Town & Country articles from July 2008

Town & Country archives from July 2008

We are family.(EDITOR'S LETTER)(Editorial)
July 1, 2008... IT SEEMED LIKE a perfectly good idea at the time. Why not take Angela, the younger of my two sisters, and her children--Zachary, five, and Caitlin, three--on a minivacation? I knew just where we'd go, too: Atlantis, in the Bahamas. A year ago,...

The School of American Ballet.(PARTIES: New York)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] The Event: The School of American Ballet, the dance academy affiliated with New York City Ballet, gave its fourth annual Winter Ball at Lincoln Center's New York State Theater. Van Cleef & Arpels was the sponsor....

Phoenix Art Museum.(PARTIES: Phoenix)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Purpose: To inaugurate "Chado Ralph Rucci," an original exhibition celebrating Ralph Rucci's twenty-five years as a fashion designer. The Highlights: After a Champagne reception in the lobby, 300 guests moved to...

West meets East.(ON THE TOWN)(Jean Georges Shanghai)(Restaurant review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE CHINESE CAPITAL MAY be the Asian city getting the attention this summer (see "Beijing Gears Up," page 96), but even its best restaurants still won't be winning any culinary awards. No, to have a meal that truly...

Smoke and mirrors.(ON THE TOWN)(Fumoir)(Brief article)(Bar review)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Off the labyrinthine lobby of Claridge's, in London, the newly redone Fumoir bar adds a touch of 1930s glamour to this showpiece Mayfair hotel. Distinct from the main bar, the shoebox-sized space opened in 2001 as a...

Georgia's peach.(ON THE TOWN)(Georgia Tapert Living boutique)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Georgia Tapert Living, a home-furnishings boutique in New York's SoHo, nods to the past and muses on the present. Tapert is a young interior designer whose previous work, for firms such as David Easton and...

Wolf it down.(ON THE TOWN)(How to Cook a Wolf)(Restaurant review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... What's in a name? Not a grain of truth, thankfully, at HOW TO COOK A WOLF, Ethan Stowell's third Seattle restaurant, named after the 1942 book by food writer M.F.K. Fisher. This Wolf, located in a pint-sized spot in the Queen Anne neighborhood,...

Gucci: under glass.(ON THE TOWN)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For true fashionistas, there's no such thing as too much of their favorite brand. And if that brand is Gucci, their version of Mecca recently opened in New York's Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue. It's a...

Dive in.(ON THE TOWN)(Waterbar)(Restaurant review)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Although many San Franciscans consider the Embarcadero nothing but a tourist magnet and, for that reason, a place to avoid, they have only raves for its newest restaurant, Waterbar. The dramatic views from the dining...

Loving lavender.(IN THE COUNTRY)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With its clean, pungent aroma and tight-lipped flowers springing from tall, straight stalks, lavender is a garden winner, especially at the height of summer. Its flower heads range in color from purple to blue to...

Cooking up a summer.(IN THE COUNTRY)(cookbooks)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... "I love cooking in the summer," writes Anna Pump, proprietor of the Hamptons specialty-food shop Loaves and Fishes, in Sagaponack. "It's the best time to be creative because all the freshest produce is so easily accessible." Her book Summer on...

The well-flavored oil.(IN THE COUNTRY)(O Olive Oil)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Parlaying the knowledge he had gleaned years earlier on his visits to olive presses while living in Italy, where the fragrance of the lemons that were used to clean the millstones captured his imagination, Greg Hinson began to produce his own...

Exterior decor.(IN THE GARDEN)(Garden Traditions)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Garden-antiques dealer Barbara Israel admits that as a child growing up in Far Hills, New Jersey, she would sneak into the nearby Blairsden estate to marvel at the formal plantings and statuary on the grounds. Later, as a teenager, Israel came...

