq’s healthcare centers as an interpreter and later at the Kativik School Board, an institution that administers education to 14 Nunavik communities in Quebec and that incorporates Inuit culture, language, and values.
“The pandemic is opening hearts and souls to find solutions to address climate change; it has exposed the unresolved issues of racism in the Indigenous and Black communities,” says Siila. “We’re in a space where we need to address these issues as we’re all connected. Change is coming, and there is hope in that.” Siila, pronounced see-la in Inuktitut and she-la in English, was born in Kuujjuaq, Northern Quebec, an old Hudson’s Bay outpost formerly known as Old Fort Chimo, and was raised by her mother and grandmother, two “remarkable women who overcame incredible challenges to care for and feed their families.” Until she was 10, she lived a traditional Inuit way of life, traveling by dogsled and learning the importance of community, culture, and respect for nature from her elders. She was then sent away to various places by the Canadian government, landing first in Nova Scotia with a family when she was 10, then Churchill, Manitoba at a residential school at the age of twelve, and then Ottawa for high school.
“When I returned to Quebec, I began to witness first-hand the dramatic changes that were happening within Inuit communities, the addictions that had started to set in and the breakdown of traditions,” Siila says. “There was so much going on and so many issues that weren’t being dealt with, especially for our youth.” She had never wanted to get into politics, seeing it as more her brother’s arena — “but I realized if I put myself in a leadership role, I could help.” She began to look for opportunities to leverage her knowledge of the educational systems on a larger scale, which led to her work as the Inuk advisor to the Nunavik Education Task Force. It was there that she and her colleagues produced a document with 101 recommendations for change called “The Pathway to Wisdom.” When she was elected to the Makivik Corporation in 1995, she focused on how she could help guide the youth. Both highlighted the extraordinarily rapid decline of Inuit Society and the weaknesses of the educational systems in Inuit communities to support youth and individuals through such tumultuous changes. It was that work which eventually led her to move beyond regional politics,
and got her elected to lead the Canadian branch of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), a body that represents approximately 165,000 Inuit in the Arctic, predominantly located in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Russia. After 7 years in the role, she was elected Chair of the ICC, leading all four countries for four years. “It was almost overnight that I became the spokesperson for the Inuit around the world,” Siila says, and it wasn’t just issues of education she was dealing with. “I entered the organizations at a time when much work and research was being done about the health impact of pollutants and toxins on the communities. These pollutants, carried though weather patterns from afar, were contaminating the Arctic food chain and accumulating in the bodies and nursing milk of our Inuit mothers. Climate change was also impacting an individual’s ability to safely hunt.” Strengthened by what she calls her “maternal instinct to protect what I love,” Siila gave a voice to this issue on the global stage and went on to play a critical role in the United Nations negotiations that banned the use of Persistent Organic Pollutants. In 2007, while ICC Chair, she launched the first legal action linking climate change to human rights, particularly in the context of the Inuit. Her book on the subject entitled The Right to be Cold is internationally renowned. Today, Siila is considered one of the world’s greatest advocates for the rights of the Inuit of the Arctic. For her work, she has won and been nominated for dozens of awards, including a nomination for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore. She became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006, received the Right to Livelihood Award in 2015, and has been recognized as a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme. Siila has also received many honorary doctorates from universities in Canada and one from the USA. page 151
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WOMEN+POWER
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
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N HER ACCESSION, AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-FIVE, SHE BECAME THE STUDIOUS, CAREFUL RULER THAT WE KNOW. THERE HAVE BEEN TIMES WHEN THE QUEEN HAS MOMENTARILY MISSED THE MOOD, BUT IN THE COURSE OF A LIFETIME SHE HAS DEPLOYED THE CHARISMA OF THE CROWN WITH SKILL AND, OCCASIONALLY, TO GREAT TRIUMPH. The Commonwealth, a 54-nation political association of (mostly) former page 152
British colonies, is her legacy. Her visit to Ireland in 2011, the first by a British monarch since the country gained its independence, in 1921, was a huge deal. She knows the right word, the correct unreadable facial expression to wear. During the pandemic, the Queen channeled Dame Vera Lynn and Britain’s wartime tribulations, which have anchored her own decades of service: “We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.” She understands her majesty: “I have to be seen to be believed,” is her signal aphorism. She is acutely aware of her multiple roles: as the ceremonial head of state, a
mirror for the nation to gaze upon itself; as the C.E.O. of a rich, albeit dysfunctional celebrity dynasty (the Queen’s net worth, in 2021, was 365 million pounds, or a little more than $450 million); as a mother, grandmother, and so on. She does not get these confused. The Queen’s favorite subject, bar none, is the breeding of horses. Her closest male friend was the Seventh Earl of Carnarvon—known as Porchey, from an earlier aristocratic title—who served as her racing manager from 1969 until he died of a heart attack while watching the coverage of 9/11. Her wedding present to The Prince of Wales, when he finally married Camilla Parker-Bowles, in 2005, was a broodmare. As it hap-
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pened, the timing of the wedding clashed with the Grand National, Britain’s biggest steeplechase. The organizers delayed the race by twenty-five minutes. Shortly after the ceremony, the Queen stepped into a side room in Windsor Castle, with Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla’s previous husband, to watch the race. page 153
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Q
UINN IS A PROFESSIONAL SOCCER PLAYER AND, IN 2021, HELPED TEAM CANADA WIN THEIR FIRST-EVER GOLD MEDAL IN SOCCER AT THE TOKYO OLYMPICS. IN DOING SO, THEY MADE HISTORY AS THE FIRST OPENLY TRANSGENDER, NON-BINARY ATHLETE TO COMPETE AT AN OLYMPIC GAMES, TO WIN A MEDAL, AND TO WIN A GOLD MEDAL. page 154
QUINN Prior to playing in Tokyo, Quinn represented Canada at the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016, and helped the team earn a bronze medal, but they were not known publicly as trans at the time (in 2016, the number of out LGBTQ+ athletes was 56; fast forward to 2021, and that group has grown to at least 180). Quinn’s historic moment is only a few years removed from the 2004 decision that solidified trans athletes being eligible to compete in the Olympics. Understanding the importance of representation and driving change, Quinn
uses their platform and story to continue the conversation around the inclusion of transgender and non-binary athletes in sports, and to be visible to members of the LGBTQ+ community — regardless of whether they play sports or not.
