AVENUE January|February 2021 by Avenue Magazine

Cool & collected

JOAN DIDION Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe

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INTRODUCING THE NEW

D E S T I N AT I O N COLLECTION

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4.5 Acre, 11,000 SF, 8 Bedroom Oceanview Water Mill North Estate with Tennis Water Mill. A magnificent McDonough & Conroy designed 8 bedroom, 11 bath shingled Gambrel traditional anchors a 4.5 acre estate that misses little in creating the ultimate Hampton retreat midway between ocean and bay as an 11,000 SF+/- residence offers consummate detail and impressive symmetry on three levels of living space. A dramatic double height paneled entry ushers all into a sundrenched environment over beautifully finished 8” white oak floors that fan out to find both great room and adjacent formal living room under coffered 11’ ceilings connected by a large see-through fireplace. The expansive eat-in kitchen features a large center island, professional stainless-steel appliances and storage pantry. The formal dining room offers enough room for both sides of the family. A generous guest master suite and nearby office/den/media room complete the first floor. Series of doors open to the 2,000 SF deck offering expansive areas for seating and alfresco dining, a complete outdoor kitchen and a unique stone-faced gas fireplace. Upstairs find seclusion in the master wing which offers private terrace, sitting room with wet bar, lavish bath and dual walk-in closets. Four guest bedrooms suites complete the second floor. An elevator takes you to the roof deck that offers commanding views to Mecox Bay and the ocean. The sprawling finished lower level reveals recreational rooms, screening room, gym, wine cellar, laundry room and 2 staff suites. All this opens to the massive covered terrace, tiered stone walls, lawn, colorful landscaping and an expansive stone patio framing the 26’ X 50’ pool, spa and cabana with kitchen, bath and laundry room as well as the tennis court. Additional amenities include Lutron lighting, security and sprinkler systems, separate full bath off the kitchen and a 3-car garage with Tesla charger which could accommodate a hydraulic lift to house more vehicles. Exclusive. $9.95M WEB# 872054 Real estate agents affiliated with The Corcoran Group are independent contractors and are not employees of The Corcoran Group. Equal Housing Opportunity. The Corcoran Group is a licensed real estate broker located at 660 Madison Ave, NY, NY 10065. All listing phone numbers indicate listing agent direct line unless otherwise noted. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Corcoran makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. All dimensions provided are approximate. To obtain exact dimensions, Corcoran advises you to hire a qualified architect or engineer.

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CONTENTS JAN.–FEB. 2021 VOL.44 NO.1 42

HAMILTON

Palm Beach’s suave charm is personified by a matinee idol who spent his youth on its sugared sands. Bob Morris basks in the bronzed glow of George Hamilton. Photographed for Avenue by Nick Mele. 50

GIRLS GONE MILD Time has caught up with the generation of tabletop-dancing socialites of the ’80s to the 2000s. Lisa Marsh talks to the former wild children.

BEST IN SHOW

The spring runways were awash with ’80s staples. Bodacious fluoro! Boulder shoulders! Illustrations by Donald Robertson. 60

SNOW BIRDS

A New York mother and son escape to the Breakers for some winter warmth. Photographed for Avenue by Gabor Jurina. 70

POWER PLAYERS

With its favorable climate for training, Florida has emerged as the nation’s sporting capital, attracting elite athletes in polo, tennis, golf, soccer, sailing, and more. 80

SHOW BOATS

Angela M.H. Schuster speaks with a trio of premier Florida designers about the latest trends in super-yachts now that families are staying at sea longer.

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SHADES OF GENIUS The writer and New Yorker Joan Didion, photographed by Brigitte Lacombe.

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VERNISSAGE

Avenue’s insider preview of all that’s new and noteworthy: the priestess Nancy WolfsonMoche discusses fertility and sacred eating rituals for Upper East Siders; Mason Klein, the senior curator of the Jewish Museum, on the upcoming exhibition examining the golden age of magazines; how Margaret Duriez, the green-thumbed Palm Beach resident and organic farmer, is nourishing South Florida; and a compelling documentary about eccentric gentlemen truffle hunters. By Ben Widdicombe and Horacio Silva. 24

BUY CURIOUS

Soft textures with attitude for 28 your wardrobe and luxe objects for the home. By Horacio Silva.

TAKING THE PLUNGE “Snow Birds” is photographed by Gabor Jurina for Avenue.

STAR QUALITY George Hamilton, photographed by Nick Mele for Avenue.

CULTURE

COVER: Illustration by Petra Eriksson 14

LIVING

On the eve of a new collection of her essays, Avenue asks Joan Didion twenty questions. Claire Gibson talks to the young Floridian writer Dantiel W. Moniz about her highly anticipated short story collection debut. Robert Becker reviews a compelling collection of obituaries, Mark Libatique reads a masterful biography of Mike Nichols and shimmering poetry from Yusef Komunyakaa, and Elissa Altman can’t put down Sybille Bedford: A Life or William Boyd’s latest novel set in the ’60s. Angela M.H. Schuster checks in on the Freud-Bacon art market, previews standout Warhols and a rare-tomarket Rembrandt going on the block at Phillips and Sotheby’s, and flags five not-to-be-missed Palm Beach exhibitions.

Liz Petoniak explores Palm Beach, an American paradise where status and sunshine meet for drinks. Bob Morris presents Palm Beached: The Board Game (can you tell a Fanjul from a Lauder and a Pitt from a Phipps?). Conceived as “the dream city of the western world” by architect Addison Mizner, Boca Raton remains a place of wonder, finds Alyssa Fisher. As many younger New Yorkers, unsettled by conditions in the city, flee for the comforts of South Florida, Joshua David Stein discovers that Palm Beach and its neighbors aren’t just for retirees anymore. Shivani Vora enters the elite world of concierge medicine, where doctors sleep with their cell phones in order to be on call for their wealthy patients 24/7.

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NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS

Aria Darcella recalls publishing heir Peter Pulitzer, who cut a rakish swath through Palm Beach with his fashion designer wife, Lilly, but would later become tabloid fodder. 110

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SEEN

Boutiques, galleries, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are finally getting back into the swing of things.

SOCIAL SKILLS

“Astrology columnist” Posey Wilt issues several corrections to her January 2020 year-ahead horoscope.

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AVENUE MAGAZINE | JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021

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Sunrise

as any New Year in history ever been more welcome than 2021? January brings with it the promise of a fresh start, and for many of us, there’s no better place to ring that in than South Florida. Palm Beach, the focus of much of this issue, is hardly a secret to Avenue readers. But what may surprise many is the extent to which the community has grown in popularity among younger families. Once viewed as a sort of climate-controlled warehouse for storing grandparents over the winter, South Florida is now attracting couples in their 30s and 40s who want to put their children in local schools. Real estate is booming accordingly, as our reports indicate. Welcoming you to our Palm Beach section is George Hamilton, the longtime dean of the scene. We hope you’ll enjoy our survey of Florida’s leading sports figures, a reminiscence of the late Palm Beach wag Peter Pulitzer, and 16 pages of fashion. Elsewhere in the issue you’ll also encounter Joan Didion, the up-and-coming writer Dantiel W. Moniz, a fascinating examination of the complex relationship between the British painters Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, and much more. So here’s to 2021, and may the coming year contain as much sunshine as you find in these pages. Warmly, BEN WIDDICOMBE

Editor-in-Chief 16

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ben Widdicombe CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Courtney Gooch

BOB MORRIS (Hamilton, page 42; Palm Beached, page 92) is a writer, playwright, and author of Assisted Loving and Bobby Wonderful. He has contributed to the New York Times, Town & Country, and The New Yorker, among other publications. “I hope the board game I co-created will amuse the Palm Beach bored, ennui being a hazard in any small resort town,” he says. “And I hope my interview with George Hamilton inspires readers to take their style more seriously than themselves. I think Florida should make him the state bird.” DONALD ROBERTSON (Best in Show, page 54), or Drawbertson, as he is better known on Instagram, is a prolific illustrator and pop artist whose work spans a variety of mediums. He describes his work for this issue as an “imaginary behindthe-scenes [piece] celebrating superstar hair, makeup, and stylist assistants.” GABOR JURINA (Snow Birds, page 60) is an award-winning Canadian fashion and celebrity photographer whose images have appeared in Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Cosmopolitan. Meghan Markle, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna, among countless others, have sat before his lens. For this issue, he captured the season’s best looks at the Breakers hotel. “[It] was the perfect setting for a shoot inspired by Patrick deWitt’s novel, French Exit,” he says. “The Old-World glamour was the perfect setting for our fashion escapade.” 18

DEPUTY & MANAGING EDITOR

Angela M.H. Schuster FEATURES DIRECTOR

Heather Hodson PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

Catherine G. Talese PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Jessica Lee STYLE EDITOR

Horacio Silva DIGITAL FASHION EDITOR

Aria Darcella ART ASSISTANT

Daniela G. Maldonado LONDON EDITOR

Catherine St Germans PARIS EDITOR

Clémence von Mueffling CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Liesl Schillinger, Katrina Brooker, Gigi Mortimer, Tracy Bross CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Anders Overgaard, Mitchell Feinberg, Richard Kern, Landon Nordeman, Rainer Hosch, Johnny Miller, Martin Vallin, Nick Mele © 2021 by Cohen Media Publications LLC AVENUE MAGAZINE 750 LEXINGTON AVENUE 16TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NY 10022 EDITORIAL@AVENUEMAGAZINE.COM

MEMBER OF ALLIANCE FOR AUDITED MEDIA

PUBLISHER

Spencer Sharp COHEN MEDIA PUBLICATIONS LLC CHAIRMAN

Charles S. Cohen

PETRA ERIKSSON BY CARLES ARAGU; BOB MORRIS BY LENA SHKODA; DONALD ROBERTSON BY BRAD LANSILL; GABOR JURINA BY GEORGE PIMENTEL

PETRA ERIKSSON is a Swedish-born, Barcelonabased illustrator whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times, among other publications. “I have lived in a colorful world since childhood, which definitely has affected my style,” she says. “I absolutely adore bright hues and a dynamic mix of organic graphic shapes.” For this issue’s cover—the first of six that Avenue has commissioned her to create for 2021—a snowcapped Manhattan skyline seamlessly melds into the tropical terrain of the Sunshine State, where so many of our readers take refuge during the chilly winter months. “I’ve visited New York several times, so I have quite a good sense of the city, but I definitely had to do a bit of research when it came to Florida— the shape of the state and the locations of its resort cities,” she explains. “Inspiration for the rendering of both places,” she says, “came straight from the glamour of the movies.” Eriksson is a founding member of HER Barcelona, part of a global platform dedicated to women’s support and networking.

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GROOMING BY NOZOMI FOR WARREN TRICOMI SALON.

GENDER REVEAL PARTY Opposite and above: Nancy Wolfson-Moche, a priestess who specializes in sacred eating, makes cupcakes for a ritual she says enables clients to conceive a child of their desired sex.

Kind Hearts and Kohenets

Photography by Johnny Miller for Avenue

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date w ith Nancy WolfsonMoche can get you pregnant. A kohenet—or Hebrew priestess— who lives near Gracie Mansion, she specializes in creating sacred-eating rituals for spiritually minded Upper East Siders, with a particular focus on fertility. An example of her services? “Clients asked me to create a Valentine’s Day ritual that involved red velvet cupcakes to help them conceive a child of a specific gender,” Wolfson-Moche tells Avenue. “Nine months later, their baby of the desired gender was born, and turned one last November.” She is a graduate of Rabbi Jill Hammer’s Manhattan-based Kohenet Institute, a globally recognized center for female Jewish mysticism. “We're told that spiritual history has been shaped by people in power, and it is possible to widen that lens, and to understand that women and others were put on the margins,” Rabbi Hammer explains. “We really need the ability to feel that our lives are sacred, in a liberating and inclusive way.”

