Josephine Komara was depressed. She had recently divorced. She had moved into a small house. Her business supplying fabric for lampshades was lucrative but unfulfilling. Ms. Komara sipped her wine and smoked a cigarette. She sank to the floor, dipping her hands into two wooden chests filled with antique Indonesian textiles. In one chest, Ms.…
In September 2018, Lauren Davis Pariani and Kate Elizabeth Schatz met on a school playground. Their sons, who had just started kindergarten, soon after became best friends and during multiple play dates the two women forged a close bond. At the time, both lived in Alameda, Calif., a small island community just off Oakland, with…
The first time Isabella Delgado Reyes realized that Andrew Charles Sublett really liked her was when the two were having lunch together on Feb. 17, 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. He brought her a tube of mini M&M’s, her favorite candy. She immediately gave it back to him, though not because she didn’t…
Bagels, lox and N.F.L. marathons — that’s how Elan David Cooperman grew up spending nearly every Sunday at his childhood home in Roslyn, N.Y. “There’s nothing casual about watching football at my family’s house,” Mr. Cooperman said. And he knew when he met Sydney Marissa Berger in October 2018 that she would fit right in…
Erics Kun was fighting yawns the first few times he and Sahra Nguyen got together in the fall of 2016. This was no reflection on her. After staying up all night in his bartending job, he couldn’t pass up the chance to see her for early morning coffee. “I would get off my shift at…
I had a home, money, an isolated location to quarantine — I was safe by every measure. But my partner, who promised to protect me and our children, had disappeared overnight. The people who would have propped me up, fed me, helped with the children — my family and closest friends — could not get…
The scenes on social media are grisly. A body dangles out of the trunk of a sedan, dribbling purple goo. Another is draped across a basketball hoop with a net that has been stained lilac. A third splutters in a bathtub covered in dusky handprints. The liquid splashed across these tableaus is not blood. It…
It took Rahul Mishra six years to sell his first bridal lehenga, a three-piece skirt, blouse and scarf ensemble from the Indian subcontinent. That was in 2017. Now, there’s an almost five-month wait to buy one. In April, the 43-year-old fashion designer, who is based in Delhi, India, made headlines for dressing Zendaya in a…
Tucked away in the wooded suburbs south of Atlanta is a small family-owned amusement park that used to bring in customers thanks to humble attractions like its Ferris wheel, bumper boats, Tilt-a-Whirl, go-kart tracks, Scooby Swing and batting cages. But as of this year, Fun Spot America Atlanta has transformed itself into something of a…
When the ultrafast-fashion retailer Shein invited Kenya Freeman on a free two-week trip to China, she was thrilled. It has become a status symbol for Instagram and TikTok creators to be taken on paid excursions by brands, and Ms. Freeman, who had also been designing clothes for Shein for two and a half years, saw…