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WOMEN+POWER
SUZIE TURNER
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UZIE TURNER GOWNS HAVE GRACED THE CARPETS OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE, STATE DINNERS, WEDDINGS, AND FORMAL FUNCTIONS, YET IN ALL HER SUCCESS TURNER IS A DOWNTO-EARTH HARDWORKING WOMAN WHO AS SHE PUTS IT, “IS SIMPLY A DRESSMAKER, A PATTERN CUTTER, A HAND FINISHER, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, A DREAMER”
Walking into the Suzie Turner atelier in northeast London you see passion with fabric samples on the walls, sketches on work tables, staff embroidering new pieces, world-class craftswomanship, and beautiful designs fit for a princess. But you also see Suzie, with her blonde hair and big smile. Turner creates bespoke designs for women around the world from royalty, celebrities, and every woman in between. In her early years Turner struggled to read but she showed signs of taking to a needle and thread. Her mother, a
seamstress created curtains and various creations for people and young Turner would help lighten her mother’s workload by helping her. “My mother Mary, and I were very close when I was growing up. She was always making my sister Sadie and I the latest styles, and making sure our school uniform fitted us to perfection.” She used to help her mother not only with making drapes for stately homes, but also making clothes. “I never once felt it a chore to sew, and I will forever cherish spending those special moments with my mum. It helped me learn a skill that I now realize has stood me in good stead. We never truly understand the value of the things we do until after the fact, and then it all becomes clear, these moments with my mum truly made me who I am today. I am very grateful that I still love to sew even after over 30 years of being in the industry.” After school, Turner took up working in a London tailor. Her philosophy was that if she could learn cutting, sewing, sketching and all arms of a tailor she’d always have a job.
“I never looked too far into the future to dream of what I would become. I was always too consumed with the task at hand, finishing the piece that I had started, failing at it, and trying again to get it perfect. I would envisage the look - the outfit - who might wear it where she might go - and the lifestyle she had. I dreamt about these things, and more often than not, I was wanting to be the woman in my dreams. I called this woman my future self, telling myself that one day I will wear a power suit, one day I will be perusing along the Cote d›Azur in a flowing Cruise outfit. Maybe one day I will need a gown for a gala, and who knows, one day I might even need a wedding dress! So, during this time of dreaming, the urgency of creating looks for these occasions is what kept me sewing through the night. These days seem like only weeks ago but in fact nearly 30 years on, I raise my head from the sewing machine and others are calling me a Couturier - yes, it is a label that we use to describe what we do, but in essence I am a dressmaker, pattern cutter, hand finisher, and the most important ingredient that makes up who I am - a dreamer.” page 155
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FASHION & STYLE
CHANEL OPENS A HAMPTONS STORE JASON KIM PRESENTS DIOR S23 VIRGIL ABLOH LIVES ON IN LV MEN'S 23
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STYLE
HOME FOR THE
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SUMMER
N JUNE, CHANEL OPENED A NEW EPHEMERAL BOUTIQUE IN EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. THE 220 SQ METER TRADITIONAL GRAY-SHINGLED HAMPTONS BOUTIQUE HAS BEEN RE-IMAGINED AS A PERFECTLY PARISIAN SUMMER FANTASY.
Spread across two floors, the boutique offers handbags, small leather goods, accessories, Watches & Fine Jewelry creations, and silhouettes from the Coco Beach and Métiers d’art 2021/22 collections by Virginie Viard. Outside, a quintessentially glorious Hamptons garden will be used for entertaining throughout the summer.
The boutique is a refreshing plunge into the spirit of Chanel à la plage. The décor is light-filled and summery, drawing on both the Hamptons spirit and the timeless codes of the House, including the emblematic black, white, and gold color palette, and the elegant design touches synonymous with Mademoiselle Chanel’s eternally modern allure.
