Around 10 years ago to the day, I wrote my first column as the Critical Shopper. In that time, I’ve written about more than 150 stores, spanning luxury outposts and discount retailers, malls and pocket-size shops, decades-old spots and places that quickly vanished. But I’ve never written about the one I’m most familiar with. That…
Details
It can take up to 1,800 liters of water to produce a single pair of jeans. To give you an idea of what that looks like, it’s equal to flushing your toilet 132 times in a row. And that’s not the only problem the denim industry has. The EPA reported that between 1960 and 2015,…
Details
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…
Details
BEIJING — The Lunar New Year holiday in China is the world’s largest annual migration of people, with hundreds of millions of travelers fanning out across the country and the world, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on hotels, restaurants and shopping. Now, with a mysterious new pneumonia-like coronavirus that has killed at least…
Details
Pregnancy and breastfeeding are associated with a reduced risk for early menopause, new research suggests. Menopause before age 45 has been linked to osteoporosis, depression, dementia, cardiovascular disease and premature death. It affects about 10 percent of women in the United States. The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, used data on 108,887 women,…
DetailsThe internet is rife with funny cat videos showing their reactions to a plant commonly known as “catnip.” What is catnip, does it affect all felines, is it safe for cats, and should humans use it? This Special Feature investigates these questions and more. Share on PinterestDoes your feline friend go crazy for catnip? In…
Details
Good morning. How it goes, when I’m preparing to make chicken shawarma for dinner: I head to this bakery I’ve been going to since I was a kid, Damascus on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and I buy a lot of pita bread. Like, too much pita bread, even for the pounds of shawarma I make…
Details
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…
Details
This past fall, when Los Angeles burst once again into flames, I couldn’t sleep. My husband and I kept our children inside, away from the smoke, while the guilt and fear chipped away at my love for the city. I started to question: Are we supposed to live here? Is there anywhere else we could…
Details
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…
Details