Sublimely Soft and Colorful Cashmere Sweaters
When the siblings Andrea and Edouard Leret, 26 and 29, respectively, had each logged a few years in the New York fashion industry, they decided to join forces to tackle one of retailing’s perennial white whales: the perfect — versatile but not boring, special but still a staple — cashmere sweater. Their fall entry into this admittedly crowded category is a brand called Leret Leret, which offers a dozen or so limited-edition crew necks (with more styles to come) in slightly baggy unisex silhouettes, made all the more cozy by their natural colors (wine red, sky blue, carnation pink) and nostalgic motifs, from wide stripes to oversize clouds to one particularly charming whooshing paper plane.
But the reason to buy nice cashmere is, of course, the cashmere itself: The yarn for these sweaters, most of which cost $475 or so, comes from the hircus goats that roam the countryside of Mongolia, where the pieces are also knit. Because of the region’s extreme seasonal temperature variations, the animals grow exceptionally soft undercoats, which herders comb ethically by hand to both maintain the health of the breed and protect those cherished fibers. I’ve been wearing my own Leret Leret for a few weeks now, often without a T-shirt underneath, and these are results I can feel. And, in a clever gambit, each item comes with its own small beechwood comb, so that wearers can personally tend to — and maintain — the classic (but not too classic) piece for years. From $475, leret-leret.com. — KURT SOLLER
From Two Chefs, an Unusual Culinary Collaboration
In a rare sort of partnership, two of North America’s most exciting chefs — Jessica Koslow of Sqirl in Los Angeles and Gabriela Cámara of Contramar in Mexico City — are now co-chefs of the newly opened Onda, which is attached to the Proper hotel in Santa Monica, Calif. “When I first saw the space, it felt bigger than just me. I thought of Gabriela and I made a call,” says Koslow. (The women had become friendly after meeting at a food conference in Copenhagen a couple of years earlier.) “It was a shot in the dark, but somehow, it evolved.” The idea was to make a new kind of L.A. restaurant, something ambitious but relaxed that centered on reinventions of Mexican fare filtered through Koslow’s love of flavor and fermentation.
To build the menu, the pair organized myriad tastings of potential dishes with friends and family. Koslow believes that, of those that made the cut, two in particular are destined to become signatures: There’s a play on a fritto misto called Fish Hiding in Kelp, the fish being cured anchovies and the kelp dipped in housemade masa batter, and there’s an “inside-out” quesadilla that nods to Israeli street food by featuring turkey shaved from the restaurant’s trompo, or vertical spit. Cámara, meanwhile, is particularly fond of the pickled pork-skin tostada and the pig-ear salad with cabbage, rice powder and curry leaf, which she describes as “the perfect marriage of two things made in each other’s way.” The restaurant sits in a 1920s-era Spanish Colonial building whose interior design was also a collaborative effort, one between Kelly Wearstler, who did the rest of the hotel, and Sqirl’s longtime creative director, Scott Barry. The result is an airy, understated space with thoughtful details like vintage stacking chairs by the late Mexican designer Bruno Rey and a sculptural host stand that the New York artists Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon fashioned from industrial fencing. It’s a slow, traffic-filled drive from Sqirl’s home in Silver Lake, and a much longer journey from Mexico City, but it’s not hard to imagine people coming from farther still to queue for a table. onda.la — KATE GUADAGNINO
A Photographer’s Ode to Fashion and Fast Cars
Rarely do the worlds of “fashion” and “drag racing” collide. But for the British-born, New York-based photographer Craig McDean, this thematic tension provided the starting point for a new book of images, “Manual.” Released this month, the 208-page hardback volume, published by Rizzoli, combines pictures from McDean’s stellar fashion portfolio with his love of cars. Growing up in a suburb of Manchester, in northern England, McDean trained as a mechanic before picking up the camera (he discovered his talent for image-making by shooting portraits of his friends in his hometown). Though he later moved to London and began his career, in 1989, by working as an assistant to the photographer Nick Knight, “I’ve never stopped being a mechanic,” he says. “I work on my personal cars at the weekends still. It’s a form of meditation for me.”