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The boutique’s inviting design connotes refined comfort and a relaxed sense of glamour inherent to the House. Matte black painted floors and white walls are accentuated by tweed rugs, elegantly understated seating options, and graphic accent pieces evoking Gabrielle Chanel’s legendary salon in her apartment at 31 rue Cambon in Paris. The second floor, reserved for private appointments, is organized around central-facing creamy linen couches topped with throw pillows in white and gold Chanel tweed. The first floor divides its focus between Ready-to-Wear, accessories, Watches and Fine Jewelry, eyewear, and shoes. Here, clients can experience the House’s latest objects of desire, from diamantétrimmed suiting, loose summery denim, gilded tweeds, and sleek evening
options from the Métiers d’art 2021/22 collection, to the swimwear and colorful coverups of the Coco Beach collection, as well as small leather goods, jewelry, and sunglasses from the Summer and Fall 2022 Eyewear collections. The iconic 11.12 and 2.55 bags are presented alongside the House’s latest creations, including the Chanel 22 Handbag, first seen at the Spring-Summer 2022 Readyto-Wear show. Guests will also be able to discover an exquisite selection of the latest Watches & Fine Jewelry creations in a dedicated space, including the timeless J12, Première, Code Coco and Boy·Friend watches, as well as the emblematic Coco Crush Fine Jewelry collection. Presented last December at le19M in Paris, the Métiers d’art show celebrated and paid tribute to the House’s artisans,
using a myriad of savoir-faire such as three-dimensional knitting techniques, hand- spun gold embroidery, intricate flower-making and various glittering appliqués of the House’s iconic double C branding. The Chanel Coco Beach 2022 collection remains true to the freewheeling vacation spirit pioneered during the debut Coco Beach collection in 2018, this time with pink and two-tone black and white tweed so lightweight it could be terrycloth, and summer essentials like cycling shorts, leather totes, and printed jersey bikinis. This new boutique is an invitation to experience the timeless elegance of the House – as well as the ideal Hamptons wardrobe – and to summer with Chanel.
STYLE
PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION
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PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION
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KIM JONES' DIOR S23 MENSWEAR SHOW
PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION
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STYLE
K
IM JONES TOOK CHRISTIAN DIOR‘S COUTURE SPIRIT TO THE GREAT OUTDOORS FOR SUMMER 2023, EXPLORING BOTH INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE THROUGH ART AND POETRY AND THE PRACTICAL DEMANDS OF THE NATURAL WORLD ON ITS OWN TERMS. Already bending the new rule that Spring and Fall capsule collections would see Jones explore his penchant for collaboration and Summer and Winter would mark full, Jones-only collections, Summer 2023 draws inspiration (but not collaboration) from the work and life of Duncan Grant, a British post-impressionist painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group, and who shares the same birthday as Christian Dior. Both men were famously fond of gardens and gardening, the characteristic theme of page 170
the collection which is readily apparent in the set design by Etienne Russo of Villa Eugénie that reconstructs Monsieur Dior’s Granville villa and Grant’s and Vanessa Bell’s Charleston Farmhouse, a sort of headquarters and retreat for the Bloomsbury Group. This theme allows for Jones to explore the gorp-core trend, finding smart ways to refract the practicality and style of outdoor gear through the lens of Christian Dior’s couturier sensibility. Amid Jones’ signature mix of tailored elegance and elevated streetwear, brilliant details drawn from gardening and outdoor gear proliferate – zippers and straps, technical fabrics, hidden compartments – as well as pieces like trekking backpacks, gardening hats, fleeces, and hiking boots. Direct references to Grant’s paintings are kept to a relative minimum, appearing on just a few sweaters. But the ephemeral spirit and floral, pastel color scheme of both his artwork and
garden blossoms across the collection in gossamer paneling in sheer and lace, petal-like knit patterns, and a blooming palette of mossy green, evening-sky blue, delicate pink, and warm sand. Excitingly, Jones also got more experimental with structure than we’ve seen from him in the past, almost veering into deconstructionist territory with touches like redundant sleeves, asymmetry, and strappy, bib-like tops. At once poetic and practical, the collection feels like a deft synthesis of the spirit of an impressionist landscape painting and what it actually feels like to exist in touch with the land. We could have easily felt that the collection was perpetuating the feeling of collaboration fatigue and whiplash, but the holism and grace with which the inspiration was incorporated avoided this potential pitfall and made for a cohesive collection that felt distinctly Dior in its celebration of artistry and adventure.
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OUTDOOR PRACTICALITY MEETS COUTURE AT DIOR
CONTENT AND PHOTOS COURTESY THE IMPRESSION
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LOUIS VUITTON
VIRGIL ABLOH'S MEN'S 2023
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IRGIL ABLOH‘S LEGACY AT LOUIS VUITTON CONTINUES TO LIVE ON, AND THE HOUSE’S SPRING 2023 MEN‘S COLLECTION – DESIGNED BY ITS OWN STUDIO COLLECTIVE IN LIEU OF A SINGLE CREATIVE DIRECTOR – AFFIRMED THAT THE BRAND’S VISION (AT LEAST WHEN IT COMES TO MENSWEAR) HAS LEARNED AND GAINED MUCH FROM THE LATE DESIGNER’S GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT AND OPTIMISM.
The collection formed one of the most vibrant and direct expression’s of Virgil Abloh’s visionary celebration of boyhood and imagination for which the maison of Louis Vuitton became a vehicle. Taking shape over a base layer of strong tailoring and hot-selling streetwear staples, a world of color and imaginative iconography that explored and reiterated the limitless possibilities of childhood play, worn by a legion of models who strode down a runway that recalled a Hot Wheels track. Chunky beads that suggest necklaces assembled in elementary school arts-andcrafts time, leather renditions of classic origami hats, suit jackets and pants bedecked with paper planes or scissors
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and paste. Other, less-literal references to the world of playtime include oversized, croc-like clogs that recall the shoes of retro cartoon characters, checkerboard patterns, bags in the shape of a many-sided die, oversized proportions and pop-art color-blocking that recall early childhood educational toys. Tapping into both the season of spring and its metaphorical connotations of youth, newness, freshness, a motif of flowers also runs throughout. Of course the collection was realized with a sharp dedication to another kind of craft – what might be called the savoir-faire variety – bringing the imagination behind these looks to life
with skill and a broad array of techniques: jacquard, embroidery, beadwork, crochet, and unique knit patterns, to name just a few. The strength of Louis Vuitton’s studio was fully on display, even if it was easy to lose the details in the playful rush of color. While many of the details of childhood memory are forgotten, it’s often the seemingly smallest of details that remain with us, lending visual shape and clarity to an elusive recollection of a time that felt more optimistic, more new, more boundless. Reminding us to stop and smell the flowers, to take time for play, Louis Vuitton revives this sense of wonder in all its vibrant detail.
