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Together with WSJ. Magazine, Van Cleef & Arpels celebrated new beginnings.
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90
june/july 2019
30 EDITOR’S LETTER
34 CONTRIBUTORS
36 COLUMNISTS on Sacrifice
STILL LIFE Chip Kidd The legendary graphic designer shares a few of his
favorite things.
What’s News.
39 Artist Mika Rottenberg’s solo show at New York’s New Museum; heels with PVC and Lucite accents
41 A new restaurant atop an art deco Manhattan tower; Facts & Stats: Disney’s theme parks go Stars Wars
42 Trend Report: Rose-gold watches
44 The Download: Alex Morgan; black-and-white style
45 A Baccarat champagne decanter; summer nail polish colors; cognac’s comeback
46 NYC’s wellness epicenter; chic retreats in Puglia
48 A show and book on Charlotte Perriand; Corpus natural deodorants; Chanel’s J12 watch; KAWS dolls for Dior; London chef James Lowe opens Flor
49 Jewelry Box: Marco Bicego’s Unico necklaces
on the cover The room in Mikael and Lotta Jansson’s Tuscan home known as the “pink room,” featuring the first reclaimed door they found during renovations, photographed by Mikael Jansson.
thIS PAGe A view of Luang Prabang, Laos, from Mount Phousi, photographed by Jamie Hawkesworth.
FoLLoW @WSJMAG: To purchase original single issues from WSJ. Magazine’s archive, visit the WSJ Shop at wsjshop.com.
108
From left: Valentino Haute Couture dress and Ana Khouri earrings, photographed by Dario Catellani and styled by George Cortina. For details see Sources, page 106. Graphic designer Chip Kidd, photographed by Ryan Lowry.
Market report.
51 rainbow bright A carefree island adventure calls
for laid-back dressing in floaty silks or sleek swimsuits.
Photography by Laura Coulson Styling by Clare Byrne
the exchange.
59 tracked: regina hall The actress, who has been a staple
in comedy films for two decades, is entering a new phase of her career.
By Francesca Mari Photography by Celeste Sloman
62 a star is born Following her supporting role in
Lady Bird, Beanie Feldstein is front and center in Booksmart.
By Kayleen Schaefer Photography by Katie McCurdy
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108
78
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P L E A S E D R I N K R E S P O N S I B LY
summer escapes issue.
66 a practiced eye Photographer Mikael Jansson and
his wife, Lotta, found the ideal Tuscan retreat for gathering friends and family.
By Joshua Levine Photography by Mikael Jansson
78 the tide is high This season’s couture collections
include one-of-a-kind pieces and dramatic gowns loaded with lace, sequins and feathers.
Photography by Dario Catellani Styling by George Cortina
90 mystery train Laos awaits the arrival of a
high-speed railway—and the impact of more Chinese investment.
By Tom Downey Photography by Jamie Hawkesworth
rays the game The warmth of the summer sun is
reflected in collection-worthy pieces that feature bright stones and glittering diamonds.
Photography by Joss McKinley Styling by David Thielebeule Set design by Noemi Bonazzi
“I would love to go furnIture huntIng for
someone else—wIth someone else’s money.”
–lotta jansson
41
66
From left: Fluke tartare with caviar and sea urchin at SAGA in New York City, photo-graphed by Ike Edeani. The master bathroom in Mikael and Lotta Jansson’s Tuscan home, photographed by Mikael Jansson.
100
30 WSJ. MAGA ZINE
EDITOR’S LET TER
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEJANDRO CARDENAS
TRIP ADVISORS Anubis and Bast, both wearing Tod’s, on a motorcycle tour of northern Laos’s hill country, before the arrival of a new high-speed rail line.
RENOVATION ROAD
CONVINCING HIGH-PROFILE individuals to appear on WSJ.’s cover is a challenging part of putting out the magazine, and ask-ing Mikael Jansson to focus his camera lens
on his own life and home was an especially delicate undertaking. Jansson, among the fashion world’s most celebrated photographers, is a private fi gure who prefers to let his luminous imagery speak for itself. His quiet discretion is just one of the ways he earns the trust of his portrait subjects. Last sum-mer, I was fortunate enough to attend Mikael’s 60th birthday party at the Tuscan retreat he and his wife, Lotta, renovated together, a gorgeous property that refl ects their shared passion for decorating houses. I knew our readers would be as dazzled as I was to
get an inside look at how their beautiful home came together, as documented by Mikael himself; thank-fully, in the end he consented. (And it’s fi tting that the article includes a collage of images Jansson took on his iPhone when the landscape was more green and lush, as the Journal recently announced a part-nership with the subscription service Apple News+.) This is Jansson’s 10th cover feature for WSJ. and a testament to his exceptional eye for beauty.
As the push for development in Southeast Asia moves into ever-more-remote regions, a new high-speed train will have a profound e� ect on Laos’s rural areas and traditional way of life when it launches in the next few years. Reporter Tom Downey and pho-tographer Jamie Hawkesworth reveal a country at
the crossroads of modernity, a place where one can still enjoy Buddhist temples, meandering rivers and ancient artisanal practices that exist not far from fac-tory farms, casinos and the hum of commerce.
The issue’s couture fashion story is a delight-ful mix of gloss, glamour and sand. Shot by Dario Catellani and styled by George Cortina, model Hiandra Martinez takes to the beach sporting volu-minous silhouettes, dramatic ru� es and lace against a tranquil backdrop of surf and sky. It’s the perfect note for ushering in the joys of warmer weather.
Kristina O’Neill [email protected]
@kristina_oneill
WSJ. Issue 108, June/July 2019, Copyright 2019, Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. See the magazine online at www.wsjmagazine.com. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. WSJ. Magazine is provided as a supplement to The Wall Street Journal for subscribers who receive delivery of the Saturday Weekend Edition and on newsstands. Individual copies can be purchased at wsjshop .com. For Customer Service, please call 1-800-JOURNAL (1-800-568-7625), send email to [email protected] or write us at: 200 Burnett Road, Chicopee, MA 01020. For advertising inquiries, please email us at [email protected]. For reprints, please call 800-843-0008, email customreprints@dowjones .com or visit our reprints web address at www.djreprints.com.
editor in Chief Kristina O’Neill Creative direCtor Magnus Berger
exeCutive editor Chris Knutsendeputy editor Elisa Lipsky-Karasz
digital direCtor Sarah Ball
fe atures
features direCtor Lenora Jane EstesartiCles editor Julie Coe
Culture editor Thomas Gebremedhin
art
design direCtor Pierre Tardifart direCtor Tanya Moskowitzsenior art direCtor Katie Field
photography
exeCutive photo direCtor Jennifer Pastorephoto editors Dana Kien, Noelle Lacombe
assistant photo editor Sara Morosi
fashion
style direCtor David Thielebeulesenior market editors Alexander Fisher,
Laura Stolofffashion assistants
Kevin Huynh, Natasha Marsh
production, copy & rese arch
produCtion direCtor Scott WhiteCopy Chief Ali Bahrampour
researCh Chief Randy HartwellCopy editor Clare O’Shea
researCh editors Laura Casey, Dacus Thompson
digital
digital editor Myles Tanzersenior platform editor Saira Khan
digital staff writer Lane Florsheimdigital visuals editor James Clarizio
contributing editors
Alex Bhattacharji, Michael Clerizo, Kelly Crow, Jason Gay, Andrew Goldman,
Shakthi Jothianandan, Howie Kahn, Joshua Levine, Sarah Medford,
Hope Brimelow Oliver, Esmé René, Christopher Ross, Fanny Singer
entertainment direCtor
Andrea Oliveri for Special Projects
Contributing Casting editor
Piergiorgio Del Moro
publishing
vp/publisher Anthony CennameassoCiate publisher Stephanie ArnoldassoCiate publisher/luxury Alberto E. Apodacaeurope direCtor/luxury Omblyne Pelierbusiness manager Vincent Shapiroluxury direCtors Robert D. Eisenhart iii, Richie Grin, Alana Scharlop, Megan Tompkins
(travel & design), Chloe WordenexeCutive fashion direCtor Jillian Maxwell events direCtor Scott Meriam marketing manager Sarah Hong marketing Coordinator Courtney Gallagher direCtor of integrated marketing/luxury
Emma Jenks-Daly
the wall street journal
editor in Chief Matt Murraysenior editor, features and wsj weekend Michael W. Miller
dow jones
Chief exeCutive offiCer William LewisChief revenue offiCer Josh Stinchcombevp & Chief marketing & membership offiCer Suzi Watfordevp print produCts and serviCes Frank FilippoChief CommerCial offiCer Kristin Heitmann svp finanCial John KennellyviCe presidents Robert Welch (b-to-b), Sara Mascall (teleCom & teCh), Luke Bahrenburg (real estate), Anna Foot (europe/asia), Colleen Schwartz (Corporate CommuniCations), Paul Cousineau (ad serviCes) ad serviCes, magazine manager Don Liskad serviCes, bureau assoCiate Tom Roggina
news corp
exeCutive Chairman Rupert MurdochChief exeCutive offiCer Robert Thomson
34 wsj. maga zine
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CONTRIBUTORS
LAURA COULSONPhotographer
Rainbow bRight p. 51
JAMIE HAWKESWORTHPhotographer
mYsteRY tRain p. 90
FRANCESCA MARIWriter
tRaCKeD: Regina hall p. 59
KAYLEEN SCHAEFERWriter
a staR is boRn p. 62
A PRACTICED EYE P. 66 For his 10th WSJ. cover shoot, photographer Mikael Jansson got personal: He headed to Italy to document the Tuscan home he owns with his wife, Lotta. Writer Joshua Levine accompanied him on the journey, noticing the strong link between Jansson’s photo-graphic style and the house’s interior design. “Someone used the phrase ‘refined simplicity’ to describe his aesthetic,” Levine says. “I can’t do better than that.” For Jansson, the experience of capturing the spaces was a mix of the familiar and the new. “It felt a bit different and special to shoot your own house for a magazine,” he says, but “the approach was pretty much the same as when I shoot fashion. My assistants flew down, and we shot for two days. We woke up at 5 in the morning, waited for the right light in each room. Like a normal shoot, but fewer people. It was fun!” —Christopher Ross
HOME FRONTlotta and mikael jansson in tuscany with their dogs Gigi and Gina.
36 wsj. maga zine
WSJ. asks six luminaries to weigh in on a single topic. This month: Sacrifice.
YukiekamiYa
“In this global world, communication is easier than ever. An individual is simply one tap away. As a curator, I’m at times required to be in frequent communication with artists. The office can be anywhere—on a train or in a cafe. Re- cently, I’ve been in weekly meetings with the Japanese architect duo Atelier Bow-Wow (Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto), working on an exhibition about Tokyo ahead of the 2020 Olympics. They are teaching, lecturing and executing projects together and separately all over the world. So when I meet with them via Skype, FaceTime or WeChat, we’re commu-nicating across different time zones. Their work hours extend until well after midnight. I’m willing to sacrifice personal time to ensure the best outcome for a project, but others may not see it the same way. Do we consider this to be a sacrifice or a means to satisfaction? Are we the victims of our communication?”
Kamiya is the director of the Japan Society Gallery.
