Creating a Name for Themselves

Tasha Mente, a 31-year-old marketing vice president in Oakland, Calif., had a note in the program on the day she married Joe Mente, a 34-year-old engineering manager. “Traditionally, in heterosexual marriages,” read the program, “married women are expected to take their husband’s last name. Neither of us believe that a woman should be expected to…

Dinner in French!

Melissa Clark and I were in Toronto over the weekend, eating marvelous fried ocean smelts among about a thousand other things at Brothers on Bay Street, before taking the stage at the Hot Docs festival with the reporter and critic Chris Nuttall-Smith to talk about Melissa’s new book, “Dinner in French.” (We also talked about…

Makeup and the Coronavirus: An Uneasy Mix

It was business as usual at Sephora in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan Monday evening, give or take a few face masks not of the soothing mud variety. Customers were browsing the latest Urban Decay palettes, sitting at mirrored stations getting makeup applied by sales associates and stocking up on luxury skin care, including $335…