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MANSION OF THE MONTH
RANCHO CARIÑOSO CARPINTERIA, CALIFORNIA
JUST LISTED $109,000,000 USD
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MANSION OF THE MONTH
RANCHO CARIÑOSO
OFFERS HORSES, PRIVATE BEACH AND FAMOUS NEIGHBORS
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I
F YOU LIKE HORSES, BEACH ACTIVITIES AND OSCAR-WINNING ACTORS, THIS PROPERTY MAY BE FOR YOU. The newly listed $109 million estate located in Santa Barbara Country’s Carpinteria will give you access to 4.2-acres of space, horse trails and your very own private beach. Dubbed Rancho Cariñoso, the estate sits on the famous surf break known as Loon Point. It’s also near Kevin Costner’s Padaro Lane estate, which he purchased in 2006. The property includes a main residence that spans 2,500 square feet. The relatively modest abode includes three bedrooms, four bathrooms, a workshop and a detached garage. Views of the Southern California coastline abound and as a bonus, you can add a pool and additional structures on the land, or even build a nine-stall stable (which it’s zoned for), according to co-listing agent Eric Haskell of the Agency. New owners will be also able to keep a hangar
of small boats, kayaks and more on the property’s beach portion. Sean Matthews of Compass also holds the listing that is being sold by a descendant of Texas oil mogul Arthur Cameron and model-actress Kay Aldridge. The seller, Arthur Cameron III, told The Wall Street Journal that he inherited the property from his father and used it as a year-round beach retreat and riding spot for his horses. The 40-year-old investor and polo player is just one of the owners who’s kept the property in the family for more than four decades. He also owns a 377-acre ranch north of Santa Barbara and is selling the Carpinteria estate to move on to the “next adventure,” WSJ reports. The home was built in 2014 and is surrounded by legacy estates (properties gifted to beneficiaries of a will) that rarely come on the market in Carpinteria, according to Haskell. Though the estate is surrounded by a never-ending amount of foliage, which is great for privacy, it’s still an oceanfront proper-
ty—making it an in-demand listing. In fact, Haskell tells WSJ, “we’re at a peak buyer interest, especially high-end buyer interest. So, if you’re ever going to let go of a legacy property, the timing is right.” Fans of Costner, your potential neighbor, may be aware that his 10.25-acre property next door was listed for $60 million in 2017. At the time of this writing, the home has yet to sell and is on the market for a discounted asking price of $49 million. Whether you’re invited over for drink or not, you’ll be able to enjoy the same local attractions as the actor, including trips to the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club, access to a private airport and luxe shopping and dining in Montecito Village. All of this is just 80 miles north of Los Angeles. “This world-class legacy property is unlike any other beach-front estate on the market today,” Matthews says in a statement. “It is truly an equestrian enthusiast’s dream.” For more information on the listing, contact Eric Haskell at the Agency or Sean Matthews of Compass. page 187
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MANSION OF THE MONTH
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NANTES PAYS DE LA LOIRE 44000 FRANCE
PRICE $29,967,206 USD BEDROOMS 8 / BATHROOMS 2 FULL INTERIOR 10,7639 SQ FT. / EXTERIOR 317.29 ACRES NANTES, PAYS DE LA LOIRE, 44000 FRANCE HUS STUD FARM This exceptional estate comprises not only a historic chateau but also one of France’s biggest equestrian facilities with page 192
the capacity to house approximately 400 horses. The castle has been restored and offers 1000 sq. meters of perfectly renovated living space including an indoor pool, a steam room and a gym. The spacious grounds comprise 128 hectares including private access to the River
Erdre, a 30-meter mooring, extensive equestrian training facilities including show jumping and dressage with 200 hectares extra rental. Restored outbuildings, helicopter pad and only 35 kilometers from the international airport. The sale includes 300 horses.
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CASTILLO CARIBE CARIBBEAN LUXURY IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS PRICE UPON REQUEST
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N
OW YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL: LIFESTYLE, LUXURY, LOCATION AND LIMITED TAX LIABILITY. WITHOUT DOUBT CASTILLO CARIBE IS ONE OF THE FINEST BEACH-FRONT ESTATE HOMES IN THE WORLD OFFERING EVERY LUXURY FOR MODERN DAY LIFE WITH ALL THE LIFESTYLE OPTIONS ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND THE CARIBBEAN.
Although the Cayman Islands enjoy year-round sunshine and a temperate climate, this benefit is eclipsed in most people’s eyes by the Islands’ offshore status. The Cayman Islands are well known as a financial center on the world’s stage and provide the highest quality of lifestyle available in a tax
neutral environment, making it very appealing to people of high net worth to seek residency here - a position that is actively encouraged by the local government and, as a British Overseas Territory, is a very stable option. There are a number of destinations in the world that are able to offer offshore status to a greater or lesser degree, but the Cayman Islands have no local taxes whatsoever: no property tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Castillo Caribe offers a rare opportunity to combine this with privacy, security, luxury and lifestyle all on a pristine white sandy beach overlooking the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. The space afforded here is too limited to provide adequate description of all the properties features and amenities, please request a detailed package by emailing: heather.carrigan@sothebysrealty.com.
