T Qatar Feb.-Mar.2019 by Oryx Group of Magazines

Jewellery February-March 2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

EXQUISITE TREASURES

Jewellery February - March 2019

The Academy A diverse group of black male writers is making essential work, earning accolades long overdue and redefining the American canon. By Ayana Mathis Creative Direction by Boots Riley Styled by Carlos Nazario

Herbs, Everlasting Both chefs and florists are rediscovering that these age-old crops can do more than dress up a dish. By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Sharon Core Styled by Joshua Werber

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

On the Cover

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David Webb's Bastille cuff made in a faceted rectangular coral with brilliant-cut diamonds, black enamel and 18k gold and platinum.

Clockwise from left: Abigail Brown hare sculpture, $415. Creel and Gow glass bell jar with coral, $2,800. Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello leather and antelope-hair shoe (sold as pair), $2,095, ysl.com. David Yurman amazonite and lavender spinel necklace, price on request, davidyurman.com. Sindarve Lammgard Gotland sheep fur, $600, rwguild.com. John Hardy tiger iron and black mother-of-pearl earring (sold as pair), $25,000, (888) 838-3022. Bouchon Bakery Bûche de Noël cake, $48 for eight inches, bouchonbakery.com. Maison Auclert Paris antique rock crystal and diamond ring, $6,500, maisonauclert.com. Hillier Bartley feather brooch, $252.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANTHONY COTSIFAS

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Expertly crafted gifts, such as earrings made with daisies preserved in resin, that possess something of a life force. Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Styled by Jill Nicholls

THINGS

People, Places & Things A new hotel in Quintana Roo, printed handbags by Marc Camille Chaimowicz for Mansur Gavriel, the preciousness of Japanese paper and more.

41 Adrift With his first mobile, Alexander Calder created a new form. Now, artists and designers are fashioning new takes on sculpture that both hangs and moves. By Nancy Hass Photographs by Max Burkhalter

Of a Kind Loro Piana’s menagerie. Illustrations by Aurore de La Morinerie

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Admiration Society The director Ivo van Hove and the singer Rufus Wainwright discuss politics and their ever-evolving sense of selves. By Boris Kachka Photograph by Sean Donnola

Market Report Metallic accessories. Photographs by Mari Maeda and Yuji Oboshi

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PLACES

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Pretty Little Things Diamond jewellery shines more brightly when worn all at once. Photographs by Jennifer Livingston Styled by Haidee Findlay-Levin

46 Consumed Artists who play with their food — as well as our assumptions about this essential material. By Ligaya Mishan

The Human Hand Within her Jaipur home, Caroline Weller favors the same sort of vibrant and wonderfully imperfect Indian craft that defines her clothing line. By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Anu Kumar

Paved With Gold Puebla, Mexico’s fourth-largest city, offers gilded churches and a thriving cultural scene. By Kate Donnelly Photographs by Mariano Fernandez

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One Last Slice Old-fashioned pies and layer cakes, remade with heritage grains and a sense of whimsy. By Rebecca Flint Marx Photograph by Esther Choi Food Styling by Claire Saffitz Prop Styling by Victoria PetroConroy

The Thing From Louis Vuitton, a sophisticated chronograph that harks back to all-black models popular in the 1970s. By Nancy Hass Photograph by Adam Kremer Styled by Todd Knopke

FROM TOP: ANU KUMAR; ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE, ‘‘SELF PORTRAIT,’’ 1980, GELATIN SILVER PRINT, SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NEW YORK. GIFT, THE ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION, 1996 © THE ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE FOUNDATION. USED BY PERMISSION, PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENNIFER LIVINGSTON

People, Places & Things Qatar Paris Saint-Germain makes history in a camel race; Qatar Museum's educational and cultural activities; First initiative for Qatar-India Year of Culture

A Dazzling Odyssey The premium jewellery and watch brands from across the world descended under one roof — Doha Exhibition and Convention Center (DECC — to mark the beginning of the six day (20th - 25th February 2019) extravaganza. By Arshia Khan Photographs by Anish Grid

PEOPLE QATAR David Webb's Timeless Language

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For decades, David Webb has continued to preserve its image as a quintessential American jewellery brand that produces highly original and modern jewellery. By Alexandra Evangelista Photographs by Anish Grid

Stand Up and Stand Out Two women in the business of being funny come together to show style and substance go hand-in-hand for modern-day comics. By Debrina Aliyah Photographs courtesy of & Other Stories

THINGS QATAR 49

PLACES QATAR ABOVE: PHOTO COURTESY OF ANISH GRID OF POMELLATO'S ICONICA COLLECTION; BELOW: MSHEIREB MUSEUMS

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New Complications A creative mixture of design, craftsmanship and innovation from brands which have taken watchmaking beyond the borders of imagination and common structure. By Alexandra Evangelista Photographs by Anish Grid

What to Do in Doha, According to 3 Locals A trio of personalities from diverse fields shares an inside look on their favorite places to eat, drink, shop and play. By Debrina Aliyah Photographs courtesy of Stephane Buchholzer, Jassim Al-Shamali, Karen Gines

Cool Trenches A classic staple reinterpreted in the season’s key trends for the perfect drape over your abayas. By Debrina Aliyah

Another Thing Gucci’s Le Marché des Merveilles collection has gone audaciously all out with its intriguing combination of animal emblems and precious stones. By Alexandra Evangelista

T: THE STYLE MAGAZINE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES Editor in Chief Hanya Yanagihara

Creative Director Patrick Li

Executive Managing Editor Minju Pak

Photography and Video Director Nadia Vellam

THE NEW YORK TIMES LICENSING GROUP General Manager: Michael Greenspon Vice President: Alice Ting Vice President, Executive Editor: Nancy Lee

LICENSED EDITIONS Editorial Director: Anita Patil Editorial Coordinator: Ian Carlino Coordinator: Ilaria Parogni

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Publisher & Editor In Chief Yousuf Jassem Al Darwish Managing Director & CEO Jassem bin Yousuf Al Darwish

ART Senior Art Director Mansour ElSheikh

Fashion Editor Debrina Aliyah

MARKETING & SALES Marketing Manager Sony Vellat

Junior Correspondent Alexandra Evangelista

Asst. Advertising manager Zuhaib Siddiqui

Marketing Communication Manager Kristina Events Director Khalid Mohanna Accountant Pratap Chandran Distribution Basanta Pokhrel Public Relations Officer Eslam Elmahalawy

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SEAN DONNOLA

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General Manager Dr. Faisal Fouad

EDITORIAL Chief Editor Ezdihar Ibrahim Ali

Introduces

Photograph by Tony Floyd

The property’s 3,700-square-foot L-shaped pool, lined with handpainted tiles, and thatched-roof bar.

Playa del Carmen to Tulum, which, with its winter yoga retreats and beachside bars, remains the bohemian favorite. It also has some much-lauded restaurants and small hotels, including two new and noteworthy properties: Habitas Tulum has a glasswalled Moorish restaurant and 32 canvas structures outfitted with kilim rugs, midcentury-style furnishings and decorative macramé. A ways inland, in the heart of town, lies the 16-room Casa Pueblo Tulum, set in a Modernist concrete building whose décor — unpolished wooden doors, handcrafted ceramics — nods to the Japanese art of wabi-sabi.

The region’s latest exciting spot, though, isn’t in Tulum at all but some 50 miles north — past the Mayan ruins of Xel-Há and Playa del Carmen, in the area known as Punta Maroma. Here, on an especially lush stretch of jungle that juts out into the sea, you’ll find Chablé Maroma, which promises to draw the next wave of pioneers looking to escape the scene. It’s the second location for the Chablé brand, whose first resort opened just outside Mérida in 2016. Like that property, this one prioritizes privacy — each of the 70 palapa-roofed casitas has its own pool and terrace — and

Quintana Roo, the Mexican state on the Caribbean side of the Yucatán Peninsula, has been a major destination since the 1970s, when the first resorts started appearing along its sandy coastline. Since then, travelers in search of a pristine, not-too-developed piece of it have moved from Cancún to

PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS

the beauty of the natural surroundings. The architect Javier Fernandez placed the casitas throughout the 11-acre site around the existing mangroves. The floors are made of parota wood, and local Yucatán limestone was used for the facades, while artisans in the Yucatán city of Valladolid embroidered the silk and linen pillows inside. The rooms also come with outdoor showers, from which you can watch spider monkeys swinging through the canopy overhead. The sense that one is entirely surrounded by nature carries over to the white sand beach. Because there are no neighboring resorts competing for access, guests can take nearly private swims and snorkel runs through the clear water of the cenotes (underwater caves). Then there’s the main restaurant, Bu’ul, which will entice the same sort of crowd who last year flocked to Tulum’s pop-up of Noma, René Redzepi’s food mecca in Copenhagen. Helmed by Jorge Vallejo, who trained at Noma and runs the esteemed Mexico City restaurant Quintonil, it serves

RICCARDO TISCI, the newly appointed chief creative officer of Burberry, was just 2 years old and living in the south of Italy when the Sex Pistols signed to A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace in 1977. Yet he’d come to identify with the punk movement all the same: As a student at London’s Central Saint Martins, Tisci studied the groundbreaking designs of Vivienne Westwood, who, along with her former partner Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager, helped birth the punk aesthetic in the early ’70s. At Givenchy, Tisci occasionally channeled Westwood’s spirit by Illustration by offsetting the romantic Ilya Milstein mood of his work with chains and studs, and he even helped the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Andrew Bolton research Westwood’s archive for the Costume Institute’s 2013 ‘‘Punk’’ exhibition. Now, he’s honoring the British designer — and his adopted city — with a soon-to-be-released 16-piece collaborative collection. It consists of iconic Westwood shapes, from her towering lace-up heeled brogues to a cinched-waist wool blazer with Teddy Boy lapels, all remade in Burberry’s signature check, which, in this context, morphs into an instantly edgier plaid. ‘‘It was like working with family,’’ Tisci says of conferring with Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler, her husband and creative partner, on the looks, proceeds from which will benefit the environmental nonprofit Cool Earth. ‘‘Clashing the two houses — it feels so natural and sort of new-punk.’’ — Alice Newell-Hanson

MINI MARKET

Furniture Finished With Car Paint

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Chaise longues on the shore. The Mesoamerican Reef is within swimming distance.

a menu of contemporary Mexican cuisine built around fresh seafood and local produce (avocados, chiles, guava): Diners might choose between grilled octopus with sweet potato purée or boquinete roasted tikin-xic style, for which the fish is marinated with achiote sauce and sour oranges and then wrapped in banana leaves, before finishing the evening with a pot of baked Oaxacan chocolate. — John Wogan

Palette Play COLOR HAS ALWAYS been a defining element for Mansur Gavriel, the New York-based, Italian-made clothing and accessories brand known for its leather totes and bucket bags with interiors lined in crimson, cadet blue and blush. The same could be said for the artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz — the beau ideal of colorists, whose interdisciplinary work includes ‘‘Coiffeuse (peut-être pour adolescents)’’ (2008), a

From left: Müsing—Sellés Table No. 5, $4,500, musing-selles.com. Odd Matter Guise bench, about $6,845, nilufar.com. Marco Campardo and Lorenzo Mason (M-L-XL) L chair, $3,500, m-l-xl.org.

room- size domestic scene replete with lavender wallpaper, a dressing table and pastel rugs of his own design — and with whom the brand is debuting a collection of handbags. ‘‘It felt as though I had been waiting for this,’’ says Chaimowicz. ‘‘It’s a logical extension of my practice.’’ Set to launch in February, the 12-piece line was three years in the making and comprises wrist wallets and handbags — including a tote, a mini bucket bag and a top-

handle bag — silk-screened in three distinct patterns created for the collaboration. One is a confettilike pattern of cerise, cerulean and white, while another, in pale orange, bubble-gum pink and mint green, is a ’70s-inspired abstract floral. The artist drew inspiration for his palette from Vuillard, Bonnard, Matisse and Warhol. As Chaimowicz says, ‘‘Primary colors are best left at primary school.’’ — Caitlin Youngquist

A mini bucket bag silk-screened with Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s ‘‘Peony’’ print.

CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: TONY FLOYD; ELLIOTT RYAN; PIM TOP; M-L-XL STUDIO; COURTESY OF MANSUR GAVRIEL. ILLUSTRATION REFERENCES VIVIENNE WESTWOOD & BURBERRY PIECES, INCLUDING AN OVERSIZE T-SHIRT, DOUBLE-BREASTED JACKET, BOXER SHORTS, BUTTON-DOWN, TIE, BERET AND PLATFORM SHOES, BURBERRY.COM

CHECK MATES

continued from page 9

NOTES ON THE CULTURE

Irreplaceable

Photograph by Kyoko Hamada Set Design by Arielle Casale and Maxwell Sorensen

ONE OF THE CLICHÉS of modernity — but a cliché we nonetheless have to live through — is that new forms of technology make us nostalgic for prior ones and the eras they connote. When smartphones emerged, they brought the internet into spaces that were once free of them, so that a poorly functioning flip phone now inspires a hint of wistfulness. The pileup of digitized music since the emergence of the MP3 has prompted a retreat, however niche and ultimately minor, into the world of vinyl records and even tapes. The ransacking of the physical Japan’s texture of the world — books, newspapers, centuries-long retail stores, maps — has been so enormous and fascination with traditional sudden that it becomes possible to see what papermaking we are losing and no longer regard the onrushing means there’s future as progress. still a robust analog culture in Because of the sheer accumulated weight of a country known its past, and the velocity of its rush into the for its embrace future, Japan offers these contradictions and of the modern.

anxieties of modernity in particular abundance. Japan was geographically isolated for centuries, so the time between the country’s opening — thanks to the gunboat diplomacy of American warships’ arrival in 1853 — and the postwar miracle of reconstruction produced a linear and especially propulsive narrative of an agrarian society becoming one defined by urban futurism. The contrast (and conflict) between ancient and modern is the primary tension in Japan’s modern literary and filmic traditions: rural families experiencing the shock of the city in Yasujiro Ozu’s films of the ’40s

and ’50s, or Noh drama in the novels of the Showa-era writer Fumiko Enchi. Everything, from the perfervidness of the country’s electronic manufacturing, the proliferation of its pop culture, the aggressiveness of its building booms — even as a three-decade-long economic decline strips these characteristics of their sheen — seems to serve as a reminder that throughout the postwar era, Japan was a byword for the future. All of these forces — the past, the present, the future — can be crystallized in one persisting Japanese tradition: the longevity and depth of its papermaking. Perhaps chief among the historical foundations of Japan is that it is a country of artisans, so much so that the national government stipulates requirements for an object to be classified as a ‘‘traditional Japanese craft.’’ The first of

ALTERED IMAGES: DAJ/GETTY IMAGES; BERNARD ALLUM/GETTY IMAGES. ORIGAMI: BETH JOHNSON. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: JONAH ROSENBERG

Why, in an age of screens, are the Japanese still so attached to paper?

NOTES ON THE CULTURE PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS

these requirements is that an object must be practical enough for regular use, which helps explain the continuing relevance of paper, or washi (which translates as ‘‘Japanese paper’’). In our digital age, we tend to forget just how practical and versatile the material actually is, and many of its modern uses can be traced directly back to Japan, where the art of handmade washi began with the arrival of Buddhist monks to the islands from Korea in the seventh century. Since then, washi has been used as stationery, as canvas and as art itself through the rise of origami, which was invented almost simultaneously with washi — but these practices, which remain popular, overshadow just how deeply entrenched paper is in Japanese history. Some 700 years before the Gutenberg Bible, the Japanese were hand-printing Buddhist texts on paper. Before printed periodicals began to appear in Europe in the 17th century as predecessors of the modern newspaper, Japan was printing yomiuri (literally ‘‘to read and sell’’), handbills that were sold in major urban centers. (Today, Japan maintains the largest circulation of print newspapers in the world, and the second largest per capita.) Paper was the dominant characteristic of Japanese aesthetics, appearing everywhere from domestic rooms to funerals. Paper lanterns were burned at religious

Paper has a long history all over the world, but it is to Japan something like what wine is to the French — a national obsession and point of pride. ceremonies. Clothing was made from it. It became a popular building material. The shoji screens that were ubiquitous in the Edo period, which spanned the 17th to the late 19th centuries, reflected an appreciation for mood and tactility and, with their lunar opacity, contributed to the clean, mollified serenity that later so attracted Modernist architects like Le Corbusier to traditional Japanese architecture. Even a form of facial tissues, the kind you sneeze into when you have a cold, were used by the Japanese for centuries. Paper has a long history all over the world, but it is to Japan something like what wine is to the French — a national obsession and point of pride. It remains, despite every innovation since, the central material of Japanese culture.