It is true Wolfson-Moche is interested in healthy eating—her most recent book, Vegetables for Breakfast from A to Z, was presumably top of Santa’s list of presents for naughty children. “But it is not only what is in the dish or the meal; the key is how it is conceived, prepared, presented, and received,” she says. “That is where the magic and spirituality enter.” In addition to incorporating prayer and blessing into food preparation, other techniques include being mindful of how many times to cut something, and into how many pieces, in a nod to gematria, the Hebrew system of numerology. There are certainly plenty of rituals to go around. Wolfson-Moche, whose husband was raised in Asia, celebrates all three new years: lunar, Jewish, and secular. January 1 found her in the family’s country cabin just outside Cornwall, Connecticut, where the meal included a blackeyed pea stew (“a symbol of community of various ingredients that come together”) as well as pomegranate “caviar” served in a martini glass and drizzled with limoncello. “Pomegranate seeds are just really beautiful. They’re transparent, and I feel that that’s something we really need moving forward in 2021,” she says. Sigal Greenberg, a certified life coach, is among Wolfson-Moche’s satisfied customers. “She’s my priestess of everything that has to do with nutrition,” she says. Among other small miracles, Greenberg credits Wolfson-Moche with getting her picky daughter to eat broccoli. And does she follow all the sacred instructions, like the specific number of cuts to make? Greenberg pauses. “No, that is not something I adopted,” she says with a laugh. “For me it was too much, I am telling you the truth.” — Ben Widdicombe JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“BEAUTY AND INVENTION ARE ALWAYS INSPIRING”.

BROAD SHEET Above: Nan Martin, Street Scene, First Avenue, 1949, by Frances McLaughlin-Gill; right: PM Magazine, October– November 1938, cover by Paul Rand.

Glossy Posse

LESLIE CAMHI, DESIGN CRITIC

“É

tonnez-moi,” Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes, famously snapped at a young Jean Cocteau. “Astonish me!” The exhortation is also at the heart of “Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine,” an exhibition at the Jewish Museum on view from March 11 through July 11 that surveys how a group of polymaths who came out of Bauhaus thinking and relocated to the United States after being forced out by the Nazis transformed American visual culture from 1930 to 1960. “The exhibition covers the period of the golden age of magazine publishing,” says Mason Klein, the senior curator of the Jewish Museum who organized the show. “It was a period during which avant-garde approaches to photography and design reached the United States via these artists who really believed in the melding of art and industry.”

It’s a star-crossed match introduced by pioneering artists and theorists such as László Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes and popularized by two formidable art directors, both immigrants and accomplished photographers in their own right: Vogue’s Alexander Liberman and Harper’s Bazaar’s Alexey Brodovitch, who adopted Diaghilev’s “Étonnez-moi” as his own and encouraged his designers and photographers to delight and surprise him. “Liberman and Brodovitch were so photographically literate that they changed the power of the page,” explains Klein, “and how that power could be contested by the artist or photographer to deal with subjects that were not just about creating alluring pictures, but moving people to develop a certain empathy and discovery.” The 150 works on display, include photographs, magazine layouts, and cover designs by talents such as Richard Avedon, William Klein, Irving Penn, Margaret Bourke-White, Ilse Bing, and Frances McLaughlin-Gill (whose daughter, Leslie Gill, designed the exhibition.) In fact, the exhibition underscores the latent feminism of the era and the ways in which commercial magazines, which are only now being taken seriously by academics, offered opportunities for women. “Magazines are a double-edged sword,” says Leslie Camhi, the design critic who wrote one of the essays in the accompanying catalogue published by Yale University Press, “in that women are often reduced to their appearances; as an industry it has always been a powerful economic engine for women’s financial and creative empowerment.” Though the exhibition was planned prepandemic, the transcendent works on display, which in their day helped magazine readers deal with hardship by fantasizing about a better future, offer a welcome salve for the current moment. “Beauty and invention are always inspiring,” says Camhi, “but more than ever we’re all desperate for a window onto a world of possibility.”—Horacio Silva

VERNISSAGE

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Duriez wants to nationally expand her FreshRx Patient Program, which provides free produce to those under medical care who need to improve their diets. That means, in addition to doing everything from planting sprouts to writing newsletters, there’s plenty of glad-handing of donors to be done. “I’m the Jill of trades,” she says, “and fundraising is hard work. There are so many wonderful nonprofits in Florida that it can be a challenge to communicate why donors should choose this project. You have to put in the extra effort.” If that means putting up with the occasional jibe about being a Green Acres–style city slicker turned farmer, so be it. “I’ve heard it all,” she says with a chuckle. “Look, I was born at Good Samaritan in West Palm Beach and am as local as they come. But my family did have a farm in Pennsylvania where I spent time in the summers. I’ve earned my overalls.”—HS

FARM TO TABLE Left: Margaret and Franck Duriez at their farm in Loxahatchee, Florida; below: in Italy, a gourmand and his truffle.

Salt of the Earth

DURIEZ/NICK MELE; IMAGE BY MICHAEL DWECK AND GREGORY KERSHAW. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

ot all heroes wear capes; some wear overalls. From her home in Palm Beach and a small farm in the euphoniously named Loxahatchee, Florida, Margaret Duriez is fighting the good fight on behalf of the nutritionally and financially vulnerable. FreshRx, the organization she founded in 2018 with Dr. Marshall Stone, medical director of pediatric surgery at Jupiter Medical Center, offers education about nutrition and access to fresh fruits and vegetables. “There are over 300 communities right here in South Florida that have been labeled food deserts,” says Duriez, referring to areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food. “So, it’s not only a pricing issue, but a location and transportation issue that we’re trying to combat.” FreshRX, whose programs include a mobile farmers market servicing areas that are more than a mile from fresh food grocers, was born out of Lox Farms, an organic agricultural concern that Duriez started in 2014 with her husband, Franck. On their selling trips to local green markets, Duriez became fascinated with clients who were not only maintaining their health but also regaining it by eating fresh, healthy produce. “I was so inspired by seeing these people with cancers and all sorts of chronic illnesses taking charge of their lives and shifting to a plant-based diet,” she recalls. “I wanted to be a bigger part of the food as medicine movement.”

Every Day They’re Truffling

o you have 90 minutes to roll around in the dirt with some aged Italian men? If so, you might enjoy The Truffle Hunters, a new documentary by directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw. It follows a cast of elderly, eccentric gentlemen as they scour the Piedmont region of northwest Italy for the world’s most expensive ingredient, the

white Alba truffle, which can retail for $5,500 a pound—or higher. The film, which opened in limited release on December 25 and plans a national theatrical rollout in January and February (conditions permitting), is told through a series of artfully composed, single-frame shots that play out like tableaux vivants come to life. It’s an ode not only to the prized fungi that grow at the root of tall oak trees but also to a time-honored culture that is far removed from technology, and so secretive as to border on the occult. Secrets about where they hunt, how they train their dogs, and even if they actually find any truffles are all closely guarded. We meet two hunters, Aldo, 86, and Renato, 90, who have breakfasted and lunched together for most of their lives, and never discussed their private truffle haunts. As for what viewers might learn from the sylvan mysteries of the truffle hunters? “Well, it’s finding the meaning of life,” Dweck says. “That's of course what everyone searches for and these guys have found it…their happy place happens to be the forest and it happens to be their dog. It’s a very beautiful, simple life.”—HS JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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BUY CURIOUS

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Soft to the Touch Textures for living BY HORACIO SILVA

Shaun Leane 18-karat gold medium sabre earrings, $4,220; shaunleane.com

Fendi mink and nylon gilet, $16,900; fendi.com

Celine “Melody”’ Mary Jane pumps in python, $1,500; celine.com

Rodarte embellished tulle gown, $2,645; thewebster.us

Isabel Marant “Enolia” floral print velvet jacket, $1,595; isabelmarant.com

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BUY CURIOUS

Reflections of You Who’s the fairest of them all? BY HORACIO SILVA

Tom Faulkner for Savoir “Cloud” bed, $37,700; savoirbeds.com Michael Anastassiades for FLOS “IC Light S” pendant light, $595; flos.com

Paul Smith for Thomas Goode bone-china coffee pot, $425; paulsmith.com

Mario Bellini “Camaleonda” sofa, price upon request; bebitalia.com

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Bower Studios “Melt Mirror IV,” prices starting at $4,300; thefutureperfect.com

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GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

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Have you ever been starstruck by meeting a person you admire?

No. Do you have a guilty pop culture pleasure?

I can’t think what it would be. Is there another city you would like to live in?

Honolulu, or Paris. What’s your favorite view?

What books are on your bedside table?

Cool and Collected On the eve of releasing a new collection of essays, Joan Didion answers twenty questions.

On my table, I have a book of Camilla McGrath’s photographs called Face to Face. I have Auden’s Collected. And I am rereading Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights. Do you have a morning ritual? I read once that you only used to drink ice-cold Diet Coke out of a glass in the mornings.

Regular Coca-Cola, not Diet. Now I have fruit and coffee and read the paper. I save the CocaCola for lunch. What can’t you do without?

I prefer to live with orchids. Which is your favorite season?

I think it’s summer, but I don’t have a sense of having a favorite really. What’s your worst habit?

Saying “no” to everything. What’s your best habit?

Saying “no” to everything. Who do you most often pick up the phone to talk to?

My nephew, Griffin.

My favorite views are of water. The ocean from my deck in Malibu, the Sacramento River where I learned to drive. When I was young in New York, I used to walk to the West Side to look at the Hudson. If you could learn something new, what would it be?

How to work my television. Which word do you most overuse?

I don’t know. When are you most relaxed?

Listening to music. What’s the best piece of advice you have for writers?

I don’t give writing advice. What do you love best about New York City?

People ask me this a lot. The answer is, I don’t know, I just love it. If you could throw a dinner party and invite anybody you have known in your life, who would you invite and why?

Those who’ve died keep coming up. But I wouldn’t choose. What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

My dog, Ellie.

Which is your favorite New York restaurant?

Elio’s, or Sette Mezzo. Has there been a funny recent interaction with a fan or admirer? JOAN’S TOWN The essayist and novelist Joan Didion has made her home in New York City, off and on, for more than 60 years.

Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe

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I was invited to a young woman’s book club near where I live.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean will be published on January 26 by Knopf. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“Children are way more intelligent and perceptive than adults think they are.” Dantiel Moniz

Florida Gothic Set in her native Florida, Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut short story collection draws on her obsession with the terrors of early adolescence. She speaks with Claire Gibson about being lured by shadows in the Sunshine State.

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rowing up in sunny Jacksonville, Florida, Dantiel Moniz was drawn to dark stories. “My parents didn’t moderate what I read,” she says, then laughs. “I read Goosebumps. Animorphs, tons of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine. Honestly, I think my mom introduced me to Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews. I read so much V.C. Andrews, which makes sense now, considering what I write about: messed-up family dynamics.” Speaking via FaceTime one recent afternoon from her apartment in Jacksonville, she sits on a patio chair, skin glowing and dreads draped over her shoulders. Her balcony overlooks a large apartment complex, a pond, blue skies. She’s surrounded by a jungle of green potted plants she accumulated during the early days of the quarantine. “Being really patient with them and learning what they need has taught me a lot,” she says, and calls them by name: rubber tree, Monstera, spiky cactus, hanging fern. They grow well in this climate, and so, it seems, does she. Moniz, 31, has been writing for as long as she can remember. With a combined five children in a blended family, her parents worked different jobs over the years, but often worked for themselves. As a girl, Moniz would occupy herself with reading and composing stories, typing them out on an old word processor, or writing them longhand on loose-leaf paper and tying the pages together with yarn. “Sagas about my friends and me, all married to our crushes, living together,” she says. “That sort of thing.” On an eighth-grade field trip to Douglas School of the Arts in Jacksonville, she stumbled across information about the school’s creative writing program and was struck for the first time

by the idea that writing could become a viable career path. Her friends had planned to attend high school together and were angry that she might break up the “group” for the sake of the arts. But she followed her gut and enrolled at the school the following fall. Her path has been set ever since. In the past half-decade, Moniz has tended to the seed of her talent, letting her imagination blossom into the brooding tales that comprise her highly anticipated debut short story collection, Milk Blood Heat. From page one, readers are brought into the seductive, electric world of girlhood, as two 13-year-old best friends, Kiera and Ava, slash their palms and mix their blood with milk to drink. “Blood sisters,” they vow. And thus, the terror of growing older begins. That short story, like many in this collection, was written while Moniz was pursuing an MFA through the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Stories in Milk Blood Heat were originally published in 2018 in Ploughshares, for which she was later awarded the 2019 Alice Hoffman Prize for fiction, and several other noteworthy and award-winning short stories have appeared in The Paris Review and Tin House, among other literary magazines. The stories tend to ruminate on early adolescence and mortality. There’s something eerie and fragile about those years just before adolescence, when the human mind and body experience a range of intense sensations and changes. With guidance from some of her mentors and professors, including Jamel Brinkley and Danielle Evans, Moniz chose to hone her obsession. “Children are way more intelligent and perceptive than adults think they are,” she says. “That time period is a great way to get into the questions: Who are we going to be as people? How are