“When we Iraqis express love and gratitude we say fidetak or fidwa. This means, ‘I wish to be sacrificed for you.’ It’s lovely on the personal level, but it’s scary to me when that moves to the public level. During the time when I was raised, under Saddam’s regime, there was this idea that one sacrificed for the sake of the nation. This concept was used as a way to manipulate and drive violent action. People chanted, ‘We sac- rifice our blood for you.’ It was scary. But I’m not one who believes in sacrifice. I left the country because I didn’t want to sacrifice my freedom to write. It’s not easy to leave home. I had 30 years of my life to put in one suitcase. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. I felt as though I had for- gotten something. I keep looking back think- ing, What did I forget to do or take? I keep looking back.”
DunYa mikhail
Mikhail is a journalist, poet and special lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan. Her poetry collection In Her Feminine Sign is out in July.
“Sacrifice is being aware of an alternate path and continuing on the one that might be less com-fortable, guided by some belief that the greater good is being served. I see true beauty in sac-rifice. I see something essential and elemental. You need to be humbled; you need to be remind-ed of your role in the lives of others. I’ve loved art by a lot of people that have been empiri-cally awful, and for a long time, I struggled with the dissonance between an artist’s beau- tiful vision of the world and the selling of a horrible lifestyle as a justification for it. The problem is how often the artist gets emulated rather than the art. The lifestyle becomes a prod- uct. But what’s being sacrificed is awareness, some kind of conscious-ness of one’s own individuality. It wasn’t the way I wanted to see myself, as this cliché. I needed help to come out on the other side.”
jeff tweeDY
Tweedy is a guitarist and the frontman of Wilco. The band’s music and art festival, Solid Sound, will take place in North Adams, Massachu-setts, June 28–30.
soapbox
the columnists
Welteroth is a journalist. Her memoir, More Than Enough, is out in June.
elaine welteroth
“My mother raised me with the notion that her job was to ensure I had it better than she did. That was her singular measurement for success as a parent. My respon-sibility was to live life as fully as possible. I think about the sacrifices my maternal grandpar-ents made too. They moved from Georgia to Rochester, New York, in order to provide their kids with more oppor-tunities. So I feel like my success is not just for me, it’s for all the women in my lineage. But this knowledge comes with an intense pressure that I think a lot of women, es- pecially women of color, put on themselves. The sacrifices I’ve made hard- ly compare to the sac- rifices of those who have come before me, so I nev-er really thought about them as sacrifices. The goal is to become aware of those sacrifices in order to make sure that they’re worth it and in line with your values.”
McCraney is a playwright and screenwriter. His drama series David Makes Man premieres on OWN in August.
tarell alvin mccraneY
“Sacrifice comes from the word sacred. When we talk about sacrifice, we’re talking about giv-ing up something that is highly valued and holy. There’s a driving nar-rative, especially in the commodification of art from people who live in the margins, that there needs to be some sort of sacrifice and grat- itude in order to make art. As an early artist, you may think, Thank goodness this person or institution feels that I’m worthy, and then work yourself to the bone. It’s problematic because art isn’t privileged. It’s essential to life. We’re told that we need to white-knuckle through a terrible situation, to endure someone’s ha- rassment or abuse, for instance, in order to achieve something greater. But those sacri-fices are not sacrifices, because you’re being forced or tricked into giving up something that you hold sacred. You’re being robbed more than you are being asked to sacrifice.”
“In any field one has to make sacrifices, but the restaurant and hotel industries require an extra, more personal kind of sacrifice. Often you must sacrifice time with your family or your social life so that others may enjoy themselves when they go out. I run restau- rants on three different continents; everyone comes to a restaurant with big expecta- tions, and you don’t ever want your reputation to suffer. That said, you shouldn’t complain, because it’s the life you chose. The goal is to draw a line, but it’s diffi-cult as to when—success just demands a little more. But even though I’m making a sacrifice, there are others in my life—my family, my friends—who are mak-ing bigger sacrifices so that I may be successful. I always appreciate that their sacrifices are bigger than mine.”
manish mehrotra
Mehrotra is the corporate chef of Indian Accent, which has locations in New York, London and New Delhi.
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39wsj. maga zine
by Thomas GebremedhinphoToGraphy by harris mizrahi
Artist Mika Rottenberg’s pointed, absurdist film and installa-
tion work gets a solo turn at New York’s New Museum.
MoviNg pictuRes
what’s news.june /july 2019
AT ONE POINT IN artist Mika Rottenberg’s new fi lm, Spaghetti Blockchain, the camera settles on an all-female throat-singing ensemble, whose voices carry across rolling green hills
on the Russian-Chinese border. It’s one in a series of o� beat scenes in the fi lm: the hum of servers at Swiss physics lab CERN, a hand smacking Jell-O, machin-ery plowing a potato fi eld. These dissimilar clips echo themes long present in Rottenberg’s work—notions of the body, the material world and the creation of value. Rottenberg approaches these topics with a certain play-fulness, twisting the familiar to emphasize the folly of modern life. In her world, women mash up cut fi nger-nails into maraschino cherries or stare at computers surrounded by garish infl atable toys. “Part of the humor is the complexity of the situation,” Rottenberg, 42, says.
“When you deal with heavy themes, [you must] allow for that. Otherwise I would just be an activist. As an artist you can play with both.”
Spaghetti Block-chain will feature in Rottenberg’s fi rst solo museum show
in New York, opening at the New Museum later this month. Titled Easypieces, it will also include sculp-tural works—a twitching ponytail poking through a wall, an air conditioner dripping into a potted plant—as odd and transfi xing as her fi lms. To watch one of Rottenberg’s videos is to be entranced, much as the people in them seem to be by the repetitious nature of their tasks, whether irritating oysters to make pearls or sneezing pasta onto plates. “There’s always been this Marxist or political reading, but her work is more invested in the disturbing and absurd qualities of labor,” says New Museum curator Margot Norton. In addition to Marx, artists like Martha Rosler and David Lynch also seem to infl uence Rottenberg, yet her work is something else entirely .
Rottenberg was born in post-Perón Buenos Aires , but her family moved to Tel Aviv when she was an infant. “[Tel Aviv] is a cool city, but it felt a bit small and pro-vincial,” she says. “When I was growing up everyone wanted to be American or European.” Rottenberg, meanwhile, wanted to be an artist.
In the late 1990s, she stud-ied painting at the Faculty of Arts–Hamidrasha at Beit Berl College, Israel, but she fi nished her undergraduate education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she trained under Marilyn Minter and Haim Steinbach. At the time, she projected comic books (manga, Disney) onto canvases and traced the characters’ contours, creating hybrid creatures. She came to realize that she was more interested in the research and source material than in the fi nished can-vas, so she transitioned to video. Minter “critiqued my videos very harshly. She even made me cry! But she was very invested—she cared,” says Rottenberg, who now teaches at SVA herself. “I gave her a really hard time,” Minter recalls. “I said, ‘You’re a much better painter.’ But after a while I said, ‘OK, this is your medium.’ Her work is rigorous. She has a real vision, and she doesn’t let anything get in her way.”
After earning her degree from SVA in 2001, Rottenberg got an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 2004. She had her fi rst solo New York gallery show at Nicole Klagsbrun in 2006, and over the next few years her work appeared at institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art and New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Then in 2012, Rottenberg signed on with Andrea Rosen Gallery, which helped her reach new heights. She premiered her fi lm NoNoseKnows, shot in part at a pearl farm in China, at the 2015 Venice Biennale and had a solo show in 2016 at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo. When the gallery closed in 2017, it was dev-astating. “It was like losing your job,” Rottenberg says.
But she focused on her practice and delved deeper into her signature themes . This past winter the interna-tional gallery of Hauser & Wirth announced worldwide representation of Rottenberg, whose art has taken on extra signifi cance given current debates around glo-balization and women’s rights. “It was [all] hidden before, it wasn’t so much in the news,” she says, refer-ring to her 2017 fi lm Cosmic Generator, which she shot in part at the U.S.-Mexico border. “All these things I’ve been obsessing about are suddenly in the headlines.” But for now her energies are on the New Museum show. “I can’t be cool about it,” Rottenberg says, laughing. “I invest a lot in each piece. It takes one to two years. So when I present it’s a big thing. ”
OUT OF THE BOX From far le� : A still from Mika Rottenberg’s Cosmic Generator (2017); the artist’s Ponytail (Orange) (2016); AC and Plant (2018).
“SHE HAS A REAL VISION,
AND SHE DOESN’T LET
ANYTHING GET IN HER WAY.”
–MARILYN MINTER
40 WSJ. MAGA ZINE
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ALL CLEARBlack heels with PVC or
Lucite accents are a sheer delight this spring.
From top: Sam Edelman; Balmain; Marc Jacobs; Christian Dior; Jimmy
Choo. For details see Sources, page 106.
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what’s news
In March, chef James Kent and his restaurateur partner, Jeff Katz, opened Crown Shy, an elegant but casual 120-seat restaurant on
the ground floor of 70 Pine Street, an 87-year-old art deco skyscraper in Manhattan’s Financial District. Later this summer, Kent and Katz will add an ambitious fine-dining concept and a bar on the top floors of the 970-foot-tall building, which once housed offices for executives at Cities Service (now known as Citgo) and later AIG.
MN Design Professional Corpora-tion, which has designed multiple New York City restaurants, including Crown Shy, will reconceive the multilevel space as the restaurant SAGA (an acro-nym of the first initials of Kent’s and Katz’s children; they each have two) and the yet-to-be-named bar. SAGA will encompass a 50-seat private dining room on the 62nd floor, a 52-seat main dining room on the 63rd floor and a 20-person private-event space on the 66th floor, which offers panoramic
views of the city and beyond. The 24-seat bar will occupy the 64th floor and serve cocktails and small plates. Each of the floors has outdoor space. “Imagine being able to eat three or four courses of your meal on one of these balconies,” says Kent. “We’ll have the ability to move all 52 guests in the main dining room onto one of them for a part of the night.”
Kent, 40, spent the past decade working for Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, first as chef de cuisine at Eleven Madison Park and then as executive chef at The NoMad. Katz, 37, has worked at Del Posto for 13 years and still serves as a co–managing partner. Discussing his eight-course tasting menu, Kent says he’ll explore concepts he hopes to elevate. “One course will be progressive, one playful, one family style, one abundant, one traditional,” he says. Katz explains the intended mood: “It will feel like you’re at a party in an incredible penthouse.” crownshy.nyc. —Howie Kahn
food net work
THE SKY’S THE LIMITThis summer, chef James Kent and his business partner, Jeff Katz,
debut an elevated concept in one of Manhattan’s most storied buildings.
NEW HEIGHTS From top: restau-rateur Jeff katz (left) and chef James kent at their new restaurant, sAGA, at 70 pine street in new york; fluke tartare with caviar and sea urchin. photography by ike edeani; prop styling by kate Berry.
41wsj. maga zine
facts & stats
galaxy’s EDgE
food vENdorSat which to dine on such delicacies as smoked kaadu ribs or Fried endorian tip-yip: oga’s Cantina, Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo, ronto roasters, milk stand and kat saka’s kettle.
5
acrESthe size of star Wars: Galaxy’s edge in each park—the largest single-themed expansions in Disney parks history.14
HourSApproximate running time of new music in the set list spun by DJ r-3X in oga’s Cantina, including Bith jazz, dubstep by droids and Jawa pop. 3
combINaTIoNS Variations on the lightsaber that can be
customized at the build-it-yourself workshop.
