Mugler, coffee butter, and country mice
OK, we’ve returned from Europe and we’re back to our usual programming—with a couple of trip highlights, and a few other good mentions below. Get in here.
1.
Last weekend Jodie and I saw the Thierry Mugler, Couturissime exhibition at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and there was one single word we kept using to describe the show: rich. It was all so comprehensively well-conceived, and thrilling to experience each room after the next…and honestly, it made the Met’s past few outputs seem pretty lazy in comparison. Mugler himself was a genius, both in artistry and technical skill. You saw that well beyond the garments, all of which the show captured terrifically: in the spectacle of his fashion shows, and his groundbreaking ad campaigns (many of which he photographed himself), as well as his costume designs and his collaborations with other artists like George Michael.
2.
No recipes this edition, just a succinct rundown of some damn good things I ate recently: a gorgeously fragrant, cozy-inducing cardamom bun from NYC’s La Cabra with Kristin; just about everything Anna and I tore into at Ha’s Dac Biet pop-up, most especially the steamed skate wing, and the menacing-looking slab of black sesame mousse cake; and the bite-sized blue cheese ice cream sandwiches, at Breda in Amsterdam, enhanced by the simple fact that my sister and I were child-free for a few hours, and together on a sunny afternoon in the city. Loved. That. The most memorably » 🤯« food, though: coffee butter at Le Mary Celeste, a favorite wine bar in Paris. It arrived as a plated component to sardine toast, along with a small mountain of flaked salt, yet I can’t stop thinking that spreading some over a warm slice of toasted Poilâne bread would make the perfect, Sunday morning breakfast-in-bed situation.
3.
Admittedly, I found myself feeling pretty smug while reading this recent NY Times piece about city-turned-country folk contending with—and even abandoning—the realities of their new rural surroundings: pesky animals, weather hazards, small-town politics, etc. As an upstate-raised farm kid, I’m kind of perplexed these factors weren’t considered from the get-go, but New Yorkers have often been known for their ‘blind’ ambition.
4.
A trip to Paris’ Merci introduced me to the Italian designer Maria La Rosa, and all the great, tactile materials she works with for her bag designs: raffia, plastic lanyard string, aluminum chain, sheepskin, and even nylon flowers. There’s nothing discreet about them, and that’s what I find so fun.
5.
If you haven’t already, I’d encourage everyone here to read anything (and everything) you can about last weekend’s Balenciaga show during Paris Fashion Week. In October, the brand’s carpet spectacle, which concluded with a bespoke Simpson’s episode, was the show that broke Fashion Week. With its latest offering, Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna, tore down the invisible wall between designer and audience…between fashion and the strength of expression, to deliver the month’s most inspiring and relevant statement on war (specifically what’s happening in Ukraine), trauma, displacement, and fearlessness through resistance.