Photograph by Charlotte Kesl for AVENUE

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Books

we going to be in the world? How do you begin to understand that, before you can even understand how the world is conditioning you to be a person?” Lyrical and rich with images, the stories range in scope, but maintain a similar setting. In “Outside the Raft, she writes: “It was a typical Floridian summer, both sweltering and sweet. stretching out before us like a wide-open hand.” In the opening scene of “The Hearts of Our Enemies,” a woman sits in her car, smoking cigarettes, ruefully watching her neighbors while contemplating the demise of her own marriage. Is there such a thing as Florida gothic? If so, then Moniz has earned her place with other authors who claim a love-hate relationship with Florida, including Lauren Groff, a champion of Moniz whose own work focuses on the dark shadows that linger in the Sunshine State. Will she stay in this hot, airless place? For now, she says, the answer is yes. Once a week, she logs into Zoom to work virtually side by side with other writers. Though the pandemic has been difficult and stultifying, Moniz says she’s taken comfort in creative friendships from across the country, including the poet Chet’la Sebree, whom Moniz calls “one of my main support people.” And when she’s not writing, she tends to the needs of her plants, watching them thrive in a climate often forgotten by the literary set. As she touches the Monstera’s newest leaf, she says, “I’ve been propagating.” She turns and picks up a spiky cactus growing from a small terra-cotta pot, then points to a much bigger plant across the balcony. “These came from that, and they were very tiny. It’s really cool to see stuff growing. It’s a reminder that growth is slow. You can’t see it. And then I come out one day, and a whole new leaf unfurls. And I think, there you are. You were doing that the whole time.” Milk Blood Heat will be published on February 2 by Grove Atlantic. 32

LAUNCHED INTO OBIT Adrian Dannatt photographed by his late friend, the art dealer Paul Kasmin, at the funeral of the sculptor-designer Claude Lalanne in France in 2019. Right: Pieter Schoolwerth's portrait of the writer is among Dannatt's curios on view at the Miguel Abreu Gallery.

DOOMED AND FAMOUS by Adrian Dannatt (Sequence Press)

With anecdotes such as “At age 13 [Ultra Violet] escaped by bicycle, with no underwear, and went to the nearest cafe to drink her first whiskey, smoke a cigar and read the financial newspaper,” one might easily mistake Adrian Dannatt’s Doomed and Famous for a book of short stories. Instead, overﬂowing with accomplished, eccentric characters—some tragic, some merely obscure—it’s a collection of obituaries written by the English journalist over the past 25 years in a style that combines Evelyn Waugh with the Andy Warhol Diaries. In these

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE ESTATE OF PAUL KASMIN; ARTWORK COURTESY MIGUEL ABREU GALLERY, PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN FAUGHT.

Obituary, poetry, biography, ﬁction: ﬁve dazzling reads for spring

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EVERYDAY MOJO SONGS OF EARTH by Yusef Komunyakaa (FSG)

deliciously distilled biographies readers meet characters like Raven Chanticleer (dandy, impresario), Spider Quinnell (“professional beauty”), Rockets Redglare (actor, drug dealer), Bernard Heidsieck (champagne heir, banker, performance artist), Dorothea Tanning (poet, painter), and dozens more. Like a dinner party raconteur, Dannatt eulogizes these hard-living, obsessed, uncompromising, unconventionally brilliant, entirely original artists and aristocrats of the international bohemian demimonde. Gallows humor abounds, including the postage stamp–sized woodcuts by the British artist and writer Hugo Guinness that pepper this beautifully published edition: the image of a drowning man, for instance, is tucked into the pages of the piece about artist Ray Johnson, who died when he jumped off a bridge in Sag Harbor. In the tradition of the best British obituaries, a reader is left either laughing or weeping but always completely engrossed. Coinciding with the launch of Doomed and Famous, the Miguel Abreu Gallery in Manhattan will show dozens of objets d’art and curios from the author’s personal collection— a drawing by Princess Charlotte Bonaparte, a bootleg tape of Nine Inch Nails—as idiosyncratic and provocative as the characters in Dannatt’s book. ROBERT BECKER

The Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa again demonstrates why he is a giant of American poetry with his latest work, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001–2021. The new poems in this collection offer arresting, majestic visuals of scenes set in times both ancient and modern, both heavily epic and seemingly trivial—through primordial Ethiopian grass plains to the dimly lit corner of a New Jersey lounge. This Louisiana native and Vietnam veteran also reintroduces us to some of his best poems from previous collections, including Talking Dirty to the Gods, Taboo, and The Emperor of Water Clocks, among others. Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth demonstrates Komunyakaa’s skill in using words to paint scenes not only with great emotional insight but a researched and understated worldliness as well, threading connections originally unseen and piecing together verses that come alive whether they are read silently alone or recited aloud in front of a crowd. Be it childhood or aging, suffering or joy, race, belief, fear or love, Komunyakaa finds a way to make what he writes about both solidly personal as well as universal. MARK LIBATIQUE

comedian to his passing in 2014 as one of the few in history to have achieved EGOT status, Nichols’s astronomical rise to prominence over the latter half of the 20th century is also the story of American film and theater’s coming of age. Mark Harris has penned the ultimate account of Nichols’s life. For older readers, it serves as an encyclopedic memorialization of his work, offering behind-thescenes looks at movies, television, and plays that have helped mold the modern American psyche—The Graduate, Death of a Salesman, and Angels in America, to name a few. For younger readers, it’s an introduction to a man who served as a thread connecting generations of entertainers, from New York and Chicago to Hollywood and London, and beyond. Harris builds this biography on interviews with hundreds of the most celebrated industry personalities of the past 50 years, including the likes of Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, and Dustin Hoffman. Harris does not shy away from detailing Nichols’s episodes of both strength and vulnerability, and paints a picture of a man who, behind all the accolades and the legendary status, was simply someone who knew how to do what he loved. MARK LIBATIQUE

TRIO by William Boyd (Knopf)

MIKE NICHOLS: A LIFE by Mark Harris (Penguin Press)

It’s impossible to imagine the entertainment industry today without the touch of Mike Nichols. From his first footsteps onto a stage in the ’50s as a novice

From the bestselling, multi-awardwinning author of sixteen novels William Boyd comes a darkly hilarious novel of style and rapier wit, set on a film shoot in rollicking 1968 Brighton, the down-at-heel seaside resort on the south coast of England. The trio of the title are creatively blocked alcoholic novelist Elfrida Wing, who cannot shake her grim obsession with the suicide of Virginia Woolf, a writer she does not like but to whom she has been compared; Talbot Kydd, a closeted film producer; and Anny Viklund, the beautiful drug-abusing star of the film—directed by Wing’s

husband—who is divorced from a leftist American conspiracist being tracked by the FBI and is secretly sleeping with her costar, a twentysomething, hormonally driven young man who can’t get enough of Anny. Fast-paced and expertly written, Trio is a brilliant comedy of manners that dances back and forth between the complicated inner and outer lives of its characters, all of whom teeter on the brink of authenticity—no one is quite who or what they say they are, right down to their names and histories. The result is a story that instantly pulled this reader in and kept her there, delighted by Boyd’s ingenuity, sophistication, and unforgettable characters. ELISSA ALTMAN

SYBILLE BEDFORD: A LIFE by Selina Hastings (Knopf)

In this well-wrought biography of one of England’s most celebrated authors of both fiction and nonfiction, Selina Hastings’s Sybille Bedford: A Life is a work the likes of which arrive on the biographical scene only rarely, destined to become foundational. The Germanborn Bedford, who died in 2006 at the age of 94, lived a life devoted to her work, travel, and anti-fascist politics (“The catastrophe of my life was the arrival of Hitler,” she wrote). She enjoyed countless affairs with women; wine; and her friends, among them Aldous Huxley, Rebecca West, Graham Greene, and Julia Child, the latter of whom she described as “the dear, unﬂappable, slightly clumsy St Bernard she looks….” In this copiously noted literary explication of a life well-lived, Hastings is, at once, consummate storyteller and astute literary anthropologist, unpacking and interpreting her subject’s passions and predilections against a backdrop of literature; war and fascism; food; friendships both true and not; joy, and the encroachment of age, which did not slow Bedford down, until it did. Riveting. ELISSA ALTMAN

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Rogues’ Gallery Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon were best friends, partners in crime, and often foes in postwar London. On the eve of two groundbreaking biographies of the painters, Tom Shone recalls the bad behavior and lovehate relationship of these titans of British 20th-century art

n the spring of 1949, Lady Rothermere, later Mrs. Ian Fleming, threw a formal ball to brighten the spirits of gray, postwar London. The Queen Mother (then still on the throne as Queen Elizabeth) was there, as was Princess Margaret, who, toward the end of the evening, startled everyone by grabbing the microphone from the band leader and instructing them to play Cole Porter songs, which she proceeded to sing in her notoriously high-pitched voice. She was applauded by all the doting ladies sporting their family jewelry, with the men in their white ties and black tails, and was just launching into a warbly, off-key rendering of “Let’s Do It” when there came, from the back of the crowded ballroom, the sound of thunderous booing.

CULTURE

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KINGDOM OF BOHEMIA Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, facing page, photographed in 1974 in Soho, London, close to their favorite haunt, the insalubrious Colony Room club. At right: Lucian Freud's oil on canvas Reflection (Self-Portrait), executed in 1985.

The band stopped. The princess reddened, gathered her crinolines, and fled the room, followed by her ladies-in-waiting. Among the guests that night was novelist Caroline Blackwood, who turned to the nearest man in white tie, his red face made apoplectic by rage. “It was that dreadful man, Francis Bacon,” he thundered. “He calls himself a painter, but he does the most frightful paintings. I just don’t understand how a creature like him was allowed to get in here. It’s really quite disgraceful.” Bacon was there at the invitation of his friend Lucian Freud, whom Blackwood would later marry. As two monumental new biographies— Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s Francis Bacon: Revelations and Williams Feaver’s second and final installment of The Lives of Lucian Freud, covering the years 1968 until his death in 2011—make clear, no two men would do more to revitalize figurative painting in the postwar era. Emerging from the bohemia of bombed-out Soho, the two painters, both in thrall to the flesh in an era smitten with wan abstraction, were virtually inseparable for much of the ’50s and ’60s. Blackwood said that she dined with Bacon pretty much every day of her marriage to Freud. Most mornings Freud would drive to collect Bacon from his flat in his Bentley and head off for breakfast at one of the small workmen’s cafés at Smithfield Market. This was often followed by lunch at Wheeler’s on Old Compton Street or the Colony Room on Dean Street, the notorious, cramped members-only drinking club managed by the Gorgon-like proprietor Muriel Belcher, where Bacon, ebullient and impeccably mannered in black leather, would wave for champagne as he took his seat amid the Gitanes fumes and drunken invective. “It was like being at the theatre…telling stories, and being absolutely scandalous and looking fantastic, and attracting attention and showing off,” Annie Freud, one of Lucian’s numerous daughters, told Feaver. “Theirs was a deep love…. I’ll tell you something that dad said about Francis that was

“Francis opened my eyes in some ways. His work impressed me, but his personality affected me.” Lucian Freud

so lovely. He said he had the most sensuous forearms. That is lover-like, isn’t it?” Alert and shy but mercilessly direct, and fine-boned like a small bird of prey, Freud was 13 years the junior of Bacon, who had started painting late at 30, and whom he looked up to as the “wildest and wisest” person he had ever met. Born to a wealthy Midlands family in Dublin, Bacon had swapped out Edwardian aspirations, tweed suits, and fox hunting for a life of what he called “gilded squalor” amid the rubble of postwar Soho, carrying with him an aristocratic disdain for money—treating sums both large and small with the same fabulous contempt. “Francis opened my eyes in some ways,” said Freud. “His work impressed me, but his personality affected me.” Introduced by Bacon to the roulette wheel, spun in late all-night sessions at his studio den, with his longtime nanny Jessie Lightfoot acting as a bouncer, Freud quickly became enamored of what Bacon called “the sensuality of debt.” “Lucian, who was never very generous in the years I knew him, would run after Francis with great wads of banknotes and give them to Francis to go gambling with,” said one of Freud’s lovers, Anne Dunn. “Lucian was never a gambler until his relationship intensified with Francis… he’s retentive.” Bacon, too, acted differently around his young protégé. When Freud showed up at the Colony Room, Bacon cut back on the queening—all the cries of “daughter” and “duckies” in his fluting high voice—and huddled down with Freud to discuss Giacometti, Velázquez, and risk. Most evenings, Freud, after a prolonged session on the one-armed bandit slot machine, would peel off to

continue work on his painstakingly executed canvases through the night, while Bacon continued gambling or in pursuit of cathartically cruel onenight-stands with sailors. Freud fretted over his friend’s bruising penchant for rough trade, at one point taking George Dyer, the cockney homme fatal whose antics included planting cannabis in Bacon's studio and tipping off the police, up to Scotland to dry him out. “I know it annoyed him,” said Freud. “It was a bit like interfering in marriage rows.” Bacon was equally bewildered by Freud’s hobnobbing with aristocrats. The Berlin-born Freud—whose family emigrated to London in flight from the Nazis in 1933, five years before his eminent grandfather, Sigmund, followed from Austria—had a remarkable ability to flit between the betting shop and Princess Margaret’s set, on whose patronage he relied for his portraits, and whose ruthless candor he admired. “I don’t mind being on no terms or bad terms,” he once said. “I just don’t want to be on false terms.” At one point he came close to painting a portrait of Princess Diana—“a great, great, great wonderful idea,” Lord Goodman told the princess’s secretary. “But JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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LAST TANGO IN PARIS Francis Bacon at a dinner on the eve of his careerdeﬁning retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. Two days earlier, his lover George Dyer had died of an overdose.