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In Search In Pursuitof ofSolace the Perfect Glassware C R Y S TA L- C L E A R
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE
GLASS
WILLIAM SMITH @willismith_2000 COPY EDITOR & CONTRIBUTOR
W
HEN THE
SEASONS ALLOW, DINING AL FRESCO IS A FAVORITE OF MINE. THANKFULLY, OUR SEASON FOR DOING SO IS LONG IN SANTA FE, N.M., AND MANY RESTAURANTEURS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, AND OF COURSE, THE MOVE TO OUTDOOR DINING BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE PANDEMIC INCREASED OUR LOCAL OPTIONS. page 198
And so it was that recently I was enjoying lunch with a friend at one of my favorite outdoor dining spots, a gorgeous courtyard that locals and tourists alike flock to for excellent food and libations, as well as some of the best people-watching in town. It being a warm and sun-filled day, I ordered a glass of White Burgundy that I had also ordered on a previous occasion and loved. Out it came, and then I remembered another part of that first experience – the glass in which it was served was not for me. Perhaps outdoor dining may require a sturdier glass than say a fine crystal one, but this glass was thick. And heavy. The opposite of what I felt both the wine and the day called for. I then proceeded to do exactly what I had done on the previous visit and asked for a different glass and apologized, a second time, for “being fussy.”
It led me to ponder – does the glass matter? Am I being fussy or is there something else going on here? The wine glass industry is serious – and big – business. Take Riedel which bills itself as “The Wine Glass Company,” and for good reason. Perhaps no other wine glass maker has become as popularized as Riedel, taking even the casual wine drinker to a deeper appreciation of the glass itself. Super giant retailer Target even carries Riedel in an exclusive line called the “Vivant” line. On Riedel’s own website, the choices are endless. Dozens of options are available for reds with specific glasses offered up for wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, for Old and New World Pinot Noirs, for Syrahs and Cabernets, glasses with stems and without, and varying bowl designs and holding capacity. The same
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Q: Has a customer ever requested a different glass than the one that you chose? I know I shared with you that I have done this and I apologized for “being fussy.” Is that an appropriate request?
is true for their offerings for whites, including different glass for chardonnays depending on whether they are oaked or not. Offerings for sparkling wines are also plentiful, though not a single coupe is to be found… more on that point later. With so many choices and pondering my own experience, I turned to someone more versed in the field, my friend and accomplished sommelier Kristina Hayden Bustamante, the Wine Director at Santa Fe’s award- winning restaurant, The Compound. Kristina’s built the wine program at The Compound into something swoon-worthy, garnering “Best of Award of Excellence” from Wine Spectator for the last three years running. Q: So, does the glass matter when serving wine? is there something beyond personal preference or historical consistency as to which glass to use? A: There is definitely a science at work when it comes to wine glass design.
The shape of a glass has shown to either enhance or restrict aromas and/ or flavors for the taster. For instance, a glass designed for wines from Burgundy (chardonnay or pinot noir) is specifically engineered to show the finesse and delicacy of those grapes. This being said, I look at specialty glassware in the same way a professional athlete looks at their equipment. As someone who tastes and evaluates wine for a living, I prefer certain glasses to others and look at them as part of my ‘equipment.’ For someone who is a layperson or general wine enthusiast, I don’t think it is necessary to have super-specific and often-expensive glassware to thoroughly enjoy a wine. At the end of the day, it is only important to choose a wine you love and surround yourself with friends. With these things, I can almost guarantee a terrific outcome! What you drink from has little to no effect on that level of enjoyment.
A: Absolutely! A customer’s desire for a particular glass (sometimes just because they like the look or size of the glass) should always be honored if possible. There is never a wrong request from a guest pertaining to glassware. It is ultimately about the guest’s enjoyment, but if there is an opportunity to show the guest the reasoning behind certain glass shapes or styles, I take it. This is always fun and informative. I never want a guest (or a friend) to feel ‘schooled’ or lectured. Q: I’ve read that flutes are the worst of all glasses to serve a sparkling, yet they seem to be the “go-to” glass. What’s your take on this debate? A: Yes, indeed! I have absolutely found that a burgundy or larger ‘bubble’ shaped glass really helped me to identify and explore the subtle aromas and flavors of the sparkling wine. These wines are quite delicate and don’t offer intense aromas or flavors like a big red wine might, so a bigger glass enables a taster to really get their nose in there and poke around. Personally, I love a beautiful coupe glass for champagne, but when I am really page 199
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In Pursuit of the Perfect Glassware
interested in exploring a wine I prefer a bigger glass. Flutes are traditional and totally acceptable, so I guess that what I am saying is that it really depends upon your reason for drinking a wine. Are you evaluating and studying, or are you just enjoying a glass of sparkling wine? By the way, I have thoroughly enjoyed fine Champagne sipped from a coffee cup when camping with friends. Q: I really love a coupe as well. There is something elegant and glamorous about them. I recently purchased a set of vintage Baccarat coupes in the Capri design and they are art in-and-of-themselves. In contrast to such fine glassware, I have to confess a snobbish aversion to those thick, heavy all-purpose glasses one finds in some restaurants. How do you feel about those other than they are sturdier for the establishment? A: I think in most instances it probably comes down to a matter of cost. Fine wine glasses, often made of crystal can be quite expensive. A case of good burgundy glasses can cost hundreds of dollars and can break very easily if not handled properly. It is always great to have beautiful glassware, but not all restaurants can make or even require that kind of investment. Obviously if your wine list has more expensive offerings the glassware that is chosen should reflect that cost and care. I personally keep a case of very high-end glasses for guests that either order extraordinary bottles or even just for those guests that request them. I love to bring them out, page 200
