Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com.
Stuck on where to go this summer? We’re here to help! Click here to send us your travel questions by April 10 and we’ll respond to the most intriguing ones with our recommendations in May. GIFT THIS A Landscape Designer’s Favorite Gardening Tools
With spring comes the promise of longer days, and weekends pottering in the garden. Early April is an ideal time to consider equipment that will make that work easier. I’m rarely without my Niwaki snips, which are perfect for clipping daffodils to bring into the house and light enough to slip into the pocket of my smock. (I like these thick cotton versions, which have been made for sailors and fishermen in Great Yarmouth, England, since the 19th century.) The Connecticut-based ceramist Frances Palmer, a consummate gardener in her own right, creates vessels with homegrown arrangements in mind. I love this Putnam vase, which has hints of the classical and is perfect for delicate early flowers. For more sturdy tool carrying, this canvas bag has just the right amount of pockets and will stand on its own when you get distracted by new weeds. My favorite time in the garden is first thing, when the dew is heavy and the birds are singing: These tomato red clogs will keep early toes dry (and stylish) as you check on your budding bulbs. I wish I’d planted mine in these raw-edge planters, which are handmade in Vermont and would look sweet planted with grape hyacinth on a garden table. EAT HERE Inside Sotheby’s Breuer, a Patisserie Serves Architectural French Sweets
In 2017, Roman and Williams, the New York-based design studio founded by Robin and Stephen Alesch, opened La Mercerie, a SoHo restaurant that also sells embroidered tablecloths and tapered glassware. Now the couple, along with the chef Marie-Aude Rose, are expanding their culinary reach with a patisserie on the Upper East Side. There will be brioche feuilletée laminated in ribbonlike layers, and garden-inspired entremets of creamy mousses, crunchy pralines and glossy glazes. “I’ve always had a fascination with pastry as a delicious object, like jewelry or art,” says Robin. On April 16, the team will open La Mercerie Patisserie within and alongside the restaurant Marcel (which will serve French dishes such as duck confit and cod au gratin), at Sotheby’s in the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue, a few feet from vitrines of 20th-century jewelry. The pastry chefs Alexandra Puglisi (who previously worked at New York’s Le Coucou and Gabriel Kreuther) and Rae Gaylord (Casa Tua, the Butcher’s Daughter) are behind the menu, with madeleines at the center in seven colors and flavors, from jam-filled yuzu to a periwinkle number with a violet-infused white-chocolate shell. The classic version is baked in a scallop shell and dipped in honey, a nod to the fluted spongecake’s origins in 18th-century Lorraine, France, and all come packaged in pill-shaped boxes. Large-format cakes and tarts are available for takeaway with 48 hours’ notice, and the patisserie stays open late so Marcel diners can take home something sweet. lamerceriepatisserie.com. STAY HERE A Sunny Hotel Amid Oyster Farms in Cap Ferret, France
The designer and architect Philippe Starck has vacationed in Cap Ferret, the oyster-farming peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, for over half his life, drawn to its natural beauty. “Cap Ferret is hyper-elegant simplicity,” he says. “It’s almost nothing: Just a sandbank about three-feet high with small villages of oyster cabanas between pine forests, and the wild beaches of the Atlantic on the other side.” This week, Starck is opening a hotel on the peninsula — his third in the area, after La Co(o)rniche and Ha(a)ïtza, on the other side of Arcachon Bay — with the restaurateur and hotelier Laurent Taïeb, his friend of 30 years. The architecture of Villa Colette, a newly built 28-room property on the town square, was inspired by the elaborate villas of Arcachon’s Ville d’Hiver, constructed in the second half of the 19th century as a retreat for wealthy families convalescing from tuberculosis. For the interiors, Starck and Taïeb imagined the souvenir-stuffed seaside escape of a midcentury actress like the French star Danielle Darrieux with a powder pink, acid yellow and Dior gray color palette. Downstairs, cocktails are served at a mirrored bar, while the restaurant’s dishes highlight the fresh fish from the bay. Guests can use the hotel’s electric bicycles to explore Cap Ferret’s nearly 30 miles of trails or head to the wide, sandy beaches on the Atlantic coast for a surf lesson. Villa Colette opens April 2; rooms from about $460; villacolette.com. SEE THIS A New York Exhibition Reunites the Hawaii Art Collective Metcalf Chateau