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famous hotels, designed in 1952 by Japanese acolytes of Le Corbusier, which makes use of shoji screens. The architectural roots of paper are even clearer in more recent works by Shigeru Ban, whose emergency shelters following the 2011 Fukushima earthquake were made mostly of paper — in particular, recycled cardboard tubes — or by Kengo Kuma, whose buildings continuously riff on Japanese craftsmanship. Tokyo itself remains a paradise of art and manga and stationery stores — all monuments to a persistent if perhaps anachronistic print culture. At one of these stores, Ozu Washi, which has occupied the same location in the Nihonbashi business district since 1653, I learned how washi is made. Washi is one of the strongest papers in the world, and to produce

IT WAS THE KOREAN Buddhist monk Dancho who is credited with supervising the production of the first pieces of paper in seventh-century Japan, using Chinese techniques. The court culture of the Heian era, which ran from the eighth through the 12th centuries, was one in which other Chinese developments — notably, bureaucracy — stimulated the demand for paper for record-keeping and bookmaking. As the importance of the court declined, and the feudal, polycentric system of warrior potentates rose, so too did the manufacture of paper decentralize and proliferate. It was at this point that paper began to be used in architecture, for sliding doors and screens, and so the need for more, and longer-lasting, variations became imperative. This is how washi-making became a household tradition: By the 1800s, when capitalist industrial techniques were introduced, over 100,000 ordinary families were known to be making their own paper by hand for various domestic uses. But those same hyper-exploitative industrial techniques — including the mass production of cement and, a little later, warships — would gradually put an end to this era. Today, though, the remnants of these traditions can be seen in the Modernist buildings that still stand in major cities, including Tokyo’s International House of Japan, one of the country’s most

it, one has to cultivate the kozo, a shrublike tree that is related to the mulberry (gampi and mitsumata trees are also used). Unlike with Western-style paper, the bark of the tree is crushed and retained in the production. The resulting fibers must be beaten and bleached and mixed with water and neri, a slime that comes from the roots of the Tororo-aoi. This mix is then layered over a screen, at which point colors can be added and the thickness of the paper augmented with more layers. At the end, the pulp is pressed and dried. The result is paper that is difficult to tear, palely lucent and incredibly durable. Bright patterning — of natural flora or geometric trompe l’oeil effects — is often woodblock-printed on it, or watermarks are threaded in, on pages lined vertically for calligraphy. The product is more than just a surface on which to transmit thoughts or ideas; it is a sculptural, tactile object, and its very physical presence helps account for its endurance. Paper, then, is not just a vehicle for text or images but an object unto itself — not something to be merely experienced by sight, it demands to be touched as well. Washi is more like an active metaphor

for Japanese craft writ large — luxurious, laborious, useful and maintaining a rough-edged, pastoral simplicity. THE GREAT PARADOX of Japan’s paper culture is that the country was also one of the earliest producers of global technology, particularly with the founding in 1946 of Sony (originally called the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp.), a company that could reasonably claim the mantle as one of the original tech supergiants. Having once been a papermaking innovator, the country also became the site of other crucial advancements. The first consumer tape recorders and transistor radios emerged here in the 1950s, and in 1966, the Sony Building in Ginza, Tokyo’s old business district, further transformed the look of the modern city by becoming the first example of ‘‘media architecture,’’ with a facade that displayed video images, a development for screens that was perhaps inevitable in a country that pioneered this technology back when it was still analog. In a bit of irony, the first cellular network is also Japanese, introduced in 1979 by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. This may have helped sound the long, slow demise of print throughout the world, but in a country where the roots of paper are so deep, today the material is still everywhere, even when it isn’t. As in many places in the world, passengers on the subway system scroll continuously on their phones. But the country’s low-tech traditions have not been casually discarded. The same spirit that continues to cultivate beautiful washi also seems of a piece with the strange persistence of meikyoku kissaten, the ‘‘masterpiece cafes’’ where people sit and listen to recordings of classical music on old phonographs. Much like the more famous and trafficked vinyl bars — hole-in-the-wall haunts catering to audiophiles, hundreds of which speckle the streets and back alleys of Tokyo — they reflect a reverence toward a medium and not just the product produced via that medium. In an age of sharply escalating computerization and digitization of everything into an intangible ether, it can be hard to remember that paper, too, is just another medium, something that acts as a transmitter for something written or typed in the past. Or better, it’s too easy to imagine that replacing paper with digital screens is just moving from one medium to another. Digitization has produced a change not just in what we see and feel but in what we control. The world of new media — of what the left-wing theorist Jodi Dean calls ‘‘communicative capitalism’’ — is standardized in a way that not even the most fantastical efficiency expert could have dreamed. If thousands of families could once make their own paper, it is now only a few monopoly companies that create virtually all the media through which we transmit communication today, and virtually all of it is being data mined in a way that letters never could be. The fetish for media like washi is nostalgic on one account, cleareyed on another: The paper bears an imprint, of the maker and eventually of the user, in a way no digital object ever can. For this reason, those pale, fringed sheets retain a measure of the time, and the sense of self, we are always losing as we rush heedlessly into the future. — Nikil Saval

T QATAR INTRODUCES

PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN MAKES HISTORY CAMEL RACES are widely popular in the state of Qatar, as they are part of the great sporting tradition. Paris Saint-Germain was the first-ever football club to participate in this great sport. In two thrilling races, Neymar Jr. and Thomas Tuchel emerged as winners and received cheques worth €25,000 euros from the club’s official partner, Ooredoo. The prize was then donated to the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund. Thomas Tuchel, the Paris Saint-Germain Manager, expressed his pride in winning and setting an example in the game as well as dedicating the victory to the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund. He said: “I’m very proud that this victory has allowed me to help the Paris Saint-Germain Endowment Fund, which is key for the club, so it is a great success for me.” Neymar Jr. was also cheerful in his victory, stating: “I am very happy. Our group was the fastest. Dani finished third and I finished first. Camels at full speed I won! I won!” – Alexandra Evangelista

on a four- kilometre racetrack.

Al Zubarah from a distance.

Engage, Educate and Appreciate

A YEAR OF CULTURE WITH INDIA LED BY Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar Museums launched the first initiative of a year filled with cultural and artistic exchange. With India as its 2019 Year of Culture country partner, a photography competition titled “Cricket Contemporary Photography” was created to encourage Qatar-based photographers to submit photos and videos about cricket that exhibit competition, sportsmanship, passion, loss and triumph. Entries may depict any location in Qatar where the community plays cricket, in either a professional or friendly match. The acting director of 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum, Fuad Al Mudahka, stated: “Every year we look to photographers to use their imagery to introduce audiences to the cultural elements of Qatar and its partner countries, thus fostering mutual appreciation and understanding between our people. Cricket has long been a sport that ignites passion among its enthusiasts and we look forward to how participants can bring that to life.” –Alexandra Evangelista

India’s popular sport, cricket, best exhibits competition, sportsmanship and passion.

COUNTER-LOCKWISE FROM TOP-RIGHT: PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN PARTICIPATED IN A CAMEL RACE; AL ZUBARAH FROM A DISTANCE; QATAR-INDIA YEAR OF CULTURE CAPTURED BY ABDELHAMID SERGHINI

QATAR MUSEUMS has taken the initiative to launch educational cultural activities to encourage appreciation for the nation's ancestors’ skills, wisdom and heritage. Through the incorporation of exciting workshops, exhibits and activities, the event strives to educate the local community about the significant role of traditional crafts and materials in the rich history of Qatar. Running until March, the event is being held at Al Zubarah Unesco World Heritage Site and the newly restored Al Ruwais police station. The Zubarah Cultural Fair will focus on engaging visitors with handson experiences of traditional practices while the Ruwais will feature objects found during excavations at nearby sites and encourage the visitors to explore historical buildings in the neighbourhood, through the “Window to the Past” exhibition. – Alexandra Evangelista

QATAR SHOW

A DAZZLING ODYSSEY

The premium jewellery and watch brands from across the world descended under one roof — Doha Exhibition and Convention Center (DECC) — to mark the beginning of the six day (20th - 25th February 2019) extravaganza. The 16th edition of the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition was spread over 29,000 sq.m with more than 500 brands from 10 countries across the globe.

PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS QATAR

By Arshia Khan Photographs by Anish Grid

THE SHOW WAS held under the patronage of the prime minister and minister of Interior, HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani. The exhibition saw participation from Their Excellencies, Ministers, Ambassadors, VIPs and industry experts. The who’s who of the jewellery and watches world including brands like Chopard, Graff, Chanel, Messika, Van Cleef and Arpels, came under one roof to showcase their exclusive creations. The show provided the visitors with a hands-on experience of the jewellery industry and rare designs. DECC was abuzz with crowds of nationals, residents and tourists. From gleaming diamonds to colorful corals and gems, the stop-and-shop European-style booths saw a spurt in buying patterns of Qataris. As an exhibitor remarked, “Qatar is an oil–rich state and this is reflected in their buying patterns. They

splurge on jewellery.” He continued, “Women here are very fond of flaunting their jewellery. They desire for something exclusive and new each time — a piece that no one else has. We have been coming here since the first edition and hence understand the taste of our clients. They wear what we develop.” Though the exhibitors observed a common trend in demand for long chains, necklaces and stacks of bracelets, a contrasting observation was highlighted by a Shamballa representative. He said, “The Qatari women are very knowledgeable in terms of jewellery. However, this year they have been shopping for watches — giving the jewellery makers tough Bottom: DJWE 2019 opening competition as these high-end diamond and gem ceremony led by the Prime minister and minister of stone watches are becoming a favorite.”

Interior, HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Marking the Qatar-India Year of Culture 2019, there was a separate India pavilion which was inaugurated by Indian fashion icon and Bollywood celebrity Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The India pavilion displayed dazzling collections of 13 designers reflecting the diversity of the country’s rich heritage and culture through their unique jewellery designs. Also seen in attendance among other Indian delegates was the Ambassador of India to Qatar. The exhibition also saw the return of the Young Qatari Designers (YQD) initiative and provided them a platform to highlight their designs and exchange experiences in the industry. The YQD initiative in its 3rd year at the DJWE was held under the patronage of HE the Prime Minister of Qatar and Minister of Interior, HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani, and aimed at supporting Qatari talent by highlighting their creations and designs. Under the YQD initiative, 12 local designers participated in a pavilion dedicated to Qatari talent. This year, the spotlight was on nine returning and three new talented Qatari designers. Those returning were Fajr Al Attiya of Trifoglio, Ghada Albuainain of Ghada Albuainain Jewellery; Hissa and Jawaher Al Mannai of Ghand Jewellery; Leila Abu Issa of Leila Issam Fine Jewellery; Nada Al Sulaiti of Hairaat Fine Jewellery; Nouf Al Meer of Nouf Jewellery; Sarah Al Hammadi of Sarah’s & Co; Noor Al Fardan of Noudar; and Shaikha Al Ghanim of AlGhla Jewellery. Designers taking part for the first time include Abdulla Yussif Fakhroo of Midad Jewellery; Noora and Mariam Al Meadadi of Thameen Jewellery; and Sameera Al Mulla of Hessa Jewels. The designs under the YQD initiative were auctioned for a charitable cause. This year’s edition saw participation of world-class brands for the first time, such as Tiffany & Co. and L’Atelier du Bracelet Parisien, and the return of Bulgari to showcase its unique collection of luxury jewellery and watches. Keeping up with the norm, Qatar’s premier jewellery and watch patrons too exhibited their collections to an international audience, including Alfardan Jewellery, Ali Bin Ali Group, Al Majed Jewellery, Amiri Gems WLL, and Fifty-One East. The exhibition also provided a platform to the visitors by hosting jewellery manufacturing workshops conducted by master jewellers and gemmologists to educate and share knowledge about the world of jewellery, diamonds and pearls.

Counter-clockwise from top-right: Inaguration of the Indian pavilion in honor of the Qatar-India Year of Culture 2019; the return of the Young Qatari designers.

The one-day DJWE Forum, which took place on 21 February at the Marriott Marquis City Center Doha, was an important highlight of the exhibition, bringing together leading experts in the jewellery and watch industry, as well as local and international influencers for a series of interactive discussion sessions on trends in the jewellery industry and market economies.

QATAR SHOW PEOPLE, PLACES & THINGS QATAR

POMELLATO AN ITALIAN brand born in Milan in 1967, Pomellato has returned in this year's Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition with a new stylish collection called “Iconica”. Greatly inspired by the Italian Milanese fashion, the brand has specifically crafted the latest pieces as a means to pay tribute to the very iconic Pomellato products which are chains. For 50 years, the brand has been creating jewellery that best fits the taste of women with a strong interest in fashion, style and jewellery. In this new collection, Pomellato returns with an iconic collection that best fits women who want to wear jewellery on a

daily basis. Iconica comes in very architectural — designed chains that have been invented in a more modern way with 18k gold in three kinds — white gold, pink gold and yellow gold–as well as pavé diamonds. In this latest collection, Pomellato constantly speaks about its sources of inspiration which mainly lean on the broad context of design, the fashion life of Milan and the 100 goldsmiths that make their product with the work of a hand. The CEO of Pomellato, Sabina Belli, further shared her thoughts in the message that they constantly strive to relay to the market. She said: “We also

communicate with a very special femininity. A strong woman that knows what she likes, her style, and we like to support all women in the world that look for their own personality.”

16 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

DAMIANI A FAMILY-OWNED COMPANY that is currently being represented by the third generation of its family, Damiani will turn 95 years old this year. In this year's Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, the Damiani started strongly and officially with the Ali Bin Ali Group. In the exhibition, the vice president and head of design of Damiani, Giorgio Damiani, expresses the importance of keeping the tradition that they had from the first generation until now. True to this, Damiani has brought several collections including the Mimosa collection and the Animalia collection that were recently crafted. For the exhibition, he also brought out the brand’s bestselling collections, starting from the commercial line, the D.Icon collection, which contains pieces like bracelets, earrings and some sautoir designed in a dynamic, modern and glamorous way that can be used for daily wear. The Margherita collection, “daisy” in direct Italian translation, is inspired by

the typical Italian flower that is interpreted by Damiani in a modern and high-fashion way. Damiani also shared their positive outlook with the Ali Bin Ali group and expressed their excitement in the opportunities to come with the upcoming opening of their shop at the Galeries Lafayette.

From left: A necklace piece from Damiani's collection; Vice president and head of design of Damiani, Giorgio Damiani.

Clockwise: Pomellato's CEO, Sabina Belli in her dazzling Iconica chains; Pomellato's necklace piece from the Iconica collection.

AS29 AUDREY SAVRANSKY’S brand AS29 showed her new collection that exhibits a festive and glamorous design using green emeralds. Furthermore, Savransky stated that this collection was created more specifically for the Qatar market. From her long history of jewellery making, she has pointed out this region as completely unique and perfect for showcasing her masterpieces because of its unfiltered fashion taste and confidence. She said: “People here like to wear big jewellery, they’re very feminine ladies, very beautiful, very powerful and they are not shy in wearing big things.” With much enthusiasm, she expressed her excitement in interacting with the visitors to her booth. The curiosity of the customers brought great joy to her, as a designer, as she described that the women here are completely not blasé. Being a renowned brand, she has successfully developed loyal consumers who patronize her designs and jewellery but, aside from their loyalty, the women in this region are unashamed in consistently fully expressing their interest in finding something new in her collections.

Counter-clockwise from top-right: Audrey Savransky, founder of AS29; necklace and ring pieces made in precious emeralds and diamonds; AS29's pieces made in diamonds.

LALAOUINIS IN THE LONG tradition of Greek family jewellery making, the fourth–generation sisters of Lalaouinis continues the heritage with its collections that were present at Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition. The unique pieces, which have been greatly inspired by ancient art and civilization, caught the eyes of the visitors to its booth. Every year, Lalaouinis strives to build on its collections and bring something new to the market. This year, the brand brought pieces with corals. Although they have shown mastery in harnessing precious hard stones like turquoise and malachite, for this year’s exhibition the brand has adapted its collection and produce more pieces with corals. The latest collection also came from an idea based on a Greek art from the 16th to the 18th century AD. In the words of Demetra Lalaouinis, she said: “It’s not always jewellery that inspires us. It can also be anything. It can be architecture. It can be tiles. It can be mosaics. It can be anything.” This time, the brand took more inspiration from Epirus for the main reason that it is located in the northeast of Greece and it concentrates on the dress of the time. Speaking about the exhibition, Demetra

From left: Demetra Lalaouinis, representing one of the four sisters; Lalaouinis' pair of earrings inspired by ancient art design.

Lalaouinis expressed her enthusiasm in coming into a new space which can bring great energy for the brands and the customers. She also complimented the amount of hospitality and excitement that the people of Qatar are showing towards the brand's pieces.

STENZHORN IN 1979, Klaus Stenzhorn founded Stenzhorn House of Jewellery, based in Germany. With roots in the family, the founder devoted his passion and effort to creating unique jewellery with the finest jewels. A combination of Italian and French designs with German perfectionism, the company has a unique range of collection which is achieved through its own engineering, and by merging the latest technology with traditional handwork. Throughout his childhood, Klaus’ father taught him how to always put his heart and soul into everything that

he did, and to fill his life with passion and enthusiasm. While Klaus travelled through more than 120 countries, he became slowly fascinated by the myriad, ever-changing facets of nature. From red African sunsets to the green expanse of the Amazon rainforest, his eyes filled with the brightest of colors. Specialized in mosaic setting which is the strength of the brand, filled with colorful rubies, sapphires, emerald, diamonds, Stenzhorn’s meticulously crafted jewels to reflect a passion for life and a sensuality and sensitivity for beauty that is dedicated to modern women with exquisite taste. Talking about their designs, Erich Stenzhorn, director, says, “The market in Doha is in love with butterflies and this trend is also noticeable globally. We have been coming to Doha for over 40 years and we understand the need of the discerning customers here.” Their design ranges from two naturally adventurous collection themes: Beauty of Nature faithfully

captures nature’s timeless essence, while the more abstract Art of Illusion conjures the natural world through pioneering new technical advances. The company also manufactures fine watches. A partner with Ali Bin Ali for over five years, the company has been a regular at the exhibition. Taking note of the trends, Stenzhorn says, “The market is more luxurious in Doha than in the European market such as Germany. The women here love jewellery and they love to show it off.” So, they have customized their range of jewellery to fit any occasion such as the Divine God, Noble Ones, Iced Zeit, With a starting price of $10,000 the booth saw more than 30 clients and 20 buyers.

Counter-clockwise from right: Erich Stenzhorn, the director of Stenzhorn House of Jewellery; Stenzhorn's watch piece made from diamonds and rubies; A necklace piece made from precious rubies and diamonds.

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RCM RCM IS FOUNDED in 1969 by three master goldsmiths, Lorenzo Ricci, Adriano Corbellini and Guerino Manfrinati. The brand has established itself as a leader in the international jewellery market for its creative designs and unique and rare precious stones. Speaking about the success mantra, Ricci Lorenzo, a co-founder, RCM, said “We have maintained the focus in our designs, and hence anyone can make out the difference between RCM and other brands. Our designs are created with the finest craftsmanship that will make anyone fall in love with them.” Ricci remarks, “We preserve our legacy of ‘customer first’ and always try to develop something which our customers will like — classy, latest designs using diamonds and coral stones. The inspiration is drawn from something which is classy today and will remain classy tomorrow.” RCM has been participating at the exhibition since its debut edition and hence has a grip on the market in terms of demand. “The new generation is always looking for something which is latest and classy. The consumers here have excellent taste. They buy anything which is precious or attractive. Their buying pattern is 360 degrees. Over the last few days at the exhibition we saw them buy everything from men’s cufflinks and little necklaces

to bracelets and high-end watches,” says Lorenzo. When asked what fits the Qatari women best in terms of jewellery, he avers, “Qatari women wear what we do. Rarely has a client asked us to do something different. These clients will not buy something which has been advertised and which everyone knows is on the market — they focus on uniqueness and exclusivity.”

From right: Ricci Lorenzo, a Co-founder of RCM; RCM's collection made in precious gems.

MESSIKA BORN IN PARIS, Valerie Messika grew up playing with diamonds. This

the owner feels, “One needs to focus within because if you have tasted success once it signifies that you have smelled something which corresponds to a trend in the market — so stay loyal to it.” The company also believes in staying tuned to the trends of women, but the art lies in specializing in some details. “To be exclusive in a product makes you an expert,” Messika said.