just to prove she’s not homosexual.” The ostensible reasons for their falling-out were always silly, but the depth of feeling that underlaid it was not. When the Tate’s Nicholas Serota approached Freud to loan one of his Bacon paintings, Two Figures in a Bed (1953) for Bacon’s 1985 retrospective, Freud refused, much to Bacon’s annoyance. Considered too risqué to be exhibited in the ’50s, the brutish depiction of two male nudes, “wrestling on a bed,” was considered by Freud to be one of Bacon’s finest paintings. He pawned it many times over the years, getting greater sums for it every time, each time breathing a sigh of relief when he was able to get it back. It hung in a gilt frame over Freud’s bed until the day he died. The Lives of Lucian of Freud: Fame, 1968–2011 will be published on January 19 by Knopf, and Francis Bacon: Revelations on March 2 by Knopf.

Both men disdained in the other what they pushed away in themselves—class for Bacon, risk for Freud— which made for a volatile and combustible mix.

I shouldn’t leave her in the room with Lucian.” Bacon dismissed such activity as the worst kind of social climbing. When Freud was named Companion of Honor in the queen’s 1983 birthday honors list, Bacon took the opportunity to boast of his own status as earl manqué, claiming to have turned down two offers of a knighthood. “I came into this world as Mr. Bacon and I want to leave as Mr. Bacon,” he insisted. Both men, then, disdained in the other what they pushed away in themselves—class for Bacon, risk for Freud—which made for a volatile and combustible mix. Their falling-out was both inevitable and long on the horizon. Viewed as “Francis Bacon’s sort of pet” through most of the ’60s, according to London gallery owner Anthony d’Offay, Freud’s style, under the influence of Bacon and Frank Auerbach, began to loosen up in the ’70s, his use of painting growing more visceral, and his reputation surged. It was more than Bacon could take. “Everything Lucian does is so careful,” sniped the grandee of dismemberment and chaos, wandering around Freud’s big exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1974, whose works he called, “realistic without being real.” Occasionally sighted together in the ’80s, the two men would squabble and go years without speaking. “She’s left me after all this time,” Bacon was once heard to complain in the years before his own death in 1992. “And she’s had all these children AVENUE MAGAZINE | JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021

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IN REPOSE Lucian Freud's 1994 oil on canvas, Benefits Supervisor Resting, which depicts his friend Sue Tilley, achieved an artist record $56.2 million at Christie's in New York in May 2015.

Ample Returns

LUCIAN FREUD COURTESY CHRISTIE'S IMAGES

Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon remain art world rivals even in the afterlife. Angela M.H. Schuster reports on their rebounding auction prices

“I

have such great memories of flying to New York in November 2013 to sell Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, knowing in my heart that I was likely to break the world record for any painting sold at auction,” says Jussi Pylkkänen, global president for Christie’s, who gaveled in the British artist’s handsomely scaled 1969 triptych for a then jaw-dropping $142.4 million with fees after a ten-minute bidding war won by casino magnate Elaine Wynn. Since then, some 200 of the nearly 600 paintings executed during Bacon’s lifetime have come on the block, among the most recent, his 1981 Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, which sold for $84.5 million in a marathon online auction at Sotheby’s London just this past June. “Like Warhol and Picasso, Bacon is a safe bet, investment-wise, based on the strength of the market for his raw and highly charged works, which have become must-haves for power collectors,” says Roman Kräussl, a leading expert on art as an alternative investment class at the University of Luxembourg and Stanford University. “As our hedonic art price index shows, $100,000 JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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BACON AND FREUD ART MARKET SNAPSHOT 2010–2020

INDEX

intellectual, an acquired taste if you will, and are best bought by those who truly love them.” Still, as our chart shows, Freud’s market is trending up. A $100,000 investment in a “Freud portfolio” in 2010 would now be worth an estimated $174,000—with Freud’s paintings edging ever closer to the $40 million mark on the block. “We are continuing to see spectacular prices for these two great British artists,” says Pylkkänen. “It has been a privilege to have sold so many of their masterpieces at auction. Clearly, they have a very broad, passionate, global following. Long may it continue!”

260

$300m

240

$250m

220 $200m

200

$150m

180 160

$100m

140

Bacon

120

Freud

100

$50m

0 2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

SALES VOLUME IN USD Bacon Freud

ART MARKET METRICS, ROMAN KRÄUSSL, UNIVERSITY OF LUXEMBOURG/STANFORD UNIVERSITY; FRANCIS BACON COURTESY CHRISTIE'S IMAGES

ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, sold for an artist record $142.4 million on an unpublished estimate of $85 million after a bidding war that lasted more than ten minutes in November 2013. The triptych was acquired by casino magnate Elaine Wynn.

invested in 2010 in a hypothetical portfolio of works by Bacon would be worth an average of $235,000, despite last year’s sales being curtailed by the Covid-19 crisis.” Even during the market correction in contemporary art in 2016, he explains, Bacon lost “only” 22.7 percent while fellow blue-chip artists saw a downward correction of more than 30 percent, further attesting Bacon’s resilience. The market for works by Lucian Freud, Bacon’s erstwhile muse and frequent subject, is a bit more fraught, says Kräussl. “His heavily impastoed portraits of family and friends are far more

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YES, YOUR MAJESTY Andy Warhol's 1985 screenprint with diamond dust, Queen Elizabeth II, left, hits the block at Christie's in London on January 21. Below: Rembrandt's intimately scaled oil on panel, Abraham and the Angels, 1646, goes under the gavel at Sotheby's in New York, pegged at $20 million to $30 million during Classics Week at the house.

Queen's Ransom

WARHOL COURTESY PHILLIPS; REMBRANDT COURTESY SOTHEBY’S

Standout works by Warhol and a rare-to-market Rembrandt and are teed up to lead sales at Sotheby’s and Phillips

braham and the Angels, a diminutive oil on panel by Rembrandt van Rijn, goes under the gavel at Sotheby’s in New York in January. “While Rembrandt is best known for his portraiture…this gem-like panel, painted in 1646, is an outstanding example of the artist’s ability to depict a complex and moving composition on a small scale,” says George Wachter, chairman and worldwide co-head of Old Master paintings at Sotheby’s. Of the 136 biblical paintings the Dutch master produced, he says, the present work is one of only five remaining in private hands. Featured in the Frick Museum’s celebrated 2017 exhibition “Divine Encounter: Rembrandt’s Abraham and the Angels,” the painting last appeared on the block in 1848 when it found a buyer for a mere £64, the equivalent of $8,600 in today’s

currency. It carries an estimate of $20 million to $30 million. On the other side of the proverbial pond, a suite of editioned works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Banksy, and Damien Hirst hit the block at Phillips in London on January 21. The market for editions has been on the rise as of late, propelled in part by the tight curation of the works tendered at the house by its keen-eyed worldwide co-heads in the category, Cary Leibowitz and Kelly Troester. Previous results, particularly for Warhol editions, say Leibowitz and Troester, demonstrate the continued desire for the pop artist’s work. “In the past year alone, we have achieved nine world auction records.” Among the standout lots in the upcoming sale is Warhol’s 1985 screen print with diamond dust, Queen Elizabeth II, which is tagged at £100,000 to £150,000 ($133,000–$200,000). Happy bidding!—A.M.H.S. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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CULTURE

Worth a Look: Five Palm Beach Exhibitions Not to Miss Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #418 E: A blue square on a yellow wall. The square is filled in solid, 1984. 1

“JENNIFER BARTLETT” AND “SOL LEWITT: CUBIC FORMS”

For her inaugural Palm Beach pop-up, New York gallerist Paula Cooper will offer parallel exhibitions of works by Sol LeWitt and Jennifer Bartlett, who was inspired by the former’s geometric abstractions. “Sol LeWitt: Cubic Forms” explores LeWitt's use of the cube as the base unit for an expansive body of works through his experimentation with line, form, and material. Highlights include Incomplete Open Cube 8/9 (1974)— part of the large-scale version of the artist’s major project, Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes—along with a suite of colorful gouaches and one of LeWitt’s luminous wall drawings. For the Jennifer Bartlett exhibition, the gallery is presenting a series of works in silkscreen and baked enamel on steel, including the artist’s 32-part Grids, Series XVIII (1971). “With so many people planning extended stays there this year, it made a lot of sense for us to open a temporary space,” says Steve Henry, Cooper’s Palm Beach senior director. “We love the walkability of Worth Avenue, with its charming pedestrian vias, and look forward to welcoming viewers off the street and by appointment.”

GROUP SHOW Lehmann Maupin Palm Beach Worth Avenue at S. County Road Through February 28

For its Palm Beach debut, Lehmann Maupin— which has galleries in New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London—is presenting a group show of 32 works by such luminaries as McArthur Binion, Marilyn Minter, Tracey Emin, Helen Pashgian, Lee Bul, David Salle, and Do Ho Suh, as well as Erwin Wurm’s witty, patinated bronze Short bag (2017). David Maupin says he is looking forward to establishing a foothold in the Sunshine State: “We have a loyal community of longtime clients in Palm Beach, not to mention the many museums in the surrounding area that have supported our artists over the years.”

Erwin Wurm, Short Bag, 2017.

Paula Cooper Gallery 243 Worth Avenue January 14–February 6

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WAYNE THIEBAUD Acquavella Gallery The Royal Poinciana Plaza 340 Royal Poinciana Way Through February 20

For Acquavella’s inaugural Palm Beach outing—its first venture outside New York in its 99-year history—the gallery is offering a collection of nearly two dozen works by California pop artist and neorealist Wayne Thiebaud, who turned 100 in November. The centenarian is known for his colorful and highly textured renderings of landscapes and everyday items and dishes such as fresh-baked pies and other pastries.

Wayne Thiebaud, Two Tulip Sundaes, 2010. 4

“LEONARD EDMONDSON: SIGNS & SYMBOLS” Findlay Galleries 165 Worth Avenue January 2–February 18

This Palm Beach stalwart of six decades is presenting a collection of 25 mid-20th-century abstract and surreal mixed-media works by the California painter and printmaker who credited Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky for inspiring his oeuvre. The pieces on view, says James Borynack, chairman and CEO of the 150-year-old gallery, collectively “share a delicate line, a concern with the tonal gradations of textured backgrounds, and a refined elegance.”

Mary Corse, Untitled (Beams), 2019.

MARY CORSE Pace Palm Beach The Royal Poinciana Plaza 340 Royal Poinciana Way February 4–28

Pace’s Palm Beach debut winter programming includes an exhibition of six luminous recent works by California Light and Space artist Mary Corse. Among the highlights is Untitled (Beams) (2019), an acrylic on canvas with embedded glass microspheres.

Leonard Edmundson, Untitled, 1956. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

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MILTON PALM BEACH’S SUAVE CHARM IS PERSONIFIED BY A MATINEE IDOL WHO SPENT HIS YOUTH ON ITS SUGARED SANDS AND HAS BEEN RETURNING EVER SINCE. BOB MORRIS BASKS IN THE BRONZED GLOW OF THE ONE AND ONLY GEORGE HAMILTON GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK MELE

COAST WITH THE MOST George Hamilton dressed for a black-tie beach day in a Kiton dinner jacket, tuxedo vest, and pants; Borrelli shirt; and Ralph Lauren bow tie. Clothes throughout, George’s own.

