Is Everyone Buying Fake Bags But Me?

Manuel Schmitt / EyeEmGetty Images It all seemed to happen at once. There had always been the women who bought luxury handbags outright and then the rest of us, toting around our wonky Zara dopplegangers, hoping to at least mimic the silhouette. Then, one fall morning last year, I looked up from my phone and…

Zanzibar in the Rain

If my circumstances had not been so dire — or rather, if my circumstances had been drier — I might never have found myself at the Zanzibar Curio Shop. At first glance, the store did little to distinguish itself from other trinket purveyors besieging the tangled lanes of Stone Town, the historic quarter on the…

The Death of Chintz

When Mario Buatta died in 2018, a few days shy of his 83rd birthday, he left no will. Which is not to say that he didn’t leave anything behind. “I am the original hoarder,” he would tell you. He had a ferocious appetite for collecting that started when he was 11 and bought an 18th-century…