Counter-clockwise from top-right: Valerie Messika, the founder of Messika; a Messika necklace studded in pink gold and diamonds; Messika's Move Infinity Large Cuff Bracelet in pink gold.

love for diamonds grew into her passion and a star was born. Messika created her own brand in 2005 by taking the heritage from her father and famous diamond maker Andre Messika and developed her passion for diamonds into her love for fashion. Going back in time, Messika says, “I grew up with diamonds in my skin. My father used to ask me about my choice of colors. And soon diamonds became my passion.” The expertise of the company is older than the age of the brand. Messika signifies wearing diamonds in a cooler way, she asserts. She adds, “I consider diamonds as tattoos.” Messika’s aim is to make people wear diamonds in a cooler way. Her quest for finding new technologies to design jewellery is an ongoing process. As she played with diamonds as a kid, her creations are playful, moving, noisy. To make the brand stand out she has erased the gold and made the jewellery strong, wearable, stretchable and comfortable to make it look like a part of the skin. She says, “Diamonds are not to show how wealthy a woman is, but certainly to showcase her personality, femininity and fashion.” Messika deals only in diamonds — as Messika feels they are precious. Her creations are based on designs that are instinctive and impulsive which become impressions. Messika’s design repertoire includes asymmetrical double rings, earcuffs, hand bracelets and bangles. The company has been promoting the brand in partnership with Ali Bin Ali for eight years and since then it’s normal for her to be present at this exhibition. Discussing the Doha market, Messika feels the women are more fashionable as they love to flaunt their jewellery and experiment with new things in markets, unlike the European market where women prefer singles or sets for occasions. “Middle-Eastern women lead the way by adorning long chains and stacking bracelets and anklets”, she highlights. Messika also has beautifully crafted diamond ear cuffs which make a woman stand out in elegance. Besides, the soon to be launched range includes brooches for the abaya, nose rings and head bands. Specific to the exhibition, the brand Messika showcased selected pieces which are rich in look and comfortable to wear. As Messika highlights, “The Qatari women have pushed themselves in wearing the contemporary jewellery of asymmetrical earrings and earcuffs, which sometime back was not a Middle-Eastern trend.” The brand is a personification of femininity, cool and how strong one feels about oneself. Building deeper on “a less is more” ideology, the brand has a simple, sensuous and seductive collection of diamonds. As Messika loves to travel to take thoughts and inspiration from various cultures and traditions, her passion has turned into a fashion statement for many, including celebrities. The company preserves its brand heritage by being focused, not competitive in terms of developing a range like those of competitors. As

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SHAMBALLA THE YOUNGEST trendsetter in the jewellery market, has its foundation based on the principle of “exploring the energy of the creation that encompasses the entire universe”. As Christian Hellegaard, the COO of Shamballa, says, “We want people to reflect and get the right balance in terms of what they wear. We believe that if you do well with your body and mind it will reflect in your personality.” Shamballa the brand is based on ancient scriptures that resonate with a mythical kingdom hidden in a valley in the Himalayas – a harmonious place populated by enlightened and compassionate people – the Kingdom of Shamballa. And this inspired the founder, Mads Kornerup, to launch Shamballa Jewels and to manufacture classy and comfortable pieces historically used for meditation. Mads,

a spiritual believer and yoga and meditation practitioner is recognized as an icon in the jewellery market. He rose to stardom after he originally designed the Shamballa Bracelet in 2001 for music impresario Jay Z, who came in search of a unique piece. Mads created a bracelet inspired by prayer beads – a braided macramé bracelet featuring gold beads with Jay Z’s initials, his company logo, two half-carat diamonds and his zodiac sign, something which was never done before. Following the success of the design, Mads and Mikkel Kornerup established the fine jewellery brand, Shamballa Jewels, in 2005, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Named after the mythical Himalayan kingdom of Shamballa, Shamballa Jewels is an amalgamation of Eastern philosophy with Nordic designs. The Counter-clockwise from top-right: Christian Hellegaard, the COO of Shamballa Jewels; Shamballa's necklace and bracelet collection; bracelet in pink gold and diamonds.

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CHANEL CHANEL'S LATEST PIECES have been greatly inspired by the engravings that can be found on the coromandel sheets that were in the house of Coco Chanel. Rooted in this inspiration is a rare watch collection consisting of five pieces that are uniquely designed. Apart from this, Chanel’s latest collection is divided into three chapters consisting of the flowers chapter, minerals chapter and the animals chapter. The mineral collection boasts a very geometric design depicting the coromandel sheets, yet the design retains almost a soft and subtle finish. The floral collection, on the other hand, struts rare and special pieces with pigeon blood rubies, precious stones that are truly rare, while the animals chapter features several representations of a lion. It has long been known that the lion was Coco Chanel’s favorite animal and every motif and colors of Chanel take great inspiration from it. Left: Chanel's Fleur de Laque watch in white gold, yellow gold, cultured pearls, diamonds, black laquear and mother-of-pearl. Right: Fleur de Laque earrings in white gold, yellow gold, cultured pearls, diamonds, black laquear and mother-of-pearl.

design repertoire includes bracelets, necklaces, cufflinks, earrings and rings. All Shamballa Jewels creations are in 18K gold with diamonds and precious stones and can be customized bead for bead. Resonating his thoughts with other exhibitors, Hellegaard also feels that the Qatari women are very fond of stacking bracelets and long necklaces – which is what the company has created – keeping in mind comfort for daily use. “We use a lot of precious stones, gems and diamonds in our creations as we are a high-end jewellery company.” He adds, “our designs are meant to be worn every day to remind oneself that you did well.” The company believes in being trendy and contemporary with their designs. They travel a lot to the Far East and Kathmandu to find the precious stones, drawing on ideas to stay a bit different from the others. As Hellegaard says, “The Qatari women are very knowledgeable about diamonds and they know exactly what they want and what they don’t want.” Shamballa showcased its peach coral and pearl bracelet with diamonds engraved on it – a unique design rarely seen on the market. He further says, “Watches for men is the trending thing in this year's exhibition. Women too are keen on buying these high-end watches, more than jewellery. The Qatari women are the first movers in buying luxury watches. This has given us much competition in the show, as the buying budget is divided.”

Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time:

Ivo van Hove & Rufus Wainwright By Boris Kachka Photograph by Sean Donnola

WHAT DOES THE BELGIAN dramatist Ivo van Hove have in common with the AmericanCanadian singer Rufus Wainwright? For one, they’re both artists whose gay identity is neither incidental to their work nor all-consuming. For another, they are both tireless artistic explorers, catholic in the extreme. Wainwright, son of the ’70s singer-songwriters Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, fused indie folk and soft glam into a series of highly personal albums, beginning with his eponymous debut in 1998 and continuing through his pair of dynamic 2003-4 ‘‘Want’’ albums. Then he decided to write operas — the second, ‘‘Hadrian,’’ with a libretto by Daniel MacIvor, premiered in Toronto in October — and to compose music for the renowned American experimental theater director Robert Wilson’s 2009 staging of Shakespeare’s sonnets in Berlin. These works brought him into the creative orbit of the Amersterdam-based van Hove, whose freewheeling multimedia adaptations pay equal homage to avant-garde performance pioneers like Wilson and august playwrights like Arthur Miller, whose ‘‘The Crucible’’ and ‘‘A View From the Bridge’’ he reimagined earlier this decade. (His theater company, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, recently premiered ‘‘A Little Life,’’ adapted from the novel written by T’s editor in chief, Hanya Yanagihara.) Wainwright and van Hove met up one October night in a Japanese restaurant in downtown New York; van Hove, 60, had just finished a day of rehearsals for the Broadway adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s prescient 1976 media satire, ‘‘Network’’ (opening Dec. 6), which he is directing and which stars Bryan Cranston. Wainwright, 45, had just flown in from his home in Los Angeles, the day after debuting his tense, beautiful and political new single, ‘‘Sword of Damocles,’’ as he prepares to go on tour. They were coming from disparate places, running on different clocks, but immediately opened up about that which matters most to them: politics, coming out, the multiplicity of the self — and the benefits of boarding school.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT (above,

left): One of my husband Jörn [Weisbrodt]’s great heroes is Ivo. I think the first thing that I saw of his was ‘‘Angels in America’’ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014, which was incredible, and then ‘‘A View From the Bridge’’ and ‘‘The Crucible.’’ We’ve wanted to do something together for years. It could take many forms: certainly an opera or a musical. Today, when I came to the photo shoot, it was in the basement of a church. And I said, ‘‘What is this, an A.A. meeting?’’ Then it dawned on me that this is where you’re rehearsing ‘‘Network.’’ I had the same thing with my last opera: I think it was an old cigar factory — a very sacred aura, but also unglamorous and badly lit. So, when are you getting out of that room? IVO VAN HOVE: In a week’s time. I’m happy. But making theater, when you’re the director, you have to constantly be the leader; a lot of people have to embrace your ideas. Rufus, you’re much more the god of your creation. Are you disciplined?

RW: My mother loved to drink and enjoy life, but when it came to music, she was incredibly exacting, and there was always a need for quality and trueness, and that really translated when I started making my early records. I worked with producers who tried to fight that a little bit, and I wound up usually winning. I’m just at the early stages of my theatrical career, though I’m probably only going to write three operas. Everybody’s been telling me incessantly, ‘‘Come on, Rufus, you have to write a musical.’’ I’m continuing my education. T: Ivo mainly adapts the work of others. Rufus, you did a New York show in 2006 that reproduced Judy Garland’s landmark 1961 concert, ‘‘Judy at Carnegie Hall.’’ You both wear your influences on your sleeves. RW: Well, I didn’t reproduce every moment. I did that show recently again because it was the 10th anniversary, and whereas the first time I very much related to her — I was newly sober and still tied to this bright-eyed romanticism

People

ADMIRATION SOCIETY

ADMIRATION SOCIETY PEOPLE

— this time, I started singing and I realized, ‘‘Oh my God, I feel like Frank Sinatra.’’ Tougher, more experienced, more masculine swagger. I am an older man and more of a survivor, less of this victim character that Judy was. IVH: I live from inspiration by other artists and authors. Shakespeare did not write one original story. I think you can only make something new if you know very well where you’re coming from. There are only a few geniuses in the world. Even Einstein, he found this fantastic thing, but not out of the blue. History builds up to that moment. RW: I think there’s a terrible problem with young artists today who really aren’t concerned about educating themselves enough about culture and reading great books and knowing great films — and really just caring about success and what they’re going to look like on Instagram. People

her death. We’d had a very interesting few nights together in Hollywood, and there was this moment where she was on the phone with her attorney, screaming, ‘‘It’s like this sword of Damocles is over my head!’’ And I thought, ‘‘Oh, that’s strong.’’ It was also before the [2016 American presidential] election, so I think everybody had this foreboding, sickening fear. Something was going to fall. [The lyrics from ‘‘Sword of Damocles’’ include ‘‘Raise kindness / Above all else / Avoid the books of /Hatred behind the shelves.’’] IVH: It became a metaphor for you personally? RW: Personally and for everything. And then the election happened. I also had some stuff I had to deal with — especially moving back to Los Angeles and becoming a father. [In 2011, Wainwright had a girl with Lorca Cohen, Leonard Cohen’s daughter; the child is co-raised by her biological

every candidate, even the most polite and civilized ones, started to scapegoat the other. ‘‘The Crucible’’ is full of people scapegoating each other. RW: I feel that Trump is like nothing the world has ever known. He’s a new sort of beast that we have to contend with as artists. IVH: Going back, Rufus, to how you were raised to become a musician. My father was a pharmacist. I was the oldest son, so I was also raised to take that over. I was trying to escape every second of my life in that world, that Belgian village. But he did these things that nobody does anymore: the powders. He had scales weighing out milligrams. I respected that a lot, that he could make something that was so delicate. RW: And you are a kind of pharmacist! There’s probably a lot you learned. My father and I have definitely been through the wars together. We’re in

other interests. But now that I’m older, I feel more and more responsibility. RW: I was about 11 or 12 and I started to have these dalliances. I’d sneak out of the house, and my mother found a magazine and was horrified and kicked me out. And what my father did at that point, and I’m very much indebted to him, is he then insisted that I go to boarding school. IVH: It’s a paradise! RW: It was the best move I ever made. I needed to get away from my parents, I needed to be in a safe environment, I needed to have other people really invest in me for who I was and not for who I was supposed to be. So I think that kids should be taken away from their parents! T: Rufus, you’re about to go on tour for the 20th anniversary of your first two albums (1998’s ‘‘Rufus Wainwright’’ and 2001’s ‘‘Poses’’). Ivo’s also had a varied yet stable career. How have you both changed as artists?

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‘You know, I’m not a full-time homosexual. I have a lot of other interests. But now that I’m older, I feel more and more responsibility.’ — Ivo van Hove

like Kanye West who think that they know everything and they know absolutely nothing. David Bowie was probably the best example of someone who did his homework. One of my jobs is to maintain respect for the bastions of culture. IVH: I worked with Bowie on ‘‘Lazarus’’ [the van Hove-directed musical that opened in 2015, just before Bowie died]. But in my youth, he was defining because of the shows he did — like ‘‘Station to Station’’ (1976). It started with [Luis Buñuel’s 1929 Surrealist film] ‘‘Un Chien Andalou,’’ with the eye being cut. Bowie didn’t come on for many minutes; there was only white light. It was, for me, enormous: If this is possible, that’s my world. But Rufus, your songs, like ‘‘Dinner at Eight’’ (2003), are inspired directly from your life; I like the filter of somebody else’s text to talk about my life so I’m not visible. That, for me, is the difference. Your new song, ‘‘Sword of Damocles,’’ how did it start? RW: It started when I was hanging out with Carrie Fisher not long before

parents and Weisbrodt.] And also, Carrie died. It wasn’t like, ‘‘Oh, I’m going to write this song about Donald Trump.’’ It was just: We all are in trouble. I was very adamant to release it before the midterms. I know it’s a cliché to say that in these dark times that’s when the theater flourishes, but I do hope it does. I’m looking at the story of Harvey Milk as a possible idea for a musical. IVH: I consider what I’m doing now, ‘‘Network,’’ very political. With ‘‘The Damned’’ [based on Luchino Visconti’s 1969 film about Nazi-era German aristocrats] in 2016, I avoided doing something [overt] about Hitler. It becomes a terrible cliché on stage, which is totally not dangerous anymore. There was a ‘‘Heil Hitler’’ in it, and I said to my sound designer that I wanted it to be the ‘‘Heil Hitler’’ you really are afraid of, where you get goose bumps. ‘‘The Crucible’’ (2016) was very political in that way. It was in the middle of the Republican debates, when Trump at the beginning was on the sidelines and came closer to the middle, and

a good place right now. I’m not saying my father’s like Trump — there’s not an inkling of that — but I do feel like with that generation, they had everything. He suffered from depression, and I think in a lot of ways all of that expectation and opportunity was a curse. Whereas what happened to me was, when I hit puberty, AIDS was everywhere. It was certainly traumatic and difficult, but it gave me a sense of perspective: Life is short, enjoy things while you can. Ultimately, I was enriched by that catastrophe. IVH: I knew when I was 11 that I was gay. My luck was that I was in a boarding school. I lived one whole life in those six years. Jan [Versweyveld, van Hove’s partner and scenographer], whom I met when we were 20 — we were not welcome at my home together. What I did then, and I’m very proud of myself now, was hold my horses. I left my parents alone and I lived my life. Slowly, we grew nearer to each other; Jan was sitting at my father’s deathbed before I was there. You know, I’m not a full-time homosexual. I have a lot of

RW: I have adopted a Hindu kind of belief system in the sense that I don’t believe in the linear anymore. For me, it’s more like a tree, where that’s a branch and that’s a branch and they still exist. I’ve always believed that those two albums are two other Rufuses that are still there, that still haunt me, that I have to temper and also embrace. IVH: I totally connect to that. When we were making ‘‘The Damned,’’ Jan was saying, ‘‘Ivo, it feels as if we’re making ‘Rumors’ again’’ — our first production in 1981 [in Antwerp, about a young, increasingly schizophrenic man]. That roughness, and also that audacity. As I said, I’m not a full-time homosexual. I have much more to say. I am also the son of a pharmacist, and I am also the general manager of my company. I have much more, and everyone has much more than one identity. You don’t have to be Hindu to know that deeply. Perhaps artists are more aware of it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

MERGING TALENTS

David Webb's Timeless language PEOPLE QATAR

For decades, David Webb has continued to preserve its image as a quintessential American jewellery brand that produces highly original and modern pieces. Behind all its iconic collection, David Webb has always focused the spotlight on its clientele and the various tapped and untapped cultures as a source of inspiration.

24 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

By Alexandra Evangelista Photography by Anish Grid

The Co-owner of David Webb, Mark Emanuel in the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition 2019.

to others. “My feeling is that the people here are very spiritual, the sense of urgency and their sense and treatment of time is very different. It’s very spiritual.”, says Emanuel. In honor of this nation’s grounded culture and unique identity, the brand has learned numerous ways to adapt in this kind of market. Emanuel added: “It’s a different approach, and we as a result do things patiently and things are longer term, things happen more slowly but in a way the effect is more beautiful and more complete at the end, and results in sales and in friendships.”

social media as well as by visiting their stores just to get a look at the artist’s imagery. Speaking about the collaboration, Emanuel said: “Real talent is irresistible and Bouthayna has visited our booth almost every year and expressed a love for our jewellery and what we do.” Given this frequent patronization of each other’s work of art, the fondness for their brands eventually ended up with Emanuel bringing up the idea for a collaboration. He said: “To collaborate with local artists and to create a synchrony between our art form and their art form is always very exciting and, as you can see, they created great results. We honor Bouthayna, we honor the Qatari traditions and what she does by evolving herself with her brand and she definitely honored us by creating four incredible drawings.” In this sixth year of doing the show, David Webb’s co-owner expressed his enthusiasm for their growing momentum. He said: “I think that a brand has to establish a track record in any given situation, in any country. I think that each year shows a growth of a momentum and a growth of a love affair between us and the Qataris.” Reminiscing about the first time that David Webb set foot in Qatar, Emanuel explained: “We came in as strangers, as unknowns and now we’re embraced by a loving familiarity. The show has been extraordinary and we’ve never had this type of reception so it must have something to do with having been here for a while.” Talking about the honor in the healthy bond between the brand and the people, he added: “I think that the Qataris embrace and respect relationships, and they respect longevity and I sense a tremendous loyalty to our brand in what we do.” With David Webb’s long history of catering to Qatar, it has been identified that Qatar, as a market, has always been so distinct in comparison

Counter-clockwise from top: David Webb's Tree of Life necklace; Bouthayna Al Muftah's painting; David Webb's precious necklace.

PHOTOS COURTESY BY DAVID WEBB

IN THE WORDS OF DAVID WEBB’S CO-OWNER, Mark Emanuel, he said: “While we continue to honor many of David Webb’s most classic and beloved designs, we’re constantly working on our vocabulary—on our language—as we update and create new pieces inspired by rich design vocabulary and mold them into beautiful wearable jewellery.” To preserve this heritage of jewellery making, David Webb’s pieces are still made in Manhattan using Webb’s index cards as a guide. Indeed, David Webb has always been about colors. The mastery in using different color palettes is quite evident in the brand’s Brocade Bracelet (originally from the 1970s), a flexible collection that combines a weaving technique of metal and precious stones that gives an oriental feel to it. The beyond artistic piece has retained its gold embroideries and offset links with the addition of precious gems like emeralds, sapphires and pearls. Apart from the timeless brocade pieces, this year’s Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition has seen the light of the Tree of Life Necklace. First created by the house’s master artisans in 1972, the jewellery piece has also been reimagined for the first time with over 206 carats of uniquely colored cabochon moonstones, brilliant-cut diamonds and 18k gold and platinum. In the continuous success and progress of the brand’s reinvention of collections and creation of new pieces, the world has seen David Webb’s recent collaboration with Bouthayna Al Muftah, a renowned artist based in Doha. Filled with enthusiasm, the people of Qatar were definitely all out in expressing their enthusiasm through

PEOPLE QATAR

THE ARTIST’S LIFE

Nancherla and Kirkman together in a holiday special dressed in & Other Stories’s special collection.