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taught ballroom dancing as a comely teenager in Palm Beach, he was familiar with the steps because his socially ambitious mother had enrolled him in dancing school years before. He also knew the music, because his father was a society band leader. What he didn’t know, however, was what his students really wanted. He found out soon enough. “All you had to do was lead a lady around the floor and they were thrilled,” Hamilton wrote in Don’t Mind If I Do, his 2009 memoir about the widows and dowagers he had to charm, then rope in for more lessons. “Their husbands didn’t want to dance with them so I became a sought-after partner.” If that was a dirty secret it was nothing compared with another: As a student at Palm Beach High School in the early 1950s, he was skinny dipping with a date on his favorite beach near the old Dodge estate. He claims that he ran into Senator John F. Kennedy doing the same thing. It was one of many early glittering encounters in a gilded get-about life. “Palm Beach was where I saw everything and everyone,” he says. 44

PALM BEACH PEACOCK The actor relaxes poolside at the Colony Palm Beach in a Brunello Cucinelli double-breasted seersucker suit; Borrelli shirt; and Ralph Lauren pocket square.

PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE COLONY PALM BEACH GROOMING BY COLLEEN STONE FOR CREATIVE MANAGEMENT

WHEN GEORGE HAMILTON

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KING GEORGE The actor dazzles on Worth Avenue in a Loro Piana blazer; Borrelli shirt; AG white denim; and Chrome Hearts “Pyramid Plus” link bracelet, $2,310, Whisker Biscuit Eyewear, $1,015, oval belt buckle, $1,045, and “BS Fleur” stickpin, $310, at chromehearts.com

“FROM LIVING IN PALM BEACH, I LEARNED THAT MONEY WASN’T THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, IT WAS A SENSE OF HUMOR AND A SENSE OF STYLE.” GEORGE HAMILTON

We’re talking on a Zoom call from his airy, heavily mirrored high-rise in Beverly Hills. The pandemic has kept him away from his favorite resort town for too long, but he is cheered by the prospect of an imminent return to the sugar white sand beaches he prizes. “It was the most extraordinary part of my life, and it was like my prep school and finishing school,” he says. “Everything significant I know came from my time there.” On my screen his tan looks real, although after a skin cancer scare several years ago it might have been applied using the auto bronzing cream he once sold on QVC. His tailored clothes radiate patrician elegance —pink polo shirt, checked blazer, and fuchsia sweater insouciantly draped over his shoulders. “From living in Palm Beach, I learned that money wasn’t the most important thing, it was a sense of humor and a sense of style,” says the actor, 81, whose career spanned roles as a young Hollywood leading man to Dynasty and American Housewife on TV. While he played Hank Williams, Evel Knievel, and recently Colonel Sanders to promote KFC’s extra crispy chicken, he is mostly still cast as suave, cosmopolitan men. “I saw all kinds of people in Palm Beach, including many who had everything and still weren’t happy,” he says. “But I also learned about suntanning and not wearing socks so that when I got to Hollywood, I had all this education that taught me how to play a role.”

“HARLEM REPRESENTS COOL AND CUTTING EDGE— AND DESIGNERS ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE MOST CREATIVE WAY TO SHOWCASE THEIR CLOTHES.” —JONELLE PROCOPE, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE APOLLO THEATER Legendary Harlem tailor Dapper Dan at his atelier on 125th street.

Indeed, although he was barely scraping by, he drove a vintage Rolls-Royce to promote his to-themanor-born image and impressed MGM enough to double his salary. Joan Collins was impressed too. “I had just arrived in Hollywood and met George at a party and he asked if I wanted to see his car,” she tells me. “We went for a spin and have been friends ever since.” Collins, who has worked with Hamilton in TV, film, and theater, remembers Elizabeth Taylor being madly in love with him. She also remembers him buying more clothes than her on at least

one shopping excursion. She calls him Gorgeous George, as do many others. “One of the things about being good-looking is that people don’t always think you can be a good actor,” she says. “But I think he’s a better actor than he gives himself credit for.” Hamilton doesn’t give it all that much thought and sees acting as a bit of a romp. “You just have to be the best you, not somebody else,” he once said. Along with Palm Beach, he credits his parents and his stylish gay older stepbrother, Bill (who died in 1985), for showing him the ropes among the elite JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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BY GEORGE HE’S GOT IT! Impeccably dressed for a day on Worth Avenue. Chrome Hearts Jackstastic eyewear, $3,100; chromehearts.com. Opposite: Lounging at the Colony Palm Beach.

of both Boston and Manhattan, where they spent time as children. His mother, Anne Stevens Potter Hamilton Hunt Spalding, was known as Teeny— although her personality and ledger of divorces was anything but. The daughter of an Arkansas doctor, she was a charismatic Southern belle with a taste for the high life. Renée Zellweger played her in a 2009 movie, My One and Only, based on Hamilton’s anecdotes about a road trip he and his stepbrother took with her after she divorced his dad. Hamilton’s father, a Dartmouth graduate named George but known as Spike, traveled the 46

country with his society orchestra and showed his son how the other half lives after taking him in on East 57th Street. Young Hamilton’s education included, in addition to society dancing class, the Browning School on East 62nd Street and the Hackley School in Tarrytown, where he threw himself into singing. But his classrooms were also the Stork Club and El Morocco, haunts of both divorced parents. Other memorable moments had him beating Hoagy Carmichael at poker in Palm Springs, seeing a young Julie Andrews sing at an uptown party, and work-

ing the debutante scene in Tuxedo Park. “Be a ladies’ man and a man’s man,” his father coached him. His first lead was Crime & Punishment, USA, a quirky 1959 update of the Russian novel. It earned him a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer. A leading role in Vincente Minnelli’s Home From the Hill the next year acquainted him with a young Liza. (In his memoir he recalls a fun night at Judy Garland’s weekend home in Westchester and waking up to be told she had attempted suicide.) Light in the Piazza followed, and then came Where the

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“PALM BEACH IS FOR PEOPLE WHO DOMINATE THE WORLD AND THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO RUB SHOULDERS WITH THEM.” GEORGE HAMILTON

Boys Are, in which he played a wealthy Brown undergraduate lording over spring break in a yacht. Dolores Hart, his leading lady, famously became a nun in the years that followed. Among his more impressive moments as a Casanova, he invited the bookish and pale Lynda Johnson to join him in Acapulco when her father was in the White House. “This ghost blew me away by lasting longer in the sun than I could,” he wrote. An Easter at LBJ’s ranch followed, as did a night at the Oscars in 1966, where he had a hairdresser give her a makeover.

While the roles quickly devolved (there was a camp disco Dracula in the ’70s and more recently a turn at Dancing with the Stars) the image of the dashing sought-after playboy remained. Merle Oberon, Gloria Swanson, Brigitte Bardot, Charlotte Ford—he knew them all. “Women have more fun because they’re more concerned about how other women see them,” he tells me. He adds that a beautiful, smart woman with a business sense is the ideal. Terry Allen Kramer fit the bill and for several years they were seen as an item.

“She gave the best parties and never ran out of caviar,” he said. “And I never knew anyone as sweet as her, but many guys didn’t understand that all she wanted was love in her life.” After a short break, we’re back on Zoom and Hamilton is showing me around his closet and the racks of clothes he keeps ready for his peripatetic life. He’s pulling out the lightweight garments for his upcoming Palm Beach jaunt, hitching a ride on a friend’s jet. He doesn’t mind that his younger brother, David, recently sold his house. “It’s like a club down there,” he says. “There are always JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

SILVER SURFER George Hamilton dressed up for a day in his beloved resort town. “Palm Beach was where I saw everyone and everything,” he says.

places to stay and I’d rather be a guest in a big house than own one.” It reminds me of a story in his memoir about the first time he came to town. His drama teacher at boarding school gave him a ride from up north to visit his mother, who had relocated. When he saw that her house on North County Road was shamefully tiny, he had his teacher drop him at a larger one and carried his luggage back. But the small house barely mattered. “My mother was a person with dreams, and my brother helped her fulfill them,” he says. And so, despite her modest means, she made the scene and was invited everywhere from Taboo to the Everglades Club. With a loving gaze, he shows me a black and white photograph of her, a dark-haired beauty with two sons on her arms, all dressed in blue blazers and white trousers for the opening of one of Hamilton’s early films at the Paramount Theater. In a painted portrait on his wall, she lounges in a cloud of white marabou, a study in glamour. “Palm Beach is for people who dominate the world and the people who want to rub shoulders with them,” he says. “I’ve seen leaders of style from all over down there, including Gianni Agnelli, Fred Astaire, and Cary Grant.” It’s no wonder he dresses so well. But the most important thing, he contends is the tan. “When I get down there, I always top mine off and I’m a happy man,” he says as he gets ready to go to dinner with his latest squeeze, Kelly Day, a Hollywood philanthropist and friend of his former short-term wife, Alana Stewart, who later married Rod Stewart. “A tan is the first thing you need, then a pair of loafers and velvet slippers.” “Anything else?” I ask. “A tuxedo, a bathing suit,” he replies, “and a sense of humor.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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PHOTO BY SLIM AARONS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

WHY M-C, EH? In 1991, Slim Aarons captured Marie-Chantal Miller living it up with family and friends in Cap Ferrat. Opposite: Just eight years later, she was Princess MarieChantal of Greece, a dutiful wife and mother.

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TIME HAS CAUGHT UP WITH THE GENER ATION OF TABLETOP-DANCING SOCIALITES WHO FILLED THE GOSSIP COLUMNS FROM THE ’80S TO THE 2000S. LIS A MARSH ASKS THESE FORMER WILD CHILDREN WHETHER THEIR ADVICE TO THEIR OWN KIDS IS “DO AS I S AY ” OR “DO AS I DID”?

PHOTO BY JULIAN PARKER/UK PRESS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Girls Gone Mild I

n the 1980s, sixteen-year-old Marie-Chantal Miller lead the life of a teenager’s dreams. She lived virtually alone in her parents’ luxurious Upper East Side apartment while they resided in Hong Kong, where her father’s duty-free shopping empire, the source of the family billions, was based. Her elder sister, Pia, and younger, Alexandra, were both in boarding school, but Marie-Chantal was taking a term off for “independent study”—interning for Andy Warhol. Working for the pop art icon, she accompanied him to dinners and gallery openings, as well as a seemingly endless whirl of clubs and parties. That meant being sucked into the tornado of press attention that churned around him wherever he went, complete with a permanent lightning storm of flash bulbs. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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LATE SHOW Left to right: In the ’80s, Cornelia Guest (pictured with pals Boy George, Marilyn, and Andy Warhol) earned the sobriquet “Deb of the Decade”; 20 years later, she settled into the quiet life of a vegan caterer. Nicky Hilton once never left the house without a tiara; now a Rothschild, she is the doting mother of two. 52

passively posing at charity galas and fundraising luncheons; now the aggressive new breed was creating their own media opportunities. “I remember being on assignment for WWD in the mid-1990s,” Eichner says. “Bergdorf Goodman was shutting down so these two socialite sisters could go shopping. It was the start of Nicky and Paris Hilton.” Some New York social observers may say the world had never recovered from the advent of the Hilton sisters. But the fact is that everyone gets older, and some people even get wiser. Case in point: Nicky Hilton. Now a Rothschild, she has two impeccably turned-out children and a calendar full of charitable works and side hustles appropriate to her station, such as designing a collection of tasteful flats for French Sole. When such former “It” girls find themselves raising their own children, the question becomes: Is their parenting approach “Do as I say” or “Do as I did”? For the former Miller—who became Princess Marie-Chantal upon marrying Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece in 1995, and now has five children, including her eldest and only daughter, Olympia—the answer is “Do as I say.” “Olympia says I was the strictest with her— the poor thing,” she tells Avenue. “When she

would go on sleepovers, I would say, ‘Prove it to me that you’re at your friend’s house’ and she’d have to take a picture. When I was her age, I was in New York with Andy Warhol. She reminds me all the time. She’d say, ‘It’s ironic that you’re so strict with me when you were out and about, completely able to do whatever you wanted.’ “I guess that’s the way it is—you learn from your experiences. I had a lot more independence young, and therefore I am stricter and more worried because the world is a different place,” she says. For this generation of former nonstop party people, respectability is the new punk. Last year, Her Royal Highness even authored Manners Begin at Breakfast, an etiquette guide for families with young children. It contains a wealth of sober and practical advice—such as “when children are on their screens and are being addressed by an adult or another child, it’s important that they know to look up and make eye contact when they respond”—far removed from the concerns of the pack of nightclub-hopping teenage heiresses she once ran with. But chilling out in middle age and raising civilized children isn’t just a challenge facing HRHs. Novelist Amanda Brainerd, author of Age of Consent, a coming-of-age novel loosely based on her 1980s upbringing in a world of wealth, privilege, and lax oversight on the Upper East Side, agrees that the world has become a different place. “We’ve seen laissez-faire parenting and its ill effects,” she says, recounting a friend who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, with her three siblings during the week, with only the babysitter for supervision. Her parents lived in the city and would visit on the weekends. Needless to say, this house was party central. “Most of them have found a way to be adults, have careers, marry, have children,” she says. “Now it’s the opposite. The pendulum has swung and it’s all helicopter parenting.”