122,880
100fEETthe approximate length of the
millennium Falcon, the galaxy’s fastest hunk of junk,
which welcomes visitors to the new smugglers run ride.
New attractions opening now at California’s Disneyland and in august at Florida’s Walt Disney World will transport Star Wars
fans to the remote planet of Batuu. Here, a visitor’s guide to the inter
galactic experience. —Darryn King
JobSthe number of new construction and artisan
positions created by Disneyland for the duration of the site’s development.
6,700
42 wsj. maga zine
what’s news
trend report
rosy outlookWatches with rose-gold cases keep pace with the times.
tick talk Clockwise from left: Zenith, Bulgari, Breitling, Audemars Piguet, Rolex, Patek Philippe. For details see Sources, page 106.
PhotograPhy by ryan Jenq fashion editor alexander fisher ProP styling by yolande gagnier
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WHAT’S NEWS
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At what battery percentage do you feel compelled to charge your phone?
Whenever it goes red. I purposefully don’t have the actual percentage on my
homescreen as it would stress me out.
Are there times when you try to stay o� your phone entirely?
Yes, I activate Do Not Disturb when I’m meditating. I also try not to use my
phone once I enter the locker room, usually one and a half hours before a game.
First app checked in the morningApple News.
Favorite fi tness app TeamBuildr. Our fi tness coach uploads
our fi tness and lifting program to the app so we can follow it easily.
Game you wish you could delete I only have solitaire, and I’m glad I have it
to waste time on fl ights.
Most-recent Uber trip From Finney’s Crafthouse & Kitchen in Santa Barbara, California, to Kimpton
Canary Hotel. 1.01 miles. $6.95. (I’m real-izing how lazy I seem with this.)
Most-niche app you depend on Mint, to stay organized with my fi nances.
Favorite podcast I can’t choose one: The Joe Rogan
Experience, Nutrition Facts With Dr. Greger and NPR Politics Podcast.
Siri user? No, I’ve never tried Siri.
Favorite Instagram feeds @natgeo, @doggosdoingthings,
@glennondoyle, @jerixrose (my sister).
Strangest autocorrect mishap My husband’s name gets autocorrected
to all sort of things. I guess Apple doesn’t recognize Servando as a real word?
Outgoing voicemail message I actually have no idea, but most of the time it’s too full for anyone to leave a voicemail.
Craziest place you’ve left your phone In a bathroom stall. I had to wait until
someone left to grab it. I know, defi nitely not sanitary.
App you wish someone would invent A platform for all adoptable dogs, oppor-
tunities for volunteer work at shelters, shelter needs (dog toys, blankets, etc.).
Favorite ringtone The old-school phone ring.
BIGGEST TIME-WASTING APP: “ INSTAGRAM.”
MOST-USED APP:
“MESSAGES.”
HOMESCREEN: “MY HUSBAND,
ME AND OUR DOG, BLUE,
WATCHING THE SUNSET.”
The co-captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, which is competing in this summer’s FIFA
Women’s World Cup, shares what’s on her phone.
THE DOWNLOAD
ALEX MORGAN
4 4
ACHROMATIC SCALE Clockwise from top le� : Pierre Hardy shoes; Dior dress; Michael Kors Collection boot; Stella McCartney jacket; Oscar de la Renta bag. For details see Sources, page 106.
This season, opposites attract with bold black-and-white dressing.
SHARP CONTRAST
details see Sources, page 106.
VALENTINO
HERMÈS
WSJ. MAGA ZINE
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LIBATIONS
COGNAC’S COMEBACK
Cocktail recipes starring the grape-based spirit are being rediscovered.
THE FRENCH 75 is a quintessential champagne cocktail, a fi zzy mix of bubbly, gin, lemon juice and sugar. But an early, lesser-knownrecipe for the concoction employs another
French import instead of the gin: cognac, the grape-based brandy that was once among the most ubiquitous spirits in mixed drinks. By the early 1900s, when the French 75 was introduced, cognac wasn’t so common, partially due to the mid-1800s phylloxera epidemic,which had diminished production. Yet Chris Hannah, co-owner of the New Orleans bar Jewel of the South, believes that cognac was actually the French 75’s original base spirit. Hannah makes his French 75swith Charles de Cazanove Brut Champagne and D’Ussé VSOP, which he fi nds better complements the fl avors of lemon and sugar than gin does. Cognac is now in the throes of a renaissance, and many old brandy-based recipes for drinks like the Sazerac and the mint julep are being resurrected. Here are three cognacs for mix-ing old-school cocktails anew. —Chadner Navarro
MARTELL VSOP
For its version of a Sazerac, the Athens bar Baba
Au Rum uses Martell VSOP, an aged cognac
with bright, fruity aromas, a so� , subtle
mouthfeel and a spicy fi nish. $47
HENNESSY V.S A mix of more than 40 eaux
de vie, this bold, woody cognac is
the choice of Vancouver’s
Botanist Bar for its Sunshine Tax, a mint julep–style
drink featuring regional plums and pears. $35
D’USSÉ VSOP This cognac’s
dry, oaky profi le comes to life
when built into Jewel of the
South’s French 75, where its
notes of almond, fl oral honey and
cinnamon mingle well with other
ingredients. $52
OBJECT OF DESIRE
BUBBLY PERSONALITYChampagne is always a good idea, but how can it be better? Let it breathe, says vintner Jean-Charles Boisset, whose Passion Collection Champagne Decanter,
designed for Baccarat, dissipates the more vigorous bubbles and leaves what Boisset deems the most sophisticated ones. (Try it with the Charles Heidsieck Blanc des
Millénaires Brut 1985, $590.) Thirty to 45 minutes of decanting, says Boisset, “gives another dimension to champagne.” 800-221-6330 to preorder. —Ted Loos
CRYSTAL BALL Baccarat’s Passion
Collection Champagne Decanter, designed
by winemaker Jean-Charles Boisset.
DOWN TO EARTH
Summer’s nail colors—creamy terracotta, golden orange, dusty lavender—
channel the painted desert. From far le� : Olive
& June, Deborah Lippmann, J. Hannah, Chanel, Dior
(top), Essie. For details see Sources, page 106.
D’USSÉ VSOP
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what’s news
46 wsj. maga zine
ItalIan Style
The southern stretch of Italy’s Puglia region, set between the Ionian and Adriatic seas, is spare but beautiful country that insiders love to keep to themselves. That’s getting harder
to do, however. “Fifteen years ago, it was tumble-weeds,” says Irish designer Deborah Nolan, who owns Tulsishop, a series of boutiques in the area. “There were no foreign voices. The [local] airport was basically a shed.” That airport, in Brindisi, was upgraded in 2018, and the fast train from Rome has now arrived. And yet, “there’s still a stillness,” Nolan notes. “Even as it gets busier, it’s a certain interesting, conscious person who ends up here.” And quietly stylish places to stay have started opening to meet the demand. Early this year, in the town of Nardò, French Michelin-starred chef Guy Martin and his TV-producer wife, Katherina Marx, debuted the 10-room Palazzi Maritati e Muci (above) in a pair of centuries-old frescoed structures, with a former Saint Laurent art director helping to place furnishings by Ico Parisi, Gio Ponti, Tobia Scarpa and others. This spring, the team behind Rome’s G-Rough hotel opened Palazzo Daniele, reimagining an 1861 neoclassical house in Gagliano del Capo as a nine-suite, contemporary art–filled retreat. And slightly farther north, near Fasano, the 16th-century Masseria Torre Maizza is now in the hands of British-Italian hotelier Rocco Forte, whose nearly $7 million, eight-month-long redo of the 40-room resort was completed last month. —Andrew Sessa
southern Puglia, the long, narrow heel of italy’s boot, has seen a rise in chic retreats.
the shif t
spreading the healthnew York City’s Flatiron district is becoming a wellness epicenter, with startups
settling in the blocks between Union and Madison squares. in between facials at rescue spa, classes at exhale and lunch at abcV, type-a new Yorkers can turn
to a C-suite of holistic medical and fitness experts. “it’s the best neighborhood in the world for health and wellness concepts to debut,” says amanda Freeman, co-founder of exercise studio stretch*d. “the mix of clientele and the density of
offices and residential buildings are unparalleled.” —Mia Adorante
1. Wthn This acupuncture, cupping and herbal medicine studio offers à la carte and membership options.
2. Stretch*d Co-founded by Freeman, the CEO of fitness brand SLT, this stretching studio makes the afterthought of most workouts the main event.
3. Harklinikken At this hair-loss clinic imported from Denmark, there’s a lab that allows clients’ custom topical solutions to be mixed on-site.
4. Trellis The self-described “Equinox of fertility” pairs its egg-freezing clients with a health coach, fertility specialist, nurse and nutritionist.
5. Parsley Health This doctor’s office/cafe aims to redefine primary care with a person-first, root-cause approach. “We love being so close to our friends in the startup and wellness communities,” says CEO Dr. Robin Berzin of the neighborhood.
6. Kindbody Women’s health and fertility will come to-gether at this soon-to-open center aimed at democratizing egg freezing and IVF.
7. The Well This members-only club with a gym, spa and restaurant is led by chief medical officer Dr. Frank Lipman. It will offer a wide range of East-meets-West healing when it opens in July. Terms and conditions may apply. Hyatt Zilara™ and Hyatt Ziva™ trademarks and related marks are trademarks of Hyatt Corporation or its a� liates. ©2019 Hyatt Corporation.
©2019 Playa Hotels & Resorts is the owner and exclusive operator of Hyatt Zilara™ and Hyatt Ziva™ resorts in Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico. All rights reserved. PLA04600419
CONTACT YOUR PREFERRED TRAVEL ADVISOR | 800.720.0051 | R E S O R T S B Y H YA T T. C O M
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OCEANFRONT TWO-STORY CABANAS
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WHAT’S NEWS
STUDY IN DESIGN
PERRIAND GETS PERSONAL
ON THE SCENTNatural deodorant upstart
Corpus has collaborated with skin-care line True Botanicals on
a new neroli-laced stick. Its orange-blossom aroma nods to
both companies’ West Coast roots. “We wanted to evoke a California
spirit,” says Corpus founder J.P. Mastey. $22; corpusnaturals.com.
—Fiorella Valdesolo
When the exhibition Charlotte Perriand opens this fall at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the work of the pioneering French architect (1903–1999) will be in the public eye. A more intimate story
is told in the forthcoming book Living With Charlotte Perriand (Skira Paris, $50). Edited by specialist François La� anour, of Paris’s Galerie Downtown, the volume is a fi eld guide to Perriand’s furni-
ture as it appears in collectors’ homes (above). —Sarah Medford
TIME MACHINES
Introduced in 2000, Chanel’s J12 watch took its name from the J class of America’s Cup yachts. The timepiece has been updated for its 20th anniver-sary, with an all-ceramic case and a newly engineered automatic movement, but the design retains its sporty style, inspired by the sloops’ silhouettes. For details see Sources, page 106.
