Sandra Mansour’s job is turning dream worlds into dresses. She pulls clouds down to earth via billowing tulle; she sews dawn dew from gardens into glass-beaded gowns. It’s a gift, as they say, but it comes with a cost—like, literally—because the hand-crafted pieces by the Swiss-born, Beirut-based designer are roughly (and rightly) the cost of…
If wearing face masks out in public will be a part of our standard operating procedure for the foreseeable future, we might as well do it in style. We’ve been matching our masks to our makeup and matching our masks to our looks. Several designers started making reusable masks early on the pandemic. Now Burberry…
Growing up in Chicago, Juliana Calistri was surrounded by all things Italian: music, food and language. Ms. Calistri’s grandparents were raised in Bagni di Lucca, Italy, and though her father was born in Chicago, he spoke Italian before he spoke English. “If you ask me to bake, I’m going to make biscotti and lemon knots,…
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — The world has caught up to Gregory Crewdson. In his large-scale photographs, which are produced with a movie crew in bravura Hollywood style, the people stare off into space, cloaked in solipsistic misery. The lighting is so portentous and the isolation and hopelessness so exaggerated that these scenes have always reminded…
Shopping at Chanel is an experience. To this day, you cannot purchase Chanel ready-to-wear, bags, or jewelry anywhere online (with the exception of consigned pieces not affiliated with the brand). The design house is notorious for giving IRL customers a luxurious look into the world of iconic handbags and french craftsmanship (with a glass of…
The fact that the third night of the Democratic National Convention, when Kamala Harris officially accepted her party’s nomination for vice president, followed the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and women’s right to vote (or rather, some women’s right to vote) was both fitting and significant, given that it was an evening filled with…
Every year, I send my adult daughter a check for her birthday and Christmas. She told me she prefers cash to other gifts. But she never, ever acknowledges them or thanks me. This has been going on for years! I only know if she gets them by checking my bank account. I asked her to…
BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — In a forest here, Katie Hall and members of her extended family were dangling her mother’s bra into a hollowed-out tree trunk with the laser focus of open-heart surgeons. When that failed, Ms. Hall, her mother, brother, aunt and cousin untied their shoes, using the laces to form a makeshift net…
OOO Out of Office: A Survey of Our New Work Lives Aug. 20, 2020 Yellowed newspapers. A mouse who met its end on a glue trap. Wilted plants. These were the scenes we photographed this summer at three New York City offices — including our own — amid a pandemic that has left millions of…
The handshake has been through a lot. Forged in antiquity, the preferred office greeting of the corporate era has survived the peace-sign-as-hello 1960s; the deal-clinching high-five 1990s; and the bro hug of the past decade (a manly-man micro-Heimlich ascending all the way from the playing fields to the Obama White House). But will it survive…