My morning routine is how I set myself up for the day. I splash my face with water and will often use Oskia’s Super C Beauty Capsules. I’m a big fan of Augustinus Bader’s The Light Cream and then Merit’s Great Skin Instant Glow Serum, which is very subtle. I’m really into their makeup: they have this Bronze Balm in a stick and blushers that come in little jars that are easy to swipe on. I use RMS UnCoverup Concealer and Supergoop Glowscreen SPF 40. I have an orangy red lipstick from NARS called Heatwave that I’ll wear here and there. I was on a shoot recently and the makeup artist told me about using this Schwarzkopf Styling Gel on your brows — it’s the only thing that actually stays for me. Kure nail varnish has the best range of colors and is the most durable of all the natural products; I like Rose Milk.
At the end of the day, I use a gel cleanser from Oskia called the Renaissance Cleansing Gel. In 10 seconds, you feel like all the muck is off your face. I love using a muslin cloth for a deep cleanse. Eve Lom’s Cleanser was probably the first I ever bought, and my mum uses it. Augustinus Bader has an Ultimate Soothing Cream that I’ll slather on in the winter months when it’s very cold in London. And I always have a tube of Homeoplasmine in my wash bag. It’s great for lips, dry patches of skin and brushing your brows. There’s a Sisley Exfoliating Enzyme Mask that I use on Saturday mornings that you mix in your hand with water. Instantly it perks you up. There’s a brand called Tan-Luxe that makes a gradual tanner that I love for the body, and I put a few of their face drops into my moisturizer at night. I think they make it look like you’ve had more sleep.
My hair is quite low key. I have learned that I need to use a purple conditioner here and there to lessen the brassiness in my blonde hair, so I’m currently using one from Kérastase. I’m a real bath girl, and there’s an Aesop Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser that I love; it has the best smell. There’s this brand Verden that does really great bath oils, too. When I was pregnant I discovered the brand Mutha, and I think their Body Butter and Body Oil are the best. It’s the one thing that I feel actually locks in moisture. I’ve worn Comme Des Garcons 2 since I was about 16, but I’ve also started using Ffern scents because the Comme des Garcons is quite heavy. A candle scent that’s forever my favorite is called Cyprès from Diptyque; it’s slightly musky and cozy.
The path to Bovina Farm and Fermentory, which hosts weekly dinner parties in New York’s Western Catskills, is lined with hay-scented ferns. “In the summertime, everything smells like sweet hay. In the fall, the ferns turn bright orange and red, and in the winter, they curl up and are dark brown — also so gorgeous,” says Elizabeth Starks, a Hudson Valley native who owns the farm with her husband, Jake Sackett, who comes from multiple generations of Catskill dairy farmers. The couple grow fruit, brew beer and raise dairy sheep on the homestead, which is surrounded by a forest where cellphone service is scarce. Dinners, which they began organizing in 2021, are served family style on antique platters in the Shaker-inspired dining room of their Dutch Colonial farmhouse. Each course is paired with house-made beer. In temperate months, seasonal produce like blackberries and maitake mushrooms fill out the locally sourced menu. Winter, Starks says, calls for more creativity. “How many different ways can you prepare a parsnip and make it the best thing in the world?” she says. She likes to purée the root with cream as a bed for stews, like a sherry-braised rabbit served alongside honey-roasted carrots. She inherited the recipe from Jake’s grandfather, who grew up hunting snowshoe hares in the area. There are also venison and pig trotter pies, each lanced with an enormous marrow bone. The intimacy of these dinners — 38 people around six tables — encourages conversation. “The highest praise,” Starks says, “is when people say it feels like they were just having dinner at a friend’s house.” bovinafarmfermentory.com.