CORNELIA GUEST WILD: PHOTO BY DAVE HOGAN/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; CORNELIA GUEST MILD: PHOTO BY STEFANIE KEENAN/PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGES; NICKY HILTON WILD: PHOTO BY RON GALELLA/RON GALELLA COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; NICKY HILTON ROTHSCHILD MILD: PHOTO BY NICHOLAS HUNT/GETTY IMAGES FOR GOOD+FOUNDATION

This put Miller—along with her equally mediagenic sisters—at the forefront of a new generation of celebrity socialite. From the ’80s to the 2000s, gossip columns like Page Six and the social pages of WWD were filled with pretty young things like the socials Cornelia Guest, Germany’s Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, and Nina Griscom; Emilia Fanjul; Samantha and Serena Boardman; and later, Paris and Nicky Hilton. Fabian Basabe, one of the few males to ascend to “It”-dom, made the front page of the New York Daily News in 2004 for provocatively dipping then-first-daughter Barbara Bush on the dance floor of a Fashion Week after-party. For this irresistibly glamorous New York set, dancing on restaurant banquettes and nightclub tables was de rigueur, and holding court in VIP rooms was just another night out. “I’ve seen it come full circle,” says Steve Eichner, longtime nightlife photographer for WWD’s Eye pages. He has been covering wealthy party boys and girls, in some cases, for multiple generations of the same family. “Until the 1990s, it was all socialites and photographing what they were wearing,” he says. But it all changed with the arrival on the scene of two teenage hotel heiresses. No longer were the socials

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PHOTO BY RON GALELLA/RON GALELLA COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO BY POOL DUFOUR/VANDEVILLE/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES

CALLING GLORIA Germany’s Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis was once known in the New York gossip columns as “Princess TNT” for her wild ways. Three children later, she grew into the model of propriety.

For this generation of former nonstop party people, respectability is the new punk.

“We’re not the first generation to have to go through this,” adds Euan Rellie, a banker and noted man-about-Manhattan. “My mother was convinced that the children of the people who were wild in the 1960s were all going to be conservative and railing against that freedom.” Rellie and his British wife, former “It” girl Lucy Sykes, were scene makers in the 1990s, regularly showing up at hotspots like Moomba, Pravda, Bungalow 8, Lot 61, and the Beatrice Inn. But age, and the fact that they are now parents to 17-year-old Heathcliff and 13-year-old Titus, has mellowed them. “It’s a bit unseemly in your 50s to be dancing on the banquette,” he says, admitting that these days going out is more likely to be a sedate dinner at the Waverly Inn or Pastis. As for parenting their sons, “I’m struggling with it—it’s never easy to parent teenage kids,” Rellie says. “There are pitfalls like social media and the notions of consent.” Like any normal teenagers, these young men are interested in exploring their city and having a good time. However, “Kids can’t go out in the same way that kids could 30 years ago.” “I castigate my 17-year-old incessantly,” Rellie

admits. “I’m on him all the time in a way that is hypocritical. If he knew about every dumb thing I’ve done in my life, he might conclude I lack the moral authority to discipline him the way I do. That’s part of every generation in history. We learn from the dumb stuff we did and try to make sure our children don’t do as much dumb stuff.” Rellie recalls receiving simple directives from his mother: “‘Don’t get into drugs, don’t make girls pregnant.’ And I listened to my parents. I was always aware of what the boundaries were.” Princess Marie-Chantal echoes the same sentiment: “All I can say is, wait until you raise your own children. We learn along the way and hope we’re doing what’s best.” Her Royal Highness’s experience with her sons has been slightly different from that with her daughter. “Now you can track your teenagers with these fantastic apps” with their permission, she says. “We have tools.” She adds that parenting changes with the times. “We’ve learned so much about open conversations…developing an element of trust,” she says. “If there’s a situation, I want any of my kids to be able to pick up the phone and call me. Whereas I was always petrified of my parents.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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THE SPRING RUNWAY S WERE AWASH WITH ’80S STAPLES. BODACIOUS FLUORO! BOULDER SHOULDERS! R AD RUFFLES! (LEG WARMERS OPTIONAL)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DONALD ROBERTSON

BEST IN SHOW 54

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Aniye ruffle-shouldered cocktail dress. price upon request; aniyeby.com. Previous: DROMe long viscose jacquard dress, $1,465; drome.it

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Versace ﬂuoro-print ra-ra skirt and bolero top, price upon request; versace.com. Opposite: Balmain ﬂuoro yellow jersey jacket, $2,595, sleeveless draped jersey dress (shown as top), $1,410, and low-rise boot-cut pants, $935; balmain.com

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Isabel Marant multicolored sequined dress. $1,585; isabelmarant.com. Previous: Christopher John Rogers tiered ruffle top, $1,995, and V-neck dress, $1,895; Saks Fifth Avenue.

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A PALM BEACH STORY On her: Hermès silk rib high knit collar sweater, $1,475, and pleated skirt, $16,100, hermes.com; Jose & Maria Barrera necklace, $635, earrings, $335, from Mix at the Breakers; bracelet, also from Mix; Tom Ford sunglasses, $370, from Absolutely Suitable at the Breakers. On him: Polo Ralph Lauren turquoise linen shirt with pocket, $148, polo.com; Z Zegna wool blend trousers, price upon request, at select Ermenegildo Zegna boutiques; Hermès “Toucans de Paradis” silk scarf, $420.

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A NEW YORK MOTHER AND SON (OR ARE THEY?) ESCAPE TO THE BREAKERS FOR SOME WINTER WARMTH PHOTOGRAPHY BY GABOR JURINA STYLING BY LUCREZIA MANCINI

Snow

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HELLO TROLLEY Opposite: On her, Silvia Tcherassi “Inagua” robe, $1,900, and “Fressia” leggings, $350, silviatcherassi.com; earrings, from Mix. Christian Louboutin shoes, stylist’s own. On him, Polo Ralph Lauren custom-fit polo top with pocket, $110, and slim stretch pants, $125; Giorgio Armani belt, $325, armani.com. Z Zegna leather shoes, price upon request.

HAIR AND MAKEUP BY HEATHER BLAINE FOR CREATIVE MANAGEMENT/MODELS CARLYE N. AND JOSHUA B. FOR WILHELMINA/PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE BREAKERS PALM BEACH

MAMA LOVES DRAMA Giorgio Armani jacket, $4,550, armani.com.

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THE FAMILY THAT PLAYS TOGETHER On her: Chanel muslin cape, $1,350, muslin skirt, $3,550, and satin organza top, $6,850, chanel.com; Saint Laurent shoes, stylist’s own. On him: Polo Ralph Lauren tuxedo, $1,395, polo.com, shirt, $148, and bow tie, $95, from Polo at the Breakers. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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MAKING A SPLASH Chanel jacket, $5,700, skirt, $2,900, organza top, $4,800, and belt, $2,900, chanel.com; Eric Javits straw visor, $117, from Absolutely Suitable.

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TIME-OUT CORNER On her: Roidal bandeau swimsuit, $253, from Absolutely Suitable; Eric Javits floppy hat with fringe, $450, and “Lil’ Mambo” fringe bag, $395, from Absolutely Suitable; Chanel lambskin sandals, $1,050, and bracelets, $1,525 (each); Hermès “Toucans de Paradis” silk scarf, $420. On him: Polo Ralph Lauren custom fit polo top with pocket, $110. Speedo, $39, from Surf Style Boutique.

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SHORE THING On her: Salvatore Ferragamo multicolor mesh knit tunic, $1,350, canvas cotton and silk trousers with leather trim, $690, black leather slides, $595, ferragamo.com; Jose & Maria Barrera earrings, $335, and Gas Bijoux bracelet, $280, from Mix at the Breakers; Eric Javits fringe hat, $350, from Absolutely Suitable; Folklore small “Cella” bag, $435, from folklorethelabel.com. On him: Polo Ralph Lauren linen blend pants, $125, and custom-ﬁt mesh polo, $90, polo.com.

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NO RESERVATIONS On her: Johanna Ortiz “Bella” maxi dress, $1,995, at the Webster Bal Harbour Shops; Gas Bijoux necklace, $300, from Mix at the Breakers; Christian Louboutin shoes, stylist’s own; Folklore “Loop” bag in snake leather, $385. On him: Polo Ralph Lauren tan linen blazer, $895, and linen blend pants, $125, from Polo at the Breakers; Hermès cotton poplin knotted shirt, $630, hermes.com; Z Zegna leather shoes, price upon request. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

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Power Players GUTTER CREDITS JESSICA KORDA: SCOTT TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK; HALLERAN / STAFF / GETTY IMAGES

WITH ITS FAVORABLE CLIMATE FOR TRAINING, FLORIDA HAS EMERGED AS THE NATION’S SPORTING CAPITAL, ATTRACTING ELITE ATHLETES IN TENNIS, GOLF, POLO, SAILING, SOCCER, AND MORE.

QUEEN OF CLUBS Jessica Korda on the course at St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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To the Fore

Tiger Woods Phenom emeritus Florida’s biggest resident sports star, who inhabits a large mansion on Jupiter Island, had an unfortunate 12th hole at the US Masters last year, plunking three shots into the water and ending his hopes of defending his title. But in the long dramatic arc of his career, that was merely a blip. In his 44 years, the athlete has been many things: child golfing prodigy; youngest ever Masters champion; first and only player to hold all four pro Grand Slam titles simultaneously; family man; disgraced tabloid persona; washed-up and injured sports star; and finally, a figure of redemption. Amid the tall pines of Augusta National in 2019, he eked out victory by a single stroke, proving that there is still only one Tiger Woods.

Dustin Johnson World’s number one golfer When Dustin Johnson claimed his first US Masters title in Augusta this past November, his pulse did not discernibly quicken—despite playing a final round 68 in difficult conditions to post a 20-under-par total of 268, a tournament record. “You can’t tell if we’re coming down the stretch of a major or if we’re lying on the couch watching football by his reactions,” his brother, Austin, who caddied for him in Georgia, has said of his laid-back style. The 36-year-old, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens with his fiancée, Paulina Gretzky— daughter of the Canadian ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky—and their two children, did allow for a lower lip wobble when Tiger Woods helped him into the Green Jacket. 72

TIGER WOODS: KEVIN C. COX / STAFF / GETTY IMAGES; DUSTIN JOHNSON: PATRICK SMITH / STAFF / GETTY IMAGES

SACRED PLOT Tiger Woods celebrates after sinking his putt on the 18th green to win the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, in April 2019. Right: The following year, Woods awards the Green Jacket to the next Masters champion, Dustin Johnson.

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JESSICA KORDA: YIFAN DING / STRINGER / GETTY IMAGES; NELLY KORDA: MICHAEL REAVES / STRINGER / GETTY IMAGES; SEBASTIAN KORDA: TPN / CONTRIBUTOR / GETTY IMAGES

Swing Set

Sebastian, Jessica, and Nelly Korda

TRIPLE THREAT The competitive Korda siblings from top: Jessica at the Shanghai Qizhong Garden Golf Club in 2019; Sebastian, playing Rafael Nadal in the 2020 French Open; and Nelly at the Tiburón Golf Club in Naples, Florida in 2019.