but they are a real bear to clean and polish so it doesn’t make sense to offer them across the board for all bottles. Q: If you had to recommend a set of wine glasses for every household, what would you recommend? I have a really basic set of universal (red or white) glasses that I use for parties. There are so many different brands of glassware available everywhere now that I think you should just find the ones that you find most attractive and manageable for your home. Glasses that are fairly durable or even stemless glasses for ease and comfort. It is good to have glasses that are easily cleaned by hand since
dishwasher or dish soap will often leave a film on them that can affect the taste or smell of wine. The best way to clean a glass is just to steam it over a pot of boiling water and dry with a clean, soft cloth. No soap required. My best friend serves a lot of her wine to guests at her home in thick short Italian juice glasses. I absolutely love it and feel so cool drinking from them so there are really no rules. Drink wine from whatever you like. At the end of the day, it is about ease and enjoyment so don’t ever stress about your wine glasses. WILLIAM SMITH COPY EDITOR & CONTRIBUTOR POLO LIFESTYLES 2022
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C O C K TA I L S & G L A S S WA R E
C
HOOSING THE RIGHT GLASSWARE EXTENDS TO THE ART OF COCKTAILS AS WELL. A MARTINI IN A ROCKS GLASS SEEMS, WELL, JUST WRONG. Still, the rules for choosing the right vessel for the right cocktail are not hard-and-fast, and they are ever-evolving. Sometimes a certain tequila feels best out of a mouth-blown, thick-walled, and tall Mexican shot glass. But the Clase
Azul reposado is spectacular out of Mexican glassmaker Kristalov’s Atzin collection of crystal stemware designed specifically for tequila and other mezcals. Natalie Bovis, founder of The Liquid Muse, author, and co-founder of OM Organic Mixology Liqueurs (you have to try the award-winning OM Dark Chocolate & Sea Salt Liqueur) shared her thoughts on cocktail glassware with Polo Lifestyles: “The glass is more than just a util-
itarian vessel, it is essential to the cocktail experience. There are Irish Coffee glasses, Absinthe glasses, Martini glasses, and so forth. In our grandparent’s time, cocktailians knew proper glassware, and took pride in collecting just the right ones. To truly enter cocktail culture, a person needs some classy glasses from a more glamorous era. In addition to estate sales and consignment stores, some lucky finds pop up in secondhand stores. Finding someone else’s family heirlooms can help complete your own home entertaining.”
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ALIGN WITH YO SPIRITUALITY · FAITH · QUESTIONS · GROWTH · FOCUS
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK
DONATING YOUR RETURNS
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R E TA IL GIA NT S CONS I DE R - A ND I M P L E M E NT R E TURNLES S -REFUN DS , BUT WH AT YO U DO W I TH YO UR " RET U RNS " I S UP TO YO U
HAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK AROUND. AFTER GENERATIONS OF BEING AT THE MERCY OF RETAILERS, SHOPPERS JUST MIGHT BE IN FOR A SURPRISE AT THE REGISTER. THE CHAOTIC MIX OF RECORD FUEL PRICES AND AN UNENDING SUPPLY CHAIN CRISIS HAVE RETAILERS CONSIDERING THE UNTHINKABLE: INSTEAD OF RETURNING YOUR UNWANTED ITEMS, JUST KEEP THEM.
In recent weeks, some of the biggest chain stores, including Target, Walmart, Gap, American Eagle Outfitters and others have reported in their latest earnings calls that they have too much inventory of stuff ranging from workout clothes, spring-time jackets and hoodies to garden furniture and bulky kids’ toys. It’s costing them tons of money to store it. Now add on to that glut another category of product that stores have to deal page 204
with: returns. So instead of piling returned merchandise onto this growing inventory heap, stores are considering just handing customers their money back and letting them hang onto the stuff they don’t want. “It would be a smart strategic initiative,” said Burt Flickinger, retail expert and managing director of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group. “Retailers are stuck with excess inventory of unprecedented levels. They can’t afford to take back even more of it.” Returned products are handled in a number of different ways, he said. Retailers take back merchandise from the customer, evaluate it, and if it’s in good condition put it back on the shelf at the same or lesser price. They can refurbish damaged returns and sell them for less or offload them to liquidators to resell. They also can sell returned products to foreign liquidators for sale in Europe, Canada or Mexico. “Given the situation at the ports and the
container shortages, sending product overseas isn’t really an option,” said Flickinger. Lastly, retailers can hire third party firms to handle all aspect of merchandise returns for them. Each of these options, however, tack on additional costs for retailers, he said. “For every dollar in sales, a retailer’s net profit is between a cent to five cents. With returns, for every dollar in returned merchandise, it costs a retailer between 15 cents to 30 cents to handle it,” said Flickinger. There is one other option for retailers to address returns while avoiding more product bloat and that’s to consider a ‘returnless return,’ said Steve Rop, chief operating officer with goTRG, a firm that processes over 100 million returned items annually for companies like WalMart, Amazon and Lowe’s. Rop said his company’s clients are 100 percent considering offering the “keep it” option for returns this year, although he wouldn’t disclose if any of his customers have implemented the “Keep it” returns policy yet.