BRITISH FARE
WHEN WE walked in, we knew we had to win this site,” says chef James Lowe of the Borough Market space where
he and restaurateur John Ogier will open Flor, their anticipated bakery, restaurant and wine bar, in June. For devotees of Lyle’s, the Shoreditch restau-rant Lowe debuted in 2014 that serves dishes with mainly British ingredients, Flor will be more accessible, feature imported ingredients and be open all day. Its “bread-led” menu concept will include house-made treats by Anna Higham, pastry chef at Lyle’s, like viennoiserie and birch syrup kouign-amann at breakfast. The lunch menu has a cured Mangalitsa pork and Comté sandwich in fermented potato bread. Flor’s dinner o� erings include lamb ribs with yogurt and black lime, paired primarily with sustainably produced European wines. Designed by James Beard Award–winning fi rm The MP Shift, Flor’s interiors boast original double-height Crittall Victorian windows. Guests will recognize Lowe’s subtle culi-nary style, an approach that won Lyle’s a Michelin star and slot No. 38 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2018. Lowe says Flor o� ers a “smaller, more laid-back space, but with a big personality.” fl orlondon .com. —Tarajia Morrell
THE RESTAURATEUR AND THE CHEF BEHIND THE LONDON RESTAURANT LYLE’S BRING FLOR TO BOROUGH MARKET.
48
HOT LINE
For the Dior Men’s
summer 2019 show,
artist KAWS re- imagined
his BFF fi gure as
a towering avatar of Mr. Dior himself.
Now Dior is selling the
character as a limited-
edition doll, dressed in either
a smoking jacket
or Japanese denim.
For details see Sources, page 106.
wsj. maga zine
Marco Bicego’s Unico necklaces, like many of the Italian jeweler’s pieces, were inspired by far-flung journeys.
jewelry Box
strand tour
Jeweler Marco Bicego’s collections are often paeans to landscapes around the world: His Siviglia pieces feature beads that mimic the cobblestone streets of Seville, Spain, while the Jaipur set borrows the Indian city’s vibrant colors. For the two Unico necklaces featured here, hand-engraved in Bicego’s head-quarters in Trissino, Italy, he drew on travels through the Middle East and North Africa. The gold necklace at far left, set with rough-cut diamonds and pearls, was inspired by desert sands, while the piece at near left, strung with green tourma-lines and diamonds, celebrates Africa’s natural gemstones. For details see Sources, page 106. —Christopher Ross
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBIN STEINFASHION EDITOR LAURA STOLOFFPROP STYLING BY MARGARET MACMILLAN JONES
Forget the world.Discover yours.
wsj. maga zine 51
photography by Laura CouLson
styLIng by CLare byrne
A carefree island adventure
calls for laid-back dressing
in floaty silks or sleek swimsuits.
RAINBOw BRIGHT
GOOD TRIPA psychedelic pattern takes a shirtdress to new places. Gucci dress, Sophie Buhai earrings and Bottega Veneta heels.
market report.june /july 2019
market report
52
FINE PRINTS Pattern and color evoke a dreamy tropical
sojourn. From left: Mugler dress, Valentino hat and Prada boots; Ralph Lauren
turtleneck and skirt, Chloé coat and (from top) Tohum and Alighieri necklaces.
wsj. maga zine
LACED UP Reimagine a classic silhouette. Louis Vuitton turtleneck, Chloé skirt and boots, Sophie Buhai earrings, Dior necklace, Mounser pearl bracelet and Alighieri ring, bangles and belt.
market report
54
SHORE LEAVE There’s something for everyone on summer days. Clock- wise from left: Dolce & Gabbana blazer and shirt, Eres swim brief, Paco Rabanne skirt, Sophie Buhai earring and Alighieri bracelet; Burberry shirt and headscarf; Bottega Veneta coat and heels, Matteau bikini set and Sophie Buhai earrings and anklet.
wsj. maga zine
BEFORE SUNSET Dip a toe into adventurous style. Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress and Sophie Buhai earrings.
market report
56 wsj. maga zine
CURRENT AFFAIR Jump into the season with beach-ready looks. From left: Prada dress and boots, Valentino hat and (from top) Dior and Tohum bracelets and Alighieri bangles; Hermès sweater, Eres bathing suit and Sophie Buhai earring.
market report
57wsj. maga zine
BLUE CRUSH A simple dress will blow them away. Balenciaga dress, heels and bracelet. Model, Jordan Daniels at The Society Manage- ment; hair, Shingo Shibata; makeup, Emi Kanako. For details see Sources, page 106.
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“By refi nancing my student loans with First Republic, I’ll be debt free in less than four years.”
M O R G A N B U S H
Attorney
wsj. maga zine 59
If I had realIzed how difficult it would be, I might not have done it,” Regina Hall says of act-ing. Although Hall, 48, has worked consistently for more than two decades, it’s her midcareer
roles that have garnered her a new level of recogni-tion. First came the surprise 2017 box office hit Girls Trip, co-starring Queen Latifah, Tiffany Haddish and Jada Pinkett Smith. Shortly after, Hall played the lead in the critically acclaimed independent film Support the Girls, a feel-good comedy about a compassionate bar manager. The one-two punch coincided with the mainstreaming of black Hollywood. For much of her career, Hall appeared in projects that proved popu-lar (and profitable) with black audiences, including classics like Love & Basketball and The Best Man. But recently films with majority–African American casts, like Get Out and Black Panther, have been shattering box office records. As a result, the stars of such bold dramas and comedies are being tapped for even more big-budget studio projects. This month, for instance, Hall plays alongside Samuel L. Jackson in Shaft, director Tim Story’s sequel to the 1971 hit blaxploi-tation film by the same name. (Hall had previously appeared in Story’s 2012 Think Like a Man.) “It’s wonderful to see people [you’ve worked with] get different opportunities,” Hall says. “Box office really dictates what you’re able to do next.”
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Hall decided to commit to acting in her 20s, when her father’s sud-den death, from a stroke, made her re-evaluate the direction of her life. A journalism student at New York University at the time, Hall finished her mas-ter’s degree in 1995 and then auditioned for two years before being cast in a McDonald’s ad. Three years later, when she was 29, she appeared in her breakout role as high school student Brenda Meeks in the 2000 go-for-broke horror parody Scary Movie. The film was so successful that it launched a blockbuster fran-chise with four sequels. Since then, Hall has never wanted for work, but her ascent has been slow and steady. “Life beats you into understanding patience. It’s a violent, brutal bashing,” she says.
Nine years ago, the actress had considered leaving acting to pursue a religious vocation, but she was turned away, in part for being too old. Spirituality is “where I feel my deepest connection or emotions. It’s the whole reason I’m here,” she says, referring to her acting career. Her spirituality guided her into the profession and enabled her to thrive in it, connecting her with the experiences of others. “I try to look at every character through a lens of compassion and not judgment—sometimes [it’s] easier to do with a char-acter than in real life.” In some ways Hall’s life has changed with her higher profile, but in other ways it’s the same. “My mom still has me going down to the grocery store all the time. I’m like, ‘Mommy, I don’t want [people] to take pictures.’ She’s like, ‘Nobody’s gonna want any pictures. Just go down and get me some butter!’ ” >
BY francesca Mari PhotograPhY BY celeste sloMan
The actress, who has been a staple in comedy films for two decades, is entering a new phase of her career.
regIna halltracked
class act Regina Hall at New York’s Crosby Street Hotel in a Self-Portrait dress.
the exchange.june /july 2019
$140 millionThe total worldwide box office gross of
Girls Trip.
30–40pages
The portion of a script she reads to deter-mine whether she’s interested in it.
$30,000 The approximate residuals Hall earned
from her first acting gig, a line in a late-’90s McDonald’s commercial:
“And some McDonald’s fries!”
39films
The number of movies, including a handful of TV productions, in which she has acted.
4weeks
The time Hall spent in Atlanta on the set of Shaft.
9years
The period of time that meditation has been a part of Hall’s self-care routine.
$540The day rate she was paid for her first prime-time TV show appearance, on
New York Undercover in 1997.
60 wsj. maga zine
the e xchange tracked
3pairs
The sets of thin gold hoops that Hall buys when she shops at Claire’s. She makes sure
she always has spares on hand. •
3phone conversations
The number per day Hall has with her mom, Ruby, who lives in Georgia.
9:40 a.m.On her way to her second interview on Good Morning America.
12:03 p.m.Hall on a taping of Viceland’s Sauce Talk.
4:52 p.m.Following a break in her hotel room (during which Hall takes calls about scripts), she sits for makeup touch-ups for her final interview of the day.
7:28 a.m.Hall stops to take selfies with fans on her way into ABC’s studio for two interviews with Good Morning America.
6:47 a.m.After getting her hair and makeup done, Hall puts on the first of many outfits planned for a full day of press interviews to promote her film Little.
6:16 p.m.Seth Meyers greets Hall in her dressing room before her appearance on Late Night.
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62
the e xchange
The film Booksmart begins with a close-up of Beanie Feldstein, as Molly, the valedicto-rian of her high school class. She glowers, with her jaw clenched and eyes closed, as she
prepares for a final day in the trenches with her fellow (and supposedly inferior) classmates. They partied instead of studying and won’t be going to Yale, like her.
In real life, Feldstein, who has her hair clipped to the side, gold rings on almost every finger and an impeccable complexion, is awestruck by her first star-ring role. “The film starts, like, on my face,” she says.
At 25, she still goes by the nickname given to her as an infant—her birth certificate says Elizabeth—and, unlike Molly, she doesn’t look down on others. “There are so many people that are naturally gifted or intensely talented and don’t get to do what I get to do,” she says. “I’m not taking this for granted, any little step of it.” Post Booksmart, she’s also starring in an adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s best-selling novel How to Build a Girl.
Feldstein is all hugs, laughs and compliments. The list of people and things she adores is extensive. It includes the recent Broadway production of the musical Oklahoma!, her college experience as a soci-ology major at Wesleyan University (“I really fell in love with academics,” she says) and the gold name-plate Booksmart necklace she’s wearing. She and Booksmart co-star Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Molly’s ride-or-die, Amy, also got matching ones for director Olivia Wilde and writer Katie Silberman.
Booksmart, out now, is a teen comedy with nonstop jokes, but it’s also got emotional heft. It’s about seeing other people as individuals instead of stereotypes. It’s about fumbling with your sexuality. And at its center, it’s a love story between two best friends, Molly and Amy. After Molly realizes that the peers she’d dis-missed as dummies also got into good schools, she convinces Amy to cram in all of the party ing they missed into one final night of high school.
Feldstein was drawn to Booksmart because “my female friendships are the center of my universe,” she says. She’s excited by the recent uptick in movies about BFFs, like Bridesmaids, Girls Trip and Lady Bird, the 2017 film she had a supporting role in. “There can never be too many female friendship stories, as far as I’m concerned,” she says. “I hope there are thousands.”
Feldstein told Wilde she saw Booksmart as a love story when they first met to talk about the movie at Cafe Un Deux Trois in Times Square. They were both on breaks from the respective Broadway shows they were starring in—Wilde was in 1984; Feldstein in Hello, Dolly!—and Wilde approached the film in the
BY KaYleen Schaefer photograph BY KatIe MccUrDY
Following her supporting role in 2017’s Lady Bird, Beanie Feldstein is front and center in Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart.
A STAR IS BORNScReen tIMe
same light. “We were discussing this ballsy comedy as though it were The English Patient,” Wilde says. “I remember skipping out of the restaurant and high-fiving the sky.”