The book brings together pictures McDean took at drag-race events in upstate New York, from the late 1990s to the present day, and a mix of his advertising campaigns and magazine editorials, creating unexpected pairings: An otherworldly, double-exposed headshot of the model Kirsten Owen, for example, sits across from a photograph of a turquoise racecar on the track, smoke billowing from beneath its tires. “Juxtaposing a fashion photo with an image of a car, you give new life to the images outside of their original medium,” says McDean, who has shot campaigns for brands such as Calvin Klein, Gucci and Jil Sander. “No matter whether I shoot cars or models, I’m capturing movement. There is an inherent energy in the subject, whether a car or person. I try to bring them both alive through the photograph.” $115, rizzoliusa.com. — GRACE COOK
Madame de Pompadour’s Long-Lost Desk
Long before the arrival of the smartphone, a desk was often a good place to keep a secret. In the 18th century, a small writing table or secretaire — a word derived from the Latin secretus, meaning hidden or confidential — might be equipped with concealed compartments or locked with a key, to keep prying eyes away from personal correspondence. Few pieces of furniture could embody this idea better — or have contained more interesting secrets — than the lacquer-embellished gilt-edged writing desk that Madame de Pompadour, the renowned mistress and adviser of Louis XV, commissioned from the Parisian marchand-mercier (a designer and dealer of furniture and objets d’art) Jacques-François Machart. Built by the celebrated French cabinetmaker Jacques Dubois, it was delivered to the marquise in 1755 at the Château de Choisy, a royal residence just south of Paris, where De Pompadour kept a bedroom next to the king’s apartment until her death in 1764. The small rococo desk was recently rediscovered in the collection of the Spanish philanthropist Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, and it will be sold at Christie’s in London on November 13.
“The piece in itself is extraordinary,” says Paul Gallois, the head of European Furniture at Christie’s, who was able to trace the bureau’s provenance by matching a faded handwritten inventory number on its underside to a record kept by the royal household. “It’s enriched with lacquer panels that are probably from Japanese screens or coffers that traveled around the world to Paris,” he says of the design, which also features a bright red interior with secret compartments. But the desk’s real draw is its former owner. De Pompadour, born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, was famous for her wit and became one of the most powerful members of Louis XV’s court as well as an important patron of the arts (she championed Voltaire and started the craze for Sèvres porcelain). The desk, says Gallois, “couldn’t have been closer to her life — and she’s probably one of the most fascinating characters of France at this time.” christies.com — ALICE NEWELL-HANSON
A Tokyo Jewelry Boutique for Convening With Nature
The delicate shapes of the Japanese designer Hirotaka Inoue’s jewelry reflect his deep-seated desire to connect with nature. His newest collection, Indústria, for example, celebrates the ways in which organic forms, such as hexagonal honeycombs, have long been transposed into art and architecture. This ethos extends to the interiors of his namesake brand’s second boutique, which opened last month in Tokyo’s bustling Marunouchi neighborhood. Inside, spiral-shaped gold ear cuffs that resemble fiddlehead ferns, stacking rings inset with precious stones and long gold-chain necklaces with lithe rectangular links are arranged within an oversize vitrine alongside air plants, scarlet feathers and hollow nutshells to evoke a rainforest floor; a chunk of fossilized wood rests atop as a sculptural centerpiece. Many of the pieces from the Indústria collection are exclusive to Hirotaka’s own stores and the brand’s newly launched e-commerce site, including the thin hoop-like adjustable Cygnus earrings, which call to mind a swan’s silhouette. “I am trying to express the wonders of nature through my jewelry,” the designer says. “Even when some exotic orchid or beetle may seem strange, their functionalities make sense as the answer to millions of years of adaptation.” When filtered through Hirotaka’s singular vision, even simple hoops and pearl earrings are transformed into natural wonders. hiro-taka.com — COCO ROMACK