Keeping up with the “Kordashians” A top 10 fixture of the men’s tennis tour in the 1990s, who made an improbable run to capture the Australian Open in 1998, Czech-born, Bradenton-based Petr Korda was best known for his trademark post-match scissor kicks. Until now. Korda’s 20-year-old son, Sebastian, is the hottest new name in American men’s tennis, and daughters Jessica, 27, and Nelly, 22, are standout professional golfers on the LPGA Tour. A former junior champion ranked 213 who had yet to have a tour-level victory, Sebi, as he is better known, went from nowhere to everywhere at the French Open last year, qualifying for the main draw and reaching the fourth round (the youngest American to do so since Michael Chang in 1991) where he eventually lost to his idol, Rafael Nadal. The six-foot-five rightie made fans with his cannonball serve and effortless shot-making, and with his hijinks on and off the court. Like the rest of his family he often tags his posts on social media with #KeepingUpWithTheKordashians. And after upsetting 21st seed John Isner in the second round, he made a swimming motion toward his team—a reference, he later he explained on Instagram, to having bet them they would have to swim the length of the Charles Bridge in Prague if he made it to the third round. “I would say Jess is the most outgoing of us three, and Seb’s definitely the biggest goofball,” Nelly told reporters during the French Open.

The first of the Korda sisters to break through on the women’s tour, Jessica has five tour titles to her name and is currently ranked 71 after a string of injuries over the past two years. For her part, Nelly has three titles and is currently number three in the world. Not that she has bragging rights in the Korda household. Dad has serious bona fides on the golf course, and Sebi still dines out on their head to head. “My only claim to fame is the only tournament I ever played I won and I beat [Nelly] when I was like 11 years old,” Sebi said in an interview. “[She] will never live that one down.” If he has his way, Sebi, who is coached by his father but says he owes his fluid strokes to his mother, Regina Rajchrtová, a former tennis pro who coached her son while Petr was on the tour with Jessica, will also be able to lord it over his dad. “My goal in life is to win two Grand Slams,” Korda said, “so I have one more than he has.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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The Williams Sisters Tennis Aces

Sloane Stephens Sporting Royalty She is the baseline-hugging tennis player from Plantation, Florida, who returned from a near career-ending foot injury and a ranking of 336 to win the 2017 US Open in only her fifth tournament back. The daughter of former New England Patriots running back John Stephens and Sybil Smith, a champion college swimmer, 27-year-old Sloane has reached as high as number three in the world and came within one set of snatching the 2018 French Open final from favorite Simona Halep. Her soul mate is the mercurial, 31-year-old professional soccer player Jozy Altidore, the Boca Raton-raised forward for the Toronto FC and the United States national team who has played in two World Cups. Having known each other since childhood—and having gotten engaged in April 2018—they are one of the highest-profile power couples in the world of sports. SUPREME COURT Left: Sloane Stephens serves to Elise Mertens of Belgium at the Western and Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, in 2018. Above left: Venus and Serena Williams photographed at an All Star Tennis Charity Event in Key Biscayne, Florida in 2015. 74

VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS: LARRY MARANO/GETTY IMAGES; SLOANE STEPHENS: ROB CARR/STAFF/GETTY IMAGES

Strokes of Genius

Since arriving on the professional women’s tennis tour in the late ’90s, Venus and Serena Williams have played to win on their own terms. Nothing about their careers has been country-club conventional—from bypassing the juniors circuit (a rite of passage for most players) and wearing the most talked-about tennis apparel since Gussie Moran first wore her trademark frilly knickers half a century earlier, to flexing their business muscles by becoming minority shareholders in the Miami Dolphins. Venus broke out in 1997, when she became the first debuting player to reach the finals of the US Open. Although their father, Richard, once told dumbfounded reporters that Venus was thinking of moonlighting as an astronaut, it was Serena who would soon soar into the stratosphere. During an 18-month period in 2002 and 2003, she won five Grand Slam titles, including the self-styled “Serena Slam” (a reference to her holding on to all four majors at the same time). Venus, still competing at 40, has since extended her tally to seven full Grand Slam wins. And with a haul of 23 Grand Slam titles (a record in the open era), Serena, 39, is without doubt the sport’s predominant female force. The rest of the women’s tour has finally caught up with the era of power tennis ushered in by Venus and Serena, but no player is happy to find themselves facing either of the sisters. They have confounded expectations for more than two decades, and no one would be surprised to find one or both of them hoisting the trophy at one of the majors this year.

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SOFIA KENIN: ROB CARR/STAFF/GETTY IMAGES; COCO GAUFF: SHAUN BOTTERILL/STAFF/GETTY IMAGES; NAOMI OSAKA: FRED LEE/CONTRIBUTOR

BORN READY Florida’s female tennis stars include, from top, the Del Rey native Coco Gauff, here at the 2020 French Open; Naomi Osaka, at the 2020 Australian Open; and Sofia Kenin, serving against Madison Keys at the Western and Southern Open in 2019.

Sofia Kenin

Coco Gauff

World No. 4 Singles Player

Talented Tyro

Sofia Kenin had a good year in 2020. When the south Florida tennis prodigy defeated the former world number one, Garbine Muguruza, at the Australian Open last January, her Women’s Tennis Association ranking skyrocketed. The 22-year-old is now America’s top singles player, and the world number four. The Pembroke Pines resident was born in Russia and emigrated with her parents to America as an infant. Rick Macci, at whose academy she was training by age six, was awed by her preternatural hand-eye coordination and scrappiness on court, calling her “the scariest little creature I’d ever seen.” But if Kenin’s competitive spirit brings to mind her idol, that other blond Floridian tennis powerhouse, Maria Sharapova, she has made plain that she plays for the USA, saying, “Me, I’m a rising star of American tennis.”

The most hyped teen phenom since Venus Williams emerged in the late ’90s, at 16 Cori Gauff, better known as Coco, has already begun to deliver on her precocious talent. An insider’s tip for greatness since she could barely see over the net, the Delray Beach resident announced herself as a future Grand Slam winner with a blazing fourth-round run at Wimbledon in 2019, defeating none other than five-time Wimbledon champion Venus in the first round. Now managed by Roger Federer’s company, Team8, Coco is using her considerable clout to bring attention to important social issues like racial and criminal injustice. Though the tennis season was more or less put on hold as she was beginning to make a charge to the top, the months off have just allowed her to grow into her body, which is built for speed and power. The tennis world has been served.

Naomi Osaka World No. 1 Singles Player It’s only fitting that tennis, an international sport if ever there was, should have as its new standardbearer a half-Japanese, half-Haitian player who grew up in Boca Raton. Since defeating Serena Williams to win the controversial 2018 US Open, a slugfest in which Williams’s circuitry went haywire, 23-year-old Osaka has gone on to win two more Grand Slam titles (the 2019 Australian Open and last year’s crowd-free US Open, during which she wore masks highlighting Black Lives Matter) and secured her place atop the sport. (Forget what the WTA rankings computer says: Osaka is the bestwomen’s tennis player currently out there.) As the first Asian player, male or female, to reach number one in the world rankings, the highly marketable Osaka has muscled past her rivals to become the highest female earner in sports history, as well as a bona fide sensation in Japan. Voted one of the 100 Most Influential People in Time magazine, she recently released a fashion capsule collection in collaboration with the Japanese label ADEAM and a tennis apparel line with Nike. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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DYNAMIC DUO Left: Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger after beating the Netherlands in the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019. Below: Blaise Matuidi warms up at the Inter Miami CF stadium. Right: David Beckham just before his team Inter Miami CF’s inaugural match last spring in Fort Lauderdale.

Blaise Matuidi Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger US Women’s National Soccer Team and Orlando Pride Players Soccer and style icons, champions of equal pay and LGBTQ visibility, and among the most important female athletes of the age, Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris have long been trailblazers. But for the couple whose athletic careers and romantic life have been intertwined since meeting at a National Women’s Soccer League training camp, winning the 2019 World Cup with the US national team was a game changer. At the time, the US women’s team was already a leading force in women’s sports, its members some of the most accomplished and best-known female athletes in the world, including Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, and the violet-haired, pied piper captain and striker Megan Rapinoe. But the women’s bravura World Cup performance, equal rights advocacy (28 members of the team had filed a gender discrimination suit against the US Soccer Federation over pay equity and working conditions), and post-victory partying—twerking on rooftops, letting loose on super-yachts, dancing on floats during New York’s tickertape parade in their honor, while spraying champagne–elevated them to the status of rock stars. Krashlyn—as defender Krieger and goalkeeper Harris are known—tied the knot in Miami at the end of 2019. Both Orlando Pride players are now in training for the Olympic Games in Tokyo—pandemic permitting. On the side, their business ventures include a beauty deal with Bumble and bumble— because, as Harris has said, “You can never grow or change if you stay in your lane.” 76

World Cup winner and Inter Miami midfielder The French World Cup winner and feted midfielder landed on Florida’s shores with his glamorous wife, Isabelle, last summer, coaxed from the superclub Juventus FC to play for David Beckham’s brandnew Major League Soccer club, Inter Miami. The 33 year-old Matuidi has been friends with Beckham since their days at Paris Saint-Germain, and his signing is a score for the fledgling MLS club, not least because he agreed to take a pay cut (to an estimated $1.5 million), allowing Inter Miami to sign a third Designated Player. Matuidi’s superlative skills as a midfielder will anchor the team, while Isabelle, his childhood sweetheart and mother of his three children, will surely bring some French style to the Miami wives-and-girlfriends’ circuit.

David Beckham Co-owner, Inter Miami CF An English former professional soccer player turned international media darling turned president and co-owner of Inter Miami CF, David Beckham is, incontestably, pop culture royalty. Much has been made of his being the most popular blond in England since Diana, Princess of Wales, and of his marrying Victoria Adams, better known as Posh, the imperious former Spice Girl turned highfashion designer. (Appropriately for a couple who have also assumed the unofficial title of Prince and Princess of Eurotrash in the public imagination, the Beckhams have had a book about them written by Diana’s biographer, Andrew Morton, who claims they are “the new royals for the common man.”) And just as his wife has become a fashion plate for the ages, Becks remains one of the most important influences on contemporary masculine glamour. A walking sandwich board for metrosexuality and male vanity, Beckham has made headlines over the years for his provocative photo spreads and fashion choices, from sarongs and his silk bandannas to hair braids. He also sets trends on the field: the Alice band he sported a few years back was soon adopted by players around the world. And while on most guys the accessory is a way of keeping annoying hair out of their eyes, on Beckham it’s the tiara he was born to wear.

ASHLYN HARRIS AND ALI KRIEGER: JOHN WALTON-EMPICS/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES; BLAISE MATUIDI: MICHAEL REAVES/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID BECKHAM: MICHAEL REAVES/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES

Shooting Stars

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Laura Kraut Olympic Showjumper

LAURA KRAUT: DENNIS GROMBKOWSKI/STAFF/GETTY IMAGES; LAURA GRAVES: PICTURE ALLIANCE/CONTRIBUTOR/GETTY IMAGES; GRANT GANZI: NICK MELE

After recovering from a nasty fall last August, the fearless show jumper Laura Kraut, 55, is back in the saddle with her sights set on the Olympic Games. She has been a staple of the US show jumping team for two decades, winning team gold at the 2008 Olympics with her horse Cedric and gold again at the 2018 World Equestrian Games on Zeremonie. Kraut rode throughout her childhood and dropped out of college to become a groom, turning up at shows with her saddle to “catch a ride,” once riding 62 rounds in one day. Nowadays she spends summers in England with her partner, the British show jumper and national treasure Nick Skelton, returning home to Wellington and her stable of horses, under the care and management of her sister, Mary Elizabeth, for the rest of the year.

Hot to Trot Laura Graves Olympic Dressage Rider

THE MANE ATTRACTION Above: Laura Graves and Verdades at the Rio 1016 Olympic Games. Top: Laura Kraut and her horse Teirra clear the water at the German Jumping and Dressage Grand Prix in 2012. Above right, Grant Ganzi of the polo-playing Ganzis.

A year ago Laura Graves, a former hairstylist and cosmetologist, and her 18-year-old horse, Verdades, were preparing to head to the 2020 Olympics as the US’s top podium contender. The pair has set the dressage world alight since appearing from nowhere in 2014 to finish second in the freestyle at the Grand Prix national championship. Freestyle is fiendishly difficult, requiring the horse and rider to execute intricate moves such as the flying change (a cadenced canter, giving the impression of the horse skipping) in perfect synchronization to the music. The duo went from outside the top 700 to tenth in the FEI world rankings in less than 18 months, later helping the US team win a rare bronze in team dressage at the 2016 Rio Olympics. That equaled the country’s best finish in dressage since 1948, and in 2018 Graves and Verdades became the first American partnership to reach world number one. But 33-year-old Graves, who lives and trains in Orlando, decided to retire “Diddy” when she realized her beloved horse would struggle to regain his top form. She now has a stable of young horses to train and remains American dressage’s biggest talent.

