Good morning. The birds are back in town, chirping at dawn, flitting to and from the feeders set up out back, firing up the cat at the window. There’s no languorous idyll in bed before breakfast these days; there’s much to be done. Daylight’s burning. Time for spring cleaning. Start with your fridge and your…
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In a subterranean workroom of a building on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, there are cabinets filled with bags of Chantilly lace in myriad shades: Yves Klein blue, sherbet orange, a silvery periwinkle. Nestled between the furniture are some half-dozen sewing machines, at which a small staff of seamstresses works while constructing corsets for Cadolle, a…
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This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week. At Alcova, an annual Milan Design Week exhibition that celebrates the unconventional, an aptly named San Francisco studio named Surfacedesign is showing tables and other furniture pieces made from boulders. There is no end to the movable feast of materials that can…
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Entering the atelier of the watchmaker Julien Tixier in Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux, one must navigate carefully past high benches filled to the brim with equipment such as decades-old lathes, drilling machines, grinders, cutters and high-tech devices, plus spaces dedicated to heat treatment, galvanization, decoration and assembly. Despite being only about 270 square feet, this…
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Decorative gems have adorned watches for centuries. But, beyond diamonds and the classic trinity of rubies, emeralds and sapphires, a colorless variety of quartz called rock crystal actually is the stone used most often in horology. Yet, “as a material, not a lot of people know about it,” said Tom Heap, deputy director and head…
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Until last year, the Watches and Wonders Geneva watch fair was closed to the public. Brands, retailers, media and some V.V.I.P. s were granted entry, but regular watch buyers? Would-be watch enthusiasts? It seemed like Switzerland’s reputation for behind-closed-doors dealings was dictating watch show policy, too. But that all changed last year when a new…
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In fashion, the next thing is the best thing. But the backbone of the Swiss watch industry is heritage, which explains why vintage reissues make up the bulk of new releases. What’s tried and true becomes new again with fresh materials and state-of-the-art movements. Think of it not as a rehash, but as a continuation…
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In 1995, O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty to murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted by a jury. But a little more than a decade later, he more or less confessed to the crimes. Mr. Simpson did so in a bizarre 2007 book, titled “If I Did It:…
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My relationship with bananas can best be described by paraphrasing Katy Perry’s 2008 song: We’re hot then we’re cold, we’re yes then we’re no, we’re in then we’re out, we’re up then we’re down. I’ll bring home a Donkey Kong-size haul of them on a Sunday, craving their starchy sweetness. On Monday and Tuesday I’ll…
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When the writer and professor Amitava Kumar invited the book scout Erin Edmison to his reading at McNally Jackson Books’ Seaport location in February, Ms. Edmison penciled it into her calendar and “didn’t think twice about it,” she said, “because I am old, and that’s the way things used to work.” On the night of…
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