In 1954, seven Asian American artists in Hawaii rented a soon-to-be-demolished house in Honolulu to stage a joint exhibition of their experimental Abstract Expressionist works. Merging bold, gestural brushstrokes with landforms and seascapes inspired by the artists’ home islands, the work in the impromptu show caught the attention of a city museum director who went on to organize a formal exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art — which was then known as the Honolulu Academy of Arts — launching each member to local prominence. Collectively, they became known as the Metcalf Chateau, an ironic nod to the dilapidated property on Metcalf Street where it all began. Seventy-two years later, “Waves of Knowing,” an exhibition at Ryan Lee Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, revisits the group with rarely seen works by Satoru Abe, Bumpei Akaji, Tetsuo Ochikubo, Tadashi Sato and Harry Tsuchidana — all members of the tight-knit Chateau circle, most of whom haven’t exhibited on the U.S. mainland since the 1960s. Across 10 paintings, eight sculptures and 26 works on paper, the show highlights the artists’ individual styles, as well as their shared strain of Abstract Expressionism that reflects Hawaii’s natural beauty and cultural hybridity. As the gallery co-founder Jeffrey Lee puts it, the works have “a quiet power.” “Waves of Knowing” is on view from April 9 to May 9 at Ryan Lee Gallery, ryanleegallery.com. HISTORY LESSON Tracing the Evolution of Design Through Cutlery
The design editor and publisher Dung Ngo bought his first set of vintage flatware at a shop in San Francisco around 2000. He’d just turned 30 and decided it was time to retire his college-era cutlery, and a stainless steel pattern caught his eye. The fork tines were truncated, the spoon heads had the grace of a still-closed tulip and the knife blade jutted out to a point. He didn’t know its story — only that the German brand Rosenthal had produced it — so he went to the library at the University of California, Berkeley, in search of the answer: It was a set called Composition (1962), by the Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala. “I love the hunt,” says Ngo, whose now-expansive collection is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition, “Knife Fork Spoon,” at the Denver Art Museum, and a hefty book. (The title, also used for his eye candy Instagram account, pays homage to a 1951 show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.) Ngo, who studied architecture, found that the seemingly narrow subject offered a window into 20th-century design movements. After World War II, amid a push to consider children’s developmental needs, kids’ cutlery began to fuse whimsy with ergonomics. The golden age of aviation called for in-flight pomp, as with Raymond Loewy’s sleek (and often filched) sets for the Air France Concorde. Architects of all stripes — Gio Ponti, Arne Jacobsen, Zaha Hadid, Richard Meier — brought their ideas to the table, while sets like the Haas Brothers’ Here, There cake service (2024), in glass and gold-plated steel, reflect the rise of collectible design. Lately, at home, Ngo’s flatware of choice is Form (1952) by the Bauhaus-trained designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld, who gave traditional shapes newfound refinement. “Subtle and beautiful,” Ngo says, “like a well-designed car.” “Knife Fork Spoon,” at the Denver Art Museum, is on view from May 17 through May 2028, denverartmuseum.org. “Knife Fork Spoon,” published by August Editions, is available Aug. 18, $85, artbook.com. DRINK HERE A Sultry New Bar in Paris’s Pigalle
When the artistic director Eole Peyron was overseeing construction of Hôtel Massé, the boutique property in Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood she co-owns with her brother, Corto, the bar next door went up for sale. “It was a no-brainer” says Peyron, who opened the hotel this past September. “Our family motto is to make a friend every day. We see our new bar as a place to facilitate that.” The new place, which they named Le Trente, meaning “number 30,” for the address, has a decorative kinship to the hotel — they both feature ’70s furniture and contemporary art, though the bar has a moodier flair: There are red lacquered floors, and a weathered black leather sofa in the loft lounge. Original pieces of art, including a custom drawing of a chair by the French artist Alexandre Mussard, are hung alongside family photos, some depicting the expeditions of the siblings’ father, the French explorer Stéphane Peyron. In the bathroom is a playful nod to their great-grandfather the pastis-brand founder Paul Ricard: 1,800 mini-bottles of Ricard line the walls. Patrons can expect a tight menu of creative cocktails and wine; simple snacks, including a brioche bun with pulled pork; and a rotation of cross-genre vinyl spun nightly. hotelmasse.com/trente-paris. FROM T’S INSTAGRAM In Oslo, a Brutalist Villa Where Artists Come to Play
In Oslo, the artist Ida Ekblad has transformed a Brutalist building into an experimental space for herself, and for others. She works on the second floor, in a low-ceilinged room that’s bookended by windows. Down the hall is a simply decorated bedroom where she occasionally stays after working late, and that she sometimes offers to visiting artists. And on the ground floor are several boxy rooms that Ekblad has turned into little galleries. She worked with her friend the Norwegian fashion designer Michael Olestad to source the furnishings, which hail from different chapters of Modernism and beyond. Lately, she’s started thinking of the entire villa as an artwork, one she gets to live inside of whenever she’s there. In between making works, she recently hosted a fondue night (“I felt fondue fit the house,” she says); and she plans to hold ad hoc literary readings and concerts in the living room and film screenings in the basement. Click here to read the full story and follow us on Instagram.
Read past editions of the T List here.
|