Feldstein never thought she’d act in films. Since she was 5, she wanted to be on Broadway. She pursued the dream by doing up to five musicals a year, in high school at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and at Stagedoor Manor summer camp in the Catskills. But her Broadway debut was set up by a film. In Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Feldstein played the devoted best friend, Julie, who gets the lead in the school musical (Merrily We Roll Along). The film’s producers were also in charge of the Hello, Dolly! Broadway revival starring Bette Midler and, after seeing Feldstein in the musical within a movie, asked her to audition for the shopgirl Minnie Fay. “Talk about turning points,” she says. “Getting Hello, Dolly! through Lady Bird very much changed my life in sort of every single way.”
Feldstein is the younger sister and best friend of director and actor Jonah Hill. There are nine and a half years between them, but the age gap didn’t pre-vent them from becoming close. He often calls her his hero. “People think I’m being over the top. I’m dead-ass serious,” says Hill, who has a tattoo on his forearm that says hello, beanie!, an homage to his sister’s Broadway debut. “The things I struggle with she had knocked down when she was 14.”
Feldstein is comfortable with who she is and adamant about not trying to contort herself into some-thing she’s not. “I was told very young that my body was different than the norm, slightly,” she says. “And I think for a while that plagued me.” But when she was 17, she realized that she could only be herself, and ever since she’s had a personal motto: “They either want the Bean or they don’t want the Bean.”
In Booksmart, there are several gay characters, including Amy, but whom they want to date is treated like “the eighth thing about them,” Feldstein says. “That they’re smart, funny and weird in all sorts of different ways is amazing because it just shows more queer characters on-screen in a way that is exactly how they appear in real life, which is, they’re funny, brilliant, weird and special, just like how everyone else on this planet is.” The choice to not make sexuality a defining quality has resonated with early viewers. At the question-and-answer session after the SXSW Film Festival premiere in Austin, Texas, a young woman told the cast how much it meant to see gay characters who were more than just the gay characters. Her can-dor inspired Feldstein to speak publicly about her own sexuality, even though she treats it the same way it’s
presented in the movie: It’s not the most important thing about her. “It was really meaningful for me to watch the film,” Feldstein told the crowd. “My partner is a woman.”
“One of my gifts is an openness and an emotional authenticity,” Feldstein says, recalling that moment. “Sometimes, like with that girl, I was like, I’m not gonna not address it, because it is my truth. I only do it when it feels right, but she got up there and she was like, ‘Thank you for making a film that I feel really represented by.’ And it’s actually not how I represent, because I wasn’t gay in high school. I’m just in love with a woman right now, and forever, I think, but Amy’s high school experience wasn’t mine. I found myself a little bit later, but I feel like, I’m moved by it too, and how could I not say that?”
The movie is bound to be compared to Superbad, the 2007 comedy about two male best friends in high school that starred Hill and Michael Cera. Feldstein and Dever actually decided to live together during the Booksmart shoot because Hill told Feldstein that he thought his and Cera’s on-screen friendship was suc-cessful because they’d become close before filming. She mentioned this to Wilde and Dever at their first lunch as a trio, and Wilde joked, “You guys should get an apartment together.”
“Kaitlyn and I sat back and looked at each other and were like, Would you be down? Because I’d be down,” Feldstein says.
Most of the shoot was at night, so they had black-out curtains in their West Hollywood apartment and would sleep during the day. “Then we’d eat pancakes and watch Gilmore Girls in our pajamas and run lines and then go back to work,” Feldstein says.
Hill says if their career trajectories were reversed, he wouldn’t have tried to follow his sister with a simi-lar role. “My insecurity would lead me to be like, I’m going nowhere near anything like that,” he says. “And she’s such a baller. With two middle fingers up, she’s like, ‘Oh word, yeah, Jonah was in Superbad? OK, cool, I’m going to make this movie that’s as good if not bet-ter and be better than him in it.’ ”
Feldstein and Hill recently had lunch with their mom and a few family members in New York. On his way to the restaurant, Hill passed the Angelika Film Center and noticed a Booksmart poster outside. After lunch he suggested they go back to see the poster, something their family used to do with his early roles. So they did, and took turns posing in front of it. “I would worry about anyone else about to go through what she’s about to go through in the world,” he says, “except for her.” •
wsj. maga zine
LEADING LADY “There can never be too many female friendship stories, as far as I’m concerned,” says Feldstein, who stars, alongside Kaitlyn Dever, in Booksmart, out now, as well as in the upcoming film How to Build a Girl. “I hope there are thousands.” Carolina Herrera dress, Laura Lombardi earrings and Feldstein’s own rings. Hair, Peter Butler; makeup, Matin; fashion editor, Laura Stoloff. For details see Sources, page 106.
WANT TO BE LED ASTRAY?
Fresh blooms cut from the roadside near Mikael and Lotta Jansson’s Tuscan
villa brighten a corner of the living room.
TENDER BLOSSOMS
deep Seated The living room features a sofa designed in 1934 by Josef Frank. The rug is from Märta Måås-Fjetterström; the chest and chandelier were found at the Arezzo flea market.
A Practiced Eye Photographer Mikael Jansson and his wife, Lotta, found the ideal Tuscan retreat for gathering friends and family—and a perfect canvas for their shared passion for decorating homes.
by Joshua Levine PhoToGRaPhy by MikaeL Jansson
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Calling Mikael and Lotta Jansson’s Tuscan retreat a hideaway is some-thing of an understatement. Even with precise GPS coordinates it’s easy to drive past the weathered iron gate deep in the shadow of some big trees mark-
ing the entrance. Beyond the gate, a winding dirt track runs up a hill to another iron gate, which leads you, after a time, to a handsome farmhouse in brick and the yellowish stone that predominates in this region of Italy. Towering cypresses and ancient olive trees ring a wide front lawn, which looks out over a pleasant valley toward nearby ski slopes, still car-peted with snow in April. To paraphrase the French expression, more Tuscan than this and you die.
Mikael Jansson, 60, has had a highly success-ful career taking photographs—of fashion, mostly, but also of rock musicians and actors and Formula 1 drivers and, in a recent project that has gripped his emotions, of Swedish survivors of the Holocaust.
(He is also a regular contributor to this magazine; this issue marks his 10th cover story for WSJ.) He’s lived in places all over the world, and he and his wife, Lotta, still have houses in a few of them, like London, where the couple now lives most of the time; just outside Stockholm, where they come from; and, in Stockholm’s outer archipelago, a primitive cabin on some bare rocks, where the Janssons like to go full Swede. There’s no electricity and no running water, and when you’re outside, Mikael says, you’d best keep the house between you and the sharp wind. “You really don’t need to heat it,” he says.
The Tuscan place is altogether different, less for-bidding, sweeter tempered and made for welcoming family and friends around the long, marble-topped refectory table that the Janssons found in Forte dei Marmi and cut to fit into their cavernous kitchen. After all these years, the couple has gone Italian. “The Swedish house is almost nothing—pure form, but with such poetry,” says the creative director Fabien
Baron, who has known the Janssons a long time. “So I was surprised when they bought the Tuscan house. I said to myself, Ooh, he’s got a sunny side.”
Mikael and Lotta told me about finding the house over the kind of foundational lunch you move to Tuscany to eat. The couple’s daughter Kim, a film producer down from Stockholm, had roasted the eggplants and zucchini (another daughter, Billie, also lives in Stockholm, where she works at a photog-raphy agency). The oil came from the Janssons’ 500 or so olive trees, and the pecorino came from just up the road, where a cheese maker uses milk from his own sheep—“You don’t find that much these days,” says Mikael. Lotta made the bread herself. “Italy is a great coffee country, but it’s not a great bread coun-try,” she says.
The Janssons had their “We will always love Sweden, but Italy—whoa!” moment after visiting a friend’s place in Piedmont. There ensued an Italian boot–wide hunt for the ideal house. Piedmont was
HEARTH OF THE MATTER The kitchen, formerly upstairs, was moved to a space on the main floor that once housed livestock. The refectory table is from a monastery
in Forte dei Marmi; the stove at right was found in Birmingham, England. The floors are reclaimed stone; the ceiling is original.
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appealing, but its mountains and the winter chill felt too close to home. They flirted with Umbria but also pronounced its deep forests “a bit too Swedish,” says Lotta. Tuscany was just right, but perfection posed its own kind of problem.
“We looked at a house in San Gimignano, and we were shocked,” says Mikael.
“The bus tours!” says Lotta.“We were like, Oh, my God!” says Mikael. The villa we’re now sitting in managed to avoid
those drawbacks and some other ones, too. It’s pro-tected against an easy onslaught of tourists, lying roughly two hours from Florence and two hours from Rome. It is secluded but not cut off. The Janssons love catching and smoking their own fish on their Baltic rock, but here in Tuscany, says Mikael, you want a good trattoria close at hand, and Montepulciano is just down the road. “We looked at houses on top of a hill, but we didn’t want to be that remote,” says Mikael. “I think a house on a hill is weird,” says
Lotta. “Everyone can see you!”The Janssons knew they didn’t want to rebuild
a ruin, and this house was in sturdy shape, albeit execrably decorated. Moreover, its owner was a lone Belgian; buying an old house from a big Italian fam-ily often means combing the world to track down its many owners. The sale closed relatively smoothly in October 2014, and despite the area’s Unesco World Heritage status, permits for renovation work arrived after no more than the standard bureaucratic tor-ture. (“They do love to stamp things here,” notes Lotta phlegmatically.)
Work on the interior has dragged on since then and isn’t entirely finished. Except it’s unfair to say “dragged on,” which suggests it’s been a burden. It is impossible to peer into any marriage, but this one looks custom-made to collaborate on a home. They are a well-matched pair: He is slight but athletic; she is tall and stately. He tends to let sentences trail off and seems genuinely grateful to let her step in to
finish them. And this is not the couple’s first resi-dential undertaking. “I love houses,” says Mikael. “I could easily have 10 more houses.” “You always need a new project,” says Lotta.
The Janssons did almost everything themselves and had a pretty good idea of how they wanted to con-figure the space when they started. They found the 16th-century hearth for the living room in Holland. The hulking antique stove in the kitchen was brought over from Birmingham, England, and reassembled from rusty pieces. Nearly everything in the house, with the exception of the metal windows, is either original or restored using reclaimed materials.
The rooms are spare, but not in a harsh way that puts purity ahead of warmth. There may not be many places to sit in the mostly empty living room, but one of them is a sprawling sofa covered in worn pinkish-purple velvet that Josef Frank designed for the Swedish home furnishings store Svenskt Tenn in 1934. This is a place you could settle into and stay
GRAND ENTRANCE As in the kitchen, at left, the house’s main entrance boasts an original ceiling. The entry to the living room, to the right, was
enlarged to accommodate the addition of reclaimed doors. The interior stairwell was added by the Janssons.
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COZY CORNERS The view from the master bedroom into the bathroom. The Swedish chest of drawers was found in England; the floors are reclaimed pine.
Opposite: A new stairwell is detached from the wall via a metal strip, a precaution in this earthquake-prone region.
a while. Besides, the Janssons never stop nosing around for more. “If you get too much stuff in the beginning, you have to stop,” says Lotta. “I would love to go furniture hunting for someone else—with someone else’s money.”