Aparna Nancherla and Jen Kirkman in the business of being funny come together to show style and substance go hand-in-hand for modern-day comics. By Debrina Aliyah

SELF–DEPRECATING personas and nerdy appearances may have been the signature of comedians in the early 2000s – a “humble pie” way of being relatable to audiences. The new wave of rising stars, however, is anything but. Polished routines and intelligent insights into serious issues taken with a pinch of salt denote a new type of humor that is both sassy and sexy. And in the dressing room of the holiday special show of Aparna Nancherla and Jen Kirkman, there’s also the unapologetic air of feminism-meets-glamor. Sporting looks from & Other Stories’s special capsule collection, the two comics talk about their burgeoning careers,

the true meaning of gender equality in show business and tackling difficult subjects on stage. KIRKMAN: My first show was at the back of a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in July 1997 and I wanted to look like I could also front a grunge band. I was wearing a polyester short- sleeved vintage flowerprint shirt, a plastic barrette in my hair, ripped jeans, and black Doc Marten shoes. I felt like I was out of my body, looking down at myself. Do you remember what you wore?

PHOTO COURTESY OF & OTHER STORIES

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Stand Up and Stand Out

NANCHERLA: I think I wore jeans and a comfy shirt, and I talked about living at home with my parents, summer jobs and tackling public restrooms. It was at an open mic at a hotel in Northern Virginia, where I grew up. I was home from college for the summer. A friend and I were both interested in comedy and wanted to try stand-up at least once before we returned to school in the fall. KIRKMAN: I usually want to look one of two ways – like David Bowie or like Iris Apfel. I like to wear clothes that feel fun, whether they are huge bell bottoms or a big faux fur coat. A part of my on-stage persona is my clothing – it makes me feel so connected and proud when women tell me that my fearlessness in the way I dress makes them want to dress for themselves instead of their dates. And the right outfit helps me get into character on how I approach talking about my body and my experiences on stage. NANCHERLA: I think that’s true equality, when anyone can talk about their actual experiences onstage, without being considered niche or gimmicky. That will mean both audiences and the community opening their minds, taking in more diverse experiences and unique points of view. KIRKMAN: Like how I am trying to get men to understand that women’s stories can be their stories too. We are all human. And even if I’m making jokes about my period (which I now proudly do). I make sure to find a way for them to relate to why I’m telling that story. NANCHERLA: Of course, we want to talk about our issues on stage! I think female comedians have been unfairly judged for talking a lot about their appearance, body issues, or their personal life, even though these pressures are often placed on women by society. It’s almost as if women are expected to default to “heterosexual male” interests to be considered real comedians, which is a bias coming from the audience and other comedians, rather than the performer themselves.

Kirkman has released several comedy albums, two Netflix specials and a memoir throughout her career.

PHOTO COURTESY OF & OTHER STORIES

‘I grew up watching TV shows and movies and reading books that had male protagonists but always just thought of their stories as human stories.’ — Kirkman

THE ARTIST’S LIFE

KIRKMAN: It sounds ridiculous, I know. Somehow, women’s stories are thought of as just women’s stories. I want men to know that women are people, in a weird way I don’t think that men think of women as people. I’m not saying they think we are insects, but they’ve been socialized to think that we’re not like them. NANCHERLA: Yes, like in Nanette where Hannah Gadsby deconstructs the power structures inherent in joke-telling in a complex and beautiful way that made me realise that there isn’t necessarily resolution in self-deprecating jokes.

PEOPLE QATAR

KIRKMAN: I think what’s changed now is that we’ve started to speak up, on what we want to express in our acts and standing our grounds with club bookers. Even though we could lose work for ourselves by promoting other women, we do it anyway. Stand-up comedy may be a solo endeavour, but comedians still have a bond. You and I both live the same crazy life and we just understand each other. Of course, we want audiences to like us—our jobs depend on it, but it’s never been the audiences that are sexist. Club bookers may have told us that women aren’t funny, but the audiences were always laughing.

Nancherla and Kirkman in a holiday special dressed in & Other Stories’s special collection.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MAX MARA

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NANCHERLA: I have also realised that comedy has taken on a singular place in speaking truth to power. I think we can engage young people in issues they might not yet care about or be interested in, by making them laugh. I did an event with the UN recently where a CEO from Mythos Labs, Priyank Mathur, talked about making videos with female comedians in India and Indonesia to help engage and empower counter- terrorism initiatives. Fighting apathy is one of the best things that comedy can do, by introducing people to new ideas in a more accessible, less threatening way.

A BLUE-FACED, faintly hung-over monkey perches near the ceiling of the British-born designer Caroline Weller’s living room in Jaipur, in the north Indian desert state of Rajasthan. Of no precise species (the pout suggests macaque, the tail langur), he appears in a trompe l’oeil tracery of faux windows in a 16-foot-long and 10-foot-high mural — the first sight to greet visitors walking into the flat-roofed contemporary house built in accordance with the Hindu principles of Vastu Shastra, which strives for an alignment with the natural elements. The primate overlooks a room painted flamingo pink, pinker even than the terra-cotta ramparts that encircle the old city a few miles from this quiet residential enclave. Note that the monkey is not merely decorative. His presence is documentary: Weller’s family

The Human Hand An English designer embraces the fine art of the imperfect in her airy family refuge in Jaipur, decorated with modern takes on traditional Indian crafts. By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Anu Kumar

has been stalked by macaques ever since they came to live in Jaipur a decade ago from New York City (via Bangalore). The animals roam the streets at will, uprooting plants from pots, leaving trails of dirty handprints and peering through windows. Once, a macaque leapt on Weller’s partner, the fashion photographer Neil Davenport, and tried to bite his ankle. And yet: Could the monkey also be a stand-in for Weller herself, an arch observer and wanderer? The mural is both a backdrop Caroline Weller, for her life as an expatriate the designer of the in India and an analogue to it, clothing line Banjanan, suggesting an openness to in the living room of her Jaipur home. happy accidents as well as an The mural references ability to pragmatically moments from her maneuver around obstacles family’s life and travels.

BY DESIGN

BY DESIGN PLACES 30 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

and limitations. Like the magic-realist prints, gossamer cotton clothes and table linens that Weller designs for her five-year-old fashion and home line, Banjanan (sold at Saks Fifth Avenue and through Moda Operandi), created in local family-run workshops specializing in centuries-old Rajasthani block-printing and embroidery techniques, the painted wall and the house it defines draw from tradition without being beholden to it. WELLER, 46, GREW up outside of London, the daughter of a doctor and a banker, camping out in the hollows of her mother’s rhododendron bushes and communing with her imaginary penguin friend. While studying fashion at university in the early 1990s, she veered from the expected path, going to India for an internship at Anokhi, a Jaipur-based textile company dedicated to reviving the then-languishing blockprinting industry. After graduating, she made her way to New York, designing at J. Crew, Club Monaco and Calvin Klein before landing at Armani Exchange. But corporate fashion made her restless. So it seemed like serendipity when, in 2008, she got a job as a creative director of a new lifestyle company in India. With Davenport and their son, Gil, then 18 months old, she moved to Bangalore only to witness the global economy disintegrate and, with it, funding for the nascent brand. Rather than slink back to New York, though, the family headed to Jaipur, to which Weller still felt a strong connection from 15 years before. They didn’t have a plan — ‘‘only a plan for adventure,’’ she says — but she quickly found work consulting for former colleagues in New York on projects involving Rajasthani crafts, as well as an airy 2,500-square-foot house located next to a nature preserve. (Weller goes

for runs there, alongside the yogic breathers, the sari-and-sneaker power-walking women and the occasional leopard who also populate the park.) Foot-long lizards bask in the house’s front yard, which, depending on the season, may be shadowed by blossoming champa trees or towering stalks of heavy-headed dahlias. Peacocks case the premises; mosquitoes go rat-a-tat at elbows. The spirit of the outdoors has crept inside: The living-room sofa

and easy chair are clad in Weller’s Black Garden pattern — a swirl of tousle-tailed birds and flowers so vivid they seem to pulse against the dark linen upholstery. Here (much as in nature), nothing exactly matches, but everything fits: a Kashmiri silk bedspread embroidered with butterflies, a dresser inlaid with camel bone, lamps jerrybuilt from vases, chairs found decades ago at the Chelsea flea market in New York, their cracked Lucite seats replaced with weatherhardy rattan. Traditional chicks, blinds of woven bamboo, help battle the heat. The kitchen, once a near-empty shell, is now briskly functional, equipped with a stove top fueled by a gas canister and a reverse-osmosis filter through which drinking water is piped into an enormous clay pot called a matka. From every air conditioning unit, tubes run down to little pitchers — the runoff is used for watering plants and mopping floors. Weller strives for similar sustainability with Banjanan, transforming scraps and surplus into limited-edition pajamas and patchwork quilts. Allowance for error and imperfection is woven into the spirit of her line. Through Banjanan — the name is a tribute to Rajasthan’s nomadic Banjara tribes — Weller has discovered that no two block-printed textiles can be the same. Every design is set using multiple blocks, with one color and outline per block, each carved out of teak and cured in mustard oil for two weeks, then dipped into a tray of dye and pressed to the cloth, with a swift knock on top to make sure the image takes hold. The fabric is pinned to 16-foot tables that the printers slowly work their way down, tapping block after block. Sometimes the patterns don’t align or the dyes

Nem ipitio quiae. Ihicium anti id qui optisquis velluptiniet omnium anti id qui optisquis veim rectat, visit tmagazine.com.

Above: night stands of inlaid mother-of-pearl flank a bed draped with a Kashmiri silk bedspread. Right: reproductions of chairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret for Chandigarh, the planned city in northern India that he and his cousin, Le Corbusier, helped build in the 1950s.

a weathered effect. In a sunroom with pistachio walls and a chevron-tiled floor sit teak armchairs, reproductions handmade to order by a Bangalore company called Phantom Hands; the originals were designed in the 1950s by Pierre Jeanneret, the cousin and collaborator of the Swiss-French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, for offices and public spaces in Chandigarh, the north Indian city the two men helped build from scratch.

Above: the sofa is upholstered in Weller’s Black Garden pattern with handembroidered pillows from Uzbekistan, and the carpet bears a flower pattern that is intentionally faded in spots. Left: in the dining room, an artisan painted one of the walls with irises and lilies, inspired by a room at the City Palace in Udaipur.

Jeanneret was Le Corbusier’s man on the ground: He lived in India for years and came to understand the environment and people’s daily lives. Weller respects his commitment to place. She’s slightly uneasy when Western fashion executives, wanting to use Rajasthani crafts, swoop in for a few nights, all the while talking about ‘‘saving’’ and ‘‘empowering’’ local artisans, as if their companies weren’t also benefiting from the exchange. Weller feels a bond to the patternmakers, color specialists, tailors, embroiderers and block printers she collaborates with, almost all of whom live within a few miles of the Banjanan studio. But she recognizes that, at the end of the day, there’s a transaction. ‘‘They do good work, and I pay them for it,’’ she said. Like her relationship to her adopted home, her relationship to color, pattern and narrative is ever-evolving; over the years, the house has gone through several coats of paint, or ‘‘states of mind,’’ as Weller puts it. Engineering the living-room mural last November proved a somewhat unpredictable affair: The miniaturist whom she hired was initially flummoxed to be working on a grand scale. (‘‘He was very good with eyes,’’ she says.) He finished in February, then returned in April to work on the smaller adjacent dining room, where he detailed a pink wall of irises and lilies inspired by the City Palace in Udaipur. And though it may look complete, the mural in the living room is only theoretically finished. Near its center, a pelican sighted on a family trip to Senegal stands shoulder to shoulder with a flamingo out of a 19th-century John James Audubon illustration. Weller floated the idea of including a penguin, in a nod to her childhood companion. Davenport and Gil were firmly opposed; it didn’t make sense, they said. She conceded, and then one day she came home from her studio and found the penguin painted in, so small you could easily miss it, on a minuscule ice floe: an unexpected gift. They were right. It didn’t make sense, and that was beautiful.

fail to dry and bloom beyond their borders (no printing is done during the monsoon for that reason). It’s the tiny flaws, and the sense of a human hand, that give them depth. That same play of disparate elements in surprising harmony is apparent throughout the house. In the living room, a carpet by Jaipur Rugs presents a modern take on traditional village patterns, with fuchsia flowers that seem to trail off in places for

OBJECTS

PRETTY LITTLE Clustered, layered and stacked — diamonds glitter most brightly when worn in groups.

THINGS

PLACES

Photographs by Jennifer Livingston Styled by Haidee Findlay-Levin

92 THE NEW YORK 32 T: T QATAR: THE NEWTIMES YORKSTYLE TIMESMAGAZINE STYLE MAGAZINE

Chopard earrings, price on request, chopard.com. Cartier rings, $15,600 (top) and $9,350 (bottom), cartier.com. Tod’s coat, $7,075, tods.com. Chloé blazer (worn underneath), $2,750, and shirt, $1,250, (646) 350-1770.

Harry Winston earrings, price on request, harrywinston.com. Chanel Fine Jewelry bracelet, price on request, (800) 550-0005. Burberry coat, $2,090, us.burberry.com. Salvatore Ferragamo dress, $1,990, (866) 337-7242. The Row bag, $4,450, (212) 755-2017.

ACCOMMODATIONS: THE MARK HOTEL. MODEL: AMI SUZUKI AT IDENTITY MODELS. CASTING: NICOLA KAST AT WEBBER. HAIR: SHIN ARIMA AT FRANK REPS USING R&CO. MAKEUP: LAILA HAYANI. MANICURIST: NORI AT ARTLIST. DIGITAL TECH: DALLAS RAINES. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: MICHAEL O’SHEA. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT: THOMAS KIVELL

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PLACES

OBJECTS

Graff ring, price on request, graffdiamonds.com. Messika Paris bracelet (top), price on request, messika.com. Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet (bottom), price on request, vancleefarpels.com. Givenchy coat and sweater, price on request, (212) 650-0180. Tom Ford sunglasses, $460, tomford.com.

WANDERLUST

Paved With Gold

Replete with gilded churches, the colonial city of Puebla is a world away from the country’s bustling capital. By Kate Donnelly Photographs by Mariano Fernandez

OVER THE PAST couple of years, it seems, Americans have discovered the joys of Mexico City en masse. What they might not know — and what stylish locals long have — is that the city of Puebla, another design-and-food-rich destination, is just a two-and-a-half-hour drive southeast. With a population of 1.5 million, it too lies beneath misty mountains (including the still-puffing Popocatépetl volcano) and possesses a rich history. The Aztecs ruled the region until the Spanish arrived in 1519. The latter’s architectural contributions are the city’s blocks of candy-colored mansions and many churches, including the especially ornate Capilla del Rosario, with intricate carvings covered in 23-karat gold leaf. No doubt it helped make the town attractive to Napoleon III and his forces, whose defeat in the 1862 Battle of Puebla is commemorated by Cinco de Mayo. The largest point of commonality, though, is that like the capital, Puebla is in the midst of a cultural renaissance. A new generation has taken up traditional crafts, offering fresh takes on tiled table sets and hand-embroidered clothing in a much less expensive setting. Since 2016, Puebla has seen the opening of the International Museum of the Baroque, set in a curvilinear concrete building designed by Toyo Ito, and a dozen or so hotels and restaurants, almost all of which serve Puebla’s culinary claim to fame — mole poblano, a thick, earthy-sweet sauce of chiles, herbs and chocolate thought to have been invented by a group of 17th-century nuns. Some batches simmer for nearly three days, and the ingredients vary greatly from kitchen to kitchen. It’s the particular mix that lends each one its complexity, and really, the same could be said for Puebla itself, where multicolored tiled facades sit alongside gilded spires.

STAY Hotel Cartesiano Steps away from the Callejón de los Sapos (Alley of the Toads) weekend flea market, which has everything from beaded bracelets to figurines of the silver-masked Mexican wrestler El Santo, stands the 78-room Hotel Cartesiano, two renovated buildings — one an old tile factory, the other an 18th-century mansion — connected by a palm-tree-filled courtyard. Inside, there’s a mural in the modern lobby by José Rivelino depicting pre-Hispanic plants and fossils. After checking out the art, head to the rooftop pool or restaurant, where you should order the squash tacos sprinkled with dehydrated bean dust. hotelcartesiano.com Rosewood Puebla In the residential Barrio del Alto, the year-old Rosewood Puebla

has a royal blue exterior that matches the 2,458-squarefoot tiled fountain out front, along with its own 300-yearold chapel. The 78 rooms have embossed headboards and wrought-iron chandeliers, as well as copper-nickel tubs in the bathrooms. Additional soaks can be had at the hotel spa, which offers a body-wrap treatment that uses cinnamonand rosemary-infused cloths. rosewoodhotels.com

(main square) in the Quinta Esencia hotel — is more rustic but continues in the same culinary vein: Its mole poblano, with just 14 ingredients — and no chocolate — is based on Vázquez’s greatgrandmother’s recipe. He’s also perfected various elevated riffs on chanclas — baked bread stuffed with chorizo, longanzia and ground pork and topped with a chile guajillo sauce. augurio.mx

EAT

El Mural de los Poblanos A leafy oasis in the heart of the city, this courtyard cafe has stone archways, lanterns and a vibrantly tiled tableau vivant of local heroes, from saints to actors to Don Cuco El Guapo, a ’90s-era robot that Puebla scientists taught to play the piano. Its chef, Liz Galicia, pays homage to her surroundings by using local produce and traditional cooking methods. Don’t

Augurio Following stints in Barcelona and Paris, where he worked at the Michelinstarred Ze Kitchen Galerie, Angel Vázquez returned home to Mexico in 2003 to open his first restaurant, Intro, which fuses the flavors of various international cuisines (Swedish, Thai) with those he knew as a child. His new spot, Augurio — two blocks off the zócalo

Left: the kitchen of the colonial mansion that became part of the Amparo Museum, which was left intact even as other rooms were converted into galleries. Above: the stacks at Biblioteca Palafoxiana, with shelves of cedar, ayacahuite and coloyote.