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OUR PURPOSE IN SY N C W IT H YO UR V IB E
R E N E WA L · C O M M U N I T Y · S U P P O RT · E X P LO R AT I O N · E N E R G Y
In some instances, when they determine it would be easier, some retailers advise customers to just keep or donate their return after issuing a refund. Walmart said it had nothing to share at this time. Lowe’s didn’t provide a comment for the story. “They’re already discounting in stores to clear out products but, when there’s heavy discounting, buyer’s remorse goes up. People are tempted to buy a lot to only return it later,” he said. Refunding customers while simultaneously letting them keep their returns isn’t a new practice, said Rop. “It started with
Amazon several years ago,” he said. The offer makes sense for some types of products -- lower price-tier bulky items like furniture, kitchen appliances, home decor, baby chairs, walkers, strollers where it’s costly for the retailer to cover the shipping cost for the return. “Other products like kids’ toys, footwear, towels and bedding raise sanitary concerns when it comes to returns. It could also apply to these categories,” he said. Another concern with cheaper items: Stores typically discount returned products, so the amount of money they
can make on an inexpensive return is minuscule -- and may not be worth the trade-off, says Keith Daniels, partner with Carl Marks Advisors. Still, a “keep it” policy has its own disadvantages, namely: Companies will need to ensure that they don’t become victims of fraud. “One thing retailers need to track and ensure is that customers that become aware of the [Keep it] policy do not begin to abuse it, by seeking free merchandise over a series of orders by getting a refund but getting to keep the merchandise,” said Daniels. page 205
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MOLD YOUR MIND T H E
P O W E R
O F
U N L O C K I N G
Y O U R
M I N D
BUZZWORD: RESILIENCE
BECOMING RESILIENT JOEY VELEZ
@joeyavelez88 HEALTHY LIFESTYLES CONTRIBUTOR
I
CURRENTLY WORK AS A MASTER RESILIENCE TRAINER FOR THE MILITARY. I HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH THIS POPULATION FOR OVER TWO YEARS NOW, AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. HOWEVER, TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST, PRIOR TO TAKING THIS JOB, I HAD NO IDEA WHAT RESILIENCE WAS. To me, it was just a buzzword that my coach said to motivate us. So, “What is resilience?” Your own response may better align with the definition, which is the ability to grow and thrive in the face of challenges and to bounce back from adversity. However, when we ask, “What makes someone resilient?” my guess is you may not come up with an answer quite as fast, which now begs the question: “How can one be resilient, if they do not know what being resilient is?”
WHAT RESILIENCE IS NOT While “resilience” is a buzzword used page 208
by coaches, humanitarians, colleagues, family and friends, there is a misconception about what “being resilient” actually means. The characteristics of a resilient person I heard most were: never show emotion, no need for others, unfazed by challenges, and that it is something one has from birth... But let’s clear a few of those things up. First, it is not that those with resilience show no emotion, it is actually that they know how to use and express their emotions productively. For example, if someone upsets you, but you overcome those emotions so that you can have a productive conversation with that person about what you are experiencing, that is a sign of resilience. Second, the observation that resilient people are unfazed by pressure, problems, and the challenges that they face. In reality, being resilient can look ugly and is more about pushing through, even when it is tough. For example, if you are giving a presentation at work and it is not your best work, you keep going because what you do not want to do is stop. Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t , but being able to still perform when you do not have your best stuff is an aspect of being resilient. Lastly, lets address that being resilient means you can solve all your problems, overcome any challenge, defeat
any opponent all by yourself. Wrong. Sometimes we need those around us to be resilient. For example, others can help you process your emotions, can help pick you up when you fall and provide you feedback that can help you not only be better the next time, but help you be more resilient in that moment. You do not have to go about it alone; others can help you overcome challenges and fight adversity, which is a concept that I did not fully understand at first.
WHERE WOULD I BE WITHOUT YOU? The notion that strong and resilient folks always go it alone becomes ingrained in many of us, including myself. I was firmly of the belief that if it was my problem, then I should be able to come up with a solution on my own. However, the same problems kept coming back and never seemed to get solved, or even worse, became more and more mentally draining. I felt lost and had no answers. Then, through work, I discovered that I did not have to go about these challenges in life solo and started to leverage my network to help me battle the tough times. I will admit, putting myself in a vulnerable state in front of others was disorienting, , but in the end, I am glad I did it.
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In my mid to late 20s, I picked up a terrible habit: gambling. I never treated it as an issue because I was not homeless, I paid my bills, and did not have to take out any loans or sell any of my possessions. However, I was only justifying my actions and it got to a point where I was on the verge of depression because I was having difficulty paying for life’s necessities. The number of times I had to ask my family and friends for money to tide me over to my next paycheck was embarrassing; however, they started to inform me that, “Pay me back when you can. Just know that no matter what, I got your back.” This message helped me turn things around. Without my family and friends, I would not have been able to be resilient when it came to my finances. I can now say that I have not placed a single bet in several years, and I could not have done it without the help and guidance from those in my network.
WHAT CAN YOU DO First, become comfortable with being nervous and making mistakes. Often, we associate being resilient with never being nervous. However, when you get
ready to perform, you need nerves to mobilize your energy to prepare you for the moment. When you let your nerves take control of you, composure is lost, attention is impacted and our ability to think goes out the window. Part of being resilient is accepting these nerves and using them to propel you forward. Also, being resilient does not mean being perfect. Mistakes can lead to self-doubt, which can undermine one’s resilience. Mistakes are a part of the game and can be detrimental when you over-analyze them in the heat of the moment. Continue to push forward because the resilient you desires to come out on the other side in good standing, having used this experience to your advantage in improving your abilities for next time. And the resilient you knows there will be a next time. Second, leverage those around you to help you overcome challenges. This can come in two forms: asking for help and asking for feedback. Understand that you do not have to handle everything on your own, so in times of struggle, reach out to those special people in your life for a helping hand. Not only can
this enhance the connection between you, but it can enhance your motivation to overcome your struggles due to the support you are receiving. Also, reach out to those around you for feedback. This could be for when someone does poorly or when something goes well, but utilizing another perspective so that you can get even 1 percent better the next time. They may have an idea you never thought of, or they may have an adjustment for what you currently do, both can be vital information to help increase one’s own resilience.