The space serves the pieces in them instead of the other way around—sometimes literally. The Janssons bought wooden doors of different dimensions and cut the interior walls to fit around them. Many come from dealers in old doors in Umbria and Tuscany. Italy does a lively business recycling the glories of its past. The hearthstones on the kitchen floor, an Italian sandstone known as pietra serena, look as though they’ve been there for many generations. They came from a guy who deals in giant stones. For the walls, the Janssons hired an Italian artisan named Matteo Brioni, a wizard with stucco who applied everything by hand.
But the right pieces do not make a great house any more than the right ingredients make a great meal. A
leisurely stroll through the Janssons’ retreat uncov-ers little things that come only from a confident, practiced eye. Such as Lotta’s idea to attach two sil-ver candlesticks to the inner walls of the fireplace, for instance. “It glows very nicely when you don’t want to make a fire,” says Mikael. Or the outdoor bathtub off one of the guest bedrooms in the stables. Or the pink guest room upstairs in the main house with one off-color splotch on the wall that somehow doesn’t seem jarring at all.
“It’s a test patch for the color,” explains Lotta. “We did it in the corner,” says Mikael, “and then we
loved it so much we said, Let’s keep it!”
It Is temptIng to see a connection between the Janssons’ decorating flair and their artistic lives—Mikael’s photography and Lotta’s ceramics (which she took up in the mid-’90s). The simple refinement and attention to small gestures that characterize the house apply to Mikael’s unflashy photography as well
as the shapely unglazed bowls that line the shelves in Lotta’s studio in the stables. (The problem with glaz-ing, Lotta told me, is that you can’t really control it, so she puts it off. “You can be really happy with the shape of something, and then you glaze it and it comes out super ugly.”)
Mikael fell into photography as a teenager in Stockholm. He got his first camera at age 11 and within a few years had set up a darkroom in his closet. He had taken to shooting visiting rockers and was camping out to buy David Bowie tickets when he met a girl who happened to know a photographer who needed an assistant. Thus began Mikael’s appren-ticeship, during which he learned the history of the medium through the work of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Henri Cartier-Bresson. From there, Mikael managed to hustle a job as the demanding Avedon’s assistant, spending two years with him in New York before returning to Stockholm in 1987 and setting up his own studio.
“I love houses. I could easIly have
10 more houses.”–mIkael jansson
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THE ARTIST’S WAY A Picasso-inspired quilt adorns a bed in one of the guest rooms in the stables. The 19th-century firewood holder is Swedish.
Opposite: New ceramic work in Lotta’s studio, waiting to be glazed. Previous pages: A collage of images of the house and grounds.
Since then, Mikael’s work has appeared steadily in glossy magazines around the world. The best of it con-veys openness and quiet. Fashion photography, like fashion in general, is made for its moment; much of it ages quickly once the moment has passed. Mikael’s best work does not. In 2018, the CFHILL gallery in Stockholm exhibited a series of black-and-white photographs Mikael shot in 2014. The model is Daria Werbowy, and the setting is the Janssons’ house in the Stockholm archipelago. Everything that mat-ters most deeply to Mikael comes through here—the sharp nobility of the Swedish landscape, the lyrical interplay of human and natural forms, the paring down of everything inessential. Werbowy appears as stark and as natural as the landscape itself.
“There aren’t many barriers between Mikael and his subject,” says Karl Templer, who styled the archipelago series and began working with Mikael 25 years ago. “With other people, you notice the effort that goes into a picture. They want you to feel
the weight of the craft. With Mikael, the camera is almost an extension of his body—he’s very free with it—but he never makes it about him.”
Mikael’s gift for instilling trust is pushing him into new territory where the emotional stakes are higher. His portraits of Swedish Holocaust survivors have morphed into a documentary film (Kim was review-ing some of the footage on a laptop just before we sat down for lunch). “Some of these people had never told anybody their stories before, not even their own kids. I just had to document it, so I started filming as well. It was difficult.” I asked him if he ever wondered why people who had guarded such terrible secrets would choose to open up to him. “Of course I did, many times,” he said, but an answer eluded him.
And yet however much Mikael seems to disappear from his pictures, the painstaking craftsmanship behind them is always there. The same thing holds true for his house. “It all ties together,” says Baron. “You get a sense that both things have been worked
on, but slowly, organically. And in the end, it looks like it’s been that way forever.”
I saw what Baron meant as Mikael walked me to my car. There’s a rectangular strip with a concrete surface on one side of the front lawn. It’s destined to be a court for the French game of pétanque. I asked Mikael why it remained unfinished, and he told me he hadn’t been able to find gravel in the right shade of light brown, like the color of the house, so he was still looking.
Down by the swimming pool, the Janssons are fixing up a big barn built by the owner of the house before the Belgian. From here you can see the neigh-bor’s barn and his sheep with their clanking bells. The Janssons want to buy the land so they can knock down that barn—it isn’t very pretty—but they like the sight of the sheep and the sound of the bells. How to lose the barn but keep the sheep? It’s the kind of problem that doesn’t arise for most homeowners. The Janssons will undoubtedly figure it out. •
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DARiO CATellAni STYlinG BY GeORGe CORTinA
This season’s couture collections include one-of-a-kind pieces and dramatic gowns loaded with lace, sequins and feathers—fit for a mermaid moment by the sea.
The Tide Is High
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SAND CASTLESA sheer top lightens a towering tiered skirt. Valentino Haute Couture dress, Ana Khouri earrings (worn throughout) and Mokuba ribbon.
VEILED MEANING There is a new horizon
of evening dresses. Givenchy Haute Couture
dress. Opposite: Alexandre Vauthier
Haute Couture dress.
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RUFFLE AND READY Zoom in on delicate ornamentation and bold colors. Valentino Haute Couture dress. Opposite: Giambattista Valli Haute Couture dress.
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BEACH DAY Beautiful design
looks formal but feels casual.
Chanel Haute Couture dress.
GOWN AROUND Ground-grazing hem-lines make for memorable moments. Schiaparelli Haute Couture dress. Opposite: Giambattista Valli Haute Couture dress.
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GLORY DAZE Relax —sequins and pleats have got black-tie covered. Armani Privé jumpsuit. Opposite: Iris van Herpen Haute Couture dress and Mokuba ribbons (tied as sandals). Model, Hiandra Martinez at Next Models; hair, Bob Recine; makeup, Dick Page. For details see Sources, page 106.
by tom Downey PHotoGRAPHy by JAmie HAwkeswoRtH
MYSTERY TRAIN
COLOR GUARD A view of the Mekong River in northern Laos. Opposite: Women in northern Laos—such as this Akha Mouchee mother
and her children—typically wear a combination of traditional and modern dress.
Traditionally one of the most isolated parts of Southeast Asia, Laos awaits the arrival of a high-speed railway—and the impact of more
Chinese investment. For now, there are less hurried ways to explore its byways.
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During a stay in a remote part of northern Laos, I head out on a morning run through the local village. Pausing at a bridge where two rivers con-verge, I see several Khmu women wading into the fast-flowing water. Stooping to pluck green algae from rocks along the riverbed, they load the long
strands into hand-woven baskets, a harvest that will be dried and seasoned before it’s consumed as kaipen, a popular snack. A sleek new four-wheel-drive vehicle with the words “China Railway Group” emblazoned on the side pulls up next to me, and a small Chinese contingent piles out. The English speaker in the group approaches. After a quick hello, he asks, “Are you here looking for investment opportunities too?”
The company hosting this junket for prospective investors has already broken ground on a 257-mile high-speed railway con-necting Boten, a town on the Chinese border, with Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Although the trip from Vientiane to where I now stand is only about 230 miles as the crow flies, it’s a bumpy, halt-ing 15-hour drive. Slated to open in the next two to three years, the rail line will cover the same distance in three hours, render-ing remote places like this much more accessible. The ultimate aim is to link the Chinese province of Yunnan with Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. It’s unfair to portray this new transportation cor-ridor as uniformly good—or bad—for the people of Laos. What’s undeniable is that it will forever change the country, especially its hardest-to-reach zones.
This northernmost section of Laos is one of the most culturally isolated ter-ritories in all Southeast Asia. Laos is still ruled by the same socialist govern-ment that came to power in the 1970s, a golden era for Southeast Asian commu-nist revolutions. But unlike neighboring Vietnam, which long ago morphed into something akin to Chinese-style authori-tarian capitalism, or Cambodia, for years a Wild West of global commerce, Laos has opened up to the world at a cautious pace. As China’s influence expands, that pace has increased.
To plan my trip, I contacted Remote Lands, a New York– and Bangkok-based travel operator whose co-founder and COO, Jay Tindall, is obsessed with learning about tribal peoples across Asia. I’d told him I wanted to visit a region where tourists seldom go. “We’ll need to send one guide who can speak English and Laotian and is accustomed to dealing with foreign travelers,” Tindall said. “We’ll have another guide-translator who can speak Akha and Laotian. We haven’t found any guides who do both.”
The village I visit at Tindall’s suggestion, Churya, has a popula-tion of around 500 and is reachable by a two-hour hike across gently rolling hills and valleys covered in a patchwork of rice paddies (or via a faster, more perilous motorcycle ride along the same trail). Each village along our route boasts a wooden archway at its entrance, a symbolic gateway separating the town from the outside spirit world. Unlike most Laotians, who practice Buddhism, the Akha subscribe to their own version of animism, with a strong element of ancestor wor-ship and adherence to an elaborate set of beliefs known as the Akha way. Until the latter part of the 20th century, the Akha were infa-mous for killing off infant twins, who they believed were not human.
When I arrive in Churya, women can be seen in the distance harvesting rice or climbing steep paths with loads of firewood on their backs. Most won’t return home until dusk. The village’s dep-uty chief, Sompet Liravong, whose home we are staying in, smokes Vietnamese tobacco from a bamboo-stalk pipe as he explains recent changes in his village.
“Until five years ago, Akha Mouchee men here spent all our time smoking opium and playing cards,” he says. “But opium is illegal now. So the village lives off the rice and vegetables we can grow.” The men, like Liravong, dress in modern clothing while the women wear a combination of traditional and contemporary looks: T-shirts with English-language logos; handmade hats decorated with colorful strips of fabric; dark wraparound skirts with embroi-dered edges; and heavy silver earrings. Older examples of the local jewelry, one woman told me, feature French silver coins from colo-nial times.
At first glance, Laos isn’t a land of great opportunity. For years, most Chinese people who visited didn’t venture much farther than the border town of Boten and its casino. (Gambling is illegal in China, hence its popularity.) That project was eventually shut down by the Chinese government after it became known that Chinese gamblers who had racked up big debts were being held there against their will.
But Laos also provides China with a gateway to other markets in Southeast Asia. In addition to the new railway, which aims to estab-lish a crucial trade link to coastal ports elsewhere in Southeast Asia, northern Laos boasts vast swaths of virgin land—an increas-ingly scarce resource in this part of the world. Engineers and investors from China are surveying what Laos’s land might offer the population of more than 45 million living next door in Yunnan province. Laos is already home to a growing number of Chinese-run factory farms, wildlife tourist parks, a special economic zone near
the Chinese border as well as another Chinese-run economic zone in the Golden Triangle that has become notorious for illicit wildlife trading and prostitution.