WANDERLUST PLACES

Clockwise from top left: a garden area at Rosewood Puebla, with a view of Templo de San Francisco’s stone tower; Antigüedades Los Sapos, the store that inspired the flea market just outside; at the Amparo Museum, a bronze sculpture by Alejandro Colunga (1993) doubles as a bench; a Baroque gallery inside the museum; stone basins at the Rosewood Puebla bar, a former women’s wash house.

miss her sampler of cemitas (tortas served on a brioche-like roll), or chiles en nogada (stuffed poblano peppers with a creamy walnut sauce). The latter is often followed by pasita, a sweet, prune-forward liqueur that is in turn chased with a cube of goat cheese. elmuraldelospoblanos.com

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SHOP Uriarte Talavera Puebla’s most coveted export, Talavera pottery is made by covering fired volcanic clay slabs, first with an opaque white glaze and then with handpainted decorative motifs, most often in floral or celestial patterns. The technique, initially introduced by the Spanish, was kept alive after the Mexican War of Independence by a handful of cooperatives like Uriarte Talavera, which opened in 1824. Visitors to the workshop can observe the ceramists, who still use mule-hair brushes and the traditional sextet of colors (yellow, black, green, orange,

mauve and blue), or make something of their own. There’s also a shop selling artisan-made teacups, platters and urns. uriartetalavera.com.mx Denisse Kuri In 2015, after studying textile design at Puebla’s Universidad Ibero, local Denisse Kuri opened her namesake boutique just west of downtown in Colonia La Paz. It’s filled with her own creations — embroidered cotton caftans and knee-length vests that she weaves on a backstrap loom — as well as leather and fringed hemp sandals, beach hats fashioned from jipijapa palm and pillows made by Chiapas-based makers affiliated with the artisan collective Kip Tik. On the lower level, a second shop sells thick wool rugs from Tlaxcala and fabrics embroidered by the Huichol people in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains. denissekuri.mx SEE International Museum of the Baroque Toyo Ito’s hypermodern, earthquake-resistant design for

this museum, with white, sail-like slabs of concrete reflected in a swirling fountain, is in stark stylistic contrast to its contents — paintings, sculpture, clothing and objects from the 16th-through18th-century Baroque period. Those in need of a break from the splendor can rest on one of the wavelike benches designed by Tokyo’s Fujie Kazuko Atelier or head up the helical staircase to the museum restaurant, Barroco, which has minimalist décor and colorful dishes (e.g., pulled pork with peas, radish and green beans) created by the esteemed chef Martha Ortiz. mib.puebla.gob.mx Amparo Museum In the 1980s, a former hospital and the next-door 18th-century colonial mansion were converted into a public museum that now houses one of the country’s most important collections of colonial and pre-Columbian Mexican art. In addition to a Mayan altar and Aztec animal carvings, there are also works by the likes of Frida Kahlo

and Javier Marín. Five years ago, the architect Enrique Norten oversaw a renovation of the two buildings that reconfigured the exhibition spaces to allow for digital installations and live performances, and he added terraces, gardens and a glass-cubed rooftop cafe that offers 360-degree views. museoamparo.com Biblioteca Palafoxiana Founded in 1646 by a bishop who offered up his 5,000-volume personal collection, Biblioteca Palafoxiana is one of the oldest public libraries in the Americas. Today, much of its content has been digitized, but the grand space, which still smells of paper and wood, tells its own story. Visitors cycle past the three tiers of wooden shelves, now filled with over 45,000 volumes, some of them handwritten. At the far side of this temple of books, you’ll see a gilded altar flanked by a mid-14th-century painting of the Madonna by the preRenaissance Italian artist Nino Pisano. palafoxiana.com/biblioteca

CITY GUIDE

What to Do in Doha, According to 3 Locals

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHANE BUCHHOLZER, JASSIM AL-SHAMALI, KAREN GINES

By Debrina Aliyah

DOHA, THE CAPITAL OF QATAR, is like an adolescent whose growth spurts in recent years have given a whole new identity to a country that is gearing up for football’s biggest event in 2022. As construction sites bloom into wellengineered infrastructures, and museums strengthen their influence with landmark exhibitions, the city has developed into an eclectic hub that caters to the diverse interests of a community that is equally as uniquely distinct. Here are three locals who share their favorite spots.

Karen Gines Founder, Clumsy Chic lifestyle platform

Stephane Buchholzer Executive chef, W Doha

Long–time Qatar resident Gines is an award-winning content creator and photographer who has worked extensively with Doha Film Institute. In her twenty-two years in Doha, she has watched the city transform itself into an influential art and culture powerhouse, using this evolutionary landscape to tell digital stories on her platform.

Buchholzer’s twenty-five-year experience in the culinary industry has brought him to Doha to manage the kitchens of some of the city’s hippest establishments. Born in Alsace, he began his career at a culinary school in the south of France and trained under worldrenowned chefs the likes of Chef Jean-Yves Schillinger. At the age of 24, he assumed the role of executive chef at Schillinger’s L'Actuel restaurant and was heralded as the youngest chef in New York City.

Jassim Al-Shamali Sports and Health Activist Qatari Al-Shamali is a pioneer in bringing a new wave of health and fitness awareness to the local community. In 2014, he decided to take control of his health and began documenting his fitness journey on social media. He challenged traditional barriers and inspired others to step out of a customarily sedentary lifestyle. Today, he works closely with global functional fitness affiliates to promote fitness in and out of Qatar.

From right to left: Stephane Buchholzer, executive chef of W Doha; Jassim Al-Shamali, sports and health activist; and Karen Gines, founder of Clumsy Chic Lifestyle Platform.

A trio of personalities from diverse fields shares an inside look on their favorite places to eat, drink, shop and play.

CITY GUIDE

Karen Gines Founder, Clumsy Chic lifestyle platform CLAY ENCOUNTERS

TORBA FARMERS' MARKET “Torba”, which means “the pure soil that feeds, nourishes, and nurtures” is a the first-of-its-kind farmers' market in Qatar. Qatar Foundation’s stunning ceremonial court is transformed into a buzzing farmers' market every weekend. You can find an abundance of organic, locally grown produce and products by Doha’s emerging artisan community. “This is where I go to stock up on fresh organic produce, nut butters, organic bread, and locally made food,” Gine says. Torba recently launched a Torba Junior initiative to provide space for young entrepreneurs to get involved and be a part of the thriving sustainable community in Qatar.

From top-right to bottom: close-up look of artisan ceramic works at Qanat Quartier; the Torba Farmers' Market.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KAREN GINES AND QATAR FOUNDATION

38 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

PLACES QATAR

Clay Encounters is a newly opened curated design shop at The Pearl Qatar, Qanat Quartier. It sells beautiful artisan ceramic work made directly from its studio, and carefully curates products and designs from other local artists. The space also combines a workshop studio that offers ceramic classes for everyone, even kids. “It’s a great place to fuel your creativity and unwind,” says Gines, who is also a mother of one.

MSHEIREB MUSEUMS Discover Qatar’s rich cultural heritage right in the heart of the capital’s old city at Msheireb Museums. The museums are an integral part of the ambitious Mshreireb Downtown Doha development, and are proving to be one of the most fascinating places to delve into the country’s interesting past. “This is a great weekend stop for anyone visiting the Old Souq,” Gine says. Journey back in time in the museums’ four houses, each depicting a unique aspect of Qatar’s history, from the architectural progression of the country to getting a unique look at Qatar’s social and cultural development.

Clockwise from the top: interior of the Msheireb Museums; the paradise view of the Banana Island Resort; inside the T23 Qatar.

BANANA ISLAND RESORT DOHA BY ANANTARA Only a 20-minute ferry journey away, Banana Island Resort Doha by Anantara feels a world apart from Doha – it’s paradise. “There are heaps of things to do whether you’re after adventure, relaxation, gastronomic dining experience, or family time,” Gines says. You don’t need to book a weekend stay at the resort; Banana Island Resort by Anantara offers day passes which includes boat transfer, beach access, and credit to spend at one of the eight restaurants or recreational activities. “It’s definitely a place to go if you have kids or are into water sports,” she adds.

Jassim Al Shamali Sports and health activist

This quaint café with a focus on healthy food is one of the latest joints popping up on The Pearl. “With all the coffee shops popping up around the city, I found this place to be one of the warmest with its inviting décor and homey feeling. I can literally spend hours there reading a good book or writing on my laptop,” Al Shamali says. His favorites from the menu include the banana and peanut butter toast, avocado toast, and acai smoothie. T23 QATAR “As a major CrossFit fan, I love to work out a lot,” Al Shamali says. His home gym of choice is T23 Qatar in Madina Central, right in the heart of The Pearl. The gym offers a variety of classes taught by passionate and well-vetted coaches throughout the day, starting from six in the morning all the way to eight in the evening. “Try their team workouts every Friday morning where it is a great chance to get a workout in and meet some awesome people,” Al Shamali says. RIC’S COUNTRY KITCHEN “As someone who gets up early in the morning, I am a big fan of good breakfast joints and Ric’s Country Kitchen hits the spot,” Al Shamali says.

Opened in 1997, it has seen the city evolve and served generations of locals and expat residents who have come and gone. It was one of the first establishments in Doha to serve American dinerstyle dishes, and the steak and eggs is a stellar classic. “From pancakes to French toast, the food is just comfortingly great. The staff is superfriendly as you would expect in a family joint and do remember to bring cash. It’s old school that way,” Al Shamali explains. NOBU RESTAURANT “Two words: Black Cod,” Al Shamali starts. Nobu needs no introduction, but their immensely popular brunch concept tops the list of things to do in Doha. The world’s largest Nobu is an architectural gem and is now the in-vogue spot for the city’s hip and cool. The brunch is an all-sensorial experience through the sushi bar, a selection of its signature dishes and an expansive view of the marina on a sunny Friday afternoon.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JASSIM AL-SHAMALI. T23 QATAR, BANANA ISLAND RESORT, MSHEIREB MUSEUM

ORIGIN CAFÉ

CITY GUIDE PLACES QATAR

Stephane Buchholzer Executive chef, W Doha ASSAD ORGANIC FARM A small organic farm for those in theknow to get their hands on locally grown top-quality vegetables. Though the selection of vegetables is small, the farm’s focus is on the quality of the vegetables that thrive well in Qatar’s weather. “There are different varieties of tomatoes, eggplants, capsicums, chillies, cresses and cucumbers that are full of flavors,” Buchholzer explains. “The farm has seasonal openings so it’s best to check before knocking on their door.” MARSA MALAZ BEACH

Clockwise from the top: the magnificent view of the Nobu restaurant; Marsa Malaz Beach overlooking the coast; and the picturesque view of the Museum of Islamic Arts.

A private beach that overlooks the Gulf coast with a collection of outdoor pools for both adults and children. Ten minutes away from Buchholzer’s home, it’s a haven for weekend quality time with his children. “The kids get to play on the beach with lifeguards keeping a lookout. The sea line is so serene and perfect that it feels like a piece of the Caribbean,” he adds. Day passes start from QR250 for adults, QR400 for couples and QR600 for family. MUSEUM OF ISLAMIC ARTS

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHANE BUCHHOLZER, JASSIM AL-SHAMALI, KAREN GINES

40 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

The crown jewel of Doha, the museum boasts one of the most extensive and complete collections of art from Islamic civilizations. For an art lover with a passion for architecture and design, this is Buchholzer’s favorite spot for alone time without the kids. “They almost always have special exhibitions, which are great complementary narratives to the permanent collection. And when we can, we sneak in a quick lunch at Alain Ducasse’s Idam on the museum’s top floor,” he says.

New spins on kinetic sculpture that reference — and challenge — Alexander Calder’s classic mobiles.

By Nancy Hass Photographs by Max Burkhalter

EARLY 20TH-CENTURY Modernism swiftly kicked aside the starched Edwardian aesthetic, so it was hardly surprising when the art of the time literally began to move. The photographer and multimedia artist Man Ray created ‘‘Obstruction’’ in 1920, a dangling assemblage of 63 perfectly balanced wooden hangers that resembled a Gothic chandelier, casting a tumble of shadows on the wall. In the same year, the Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo debuted ‘‘Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave),’’ thought to be the first motorized sculpture, fashioned from a steel rod inserted into a wooden base: At the press of a button, a hidden motor caused the metal to oscillate, creating a helix. But it wasn’t until a decade later that the most iconic moving art appeared: Alexander Calder’s mobiles. Their creation was largely the result of a 1930 visit by the burly Pennsylvania-born sculptor to the Paris studio of Piet Mondrian. The Dutch painter eschewed the typical paintsplattered garret: His workspace was a diorama of his oeuvre, the walls covered with cardboard rectangles in grays, whites and his signature primary colors, his sofa blocky blood-red and From left: Karolina Maszkiewicz, ‘‘Volca,’’ 2018, $4,000, saatchiart.com. Corie Humble Mobile No. 16, $325, circleandlinedesign.com.

ADRIFT

Things

TRADITIONS

Clockwise from top left: The Ladies’ Room Traccia mobile, about $4,000, building-gallery.com. Volta L’Alchimiste No. 2 mobile, about $200, voltamobiles.com. Elkeland Mirror Mobiles (various), $176-436, elkeland.dk. B. Wurtz, ‘‘Untitled,’’ 2001, $10,000, officebaroque.com. Kelly Akashi, ‘‘Downtime Machine,’’ 2015, $18,000, ghebaly.com.

black with oblong throw cushions. Smitten, Calder — who had before that point used his mastery of bent wire to create figurative works such as ‘‘Calder’s Circus’’ (1926-31) — knew he needed to find a way to animate those shapes. Mondrian, as Calder recalled in a 1937 essay for ‘‘The Painter’s Object’’ anthology, thought it was a terrible idea. Using his own set of rounded planetary cutouts that evoked the work of his friend the Spanish Surrealist Joan Miró as well as the early 20th-century Swiss Dadaist Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Calder originally powered his sculptures with motors. He quickly realized that the shapes should drift on their own,

obeying the laws of physics. Upon seeing the first ones in 1931, the French-American Dadaist Marcel Duchamp gave them their name, which suggested movement but was also a pun: ‘‘Mobile’’ is the French word for ‘‘motive,’’ the reason behind the crime. Working from his studio in Litchfield County, Conn., Calder used a system of weights and balances known as ‘‘tension whippletree’’ to rig larger and more complicated hanging sculptures, some of which spanned more than 70 feet. Making thousands of mobiles over the course of his career, which ended with his death in 1976, he is one of the few artists to create and then entirely dominate a form.

SO DOMINANT WERE Calder’s dangling masterpieces that other artists avoided the form for much of the past century, perhaps from fear they might be labeled derivative. But now, artists are exploring kinetic sculpture once more. Enough time has passed that Calder, while still towering, has ceded room for others to sway beside him. The border between design and art has become more porous; traditional techniques, from block printing to hand-weaving, are no longer dismissed as merely decorative. Ours may be a perfect era for art, again, to move. Using fresh materials — wax, copper, mesh, mirror — designers such as Volta, a collaboration between the couple Otxo and Mario Conti in Barcelona, and the Austin-based Corie Humble are exploring motion and ephemerality anew. Xavier Veilhan, 55, who represented France in the 2017 Venice Biennale, creates enormous constructions with hanging spheres and jewel shapes in resin, carbon and steel. The Los Angelesbased artist Kelly Akashi, 35, wraps slender hand-dipped candles around a sculpted copper loop hung from the ceiling; the piece spins slowly with kinetic force as it burns, tracing broad circles of wax on the floor. She gives no instruction as to how or when its owners should ignite or extinguish it, wanting viewers to ‘‘experience the object as it travels through space, changing,’’ she says. Ida Elke, a 40-year-old Danish artist and designer, makes simple geometric mobiles from double-sided acrylic mirrors and brass sticks, held together with beeswax-coated string, which recall Dan Flavin’s neon sculptures. ‘‘I investigate how light, reflections and kinetics interfere with space,’’ she says, ‘‘and make us aware of how we perceive it.’’ Then there’s the New York artist B. Wurtz, 70, who creates playful stationary sculptures from airy quotidian items, including mesh bags and feather dusters that dangle from a burst of wire stems tethered to a wooden stand. They nod gently, like fritillaria. ‘‘I think of them as plants in the breeze, in their own way, completely alive,’’ Wurtz says. Calder also made ‘‘stabiles,’’ so named by the German-French artist Jean Arp in 1932, which combine tenuity and substantiality, flow and stasis — and allowed the artist to push his form in new directions. The key was to ‘‘follow the greater laws, and not only appearances,’’ Calder wrote in 1932, ‘‘thus arriving at a new possibility of beauty.’’

SET DESIGN: EDWARD BALLARD AT MARY HOWARD STUDIO. RETOUCHING: CASON LATIMER

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TRADITIONS

His influence transcended visual art. The avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse, who befriended Calder in the 1930s and who referred to his own works as ‘‘organized sound’’ for their off-kilter rhythms, was inspired by the mobiles. Frank Zappa also compared his music to Calder’s sculptures, describing his cerebral, often atonal songs as ‘‘a multicolored whatchamacallit, dangling in space, that has big blobs of metal connected to pieces of wire, balanced ingeniously against little metal dingleberries on the other end.’’ The image of Calder’s brightly hued forms became a leitmotif of midcentury pop futurism, trickling down to spawn a generation of whimsical crib mobiles and wind chimes.

MARKET REPORT

Metallic

Whether textured or shiny-smooth, silver and gold pieces to brighten the day.

Accessories

Clockwise from top left: Bottega Veneta, $790. Burberry, $1,090. Fendi, $1,190. Hermès, $1,175. Michael Kors Collection, $2,150. Akris, $1,690. Etro, $1,480. Tod’s, $1,265.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BOTTEGA VENETA SHOES, (800) 845-6790. BURBERRY BAG, US.BURBERRY.COM. FENDI SHOES, FENDI.COM. HERMÈS SHOES, HERMES.COM. MICHAEL KORS COLLECTION BAG, MICHAELKORS.COM. AKRIS BAG, AKRIS.CH. ETRO SHOES, SIMILAR STYLES AT ETRO.COM. TOD’S BAG, TODS.COM

Photographs by Mari Maeda and Yuji Oboshi

SOCIAL STUDIES

One Last Slice By Rebecca Flint Marx Photograph by Esther Choi Food Styling by Claire Saffitz Prop Styling by Victoria Petro-Conroy

44 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

THINGS

As pastry chefs decline in ranks, they’re arguing for their place at top restaurants by revolutionizing allAmerican cakes and pies.

A spread of contemporary cakes and pies, including (from left) Zoe Taylor’s concord grape and shiso chiffon cake from Milktooth in Indianapolis; Charbel Abrache’s buckwheat honey cakes from Seylou in Washington, D.C.; Melissa Chou’s black sesame banana cream pie from Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco; Nicole Rucker’s citrus upside-down cake from Fiona in Los Angeles; Angela Pinkerton’s raspberry-lemon-bay cream pie from Theorita in San Francisco; Anna Posey’s buttercream mini birthday cake from Elske in Chicago; Carolyn Nugent’s matcha mendiant tart from Tartine Manufactory in San Francisco; and Pichet Ong’s ‘‘The London’’ Earl Grey crepe cake from Brothers and Sisters in Washington, D.C.