Recipe for a kitchen.(IN THE COUNTRY)(Masters Collection Instant Gourmet Kitchen)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... "The tools and equipment you use to cook are a kitchen's jewelry," says master chef Victor Gielisse, who, along with fellow certified master chef Ron DeSantis, designed the eighty-piece Masters Collection Instant Gourmet Kitchen, a line...

Master pieces.(IN THE COUNTRY)(X-Man Puzzles)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Seasoned puzzle cutter Randy Crossman has a confession: "Once I make my puzzles, I hate seeing the pieces apart." In one sense, puzzle devotees must share his unease. (How else to explain the irresistible urge to fit those pieces together...

Ambra Medda.(FASHION & STYLE)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... OCCUPATION: At the tender age of twenty-six, the Sardinian-born Medda is the director, cofounder and lifeblood of Design Miami, the biannual furniture and decorative-arts forum. BACKGROUND: The daughter of influential gallery owner Giuliana...

The great white shirt: this crisp classic is the key to an elegant wardrobe.(FASHION & STYLE: Trends)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Clockwise from top: JULIA B. cotton faille with sateen cuffs and collar ($395), juliab.com. YSL cotton twill ($950), ysl. com. GIVENCHY asymmetrical cotton poplin ($920), at Barneys New York, NYC, 888-8-BARNEYS....

Lighten up.(FASHION & STYLE)(handbags)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Exotic skins in pale shades look great right now with white jeans, but they'll complement autumnal hues just as nicely. Clockwise from top right: VERSACE crocodile special order; $39,000). STUART WEITZMAN FOR SCOOP python heels ($525). BOTTEGA...

Summer flair.(FASHION & STYLE: Men)(House Beautiful editor Robert Rufino)(Interview)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ROBERT RUFINO is stopped regularly on Manhattan streets and along country roads near his weekend home in the Hamptons. "It's the oddest thing, but people, especially women, will say to me, 'You're so elegant,'" says...

10 earrings we love: her ears newly pierced, T&C jewelry director Heather Bracher Severs tells us what she likes best.(JEWELRY)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 1 ALEX SEPKUS "The color of these perfectly matched opals is so intense, it's mesmerizing." Australian opals and diamonds ($42,425), alexsepkus.com. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 2 IRENE NEUWIRTH "I love...

White on time.(WATCHES)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nothing looks sharper on a tanned wrist than a clean white watch. The bonus? These sleek finds are all available for less than $500! From left: COACH Ali Sport ($398), at Coach stores, 800-262-2411. BURBERRY silver...

Damiani.(scene & be seen: A calendar of events, trunk shows and benefits taking place at a store or location near you.)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Town&Country Editor in Chief Pamela Fiori and Damiani co-hosted a cocktail reception on February 19th featuring a rare personal appearance by Giorgio Damiani. Guests gathered on the top floor of the Hearst Tower...

All aglow.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)(bronzer)(Buyers guide)
July 1, 2008... The promise of a golden glow makes sunbathing hard to resist. But hold off--a bronzer will do the trick just as well. Of course, you need to know how to use it. Giorgio Armani Beauty's national creative director, Tim Quinn, advises, "Don't go...

Beck's picks for the beach.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Harvard Business School alumna MARLA MALCOLM BECK was tackling mergers and acquisitions in Washington, D.C., in the late '90s, when she was confronted with a very different challenge: tracking down one of her...

Getting it wrong.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)
July 1, 2008... Physicians are trained to think deductively and to rely on first impressions to make quick decisions. But according to Jerome Groopman, M.D., chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, the same cognitive...

Malone's dynamic duo.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)(Jo Malone perfume collection)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Shape your mood from morning to night with Jo Malone's Kohdo Wood Collection ($50-$100). The limited-edition fragrance pair is inspired by Japanese incense ceremonies, in which different aromas are employed to...

Beauty gives.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)
July 1, 2008... The Body Shop Community Trade program, which launched twenty-one years ago, is currently benefiting more than 25,000 people worldwide. In Peru, native tribes now earn suitable wages by harvesting the nut oil used in the company's Brazil Nut...