For now, Churya is untouched by any ambition to modernize. This becomes evident when, the next morning, we awake before dawn to visit a young mother milling rice at home as it has been done for centuries. After placing all her weight on the foot pedal of an ancient-looking pounder, she steps off, causing a mortar to drop and crush the grains. After several rounds—with an infant strapped to her back, lulled to sleep by her rhythmic movements—she then uses a giant hand-held mortar as long as her torso to mash the rice. Scooping grains
from a worn stone pestle, she tosses these into a nearly flat basket and gently winnows the hulls. Gradually, as the morning sun burns off a thick fog, the rest of the village rises to the smell of rice being steamed over wood fires.
Although Churya isn’t a rural idyll—especially not for its female residents, who do most of the work—the Akha have subsisted here for generations while preserving their distinctive way of life. Relative isolation has protected their culture, but it has also meant limited access to education, health care and economic growth. “The railway project could totally change the lives of many of these people,” says Murray Hiebert, senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., and the author of a forthcoming book on China’s influence in the region (and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal). “We already see some people who have been dis-placed from their traditional homes in the highlands, where they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, being moved to the lowlands nearer to main roads.”
the far north has long been among the most isolated regions of Laos. My trip next takes me from this mountainous zone, populated mostly by hill tribes, south to Oudomxai, a booming city that serves as a trading hub for the region and is home to several ethnic groups,
EnginEErs and invEstors from
china arE survEying what
Laos’s Land might offEr thE
popuLation Living nExt door in
yunnan provincE.
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LIKE A PRAYER A Buddhist monument in the northern part of Laos. The Akha hill tribes in the area subscribe to their own version of animism and a belief system known as the Akha way.
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Clockwise from top left: Melons for sale; a tribal group in northern Laos commutes in the back of a pickup; the view from Mekong Kingdoms’ Gypsy, a private
boat that cruises the Mekong from Luang Prabang to Thailand’s Golden Triangle; a puppet theater in Luang Prabang. Opposite: A card game in progress.
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including Hmong, Khmu and Lao Tai, as well as a growing contin-gent of Chinese entrepreneurs.
My first stop is Muang La Lodge, set in a riverside village about 45 minutes north of Oudomxai. Jean-Paul Duvergé, a Frenchman who first came here as a backpacker in the late 1990s, operates a travel company and two lodges in Laos. Muang La Lodge is his flagship property, owned and run with his Lao wife and business partner, Thatsanyvanh Luanglath. The couple’s aim was to create a luxurious experience that also feels connected to the surrounding community. This is evident in how the Duvergés set up the natural hot spring at the heart of the property: Rather than cordon it off for guests, they invite village families to bathe here. In the hours before sunset, youngsters venture gingerly into the river near the lodge, where the cold, rushing water meets a natural thermal vein, as parents and grandparents watch from steaming springs.
The lodge, the only luxury property in far northern Laos, is positioned at a bend in the Nam Phak river. Cabins are arranged around a lush tropical garden, which is connected by a suspen-sion bridge to a small island, where an infinity pool has a view of the river and village homes. Muang La sits among the Khmu, a Lao Theung, or middle-altitude people, thought to be inhabitants of this region since about the 13th century. Apart from the lodge’s comfort, its main appeal is that it manages to feel like an integral part of the Khmu community.
On my last morning in Muang La, I pay a visit to Phachao Singkham Temple and its statue of Buddha. This is the most important religious site in the region and attracts visitors from across Laos and abroad, includ-ing members of Thailand’s royal family. Passing through the town’s small market, I encounter street vendors sitting and slurp-ing bowls of rice noodles while gossiping with potential buyers, who then haggle over the price of a bottle of homemade Lao-Lao (a rice-based distillate) or a skewer of smoked bat (eaten as a snack).
When I turn the corner in front of the temple, I see a line of saffron-clad monks slowly march-ing along the main street and collecting sticky rice from village almsgivers who kneel at the edge of the road. Luang Prabang is well known for its daily procession of local monks. The morning ritual, called tak bat, has become notable for attracting hordes of Instagramming tourists. But here in Muang La, no one else is around to witness this daily act of support for the local monks. “People are still very natural in Muang La,” Duvergé says. “They are gentle and generous. You see it every day when you meet them at the hot spring. This is Laos for me.”
Luang Prabang is the most significant tourist draw in Laos, boasting hundreds of hotels and guesthouses, international flight connections and an ever-increasing stream of visitors who come for its French-Laotian colonial architecture, Buddhist temples and the glimpse it allows into the lives of the monks who tend them. The city, now with nearly 50,000 residents, has been around since 8000 or so B.C. but flourished in two more recent periods, first from
the 14th to 16th centuries as Lane Xang and later under French pro-tection, when it was the capital of Laos from 1893 to 1946.
Flanked by verdant mountains, the city occupies a peninsula at the convergence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. In addition to a rich Buddhist heritage, with dozens of ancient temples—at least one for each small city precinct—it also boasts an architectural style that has been more or less locked in time since the town gained Unesco World Heritage status in 1995. After the communists, led by the Pathet Lao, came to power in 1975, most of Luang Prabang’s royal family was imprisoned or killed. The culture and cuisine that had prevailed for many decades was wiped out, denounced as ves-tiges of oppressive colonial and aristocratic regimes, though some of that long-forgotten past is now being rediscovered.
One morning, I prowl the streets with Sebastien Rubis, the culi-nary director of the Rosewood Luang Prabang. Rubis first moved to the city from Paris nearly 20 years ago and has spent most of the intervening years here or elsewhere in Laos. “When I first arrived,
I loved the cuisine,” Rubis says. “Unlike Thai food, which I often found too rich or too sweet, Laos’s cuisine was intensely sour, extremely herbal and totally different from anything I’d ever tasted.”
We drive to the city’s central peninsula—home to dozens of wats (Buddhist temples) and inhabited by hundreds of monks and novices—and duck into a small riverfront restaurant. Rubis orders a dish that is a prime example of a cuisine he is attempting to revive at his res-taurant in the Rosewood: royal Lao food, kept alive in the mem-ory of Phia Sing, the master of ceremonies and chef at the royal palace of Luang Prabang. After contracting an illness toward the end of his life, Sing decided to write down his recipes. The dish we eat, Jaew Mak Kua, is a deli-ciously charred smoked eggplant paste, which the chef has mixed with fish eggs. “I love history,” Rubis said. “But here, where almost all history is buried or forgotten, I find it through food.”
The next day I dine at Paste, a restaurant recently opened in the Apsara hotel. With the hotel’s owner, Ivan Scholte, I sample a different version of Sing’s royal cuisine, this one created by Bee Satongun, a Michelin-starred Thai chef from Bangkok. A sour river-fish soup, alive with chile and spiked with fermented fish sauce, arrives covered in brightly colored edible flowers. Scholte, who first visited in 1996 and opened his hotel in 2002, explains that Sing’s recipes gained fame largely due to the efforts of England’s ambassador to Laos in the 1970s, Alan Davidson, who authored a cookbook, Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos, and also helped get Sing’s notebooks published after his death.
During the day, most tour groups flee this historic peninsula in search of a waterfall or other sightseeing attractions outside town. In these moments of tranquillity, the main streets of Luang Prabang become very quiet. L’Eléphant—one of the city’s first foreign-owned restaurants post revolution, which started serving French food nearly 20 years ago—places a couple of wooden chairs and a small table across the street from its premises, at the corner
BUOYANT BLOOMS River plants and flowers in Luang Prabang, a city at
the juncture of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers.
of Nong Sikhounmuang temple. If you time it right, you can sip an aperitif in the shade of a small tree and listen to the monks’ chanted prayers echoing from the main hall of the wat.
When tourists first see the city’s many wats, they likely imagine legions of disciples who have dedicated their lives to the teachings of Buddha. The reality is that most novices hail from the country-side and are only temporarily in residence as monks. For these rural transplants, the temples offer free education and a setting to learn English and practice it with foreign tourists. Si Keopaseuth, a former monk I met in Luang Prabang, told me that after about a decade in one of the city’s temples, he left the monastery for good to work in the tourism industry. He went home to see his family and told them that after all he had seen and experienced he could never live in their village again.
One of the people who helped him in his life after the monastery, longtime Luang Prabang resident and ex–Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Alan Tate, told me that the temples desperately need more young men like Keopaseuth to refresh their ranks. “The morning procession for alms, the daily chanting at the temples —these are now essential for tourism in Luang Prabang and Laos,” he said. “They need to keep these rituals going strong, because that’s what brings in the tourists and powers the local economy. And they need young men from the countryside to keep repopulating these temples as the young novices leave.”
Knowing that a high-speed train will soon arrive in these parts, I decide to take things slow for the last part of my trip. For decades, travelers have cruised along the Mekong River, which con-nects Luang Prabang to northern Thailand’s province of Chiang Rai. The waterway sees a daily mix of commuter and tourist traf-fic, some recklessly zooming on speedboats, others taking slower, safer longboats. Many longboats are designed to take larger groups on two-day trips.
The Gypsy, owned by Mekong Kingdoms, offers a different sort of excursion: The private, luxuri-ous two-bedroom boat takes four days to navigate the same route, stopping along the way at isolated coves, riverbanks and vil-lages whenever its passengers feel like stepping ashore. Mekong Kingdoms is operated by Minor Hotels, which also has a resort in Chiang Rai and a new Avani+ hotel in Luang Prabang; it offers an itinerary that includes the river trip and stays at both properties—one the oldest hotel in their portfolio, the other among the newest.
The Gypsy departs from Luang Prabang’s center. Mere minutes into our journey, the scenery shifts dramatically, from a dense cityscape to more sparsely populated countryside still farmed and lived on much in the way it has been for centuries. The sights along the river—a cave with ancient Buddhist statues, a small village that makes and sells its own Lao-Lao liquor—are not, for me, the main point of the trip. What the boat offers is a chance to unwind while being tended to by a crew and private chef, to curl up on a couch and watch the land go by very slowly as our captain, who has navigated the route for more than 20 years, pilots our
vessel around sandbanks or other obstacles.At around the midpoint of our journey we anchor overnight
upriver from Pak Beng, the largest town on this stretch of the Mekong. A village a bit farther north, in the Beng district, is home to a thriving cottage industry of indigo dyers. The lowland people in this region, the Tai Leu, still take a traditional approach to dye-ing: Leaves of the indigo plant are harvested, crushed and mixed with powdered ash; this concoction is fermented in a bath, yield-ing a living, dark-blue liquid in which hand-spun cotton yarn is submerged.
Emi Weir, the owner of Ma Té Sai, a handicrafts company in Luang Prabang, who first told me about the village, explains why buyers from all over the world come to Laos for these indigo products. “Everything is done by hand,” she says. “The process is imperfect, compared to a machine. But the imperfection—the raw handmade quality—is what makes these things distinctive and desirable.”
Natural indigo has become a fashion phenomenon—especially in Japan, where cult brands have entire indigo collections. But unlike Japanese artisans who work with natural dyes and cot-tons from all over, here Laotian villagers oversee the entire process—from cultivating and spinning the cotton to harvest-ing, fermenting and dyeing with indigo. These craftspeople use the same type of indigo and cotton their ancestors have cultivated for decades. One of the master dyers, a septuagenarian named Serng Vonglorkham, says, “Only older people know how to do this anymore. Young people might learn weaving or sewing, but they don’t want to spend time getting their hands stained with indigo or learning how to feed a fermenting vat of dye.”