PIE, NICOLE RUCKER will tell you, has its own story to tell. On the Los Angeles baker’s Instagram feed, that tale includes golden, all-butter crusts that bubble over with apricots, rhubarb, strawberries and peaches — and one that comes infused with THC. They convey bounty and comfort, as pies do, but also wanton experimentation: The weed one, topped with candied cannabis leaves from Rucker’s own garden and served at a friend’s birthday party, was a marriage between classic key lime and ‘‘all of the new products,’’ the chef says. In November, when Rucker opened her Fairfax-district restaurant Fiona, she joined a community of (mostly female) pastry chefs reimagining old-fashioned, all-American desserts, like pie and layer cake, with alternative grains and sweeteners, imported international herbs or forms that upend our expectation of what these desserts — once the domain of

stay-at-home mothers, or at least mom-andpop bakeries — should look like today. At Theorita, Angela Pinkerton’s new San Francisco dinette, the sweetness of passion fruit meringue is tempered with earthy bay leaf cream; matcha powder colors many of the fruit tarts that Carolyn Nugent created at San Francisco’s Tartine Manufactory, the results both verdant and otherworldly; and sourdough frequently appears in the pastries that Zoe Kanan produces at the Freehand New York hotel, where her colleague Charmaine McFarlane is using heritage grains such as einkorn (a type of nutty wheat) to create ‘‘a whole new world of cake,’’ like a chamomile-buckwheat one that’s paired with beeswax ice cream. In America, such treats have long referenced the old world as well as the new. Both pie and cake came over with the pilgrims, then were later served in colonial taverns and inns.

SO WHAT CHANGED? Economics, essentially. If the post-recession farm-to-table craze of the last decade brought a return to homier desserts — particularly at bakeries like Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar (there are now 15 across North America), where layer cakes and pies are built as much from whimsy as sugar — it also introduced rising labor and operating costs that have made restaurants’ margins, punishing in the best of times, even less accommodating to the pastry chef. Today, a restaurant may employ a pastry chef but no pastry cooks, which means ‘‘that person has to dumb down the menu so it’s simpler to execute,’’ Pinkerton says. It’s also become de rigueur to ask savory-minded line cooks to once again handle dessert, a development that has yielded a profusion of creamy refrigerated treats such as sundaes, panna cotta and crème brûlée. These new pies and cakes, then, offer a solution for restaurants that do still hire pastry chefs or those lucky few bakers who have made big enough names to open their own ventures. Such largeformat desserts offer slight financial advantages over complexly plated individual ones, since a single pastry chef can make and freeze lots of pie crust or layers of sponge cake at once, and the finished product (which might feed a dozen or more people) requires only slicing, not elaborate garnishing. At Fiona, Rucker’s pies are limited to two flavors daily. But ‘‘I’ll make as many pies as people want,’’ she says. ‘‘If the customer can support a multitude, I’m there for it.’’ Which brings us to the real crux of pie’s story: As pastry chefs dwindle, it’s on them to make dessert seem essential. Perhaps it’s not surprising that these bakers are rethinking comfort and indulgence as their place in the restaurant industry is threatened. Scarcity, after all, begets both recalibration and innovation — especially in an era when any dish is expected to win praise on social media and woo jaded diners bored by their ever-increasing options. These sweets, it turns out, were hiding in the back of the pantry all along: so old that they seem fresh. Because you can do whatever you want to a pie or a cake and — so long as you respect the basic technical requirements — its very form will conjure nostalgic pleasure. To these bakers, that is both challenge and consolation. Diners these days ‘‘are not really happy with just the chocolate-chip cookie or the croissant,’’ says Melissa Chou, the pastry chef at San Francisco’s Mister Jiu’s, where she crowns her classic banana cream pie, imbued with black sesame, in angular chevrons of mascarpone. ‘‘You have to offer them more.’’

Pie went domestic in the early 20th century, as cookbook authors and flour companies started marketing their goods to the masses. ‘‘Suddenly, it became this iconic thing that your grandmother made,’’ says Stephen Schmidt, a food historian and the author of ‘‘Dessert in America.’’ Early American cakes were smaller and plainer (think British-style poundcakes), but as U.S. sugar production accelerated in the early 19th century, so too did layer cakes, their heft supported by access to baking powder and cast-iron stoves, both of which became common in homes by the early 1900s. By the midcentury, such treats found pride of place on the dessert trolleys whizzing around the white tablecloth restaurants that began to proliferate in cities, which necessitated extra cooks to bake such bounties. Originally, this was not a specialized role: ‘‘When I started out teaching in the ’70s, there were no pastry chefs in New York restaurants, except for maybe at La Caravelle or the Four Seasons,’’ says Nick Malgieri, the retired founder of the baking program at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan. ‘‘But when the American food revolution kicked up in the early ’80s, everyone wanted to have a pastry chef.’’ They established smaller, delicate portions and a more labor-intensive style of plating. Along with dismembered chunks of dough, elaborate herb garnishes and ice cream quenelles, that decade welcomed the molten chocolate cake, which the French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten debuted in New York in 1987 to rapturous acclaim. It continued to reign into the 21st century, as did artful deconstructions. If you wanted a traditional pie or cake, your best recourse was to find a diner, or just make one yourself.

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH, 16 raw yolks sit in a plastic ice-cube tray, each compartment brimming with albumen. Around the tray lie broken eggshells, cast off on a dimensionless blue surface. As a composition, it’s simple and striking, with saturated Jolly Rancher colors, the kind of image that pops on Instagram. But it doesn’t tell the story we’ve come to expect from food photographs that dominate social media: There’s no teasing promise of deliciousness or even edibility. The yolks are sunshine-yellow yet eerily rectangular, filling their ice-cube cells, which reflect the dimensions of the photograph itself. Nature has given way to artifice; shell has been separated from yolk, form from content, food from function. There’s nothing to eat here. The duo behind the image, Josie Keefe and Phyllis Ma, both 31, have made photographs, zines and stop-motion videos together since 2014 under the name Lazy Mom — an invocation of the cultural boogeyman of the ‘‘bad mother’’ who neglects her children. Instead of assembling a proper after-school snack, Lazy Mom indulges artistic impulses, taking close-ups of a smushed mustard packet or a pane of Wonder Bread immured in Ziploc, the light catching on plastic creases with a Vermeer-like luster. In working with food — which means playing with it, something ‘‘we’re told not to do,’’ Keefe says — the women are among a cohort of American artists for whom food is both material and subject matter, carrying on a tradition that reaches back centuries but has expanded in range and theme dramatically in the past few decades. Their forebears include the Swiss provocateur Dieter Roth, who printed his 1968 poetry journals on bags filled with sauerkraut, lamb or vanilla pudding (the last spiked with urine), and the British sculptor Antony Gormley, whose 1980-81 ‘‘Bed,’’ built of 600 loaves of bread, featured depressions as if left by sleeping bodies. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf war, the CubanAmerican artist Félix González-Torres spilled gray licorice candies on a gallery floor, invoking a fallen hail of bullets. Food has also been long exploited for surrealist sight gags, as in the British artist Sarah Lucas’s 1997 ‘‘Chicken Knickers,’’ in which she posed with a whole raw chicken, disemboweled and strapped to the front of her underpants. Elsewhere, it’s been rendered unrecognizable: In the American artist Dan Colen’s early 21st-century canvases, chewing gum supplants paint; and for 2009’s ‘‘Cola Project,’’ the Chinese conceptual artist He Xiangyu boiled down 127 tons of Coca-Cola into an oil-dark residue that he used as ink to emulate paintings from the medieval Song dynasty — a product of the industrial West transmuted into an emblem of old China. What’s different for the artists emerging today is that their work is born out of, and must on some level contend with, a culture that has turned food into fetish. In the disembodied world of social media, food is appreciated as an almost exclusively visual medium, enshrined in hyper-processed, highly mannered photos without true corollaries in the physical world. It exists in a kind of suspended state of imagined deliciousness, never to be actually tasted by most viewers: a totem of eternally unconsummated desire. This is a perspective of

Consumed

For centuries, food has been both medium and topic in the works of visual artists. Now, an emerging cohort is challenging what it means to create art that’s about — and made from — the most essential material. By Ligaya Mishan

Above: Lazy Mom’s ‘‘Geometric Floral’’ photograph (2014), featuring a cube made of gelatin and bodega flowers. Left: Fallen Fruit’s ‘‘A Portrait of Atlanta’’ wallpaper (2013), a composite of photographs of orchards throughout Georgia.

extraordinary privilege, to be so secure in our food supply that we see food not as a requirement for biological survival but as entertainment — encouraging a strain of frivolity of which Keefe and Ma are wary. (According to a United Nations report, an estimated 821 million people around the world suffered from undernourishment last year.) Part of Lazy Mom’s mission is to mock the preciousness of modern food culture, the alienating perfection of food styling and professionals ‘‘who tweezer everything on the plate,’’ Keefe says. Nevertheless, their satirical images draw some of the same audience as more straightforwardly celebratory Instagram feeds, and they’ve been hired to style food for the Ace Hotel and the now-defunct culinary magazine Lucky

Peach. The quandary for Lazy Mom and their peers is how to subvert and interrogate society’s thralldom to food without being swallowed up by it. LONG BEFORE IT became a source of irony, food was a figurative object in still lifes, which were never so popular as in Europe’s Low Countries in the early modern age. Critics initially disdained the genre as merely decorative, lacking the moral heft of narrative art. But food has always had a story: It is ephemeral — destined to be consumed or spoiled — and thus, in a subgenre of still lifes called vanitas, a reminder of mortality. And food has cultural freight, helping to define social strata. As Amsterdam prospered from trade in the first half of the 17th century, Dutch still lifes morphed into luxurious mise-enscènes featuring lemons from the Mediterranean and mince pies suffused with Indian spices. These were as meticulously staged as today’s Instagram posts, forgoing realism to make a statement about the increasingly rich, bourgeois merchants who had commissioned them. That idea — food as a signifier of status and wealth — still holds today. In ‘‘Palate’’ (2012), the Greek-born American artist Gina Beavers transforms snapshots of food found online — glistening oysters, a pileup of chicken and waffles — into relief paintings with messy surfaces of smacked-around acrylic paint, thickened and contoured by pumice and glass beads. The resulting image-objects are stylized to the opposite extreme of glossy social media, overaccentuating the pockmarks, ooze and fleshiness of reality. In 2015, the Canadian artist Chloe Wise slapped Chanel and Prada logos on purses made out of what looked like bagels, challah and jam-smeared toast. Like the designer accessories they parodied, they too became coveted commodities — although the fact

FROM TOP: LAZY MOM, “GEOMETRIC FLORAL,” 2014, BODEGA FLOWERS IN GELATIN; FALLEN FRUIT (DAVID ALLEN BURNS AND AUSTIN YOUNG), “PEACH WALLPAPER PATTERN/ A PORTRAIT OF ATLANTA,” 2013, FROM THE EXHIBITION “THE FRUIT DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE,” COMMISSIONED BY THE ATLANTA CONTEMPORARY

46 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

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FOOD MATTERS

Jen Monroe’s ‘‘Untitled’’ (2018), photographed by Corey Olsen, assembled using leeks, cauliflower, cucumber, star fruit, agar, milk, grapes, lime, tapioca and endive.

destroy, pleases her; she’s skeptical of the artist’s need to ‘‘leave a mark.’’ Still, when she creates events for brands like Tiffany & Company, Shiseido and, yes, Instagram, she’s concerned that she’s contributing to the proliferation of interactive food experiences that favor a manufactured ‘‘moment’’ over contemplation. Everything she makes is meant to be tasted, not simply commemorated in a photograph: ‘‘It’s important to me that the food is not used in vain,’’ she says. For David Burns and Austin Young, American artists behind the Los Angeles-based collective Fallen Fruit, which was founded in 2004 (with Matias Viegener), food affords an opportunity to forge a social connection. ‘‘Fruit is one of the most democratic materials,’’ Burns says. He and Young, 48 and 52 respectively, walk through cities and map fruit trees on or hanging over public property, identifying them as a common resource. They plant trees as well — to get funding, they’ve occasionally had to argue that the trees are sculptures that just happen to be alive — and organize fruit-foraging expeditions. Their parks have rules of engagement: ‘‘Go by foot, say hi to strangers, take what you need and leave the rest,’’ Burns says. In their work, which includes fruit-printed wallpaper, prints and installations, aesthetics are inseparable from civics. ‘‘Public spaces are almost designed out of fear,’’ Young says. ‘‘We’re doing this because we trust people.’’ Food is, fundamentally, a necessity, and feeding others is a social compact: The 41-year-old American artist Dana Sherwood has been exploring these ideas since 2010 by baking elaborate layer cakes for animals. Her subjects include mice eating their way out of an elaborate pastry replica of the New York Stock Exchange and raccoons, possums and stray cats happening upon a table set at night in a Florida backyard, their feral devourings captured on video by infrared cameras. Her basic recipe comes from a 1970s cookbook, incorporating ingredients traditional to animal diets — seeds, grapes, chicken hearts — although she finds that her diners often prefer frosting. (‘‘No one’s ever eaten the kale,’’ she says.) The work relies on the animals’ unpredictability — ‘‘I found that it got better when I stopped trying to control the outcome,’’ she adds — and natural instinct: They eat the food not because it’s pretty but because they’re hungry. And with hunger comes fulfillment, food restored to its natural function. After Sherwood’s nocturnal feasts, there’s no waste. In the morning, the tablecloth is stiff with sugar, and birds fly down to peck the crumbs.

JEN MONROE, “UNTITLED,” 2018. PHOTOGRAPH: COREY OLSEN

that the ‘‘bread’’ was molded out of urethane, not dough, took away some of the fun. As a material, food brings a unique texture and sensuality to works that may not explicitly address food qua food, like the American sculptor Andy Yoder’s executive wingtips in shining licorice from 2003, or the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia’s 2009 scale model of the ancient fortified town Ghardaia in the Saharan M’zab Valley, constructed out of couscous that evoked sand. (Conservators were requested not to rebuild it if it crumbled.) Key to these works is the speed of their degradation: Rot is not only inevitable — it’s the goal, as in the Swiss artist Urs Fischer’s ‘‘Faules Fundament (Rotten Foundation)!’’ (1998), in which brick walls rise from a base of decaying fruit. At times, the instability of such art can alarm and even threaten. Rotting fish, festooned with sequins and beads, gave off such an overpowering scent at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1997 showing of the South Korean artist Lee Bul’s ‘‘Majestic Splendor’’ that they and Tina Girouard opened Food, a restaurant-slashhad to be removed from the Manhattan museum; ear- installation in SoHo where eminences like Donald lier this year, a new iteration, doused with potassium Judd and Robert Rauschenberg reportedly served as permanganate to neutralize the smell, caused a small guest chefs. One evening’s menu focused entirely on fire at a gallery in London. bones, which were afterward scrubbed and strung It’s vanitas once more, pointing to the transience of together for diners to wear. In the same era, the life and the ultimate degradation of all earthly value, Romanian-born Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri ran a an idea that Fischer pushed into the realm of farce restaurant in Düsseldorf where occasionally, at the end with his 2015 exhibition of ripe fruit set in a pristine of the evening, dinner remains would be transfigured toilet bowl, both cornucopia and rude reminder of into what Spoerri called a tableau-piège, the tabletop the endpoint of digestion. The act of using such and all its contents (sticky plates, half-empty glasses) impermanent materials is both a confrontation with mounted on the wall. His idea — that ‘‘the horizontal and uneasy embrace of what awaits us. From 1992 to becomes vertical’’ — foreshadowed the overhead food 1997, the American artist Zoe Leonard stitched fruit shots that are now the universal language of Instagram. peels back together, as if trying to repair the original fruit, in memory of her friend the artist David AMONG OTHER CONTEMPORARY artists, it’s often Wojnarowicz, who died of complications from AIDS the party — not the dinner itself — that influences the in 1992. On display, the skins lie as if dropped and for- work. In 2015, the American artist Jen Monroe, 29, gotten on the floor, a still life made manifest: life began hosting monochromatic meals in Brooklyn, stilled, waiting to turn to dust. Leonard has insisted inspired by the all-black party in the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans’s 1884 novel of debauchery, that they be allowed to disintegrate. For other artists, consuming the materials before ‘‘À Rebours,’’ and the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso they rot is essential to the practice. When Gormley Marinetti’s 1932 ‘‘The Futurist Cookbook,’’ in which made his bread bed, he didn’t cut the shape of his the recipes include instructions for diners to take body out of the loaves — he used his teeth. (‘‘I ate bites while simultaneously stroking sandpaper and my own volume in bread,’’ he wrote.) In being sprayed with carnation perfume. To see more works 1992, the American artist Janine Antoni (The French artist Sophie Calle did a similar by the artists exhibited two 600-pound cubes, one featured in this story, series of monochromatic meals in 1997, but of chocolate, one of lard, both of which they were solo affairs, shared with the pubincluding Lazy Mom, Fallen Fruit and she had gnawed; the bitten-off matelic only in photographs.) Wanting to upend rial became lard lipsticks and chocolate Dana Sherwood, visit restaurant conventions with food that is tmagazine.com. delicious but also disturbing, Monroe has hearts. Sometimes viewers are encouraged to eat the art, as with the rainbow heap of served briny shrimp mousse in Barbie-pink, brightly wrapped Fruit Flasher candies that González- beet-stained deviled eggs, lurid yellow sushi in pillTorres arranged in 1991 as memorial to — and, boxes and strawberries already bitten into (through at 175 pounds, incarnation of — his partner, who plastic wrap, as a sanitary measure). died of an AIDS-related illness earlier that year. The New York City-based conceptualist Laila Feeding the audience can be an act of generosity. In Gohar’s work is less overtly confrontational but still the early 1990s, the Argentine-born Thai artist Rirkrit destabilizing. Now 30, she started out cooking homey Tiravanija converted galleries into kitchens, where he dishes for friends; by 2013, she found herself sudcooked pad thai or curry, which visitors ate for free; the denly in demand as a caterer, a career she never curry (and its price) lives on at Unclebrother, the sea- sought. (She had been working as a journalist.) Over sonal restaurant in the Catskills that he owns with his time, her food has veered toward the avant-garde, gallerist Gavin Brown. At the same time, this interac- with diners invited to pluck marshmallows from a sixtion turns the viewer into both an object and subject of foot-tall mountain, uproot mushrooms growing in the work — a complicity perhaps most fraught when elegant white pots and snip pieces of dehydrated fruit artists offer complete sit-down meals, blurring the line leathers hanging in translucent sheets from towel between dinner party and performance. In 1971, the rods. The ephemerality of her installations, which New York artists Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Goodden take months to research but hours for guests to

THE THING Like the Clash and the Tizio desk lamp, the all-black wristwatch was an invention of the 1970s, the embodiment of the decade’s suave side. The first such timepiece was designed by Ferdinand Alexander Porsche of the Italian car family, who, after creating the legendary model 911, began making consumer goods, including the ebony-cased 1972 Chronograph 1, an immediate sensation. Now, Louis Vuitton has harnessed that same debonair spirit but has added a 21st-century twist: Its new 46-millimeter Tambour All Black and Gold Chronograph is a marvel of embellished minimalism, with a steel case coated in an ultradurable high-tech PVD that makes the timepiece virtually scratch-proof. Heightened by touches of 18-karat pink gold and an obsidian alligator strap, the chronograph’s stopwatch capability may be the least of its attributes: With one flash of this on your wrist, traffic itself may well come to a standstill. $12,295, louisvuitton.com.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: SHAWN MCCARNEY

48 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

By Nancy Hass Photograph by Adam Kremer Styled by Todd Knopke

MARKET REPORT

Cool Trenches By Debrina Aliyah

Clockwise from top-left: Duchess striped coat, Taller Marmo, QR 3,630, Checked vinyl coat, Mansur Gavriel, QR 4,520, Inez cotton-canvas trench coat, Anna Quan, QR 2,545, PVC trench coat, Fleur du Mal, QR 2,879, Belted silk-satin trench coat, Matèriel, QR 2,293, Asymmetric wool and cashmere-blend coat, Alexander McQueen, QR 13,172, Twill trench dress, Tibi, QR 3,005, Checked wool trench coat, Giuliva Heritage Collection, QR 9,915.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TALLER MARMO, MANSUR GAVRIEL, ANNA QUAN, FLEUR DU MAL, MATÈRIEL, ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, TIBI, GIULIVA HERITAGE COLLECTION.