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The Painter TM Davy’s Imaginary Friends
When TM Davy was growing up on Long Island, he would hole up in his closet and paint mystical scenes directly onto the wall. (He inherited the impulse from his father, a mural painter and restorer whose studio was down the hall.) For Davy’s first solo show at Company gallery in New York, opening next week, he will bring these fantastical visions into the open. Over the past decade, the 43-year-old painter has gained a cult following for his intimate depictions of friends and chosen family illuminated by candlelight or sunning themselves in the Fire Island Pines. This new series depicts an entirely imagined cast of characters. There are pint-size fairies splashing in puddles of light, emerald-skinned satyrs and mischievous gremlins that Davy affectionately calls “tiny monsters” or “TMs.”
The scenes may seem like a departure, but Davy considers them to be as personal as anything he’s ever made. In addition to canvases, the installation will include painted musical instruments and human-scale plant boxes that look like closets with the power to transport the viewer in the style of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” “I know that fairies are communities of queer people, but I also think it’s an identity,” Davy says. “In the Irish understanding of the homeland, the matriarch was the fairy. I think I’m in her story.” “Fae” will be on view from Nov. 4 through Jan. 6, companygallery.us.
Lines formed around the block during Milan Design Week in April for the cinematic vignettes created by Dimore Studio, the design firm known for its layered interiors, which cleverly incorporate historical references. Once patient visitors got inside Dimore’s Brera headquarters and gallery, they were invited to peer through holes in the wall to see rooms including a psychiatrist’s office, a collector’s pied-à-terre and a seaside apartment. Dimore collaborated with the French fabric house Pierre Frey to make carpets for the installation, which are now available to purchase. There are five designs in total: Broadlooms, in warm shades of gold and bronze, set a louche, ’70s-inspired mood, while the scale of the geometric or stylized floral motifs provide just the right amount of texture for wall-to-wall carpet or, if you’re as bold as the Dimore designers, the walls themselves. Price on request, pierrefrey.com.
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A Minimalist Hotel in South Africa’s Wine Country
When Prisca Llagostera was planning her wedding in Swartland, South Africa’s lesser-known wine region an hour north of Cape Town, accommodations were limited. She struggled to find an option for guests in the town of Riebeek Kasteel, the area’s cultural hub — so she created one. Twenty minutes from the natural winery Intellego, where she lives with her winemaker husband, Llagostera converted a 200-year-old whitewashed Cape Dutch farmhouse into the boutique hotel Kokos Huis (huis means “house” in Afrikaans), which opened Oct. 20. A trio of stand-alone cottages with built-in brick braais (barbecues) sit just outside the two-story manor home whose six sand-colored bedrooms still have their original high wooden ceilings and whose décor highlights textiles, in the form of locally crafted raffia tapestries and linen lamp shades. “My aesthetic is very simple — less is more,” Llagostera says. (She took a similar approach at her first property, the four-bedroom mountain lodge L’Ovella Negra, in her native Andorra.) Most of the amenities are regional, from the two-tone ceramic candleholders to white waffle-weave Mungo towels and low-intervention wines from neighboring producers — which you can sip by the palm-lined pool or during a sunrise braai in the vineyard. Rooms from about $150 a night, kokoshuis.com.
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Natural Fragrances Packaged in Woodsy Bottles and Amulets
The former fashion photographer Kira Lillie grew up around essential oils — her mother, Vanessa Lillie, had used them in her craniosacral therapy and acupressure practice. Their shared appreciation for natural fragrances led the mother-daughter duo to create Incorp World, a brand that’s launching with three essential oil-based fragrances called I, You and We. Formulated with input from the Norwegian artist Sissel Tolaas, who oversees a scent archive and laboratory, each perfume includes ingredients related to an intended effect. The You fragrance, for example, has lime and coriander to cleanse, sandalwood for support and rose for guidance. The textured glass Incorp World flacons were created using the woody core of a tree as a mold, while their mushroom-like stoppers are solid brass. Also on offer are 5-milliliter amulet versions of each scent, each of which comes with a chain, as well as sculptural massage tools variously hand-carved from obsidian, opal and tiger’s-eye. As she works on new collections, Lillie plans to initiate more artist collaborations. “This project is entirely about bridging worlds — incorporating,” she says. From about $570 for an amulet, incorp.world.