When our boat finally reaches the point where we can see Thailand, the difference between the two countries becomes clear. The Thai side of the river is built up, partitioned and fenced into plots, busy with commuting and commerce. The Lao side looks decades behind, though parts of
it, financed by China, are hurtling toward the future. How quickly things will change in Laos, when it links China to the rest of Southeast Asia, is unclear.
One of my guides, Soubanh Lauj, a Hmong English teacher, tells me that his parents grow organic grapes on their farm. As we wan-der through a market one day, he says most people prefer the shiny, perfect-looking fruit from the Chinese factory farms that have sprung up all over Laos to the organic fruit that Laotians have been growing for ages. “I look for the ugly fruit,” he says. “I know it’s real. It’s not chemicals or fertilizers that have made it.”
As we near the end of our journey, I see a giant casino on the Lao side with flashing multicolor lights and architecture evoca-tive of Greek and other cultures. These slick new projects, and the gleaming metal bridges and high-speed-train tracks that will soon crisscross the country, are all signs of what Laos may become. But there’s another Laos that lives on—at least for now—imperfect but beautiful, like the indigo dyes of the Tai Leu or the fruit grown by Lauj’s family. •
looking up Members of a local tribe in Phongsaly province,
northern Laos.
hill country Oudomxai province in far northern Laos. Opposite: North of Luang Prabang, a group of Lao schoolchildren waves along the roadside.
99
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSS McKINLEY STYLING BY DAVID THIELEBEULE SET DESIGN BY NOEMI BONAZZI
The warmth of the summer sun is reflected in collection-worthy pieces that feature bright stones and glittering diamonds.
RAYS THE GAME101
BASK FORCE Juicy baubles complement a perfect afternoon, including a pendant with a sapphire of over 51 carats. Bulgari necklace and Van Cleef & Arpels watch. Opposite: Tiffany & Co. necklace, Giorgio Armani Privé earrings and Jade Swim bathing suit (worn throughout).
102
NET WORTH Catch the big one with a nearly 42-carat yellow
diamond. Harry Winston necklace.
103
TAN LINES Emerald earrings and ropes of diamonds make for a
beautiful story. Graff necklace and earrings.
104
WRISTFUL THINKING Go bold with bracelets of tourmaline, garnets and yellow diamonds. From left: Cartier High Jewelry and Dior Fine Jewelry bracelets.
105
RING TRUE Colored stones and intricate settings stand out. From top: Chanel ring and Louis Vuitton rings. Model, Shelbi Byrnes at State Management; hair, Yuhi Kim; makeup, Kento Utsubo; manicure, Ada Yeung. For details see Sources, page 106.
table of contents page 26Valentino Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, valentino .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
what’s news page 40Sam Edelman, $130, samedelman .com; Balmain, $1,295, balmain .com; Marc Jacobs, $425, marcjacobs .com; Dior, $1,190, Dior boutiques nationwide; Jimmy Choo, $750, jimmychoo .com
page 42Zenith, $19,200, zenithwatches .com; Bulgari, $7,800, bulgari .com; Breitling, $5,280, breitling .com; Audemars Piguet, $52,700, audemarspiguet .com; Rolex, $37,550, rolex .com; Patek Philippe, $47,970, Wempe Jewelers, 700 5th Avenue, New York
page 44Pierre Hardy shoes, $645, pierrehardy .com; Dior dress,
dress, price and availability upon request, givenchy .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com
page 81Alexandre Vauthier Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, alexandrevauthier .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 82Valentino Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, valentino .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 83Giambattista Valli Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, giambattistavalli .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 84–85Chanel Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, 800-550-0005, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 86Giambattista Valli Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, giambattistavalli .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 87Schiaparelli Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, Maison Schiaparelli, 21 Place Vendôme, Paris, Ana Khouri
earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com
page 88Armani Privé jumpsuit, price and availability upon request, Giorgio Armani, 760 Madison Avenue, New York, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com
page 89Iris van Herpen Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, irisvanherpen .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com
RaYs the GaMepage 100Tiffany & Co. necklace, price and availability upon request, tiffany .com, Giorgio Armani Privé earrings, price and availability upon request, Giorgio Armani, 760 Madison Avenue, New York, Jade Swim bathing suit, $198, jadeswim .com
page 101Bulgari necklace, price and availability upon request, 800-BVLGARI, Van Cleef & Arpels watch, price and availability upon request, 212-896-9284
page 102Harry Winston necklace, price and availability upon request, 800-988-4110
page 103Graff necklace and earrings, price and availability upon request, Graff, 710 Madison Avenue, New York
page 104Cartier High Jewelry bracelet, price and availability upon request, 800-CARTIER, and Dior Fine Jewelry bracelet, price and availability upon request, 800-929-DIOR
page 105Chanel ring, price and availability upon request, Chanel fine jewelry boutiques, Louis Vuitton rings, prices and availability upon request, select Louis Vuitton stores
106 wsj. maga zine
sources
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in the nex t wsj. maga zine
discoveries & Fall preview
on sale july 27, 2019
price upon request, Dior boutiques nationwide; Michael Kors Collection boots, $1,100, select Michael Kors stores; Stella McCartney jacket, $1,640, Stella McCartney, 929 Madison Avenue, New York; Oscar de la Renta bag, $2,650, Oscar de la Renta boutiques page 45
TT by Olive & June, $8, olivejune .com, In the Sun by Deborah Lippmann, $20, deborahlippmann .com, Nectar by J. Hannah, $19, jhannahjewelry .com, Purple Ray by Chanel Le Vernis, $28, chanel .com, Orange Sienna by Dior, $28, dior .com, Claim to Fame by Essie, $9, essie .com
page 48
Dior KAWS doll, price upon request, all Dior Men’s boutiques; Chanel watch, $5,700, Chanel fine jewelry boutiques
page 49
Marco Bicego necklaces, $47,230 and $55,460, us.marcobicego .com
Rainbow bRiGht page 51Gucci dress, $5,500, select Gucci stores nationwide, Sophie Buhai earrings, $325, sophiebuhai .com, Bottega Veneta heels, $670, 800-845-6790
page 52Mugler dress, $1,990, netaporter .com, Valentino hat, price upon request, similar styles at Valentino boutiques, Prada boots, price upon request, prada .com; Ralph Lauren turtleneck, $850, and skirt, $1,990, ralphlauren .com, Chloé coat, $3,165, similar styles at Chloé boutiques, Tohum necklace, $565, shop .tohum .com, Alighieri necklace, price upon request, alighieri .co .uk
page 53Louis Vuitton turtleneck, price upon request, select Louis Vuitton stores, Chloé skirt, $2,150, and boots, price upon request, Chloé boutiques, Sophie Buhai earrings, $325, sophiebuhai .com, Dior necklace, price upon request, Dior boutiques nationwide, Mounser pearl bracelet, $225, mounser .com, Alighieri ring,
$275, bangles, $415–$455, and belt, price upon request, alighieri.co.uk
page 54Dolce & Gabbana blazer, $2,595, and shirt, $525, select Dolce & Gabbana boutiques, Eres swim brief, $335, eresparis .com, Paco Rabanne skirt, $1,450, pacorabanne .com, Sophie Buhai earrings, $750, sophiebuhai .com, and Alighieri bracelet, $415, alighieri.co.uk; Burberry shirt, $1,090, and headscarf, $260, us.burberry .com; Bottega Veneta coat, $10,300, and heels, $670, 800-845-6790, Matteau bikini set, $270, int .matteau-store .com, Sophie Buhai earrings, $750, and anklet, $295, sophiebuhai .com
page 55Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress, price upon request, Saint Laurent, 3 East 57th Street, New York, Sophie Buhai earrings, $325, sophiebuhai .com
page 56Prada dress, $2,410, and boots, price upon request, prada .com, Valentino hat, price upon request, similar styles at Valentino boutiques, Dior bracelet, price upon request, Dior boutiques nationwide, Tohum bracelets, $280 each, shop .tohum .com, Alighieri bangles, $415–$455, alighieri .co .uk; Hermès sweater, $2,375, Hermès stores nationwide, Eres bathing suit, $415, eresparis .com, Sophie Buhai earrings, $750, sophiebuhai .com
page 57Balenciaga dress, $2,590, heels, $1,490, and bracelet, $650, Balenciaga, 148 Mercer Street, New York
this pageValentino dress and hat, prices upon request, similar styles at Valentino boutiques, Sophie Buhai earrings, $325 and $750, sophiebuhai .com
a staR is boRnpage 63Carolina Herrera dress, $2,190, Saks Fifth Avenue, 611 5th Avenue, New York, Sophie Buhai earrings, $325, sophiebuhai .com
the tiDe is hiGhpage 79Valentino Haute Couture dress, price and availability upon request, valentino .com, Ana Khouri earrings, $9,000, anakhouri .com, Mokuba ribbon, price upon request, Mokuba New York, 137 West 38th Street, New York
page 80Givenchy Haute Couture
scaRlet feVeR Ravishing reds make for a romantic look.
Valentino dress and hat and Sophie Buhai earrings. For
details see “Rainbow Bright,” below.
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“The phoTo is from the evening of September 10, 2001. It’s Paul McCartney, Billy Collins, George Plimpton and me at a Paris Review party. I got there late. People were whispering, ‘Paul and Heather are here.’ I came home all buzzed up. The next morning I was out on the terrace listening to Howard Stern. He says, ‘I think someone has flown a plane into the World Trade Center.’ You just couldn’t believe it. It all feeds back into that picture for me. I actually met McCartney a second time. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, the last party in New York.’ I found the little windup bird in a shop in L.A. We shot it close-up for the cover of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was the first novel of his I worked on. I started seri-ously collecting Batman and Robin memorabilia in college. Back then there was no eBay, so I would go
to flea markets; there was also this monthly maga-zine called Toy Shop. It shows you how times have changed. I got these two [windup figures] about 25 years ago. My husband, Sandy, who died a year ago last April, wrote the books of poetry on the table. His pen name was J.D. McClatchy; we met at a book party in late 1995. After we became a couple, I was design-ing all of his books. At first, the collaboration was a little fraught. He used to say, ‘Well, can’t you just press a button?’ in regard to designing on a computer. I was like, ‘No, it doesn’t work that way!’ But as time went on it got easier. After my husband died, [Star Wars director] J.J. Abrams, who is a friend, was very sweet about checking in. Last summer I wrote to him and said, ‘You know, my fall is pretty open. Can I come over and be a stormtrooper?’ I’m not a stormtrooper,
but I’m an extra in the background of the next Star Wars. Somebody in the props department made me the notebook in front. My friend Chris Ware made the wooden birthday cake. It has four figures on it—it’s him, his wife, Marnie, their daughter, Clara, and me. That’s an electric glass iron from the 1940s. I started seeing these irons at antiques shows around the time I moved to New York, and I became fixated. One of them came up for sale 10 years ago on eBay or 1stdibs, and I took the plunge. The desk is by Warren McArthur. I got it about 10 years ago from an antiques shop called Lost City Arts. All of the McArthur stuff was in storage across the street—I guess it had fallen out of favor. The aluminum frame is super light; it all comes apart. My God, I probably got it home in a cab.” —As told to Thomas Gebremedhin
photography by ryan lowry
still life
chip kiddThe legendary graphic designer shares a few of his favorite things.
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