Show some skin.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)
July 1, 2008... 'Tis the season for skin-baring two-pieces and sleeveless blouses, so it's high time that you tended to your body as diligently as you do your face. We love these antiaging products for their creamy textures and botanical extracts, which soothe...

Lipstick made simple.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)
July 1, 2008... Finding the right shade of lipstick is usually a major project that ends, often enough, in frustration. But Bobbi Brown has just made it a whole lot easier. Stop by one of the company's counters and have a makeup artist match your lip tone to...

Must-dos for July.(BEAUTY & HEALTH)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... 1. KEEP HAIR LUSTROUS Whether soaking up rays at the pool or on the beach, safeguard your locks from sun-induced dryness and dullness with J.F. LAZARTIGUE's waterproof Sun Protection Oil with UV filters ($45). After your spell outdoors,...

True confessions.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(memoirs)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... Memoirs are autobiographies at their most personal--pointed rewrites of life's staid, official versions. In some reminiscences, memory's gloves come off, bare emotions at the ready. In others, kinder, gentler sensibilities filter the stories...

Barbara Walters.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Barbara Walters's memoir, Audition (Knopf; $29.95), is now in bookstores. We asked her, "What will even your close friends be intrigued to hear about you? And will there ever be a film version?" "A great deal...

Tell me more.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(movie adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Memoirs can be addictive to watch as well as to read. With the breakout success of her 2006 saga, Eat, Pray, Love (Penguin; $15), almost five million copies of which have been sold, Elizabeth Gilbert in turn sold the film rights to Paramount,...

The nation's museums unveil spectacular architectural innovations this summer.(JULY MUST-SEES)
July 1, 2008... The nation's museums unveil spectacular architectural innovations this summer. Don't miss the following standouts, all of which have just debuted: The new Contemporary Jewish Museum, in San Francisco, Daniel Libeskind's dramatic redesign...

Die Soldaten.(JULY MUST-SEES)(opera)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... As part of this month's Lincoln Center Festival, New York's Park Avenue Armory stages the epic opera Die Soldaten, from the 5th through the 12th, performed for the first time Stateside outside an opera house, as composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann...

La Boheme.(JULY MUST-SEES)
July 1, 2008... Happy birthday, Giacomo! Milan's Teatro alla Scala honors Puccini's 150th birthday with a rousing rendition of La Boheme, which Gustavo Dudamel conducts from the 7th through the 23rd. teatroal lascala.org.

Memorable memoirs: vulnerability, bravery and beauty distinguish the books that keep these readers and writers enthralled.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)
July 1, 2008... Edward Albee Author of many acclaimed plays, including The Zoo Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Three Tall Women: "My favorite memoir? Well, it's the most comprehensive one I've ever read, despite its disguise as a novel. I'm...

Photo finish.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)('Reflections of a Man: The Photographs of Stanley Marcus' )(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... When Stanley Marcus, the late president and CEO of Neiman Marcus, traveled with his wife, Billie, he would often have her "pose" so that he could take shots of the dresses worn by passersby. For other photos, he would seek out spots literally...

Dear diary.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(writers' autobiographies)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The only kind of writer I could be is the kind who exposes himself," Susan Sontag proclaimed in 1959, five years before the publication of her short essay "Notes on 'Camp'" turned the critic and novelist into an...

Isabel Allende.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)('The Sum of Our Days')(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Isabel Allende has just published The Sum of Our Days (HarperCollins; $26.95). We asked her, "In revisiting your past, have you found that time has altered your perspective?" "There's been a lot of tragedy and...

True-life stories, famous and infamous.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... As a longtime editor in New York, I read books professionally as well as for pleasure. I've always loved well-drawn lives, whether the stories themselves are fact or fiction. Lately, it's been getting harder to tell the two apart. The...