A classic staple reinterpreted in the season’s key trends for the perfect drape over your abayas.

WATCH REPORT

THINGS QATAR

THE NIGHT SKY WATCH

From top to bottom: Arnold and Son's revamp of the most loved HM Perpetual Moon watch; HYT's pursuit of telling time using liquids.

ARNOLD AND SON made its return to the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition with a new version of the HM Perpetual Moon with a blue aventurine stone dial encased in an elegant red gold case. The brand’s quality of craftsmanship evidently remains superior as they consistently exhibit their skills in watchmaking and artistic excellence. Arnold and Son has also shared its source of inspiration in creating the HM Perpetual Moon. With much delight, the brand has simply taken inspiration from the iridescent moon and stars in the night sky in crafting the newly defined watch. This inspiration was clearly evident in the night sky details engraved on the sparkling blue guilloché moon disc inside the watch. So far, Arnold and Son has received favorable responses to the stunning piece. If the previous version of the watch was already greatly loved, this new innovation is currently the apple of the eye of customers, especially in Qatar.

HYT RETURNS WITH its exemplary combination of colors, mechanical movements and telling time in using fluids. In this year’s Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, HYT unveiled the H1.0 with a unique watch that serves its purpose like a progress bar. The newest collection is true to HYT’s philosophy that is to develop modern and contemporary complications. In the present, HYT serves its purpose by striving to create a new complication with a positive outlook on the present and not to look too much to the past when creating modern innovation. In HYT, the inspiration appears like a mirage between tradition, heritage, legacy and advanced technology. Aside from creating a watch that incorporates fluidic devices, the brand has also brought a solution to the difficult challenge of reading time at the night. To address this, the brand utilized a light system and incorporated it inside the watch to shine light on its interior. Going over to HYT's creative process, the brand gives priority in creating a watch that reflects their philosophy and then the design comes last for the design becomes the result of their intention.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANISH GRID

50 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

THE ESSENCE OF TIME

FRENCH ELEGANCE HOUSED UNDER the wings of Blue Salon, the French brand, Korloff has joined the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition with its collections belonging in its jewellery and watch line. Apart from its famous diamond jewellery line, the brand also has pieces to offer from its watches and accessories line that gives a wide range of choices for clients to choose something for themselves at an affordable price. Korloff has been known as an independent and unconventional brand that has exhibited mastery in diamond craftsmanship. Apart from this, Korloff has also taken flight with its best-selling Voyageur from its watch collection. The Voyageur was well presented in the exhibit as it unveils a dynamic and adventurous design featuring watches with two faces. As modernized and audacious as it sounds, the style of each watch perfectly fits individuals who are very inclined to travel from one time zone and lifestyle to another. Each watch has a unique feature with its reversible buckle system that can completely adapt to the different moods and lifestyle of the owner. Given all of Korloff's successful innovations, the brand aims to continue to preserve the free thinking, unconventional and French elegance that it has been consistently evoking in the market while reaching every individual that can ultimately connect to every piece that it offers.

CONTEMPORARY MACHINES

innovation with a new piece called the Horological Machine N°9 Flow. Greatly inspired by the profiles of automotive and aviation design in the ’60s and ’70s, the HM9 Flow displays kinetic art and mechanical movements in its interior that are intricately encased in sapphire crystals. Looking closely at the heart of the watch, one sees an equally complex manual winding movement that was also crafted inhouse. With its long history in the Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, the brand continues to spark interest in every customer that visits their booth. In this year’s Doha Jewellery and Watches Exhibition, the elegantly complex design has been the most requested piece of the brand. The continuous progress of the Qatar people’s knowledge about watchmaking has been incredibly beneficial for them, for people are starting to explore designs and new collections like the Horological Machine N°9 Flow. What used to be a huge gap in this knowledge is consistently being filled as each customer that purchases a watch from MB&F has developed greater emotional links to the products which is enough to make them

ambassadors of the brand. The real magic in owning the piece is to simply to spark the curiosity of a stranger and have the opportunity to tell the story and explain every detail behind it.

Clockwise: Korloff's unconventional way of putting two time zones in one band; MB&F's automotive and aviation designinspired masterpiece.

PHOTOS COURTESY BY KORLOFF AND MB&F

MB&F CONTINUES to break the boundaries of

ANOTHER THING By Alexandra Evangelista

Gucciâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Le MarchĂŠ des Merveilles collection has gone audaciously all out with its intriguing combination of animal emblems and precious stones. In this collection, Gucci continues to explore the animalier world by using a feline head motif as the main highlight of the pieces. Intricately made from 18kt yellow gold with diamond set eyes and vibrant coloured gem stones, this distinctive symbol has been a defining motif of the house that offers endless possibilities for a wild number of mix and match combinations.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GUCCI

gucci.com

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Black Male Writers for Our Time The Allure of Herbs Gifts Infused With the Stuff of Life

An arrangement of herbs atop a beef shank. From left: sage, multiple varieties of salvia, lavender, lemon verbena, savory, bay leaves, thyme, Japanese burdock and a swallowtail butterfly.

AN ARRANGEMENT OF DIFFERENT HERBS ON TOP OF A BEEF SHANK

February- March 2019

THE ACADEMY

By Ayana Mathis Creative Direction by Boots Riley Styled by Carlos Nazario

First row, from left: ROBERT JONES JR., novelist; NATHAN ALAN DAVIS, playwright; ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS, poet; JAMEL BRINKLEY, short story writer; GREGORY PARDLO, poet; DINAW MENGESTU, novelist; MAJOR JACKSON, poet. Second row: MICHAEL R. JACKSON, playwright; SHANE MCCRAE, poet; JAMES HANNAHAM, novelist; BRONTEZ PURNELL, novelist; ISHMAEL REED, novelist, poet and playwright; BRIAN KEITH JACKSON, novelist; DANEZ SMITH, poet; CORNELIUS EADY, poet. Third row: JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN, novelist and poet; JAMES MCBRIDE, novelist; DARRYL PINCKNEY, novelist and playwright; KEVIN YOUNG, poet; JAMES IJAMES, playwright; JERICHO BROWN, poet; NELSON GEORGE, novelist; GEORGE C. WOLFE, playwright and director; DE’SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW, novelist. Fourth row: REGINALD MCKNIGHT, novelist; PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS, poet; RICKEY LAURENTIIS, poet; MARCUS BURKE, novelist; MITCHELL S. JACKSON, novelist; MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN, novelist.

With their extraordinary breadth across voice, form and subject matter, these 30 black men — and their peers — are producing literature that is essential to how we understand our country and its place in the world right now.

AST APRIL, KENDRICK Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music. That’s old news, but it’ll never get old to me: Black male rappers have been so maligned as to render his award almost unimaginable to those of us who have loved the music for decades. At the ceremony, the prize’s administrator, Dana Canedy, greeted Lamar on the steps of Columbia University. ‘‘We’re both making history right now,’’ she said. And so they were: Canedy is the first black woman to hold her post, and Lamar — or ‘‘Pulitzer Kenny,’’ as he now delightfully, and delightedly, calls himself — is the first hiphop artist to win the award. On the same day, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was nominated for the prize for drama (he was also nominated in 2016). Last spring, ‘‘Black Panther,’’ with its nearly all-black cast, surpassed a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales. In May, Sean ‘‘Diddy’’ Combs outbid a rival to purchase a Kerry James Marshall painting for $21.1 million at Sotheby’s. The sale was a triumph: A black multimillionaire bought a black artist’s painting for the highest sum ever paid for the work of a living African-American artist. What matters here, what’s more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received, is the intense focus on works by AfricanAmerican men in America’s artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation. The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America’s literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import. Some of them have even come to the attention of the literary establishment. Here follows a woefully incomplete roll call: Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer, 2015. Colson Whitehead, National Book Award, 2016; Pulitzer, 2017. Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer, 2017. Terrance Hayes, National Book Award, 2010. James McBride, National Book Award, 2013. Ross Gay, Danez Smith, Fred Moten and Yusef Komunyakaa, National Book Award finalists. The list goes on, and I have not touched on the writers who are not yet household names, whose arrival I await in the manner of James Baldwin’s loving anticipation of his nephew’s birth in his essay ‘‘A Letter to My Nephew’’ (1962), in which he wrote: ‘‘Here you were to be loved. To be loved . . . hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world.’’ In that same essay, Baldwin also wrote: ‘‘This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.’’ Now, in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was. Four days before Lamar received his Pulitzer, a white man in a Michigan suburb opened fire on a 14-yearold black boy when he knocked on his door to ask for directions after missing the school bus. Hysterical racism throughout the country has spawned an epidemic of police violence so unbearable, so ongoing, that if I listed the names of the dead today, it would likely be incomplete by next month. Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies. Thus, it is possible for the Sacramento police to murder a black man holding a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard and for Whitehead to win the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award within a year. How are we to reconcile these truths? Is the attention to black male writing merely a fleeting moment, or is it a revolution?

To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication. ‘‘I can’t help but think this comes out of the eight years of Barack Obama . . . and the backlash against him,’’ says Farah Griffin, an author and scholar of black literature at Columbia University. ‘‘And also the way in which black males have been seen as targets; we know there were women, too, but the people we can name are men.’’ This raises a crucial question about black women and (in)visibility, but more on that later. To the subject at hand: It is safe to say that Barack Obama may be the most famous African-American man who has ever lived. He represents an erudite, sophisticated blackness that mainstream culture has historically derided or dismissed. But that omnipresent image of a powerful, untouchable black man reinvigorated a rage and fear of blackness as old as the nation itself. Slavery-era fixations and caricatures still titillate and terrify: Black men are a threat to order and the status quo, physically imposing and possessed of exaggerated sexual ability. Therefore, they must be contained. The poet Jericho Brown says black people don’t have the luxury of being quiet: Every black behavior, no matter how banal — getting out of a car, walking down the street — draws attention or ire. Black bodies, by their very existence, are turned up to the highest volume at all times. All of this is exacerbated by the fact of maleness in our sexist society: Men, even vilified men, outrank women in the hierarchy of being; they are more seen. It is in this charged reality that the work of black male writers finds itself in the spotlight.

HE IDEA OF a black male resurgence feels like a bit of an illusion,’’ says the playwright Jacobs-Jenkins. ‘‘Really, it feels like people are just suddenly noticing that there are black people in the room.’’ Most of the writers I spoke with shared some iteration of his sentiment: Black men have been producing rich and varied work for a long time, but folks are paying a lot more attention than they used to. John Edgar Wideman has been published to great acclaim for almost 40 years. Edward P. Jones, the author of two critiTo see a short film by cally adored short story collections, won Boots Riley and the director a Pulitzer for his novel ‘‘The Known World’’ Yvonne Shirley, as well as in 2004. Percival Everett has written nearly these authors discussing their favorite works 30 books since 1983, but wide recognition by black female writers, didn’t come until he published ‘‘Erasure,’’ visit tmagazine.com. in 2001, a sharp satire about a failing black writer who becomes the next hot thing when he parodies another character’s book called ‘‘We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.’’ Such recognition typically sparks in that instant when white literary influencers tune the dial to a station that’s been playing for a long, long time. ‘‘There’s a dynamic [black literary] conversation that has no beginning and no end,’’ says the poet Saeed Jones. If this moment is, at least in part, about heightened awareness of black male writers, it may well vanish when the social climate changes — which it inevitably will. A surge of mainstream attention to blackness and its literature isn’t unprecedented in periods of American crisis. The first strains of the Harlem Renaissance began at the tail end of World War I and gained momentum in the 1920s, as the racial makeup of American cities metamorphosed through the

First row, from left: ROBERT JONES JR. wears a Gucci jacket, $2,980, and pants, $1,100, gucci.com, Arcady shirt, $210, arcady.com, Drake’s tie, $165, drakes.com, and Aquatalia shoes, $450, aquatalia.com; NATHAN ALAN DAVIS wears a Tommy Hilfiger suit, $500, tommy.com, and Gitman Bros. tie, $115, gitman.com; ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS wears a Sandro suit, similar styles at sandro-paris.com, Canali shirt, $295, (212) 752-3131, Hermès tie, $180, hermes.com, and Michael Kors shoes, $498, michaelkors.com; JAMEL BRINKLEY wears a Brunello Cucinelli suit, $1,625, (212) 334-1010, Louis Vuitton shirt, $630, louisvuitton.com, Tommy Hilfiger tie, $50, and shoes, $220; GREGORY PARDLO wears a Loro Piana jacket, $10,050, loropiana.com, Ermenegildo Zegna shirt, $515, zegna.com, Louis Vuitton pants, $850, Tommy Hilfiger tie, $50, and Mr P. shoes, $540, mrporter.com; DINAW MENGESTU wears a Salvatore Ferragamo jacket, price on request, (866) 337-7242, The Row shirt, $850, and pants, $1,250, (212) 755-2017, The Tie Bar tie, $19, thetiebar.com, and Church’s shoes, $830, church-footwear.com; MAJOR JACKSON wears a Tallia Orange suit, $695, macys.com, and Brioni shirt, $595, brioni.com. Second row: MICHAEL R. JACKSON wears a Paul Stuart tie, $165, paulstuart.com; SHANE MCCRAE wears a Giorgio Armani suit, $2,395, armani.com, and Ermenegildo Zegna tie, $275; JAMES HANNAHAM wears a Tallia Orange suit, $695, Brioni shirt, and Paul Smith tie, $125, (646) 613-3060; BRONTEZ PURNELL wears a John Varvatos Star USA jacket, $448, johnvarvatos.com, Versace shirt, $425, versace.com,

ONTEMPORARY AFRICAN-AMERICAN literature is formally sophisticated, irreducibly nuanced and highly individualized. The writers in these pages may be a cohort of sorts, yet their work is distinguished by a great variety of voices and aesthetics. And certainly our conversations about the current literature by black men ought to include as much consideration of how writers say things as what they’re saying. The poet Claudia Rankine said of her 2016 MacArthur Fellowship that the prize was being awarded ‘‘to the subject of race.’’ Race may indeed be having ‘‘a moment,’’ and I can’t help but wonder if some gatekeepers expect black authors to focus primarily on racism and oppression. Pardlo has similar reservations about writing that might ‘‘pander to white fears and assumptions and resentments.’’ It’s an old, and valid, concern. Among his eight novels, Whitehead’s wellreceived ‘‘The Colossus of New York’’ (2003) is an ode to that city, and ‘‘Zone One’’ (2011) is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel that was nicely reviewed — yet it’s his book about slavery, ‘‘The Underground Railroad’’ (2016), that received such clamorous acclaim.

In the past, African-American writers carried two burdens: to prove our humanity to white readers while also fighting to be taken seriously as writers of so-called universal literature. Is, say, ‘‘The Brothers Karamazov’’ narrow or provincial because it’s about a few Russians in the 19th century? Certainly not, but black writers have been relentlessly sidelined for writing about black people. Groundbreakers like Morrison, in whose work blackness is a default, unapologetic and unexplained, radicalized the canon. Today’s black writers approach the subject of race, if they approach it at all, with

Race may indeed be having ‘a moment,’ and I can’t help but wonder if some gatekeepers expect black authors to focus primarily on racism and oppression.

greater freedom than ever before: Many writers today do handle the subject, obliquely or head-on. Some — Mat Johnson, Beatty, Everett — use satire to probe these depths. Contemporary black literature has a kind of boundlessness, topically and artistically. But too often the discussion around writers of color is more about content, and their dazzling artistry is overlooked. To read the work by these men is to have an urgent encounter with a vital and thriving consciousness. We have Brown’s evocative tender-tough poems, Brontez Purnell’s raw, stripped-down prose, Stephen L. Carter’s deft mysteries and thrillers and Victor LaValle’s genre-bending fabulist fiction. Beatty’s ‘‘The Sellout’’ (2015) is as smart and funny a novel as I’ve come across in a long time, in which the protagonist reckons the best thing for the black folks in his neck of the woods is to segregate the local high school. (Oh, and he reinstates slavery while he’s at it.) In the poet Terrance Hayes’s ‘‘Lighthead’’ (2010), he confronts the troubling and complicated legacy of Wallace Stevens as a poet of incomparable gifts — and an unapologetic racist (in 1952, upon seeing a photo of Gwendolyn Brooks posed with her fellow National Book Award judges, Stevens famously asked, ‘‘Who’s the coon?’’ Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry just two years earlier). The poet Tyehimba Jess and the novelist Jeffery Renard Allen, through strikingly different lenses, riff on the life of a 19th-century piano virtuoso, the enslaved Blind Tom. I wonder if, in the annals of history, this extraordinary period of artistry will find a name, or a unifying sentiment that codifies it as a movement. Perhaps, or perhaps not. For now, we can rejoice in the gifted writers whom we are privileged to read. And we must be vigilant. We must pay keen attention to who’s in the moment and who’s left out, and why. A host of writers wait in the wings. It’ll be their moment soon. Let it be wide open. Let it be without limits. Let it be as broad as they have the talent to make it.

and Louis Vuitton tie, price on request; ISHMAEL REED wears a Boss suit, $995, hugoboss.com, and Paul Stuart tie, $175; BRIAN KEITH JACKSON wears a The Row jacket, $3,450, and Brioni turtleneck, $1,350; DANEZ SMITH wears a Boss jacket, $1,395 (for suit), Michael Kors turtleneck, $498, and Warby Parker glasses, $195, warbyparker.com; CORNELIUS EADY wears a Ermenegildo Zegna suit, $4,630. Third row: JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN wears a Polo Ralph Lauren suit, $995, and tie, $125, ralphlauren.com, and Gitman Bros. shirt, $185; JAMES MCBRIDE wears a Brioni suit, $6,450; DARRYL PINCKNEY wears his own clothes; KEVIN YOUNG wears a P. Johnson tie, $135, pjt.com; JAMES IJAMES wears a Thom Browne suit, $2,500, thombrowne.com, Boss shirt, $148, and Ermenegildo Zegna tie, $275; JERICHO BROWN wears a Brioni suit, $7,950, Charvet shirt, similar styles at mrporter.com, and Boss tie, $148; NELSON GEORGE wears a Giorgio Armani suit, Tom Ford shirt, $580, tomford.com, and Drake’s tie, $175; GEORGE C. WOLFE wears a Prada suit, $2,580, prada.com, Charvet shirt, and Canali tie, $160; DE’SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW wears a Corneliani suit, $2,730, corneliani.com, and Ralph Lauren shirt, $350. Fourth row: REGINALD MCKNIGHT wears a Lutwyche suit, $5,900, lutwyche.co.uk, and Brioni sweater, $875; PHILLIP B. WILLIAMS wears a Gucci jacket, $3,850, and Tom Ford shirt, $535; RICKEY LAURENTIIS wears a Gucci vest, $1,500, and Louis Vuitton shirt, $630; MARCUS BURKE wears a Gitman Bros. shirt, and Louis Vuitton tie, $215; MITCHELL S. JACKSON wears his own clothes; MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN wears his own clothes.