FINAL THOUGHTS Being resilient comes in all shapes and sizes and is needed in various situations. Just know that you do not need to be a superhero to be considered resilient. You are allowed to show emotions, the moment is allowed to get the best of you, and you are allowed to call on other people for support. Being able to overcome the misconceptions of resilience is the first step in developing your ability to grow and thrive in the face of challenges and to bounce back from adversities. page 209
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LIFE COACHING AND EXPERT
WELLNESS EXERCISES THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
WE ARE THE MONSTERS "THEY" VERSUS "WE" VERSUS "US"
JUSTIN "GOLIATH" JOHNSON
@goliathcoaches WELLNESS CONTRIBUTOR
T
HEY (A THIRD-PERSON PRONOUN RELATING TO A GRAMMATICAL SUBJECT): ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THE WORD “they” (not to be confused with the gender identity they/them) provides sufficient anonymity to absolve any accountability by attributing negative events and reprehensible activities to a non-specific cross-section of people. “They won’t let me win.” “They have it out for me.” “Look at those people, they are killers.” From Sandy Hook to Emmit Till, from Charleston’s, Buffalo’s and Uvalde’s mass shootings, all these events fall into the “they” category. page 212
As of press time, it is mid-June 2022 and here in the U.S., we have already suffered more than 250 mass shootings in the first half of the calendar year. It’s time to ask ourselves: What is going on that results in over 250 mass shootings, coupled with police shootings, high suicide rates and an opioid epidemic? I don’t know about you, but there seems to be a real problem. What once simmered beneath the surface and was chalked-up to the “they” mindset is now starkly front and center. In my opinion, what is wildly apparent today is our apathetic approach to humanity and our expressed cognitive dissonance, especially in situations that don’t directly affect us. But truly, in a pluralistic society within a globalized world, what doesn’t affect each of us? I grew up watching the TV show “Cops.” “Cops” (for the younger readers) was a prime-time, made-for-television reality show that followed real life police carrying out the duties of their
job. It was extremely exciting, especially for a child - you were literally watching the police hunt down presumed criminals. Of course, “Cops” did not offer the full context of any of these situations. The premise of the show was clear: what the audience should enjoy was watching criminals be apprehended. We didn’t have time to understand that in too many instances, these hunted criminals came from extremely humble beginnings, living in a time of being extremely judged by the color of their skin, struggling to exist in disenfranchised neighborhoods and communities. Let me give you a statistic that may bring something to the forefront: 85 percent of prisoners in the U.S. have a substance abuse issue or were incarcerated from something related to drugs. As a child watching “Cops,” I had absolutely no way to understand that many of these people were literally hunted down by police for a problem they seemed incapable of fixing on their
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cially for being different. Let’s make it more personal: that family member that everyone is always talking badly about, do you contribute to it or seek to help? As it turns out, we are often the very monsters that we like to call “they.” We pick our personal priorities over what could potentially help others around us. We all have a sister, brother, cousin, or parent who needs extra help or extra love. We are the monsters that go to sleep at night happily in our air-conditioned houses knowing that person sleeping on the bench down the street. You know, that guy you drive by everyday, that you ignore, act like he’s not there.
own and all of it broadcast for our entertainment. If it’s not schadenfreude – taking pleasure in someone else’s pain – its darn close and rather sick regardless.
articles, you know how I feel about the victim mentality. I do not like it at all, but that does not mean that we have a victimless society.
One-third of our homeless population in the U.S. has a drug- or alcohol-related issue and two-thirds of our homeless population has a history of drug-or alcohol-use disorders. I guess “they” just need to figure it out, right? It’s their issue. Not mine. Not ours. Right?
The problems and the tragedies of our society that we have lived through are products of us. Kendrick Lamar, in his recent album “Mr. Morale and the Big Stepper,” said “You kill people, too; you just do it a little slower.”
We (a pronoun referencing a group that includes me). “We” needs to be the new way to express any type of positivism and or negativity in this human experience. “We” have to understand that “they” are “us.” If you’ve read any of my
In your life, how many times did you ignore something you could have helped resolve? How many times have you turned your back? How many times did you make fun of that person who needed more support or understanding? We ostracize others all the time, espe-
We are the monsters that don’t forgive and allow people around us to feel extreme guilt. We have become a society that enjoys watching others pain and anguish. We are the government, we are the prisoners, we are the criminals, we are the athletes. We are the heroes and we are the villains. It’s us and it’s the way we as individuals consistently pick ourselves selfishly over what would actually contribute to the whole. Until we start to treat each other like each one of our lives matter, none of our lives will matter. No one person is more important than another and each life deserves to be treated fairly. I’m not advocating for quality of outcome; I’m talking about quality of life. Until we see all of us a valuable, then life itself will continue to lose value. Sandy Hook, Emmit Till, Charleston church shooting, Buffalo mass shooting, Texas school massacre: we did this. Not them, not they, not the boogie man, us. We are the monsters. page 213
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