In the literary tradition ... novels that could have been memoirs.(ARTS & CULTURE: The Lives of Others)(Brief article)(Book review)
July 1, 2008... A Death in the Family (1957), by James Agee. When Rufus, the protagonist of this intense, poetic tale, loses his father in a car accident, his cozy family life instantly comes to an end. At age six, James Agee (middle name: Rufus) lost his...

A singular seat.(DESIGN TRENDS)(bench by Gael Appler)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This bench by GAEL APPLER, a woodworker in Dutchess County, New York, would look right at home in a Japanese temple, a Manhattan art gallery or a Napa garden. Hand carved from Honduran mahogany, it is part of a...

Books: Francophile's delight.(DESIGN TRENDS)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As one of the world's most ephemeral art forms, decorating is hard to study and even harder to research. Which is why two new books, both long in the making, deserve to become the hostess gifts of the summer....

The skywriter from L.A.(DESIGN TRENDS)(works of architect John Lautner)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While now safely established as an American icon, architect JOHN LAUTNER (1911-1994) was only recently rescued from near obscurity. "Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner," at L.A.'s Hammer...

Ship to shore.(home furnishings)(Buyers guide)(Brief article)
July 1, 2008... Sharp new looks for your Hinckley, your house on the coast or your heavenly hideaway on the Hudson. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lynn porcelain lanterns from WILLIAMS-SONOMA HOME (from left, $165, $45, $225), wshome.com. [ILLUSTRATION...

A gentle swing through Ireland: more than thirty years since her last visit, Pamela Fiori returns to her husband's ancestral homeland to find a country in the midst of a moneyed makeover.(TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK)(Country overview)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I HADN'T BEEN to the Republic of Ireland since the early 1970s and probably wouldn't have returned were it not for having a husband whose maternal grandfather's last name was Donovan. Back then it was a gorgeous,...

Couching the truth: why speak plainly when you can get creative with reality instead?(SOCIAL GRACES)(Essay)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHAT'S A NICER way of saying "euphemism"? To their detractors, euphemisms are the last refuge of the coward, the liar and, at the risk of being redundant, the politician. But as someone who uses euphemisms as often...

Daddy's little girl: she may be Donald's daughter, but make no mistake: Ivanka Trump is her own woman.(Cover story)
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ivanka Trump is, in many ways, her father's most fastidiously crafted namesake. Standing six feet three in heels, she is beautiful by any standard and speaks in dulcet tones cultivated by the best schools that money...

Sea world: fanciful underwater creatures take shape in stunning gems.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lorraine Schwartz brown-, yellow-and white-diamond fish brooch (price on request). Gioia moonstone and diamond jellyfish brooch ($185,000). De Grisogono sapphire and diamond galuchat cuff ($16,100). Tiffany & Co,...

Sun sense: what you need to know about sun protection.
July 1, 2008... OVEREXPOSURE TO THE SUN CAN BE DANGEROUS, even deadly. The National Cancer Institute estimates that in 2008 alone, more than one million new cases of skin cancer will be diagnosed in the U.S. But what to do when the beach, the tennis court, the...

Beijing gears up: as it prepares itself for next month's Olympics, the ancient Chinese capital of Beijing is racing to catch up with the 21st century--and meet the rest of the world.(City overview)
July 1, 2008... THE FIRST THING you'll notice about Beijing is the smog. It's a thick, gray soup that engulfs the city most of the year and is so omnipresent that even someone like me--who endured five years of rush-hour headaches in Los Angeles--has a hard...

Weddings.
July 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mr. and Mrs. Frank Milton Clark II (Jessica Lee Nelson, in Anne Barge) Nassau, Bahamas [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mr. and Mrs. Pierce Burrell Talbot Crosbie (Vanessa Marie Farah Der Calousdian, in Vera Wang)...

July.(HOROSCOPES)
July 1, 2008... Cancer June 22-July 22 With the New Moon in your sign on the 3rd, the moment has come to embark on a new enterprise or adventure. And although Cancers generally prefer to play it safe, Jupiter in Capricorn is urging you to take a risk and...