LOCATION: THE LIBRARY AT BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. PHOTOGRAPHER: SHAYAN ASGHARNIA. PRODUCER: NIKKIA MOULTERIE. SET DESIGNER: THERESA RIVERA AT MARY HOWARD. HAIR: RUBEN ARONOV AT MOI BARBER. GROOMING: ALANA WRIGHT. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: ROBERT STOUT AND KAZ SAKUMA. DIGITAL TECH: VINCENT BEZUIDENHOUT. HAIR ASSISTANTS: JOSH LIVINGSTON AND MARSHALL ALMEIDA. GROOMING ASSISTANTS: TARA LAUREN AND FATIMOT ISADARE. SET ASSISTANTS: ZACHARY ANGELINE, EDDIE BALLARD, ADAM KENNER AND SARICE OLSON. TAILORING: MARY CARNEY AND SARAH LATHROP. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: VESPER WOLFE, SZALAY MILLER, DEREK BROWN AND MARION KELLY

Great Migration. The Harlem of the 1930s became home to a concentration of black writers whose work piqued white interest. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Black Arts Movement erupted during the turbulent years of America’s freedom protests. Black voices received heightened attention then, too. Through the institutional cultural cache garnered during these many moments, our literary ancestors carved pathways to success. Harlem Renaissance writers parlayed white patronage to create inroads to the apparatus of publishing. The Black Arts Movement brought about radical changes in university curriculums. New institutions were founded, including New York City’s Medgar Evers College, providing black writers with access to the support and stability of academia. The poet Gregory Pardlo points to the rise of the New York and Chicago slam poetry scenes in the ’80s as a conduit for many writers, including the novelist Paul Beatty. Jacobs-Jenkins discusses ’90s-era evolutions in black writing that produced ‘‘an incredible sea change of influence,’’ when writers like August Wilson and Toni Morrison ‘‘achieved black arts excellence and major status in the same breath.’’ When I was 15, in 1988, a friend’s father gave me a copy of Sonia Sanchez’s ‘‘Under a Soprano Sky.’’ I didn’t know living black people wrote poetry. After, I read books by Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall and Toni Cade Bambara as if my life depended on it. Here, I must confess to an unease with any gendered division of contemporary literature: When I was asked to consider the particularities of the current landscape, I wondered if a focus on male achievement might obscure the equally unprecedented successes of African-American women. And does that question undermine this extraordinary moment for black male writers? I have not found an answer that is entirely sufficient, but I do know that the work of black women writers presents a ferocious challenge to old sexist perceptions; as Griffin says, ‘‘the difference between this moment and others is that, in the past, to be a black writer was to be a man.’’ Robin Coste Lewis, Tracy K. Smith, Lynn Nottage, Jacqueline Woodson, Patricia Smith and Jesmyn Ward, to name just a few, disprove those old gendered ideas.

HERBS, E V E R L A S T I N G

In bouquets and on the plate, the workhorses of the kitchen reclaim their mystical powers.

By Ligaya Mishan Photographs by Sharon Core Styled by Joshua Werber

ONCE, HERBS WERE weapons. Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians recorded, in cuneiform, lifesaving prescriptions of myrtle and thyme. The oldest surviving text of Chinese herbal pharmacology, extolling the benefits of ginseng, camphor and cannabis, was set down in the first century A.D. Around the same time, the Greek physician Dioscorides documented the properties of herbs he encountered as a surgeon with Nero’s imperial Roman army; Western doctors consulted his compendium, ‘‘De Materia Medica,’’ for the next 1,500 years. In Renaissance England, chamomile, hyssop, pennyroyal and tansy were strewn on floors to ward off the plague; men and women wielded prophylactic posies of flowers and herbs like swords. But with the triumphs of science and technology in the 19th century, herbs receded in significance. ‘‘These ancestral leaves, these immemorial attendants of man, these servants of his magic and healers of his pain,’’ as the American naturalist Henry Beston described them in 1935, became workhorses, steadfast and drained of alchemy. They came to be defined by that most prosaic of qualities: usefulness. Even in the kitchen, they were underlings, essential but largely confined to a supporting role. Any prettiness they possessed was incidental to their practical purpose and noted only in passing, en route to the boiling pot. As the modern world has lost its luster, however, herbs are coming into ascendance once more, reasserting their curative powers and claiming a beauty of their own. A private herb garden has become a status symbol, as chefs flaunt seasonings that have fallen out of favor or are hard to find, like salad burnet, its bite as cleansing as a cucumber’s, or sculpit, which evokes a bashful tarragon. This goes beyond the now

An arrangement of herbs atop a beef shank. From left: sage, multiple varieties of salvia, lavender, lemon verbena, savory, bay leaves, thyme, Japanese burdock and a swallowtail butterfly.

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mainstream farm-to-table movement, which has roots in the counterculture of the 1960s, to what the Spanish chef Rodrigo de la Calle christened gastrobotánica: the restoration of forgotten plants to the realm of cooking. The British horticulturalist Jekka McVicar, who grows more than 650 varieties of herbs on her farm in South Gloucestershire, England, has been approached by British chefs seeking sweet woodruff, beloved in Germany as an infuser of Jell-O and beer, and baldmoney from the Scottish highlands, its flavor a sidestep from cumin. Farm.One, an underground hydroponic facility in downtown Manhattan, supplies avantgarde restaurants and pizzerias with rarities such as tiny, bright pluto basil and akatade, a Japanese water pepper that imparts a faintly anesthetic heat. Even more standard herbs are having a heyday. The Israeli-born chef Yotam Ottolenghi, of Nopi and the Ottolenghi delis in London, deep-fries sage to intensify its flavor, then sprinkles it on dishes for a staccato of crunch — or turns whole leaves of basil and chervil into tempura, to be dipped in vinegar. At Cicatriz in Mexico City, the American-born Scarlett Lindeman steeps fresh bay leaves — ‘‘slick and oily,’’ she says, unlike brittle, dried leaves that don’t ‘‘taste or smell like anything’’ — in a beef braise called estofado and heaps plates with a mezcla madre, a ‘‘mother mix’’ of cilantro, mint, parsley and basil, meant to be worked into each dish.

From left: an explosion of fennel seed heads, bronze fennel fronds, giant fennel, Italian and milk parsley, allium, garlic chives, mizuna, black swallowtail chrysalides and caterpillars, a swallowtail butterfly — plus your standard garden snail. Both arrangements in this story were created by the floral artist Joshua Werber.

FLORISTS HAVE STARTED coming to McVicar’s farm, too, seeking inspiration. Now the likes of feathery bronze fennel, once eaten by Roman warriors before heading into battle; dill with its whispery fronds; pink, fuzzy-hearted, flu-fighting echinacea; and wild garlic, whose white-hooded flowers call to mind novice nuns, come entwined with conventional blossoms or command entire bouquets. The effect is often nostalgic, a paean to some lost pastoral idyll, but also intensely of the moment. ‘‘We’re in turbulent times,’’ McVicar says. She sees the embrace of herbs as a yearning for connection with not simply the natural world but our analog past: ‘‘We want to remember who we are, where we’re from, how to be gentle with ourselves.’’ Herbs are botanically delineated as among those plants that bloom and then die down to the ground, with only roots to attest to their persistence. (Rosemary and sage are among the notable exceptions.) They have a kinship to wildflowers, which have proliferated in floral designs in recent years, in keeping with a turn toward foraging and unstructured, almost anarchic arrangements. But unlike wildflowers, whose allure is their existence outside of human conscription, herbs have always had a relationship with mankind, from before we even recognized

Part of the appeal of herbs is how quotidian they are, are, quotidia n they which makes makes them them which startling out out of of context. context. startling

ourselves as mankind: feeding, protecting and arguably improving us. Parents come to McVicar’s herb farm in search of bouquets to ease their children’s asthma. For Mother’s Day, Terri Chandler and Katie Smyth of Worm in London tuck lavender and rosemary into bouquets and deliver them with cheesecloth and string, to give the herbs a second life as a bath soak. To Ellie Jauncey and Anna Day of the Flower Appreciation Society in London, herbs are the equals of flowers and ought to be treated as such. Their arrangements, mostly of locally grown plants, are built to ramble, inspired by the spirit of the great British country gardens at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent and Great Dixter in East Sussex. ‘‘I see no point in segregating plants of differing habit or habits,’’ wrote Christopher Lloyd, the gardening writer and master of Great Dixter until his death in 2006. ‘‘They can all help one another.’’ It’s an ethos shared by Amanda Luu and Ivanka Matsuba of Studio Mondine in San Francisco: What grows together, goes together. They like to mix chives with roses, a pairing commonly found in gardens. The alliums’ pungency repels aphids and larger threats (compounds in the leaves offer a kind of herd immunity against black spot, a fungal infection and botanical equivalent of the plague). Herbs are good for pollination, too: Bees are drawn to flowering herbs more than to flowers themselves, with the herbs’ healing powers suffusing the nectar.

Part of the appeal of herbs is how quotidian they are, which makes them startling out of context. Luu and Matsuba transform yarrow, with its densely packed white corymbs, or dried oregano — stems faded to a faint taupe while the tips still give off a purple pulse — into near abstractions of color and silhouette. For the New York-based florist Lewis Miller, texture is the draw: ‘‘It makes you want to touch and pinch the leaves,’’ he says, which in turn releases their aromatic oils. With that steadying scent comes recognition — we know these plants — and a sense of continuing. These ideas are central to the work of the married florist-farmers Mandy and Steve O’Shea, of 3 Porch Farm and Moonflower Design near Athens, Ga., who grow and harvest their own herbs and flowers using solar power and biofuel, rooting each bouquet in season and place. Of late, Mandy has found that couples will request herbs in their wedding arrangements because they cook together. ‘‘They’ll be reminded of their celebration every time they chop those herbs in the kitchen,’’ she says. But do herbs last as long as flowers? ‘‘I don’t think it matters,’’ McVicar says. Endurance can be artifice; if something is fleeting, at least it’s real. Should you want your bouquet to eke out another day, however, McVicar suggests a dash of fizzy lemon soda in the water. It’s an old-fashioned remedy that those who till gardens have known for years, and it works.

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Photographs by Anthony Cotsifas Styled by Jill Nicholls

NIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERA

From a geode carved out of rock candy to drop earrings studded with tagua seeds, magical gifts inspired by the elements but shaped by the hand.

From left: Abigail Brown coati sculpture, $515, abigail-brown.co.uk. Asprey foxhead decanter, $3,300, (212) 688-1811. Louis Vuitton Les Petits Nomades flowers by Atelier Oï (scattered throughout), price on request, louisvuitton.com. Sam Tho Duong pearl and silver necklace, $26,400, gogotho.de. Kirk Maxson ‘‘Jack London Oak’’ sculpture, $3,000, eleanorharwood.com. Kirk Maxson ‘‘California Bay Laurel’’ sculpture (overhead), $4,000. Sam Tho Duong pearl and silver necklace, $24,000. White pumpkin, $16, superiorflorist .com. Rocio acacia wood handbag, $1,125, rocio.co.uk. Chocolate geode by Abby Wilcox, $5,000, (607) 287-7297. Asprey dipping-duck bottle stopper, $1,100. L’Objet Haas Brothers vessel from the Limited-Edition Second Skin Series, $3,500, l-objet.com. Creel and Gow Chilean flamingo, $12,000, creelandgow.com. Jacobsen Salt Co. pink Himalayan salt, $10 for 7.5 ounces, jacobsensalt.com. Jean Roger Paris ceramic algae candlestick, $125, krbnyc.com. Chocolate geode by Abby Wilcox, $8,000. Antique Black Forest German carved wooden deer head, $625, johnderian.com. L’Objet Haas Brothers Lynda plate box, $450.

Clockwise from left: Fern Fans birchwood hand fans (scattered throughout), from $70, fernfans.com. Bahina yellow daisy earrings, $2,950, bahina.com. Hillier Bartley goat hair-trimmed bag, $1,384, matchesfashion.com. Paola Paronetto bowl, $300, theprimaryessentials.com. Nineteenth-century gilt bronze candlesticks, $1,500, darrenransdelldesign.com. Piera Bochner romanesco candle, about $50, 12thirteen-store.com. Facture Goods woodland berry spoon, $50, facturegoods.com. Bahina pink daisy earrings, $3,150. Bee Local bee pollen, $40 for 17.6 ounces, jacobsensalt.com. Chen Chen & Kai Williams stone candleholder, $64, theprimaryessentials.com. Abigail Brown zebra finch sculpture, $375.

Clockwise from left: Abigail Brown hare sculpture, $415. Creel and Gow glass bell jar with coral, $2,800. Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello leather and antelope-hair shoe (sold as pair), $2,095, ysl.com. David Yurman amazonite and lavender spinel necklace, price on request, davidyurman.com. Sindarve Lammgard Gotland sheep fur, $600, rwguild.com. John Hardy tiger iron and black mother-of-pearl earring (sold as pair), $25,000, (888) 838-3022. Bouchon Bakery BĂťche de NoĂŤl cake, $48 for eight inches, bouchonbakery.com. Maison Auclert Paris antique rock crystal and diamond ring, $6,500, maisonauclert.com. Hillier Bartley feather brooch, $252.

RETOUCHING: ANONYMOUS RETOUCH. PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS: KARL LEITZ, YUHSING LIN, JESS KIRKHAM AND VANESSA VARGAS. SET ASSISTANTS: JAY JANSEN AND TODD KNOPKE. GEODES BASED ON A PROCESS DEVELOPED BY PROF. PETER GREWELING OF THE CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA

Clockwise from bottom left: Jacobsen Salt Co. pure flake finishing salt, $55 for 17.6 ounces. Wempe pocket watch, $1,360, (212) 397-9000. Bordallo Pinheiro earthenware clam, $25, and jack mackerel, $95, bordallopinheiro.com. Bartleby Objects silk knot, $595, bartlebyobjects.com. Cameron’s Seafood Maryland large blue crab, $70 for a dozen, cameronsseafood.com. Hermès pocket watch, price on request, hermes.com. Paola Paronetto vase, $225. Kirk Maxson ‘‘Fatsia Japonica Leaf’’ sculpture, $200. Hayward mohair bag, $590, haywardluxury.com. Belperron turquoise and aquamarine earrings, $52,500, (212) 702-9040. Fernando Jorge diamond, nephrite jade and green tourmaline earrings, $34,930, bergdorfgoodman.com. The Pursuits of Happiness Del Mar pipe, $95, shop-tetra.com. Asprey egg salt-and-pepper shaker set, $1,550.

Clockwise from left: Jean Roger Paris ceramic flamme cup, $1,095. Chestnuts (scattered throughout), $5 per pound, hmart.com. Terrain golden tulip ornament, $18, shopterrain.com. Rita Soto horsehair and tampico fiber brooch, $550, ritasoto.cl. Terrain glass mushroom ornament, $32. Kirk Maxson ‘‘Medium Thistle Flower’’ sculpture, $400. Jean Roger Paris ceramic vase, $1,350. Terrain golden anemone ornament, $18. David Webb emerald, azurmalachite and diamond ring, $28,000, davidwebb.com. Terrain glass apple ornament, $38. Lobmeyr tumbler, $236, kneenandco.com. Silvia Furmanovich wood marquetry, emerald and amethyst earrings, $9,680, bergdorfgoodman.com. Rita Soto horsehair and tampico fiber brooch, $1,000. Gucci turquoise resin and crystal necklace, $5,950, gucci.com.

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This page, clockwise from left: Warted gourd, $25, 28th Street Wholesale Flowers (212) 967-5610. Key lime tree, $100, lemoncitrustree .com. Terrain glass mandarin orange ornament, $12. Jean Roger Paris ceramic cabbage, $750. Fernando Jorge diamond, petrified wood, tagua seed and mother-ofpearl earrings, $13,570. CompartĂŠs fruit cocktail dark chocolate bar, $10, compartes.com. Terrain glass mushroom ornament, $32. Opposite page, clockwise from left: Silvia Furmanovich wood marquetry, pink tourmaline and diamond earrings, $10,120. Large ammonite fossils (scattered throughout), $60 each, abchome.com. Bordallo Pinheiro ceramic watermelon tureen, $115. Terrain glass pear ornament, $38. Key lime tree, $100. Irene Neuwirth emerald, turquoise and pearl earrings, $76,560, ireneneuwirth.com. Piping Plover Love wool sheep sculpture, $195, pipingploverlove.com. Silvia Furmanovich wood marquetry, green tourmaline, tsavorite and diamond earrings, $14,740. Terrain glass mushroom ornament, $32.

OF A KIND Loro Piana’s menagerie

IN THE MID-1980S, Pier Luigi Loro Piana, then co-president of his family’s eponymous fashion company, trekked to the frigid plateau of Inner Mongolia to visit the rarefied Capra hircus goats that produce the cashmere for the line’s clothing and accessories (Loro Piana also uses fibers from South American vicuñas and merino sheep in New Zealand and Australia). As he surveyed the herd, an idea struck: ‘‘Human baby hair is infinitely softer than an adult’s. The same is probably true of baby goats.’’ Thus was born baby cashmere, made from the almost-weightless inner coat of the kid, available only once in each animal’s lifetime, when they are between 3 and 8 months old. Each produces a mere single ounce of strands that average only 13.5 microns (or about 0.0005 inches) in diameter; it takes 19 ounces to make a single sweater. ‘‘Holding one of these small creatures in my arms, I had the same emotion as when I hold a baby,’’ Loro Piana says. ‘‘It’s a symbol of purity.’’ Here is the small collection of species that Loro Piana uses to create most of its textiles. — John Wogan Illustrations by Aurore de La Morinerie

70 T QATAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE

Capra hircus goat. Most of Loro Piana’s cashmere comes from adult white Capra hircus goats, herded on the desolately beautiful Inner Mongolian plateau in northern China.

Vicuña. A shy relative of the llama, the vicuña lives wild in the Andes and can only be shorn every two years.

Baby hircus goats. Each spring, a new generation of baby goats is born in Mongolia. A few months later, they are gently combed to collect the naturally molting innermost downy fibers, which are softer but more difficult to work with than cashmere from adult goats.

Merino sheep. This breed has a long history — the Phoenicians traded them, and 17th century Spanish royals so coveted the species that they forbade their exportation. Loro Piana’s Gift of Kings wool comes from a special strain raised in Australia and New Zealand.

ANNUAL ISSUE 15

COMING SOON