The Ganzi Family Polo-Playing Dynasty The surname Ganzi has become synonymous with the sport of kings in the Sunshine State— with third-generation polo player and threegoaler Grant Ganzi, 22, now making his mark. In July, the rakishly handsome Grant led his Team Casablanca to victory for the second year in a row in the United States Arena Handicap held in Aspen, Colorado. In 2018, Grant’s parents, Marc and Melissa Ganzi, cofounders of the Wellingtonbased Grand Champions Polo Club, established the 26-goal World Polo League in partnership with J5 equestrian Bob Jornayvaz. Since then, the league has not only attracted the world’s best players, including Adolfo Cambiaso, Pablo Mac Donough, Juan Martin Nero, Nacho Figueras, and Nic Roldán, but also the world’s best equine athletes, bringing to American audiences the best polo outside of Argentina. JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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America’s Cup Contenders “Our mentality is that each day is a race day,” says Terry Hutchinson, skipper and executive director of American Magic, the New York Yacht Club consortium backing this year’s America’s Cup challenger. “When you practice like you race, and make your practice days harder than race days, the racing tends to get easier.” To that end, he says, “Pensacola, with its consistently good sailing weather, a large and protected flat water training venue, efficient logistics, and a welcoming community, has brought a lot to the table for our team.” Hutchinson spearheaded the development of the NYYC’s Florida training facility, where the team has put a trio of futuristic foiling monohulls through their paces in preparation for the upcoming America’s Cup in New Zealand this March. The design began three years ago with a 38-foot concept boat, known affectionately as the Mule, which was followed by the fullscale Deﬁant to train and iron out any kinks in design and technology, before completion of the AC75 Patriot, their competition entrant, which was christened in Auckland in October. For this year’s race, the 36th America’s Cup, Hutchinson has teamed up with longtime Kiwi rival Dean Barker in hopes of winning back the oldest trophy in international sports in what he describes as a flying boat with a capacity to move across the water at a 50-knot clip.

DYLAN CLARKE; WILL RICKETSON / NEW YORK YACHT CLUB

Seas the Day

Terry Hutchinson, Dean Barker, and American Magic

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THE SPORTING LIFE The Mallet Club in Boca Grande. Below: Shuffleboard in Sarasota, Florida in 1941. Opposite page: The American Magic team training on AC75 Defiant in Pensacola, Florida for the upcoming America’s Cup (above and below).

THE MALLET CLUB: SLIM AARONS / STRINGER / GETTY IMAGES; COUPLE: GLASSHOUSE IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK

Athleisure Championship Croquet

Pro Shuffleboard

Hoops-La

The Sport of Retired Kings

It may not surprise anyone to learn that Palm Beach is to elite croquet what Las Vegas is to heavyweight boxing. “I liken it to a game of chess,” explains Johnny Mitchell, events manager at the National Croquet Center and Croquet Foundation of America and himself a top player. “People who are more aggressive tend to either win big or lose big, but the people who consistently win are the people who are patient and play a real steady game.” Championship-level croquet, a onetime Olympic sport in 1900, is far more serious than the version one might play at home. Every four years, the United States competes against Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand for the MacRobertson Shield, a major international tournament. For those players not cut out for the big time, however, variants of the game include “golf croquet,” which is faster and simpler. “Really, there’s a lot of regular folk who play,” Mitchell says.

Don’t be taken in by shuffleboard’s genial image. Dave Kudro, 69, who is the top-ranked player in Florida—and therefore, it might be safe to extrapolate, the world—says the sport can be “brutal.” “At the end of the day, or days, playing in a professional tournament, I am mentally exhausted,” he says. For the past four years Kudro, a Hall of Famer, has been president of the Florida Shuffleboard Association. In that time, it has exploded in popularity among young people: 10 years ago, the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club had only a dozen members and was at risk of closing; today it has more than 2,000. Kudro’s personal baptism of fire came at the age of 55, when a 70-year-old local shuffleboard shark wiped the court with him. “I looked at this game as boring and I didn’t want to take advantage of what I considered as elder abuse by beating him,” he recalls. “To my dismay I found out he wasn’t afraid to embarrass me.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Show Boats

WITH VIRUS-FLEEING FAMILIES STAYING AT SEA LONGER, AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES UNLOCKING THE NEXT LEVEL OF LUXURY, ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER SPEAKS WITH A TRIO OF PREMIER FLORIDA DESIGNERS ABOUT THE LATEST TRENDS IN SUPER-YACHTS

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SUNNY SIDE UP The sundeck of the 200foot Andiamo, built by Benetti Yachts with an interior designed by Patrick Knowles.

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Having served as lead aesthete in the design and construction of more than 250 yachts over the past three decades, de Basto is keenly aware of even the slightest sea change when it comes to market demand and has garnered a reputation for his quick embrace of major advances in shipbuilding materials and technologies, including app-controlled appliances and navigation. Among the most important of these from a design perspective, he says, has been in the realm of “compound curvature glass,” which can be readily integrated into a vessel’s superstructure, affording near panoramic views of the seascape outside. “With nature taking center stage, our clients are able to enjoy a full-on ocean experience that was

unthinkable even a decade ago.” For his largest commissions—yachts greater than 100 feet in length—de Basto has partnered with yacht yards in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, as American builders have, much to his chagrin, largely ceded construction of vessels of such size to their European counterparts. Among his recent projects: the design of the exterior of the 295-foot Dar, which included an unprecedented 4,198 square feet of glass, in collaboration with the Dutch firm Oceanco. “Once regarded as elite escapes for seasonal sojourns, motor yachts are coming to serve as second homes on the high seas and, in the case of mega-yachts and super-yachts, islands unto them-

TOTAL TRANSFORMATION The Marty Lowe-designed aft deck of the Sanlorenzo 52Steel Seven Sins, above and opposite, serves both as a lounge space and a floodable bay to shelter the shipowner’s tender beneath a main deck pool.

OPENING SPREAD, ANDIAMO COURTESY OF PATRICK KNOWLES; THIS SPREAD COURTESY OF MARTY LOWE

“F

or our clients, it is no longer about showing off but about creating luxurious, and, above all, functional environments for their families, who are more active and driven by the spirit of adventure than in the past,” says Miami-based designer Luiz de Basto, who has noticed a distinct downward shift in the age of his patrons. “Many are second-generation yacht owners who come to me with clear notions of what they want and are willing to shell out upward of $100 million to design the vessel of their dreams.”

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THE PANDEMIC HAS LED SOME CLIENTS TO REQUEST THE BUILD-OUT OF FULL-SERVICE MEDICAL CLINICS AND PLACES FOR SELF-QUARANTINE.

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selves with resort-style amenities commonly associated with high-end hideaways,” says de Basto. Fort Lauderdale-based designer Patrick Knowles concurs. “Over the past year, we have seen a dramatic increase in clients asking for yachts designed for long-term living with enhanced wellness and workout spaces, as well as areas specifically designed for children and family members of all ages, not to mention additional storage for longer expeditions. Unless you’ve spent an extended amount of time aboard even the most well-appointed yachts, you wouldn’t notice that such changes were needed. Our clients clearly do.” In addition to spurring increased demand for spaces dedicated to health and wellness, de Basto adds, the pandemic has also led some clients to request the build-out of full-service medical clinics and places for self-quarantine. Fort Lauderdale–based designer Marty Lowe says clients are also looking to maximize onboard spaces, eschewing formal dining rooms, for example, in favor of open-plan kitchens and eating and living areas that can double as movie theaters. But, she says, this has also entailed the expansion and enhancement of crew quarters and the utilization of spaces that once had a more industrial function. For a recent commission, the design of the 52Steel Seven Sins, which cost $35 million and was undertaken by the Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo, Lowe radically reimagined the design of the ship’s transom—converting an aft deck area that historically would have served as a stowage space for marine toys like jet-skis, windsurfers, and runabouts into a so-called beach club—a light-filled lounge area beneath a glass-bottomed swimming pool on the main deck. With the push of a button, a quartet of jackscrews lift the center section of the space, converting it into a floodable bay to shelter the shipowner’s tender. “Our clients are staying at sea longer, and as a result are requiring more versatile spaces,” says Lowe. “This is pushing us to rethink the whole yacht-owning experience, ushering in a new era of luxury living on the high seas.” 84

GLASS ACT The exterior of the 295-foot Dar, shown above with her tender, was designed by Luiz de Basto in collaboration with the Dutch firm Oceanco and utilizes an unprecedented 4,198 square feet of glass. Top left: The glass-enclosed interior of the 295-foot Cosmos, another de Basto/Oceanco collaboration.

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COURTESY OF LUIZ DE BASTO

“OUR CLIENTS ARE STAYING AT SEA LONGER, AND AS A RESULT ARE REQUIRING MORE VERSATILE SPACES.” MARTY LOWE, YACHT DESIGNER

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COURTESY OF THE COLONY PALM BEACH

LIVING

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FANTASY ISLAND

NICK MELE

For the ultra-elite, Palm Beach is a 16-mile slice of heaven on Earth. Liz Petoniak explores an American paradise where status and sunshine meet for drinks

PINK HOUSES The love child of a golf cart and a stretch limousine awaits you outside the Colony Hotel; above: nobody wears sweatpants to walk the dog in this town.

n its more than 100 years of providing a tropical respite to the nation’s richest families, Palm Beach has never been more relevant. The forty-fifth president of the United States, of course, attracted the world’s attention to the island. But other factors, like the high concentration of billionaires who call it home, and a mass migration from the Northeast only accelerated by Covid-19, have also highlighted the 16-mile-long barrier island’s natural beauty, glittering wealth, cultural amenities, and the relaxed lifestyle such an environment affords. Palm Beach’s monied tradition began in 1892 with the arrival of oil and railroad tycoon Henry Morrison Flagler, who first saw the potential in the sparsely inhabited island. Shortly thereafter, he raised the Royal Poinciana and the Palm Beach Inn, the latter of which would eventually become a little resort called the Breakers. Flagler also constructed the Florida East Coast Railway and the Over-Sea Railroad, a rail line running from Jacksonville to Key West that transported Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, and the likes of J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst to his luxury Palm Beach resorts. Concurrently, the industrialist built his own Beaux Arts mansion

on the island, Whitehall, which now offers visitors a glimpse into the glamour of the so-called Gilded Age as the Flagler Museum. The Breakers was so hot that it burned to the ground, twice: once in 1903 and again in 1925. Determined to create the world’s preeminent resort following the second fire, Flagler’s heirs enlisted architectural firm Schultze and Weaver to raise a magnificent, Italian Renaissance-style hotel. The circa-1926 building, with its 200-foot-long lobby, significant for its hand-painted ceilings and Venetian glass chandeliers, is still regarded as Palm Beach’s undisputed crown jewel. But the hotel is not content to rest on its laurels: like the grande dames it serves, it is constantly, if discreetly, having work done. In the 1960s, Palm Beach became the winter home to President John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and the First Lady’s collection of Lilly Pulitzer shift dresses. Peanut Island, just off the North End of Palm Beach, remains the site of the former president’s nuclear bunker. Now, it serves as a 79-acre public park that attracts boaters and snorkelers. Even in the twenty-first century, Palm Beach persists as a beacon of old-world quality and qualities. Its European charm is evident at landmarks such as Worth Avenue, the town’s comJANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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LIVING

mercial center lined with elegant shops, Addison Mizner’s Spanish Revival architecture, and Mediterranean vias that reveal hidden courtyards. Rolls-Royces are often referred to as the “Palm Beach Mercedes,” and the “Season” (in normal times) consists of an endless string of galas that raise millions upon millions for local and national charities. Even the Publix grocery store resembles a Mizner mansion and boasts valet service. As a local billionaire’s wife once said to me, “It’s a very civilized place, isn’t it?” Palm Beach often feels like an impermeable safe haven, as if nothing rotten could possibly touch it. Though we know that’s far from the truth—ahem, do the names Epstein and Madoff ring a bell?—it’s easy to forget humanity is facing a global pandemic when you’re watching the waves curl and crash at Flagpole Beach. And, because distractions are plentiful, it’s possible to put our nation’s unrest out of mind—until you drive past Mar-a-Lago or bump into the Secret Service, that is. 88

No doubt, this escapism adds to the island’s allure. However, Palm Beach isn’t the same vacation destination your grandmother remembers. The privacy and privilege that comes with the 33480 ZIP code now also comes with upgraded amenities and a refreshed, youthful energy thanks to new investment—such as the revitalization of Royal Poinciana Way into the main street that Flagler envisioned—and the demands of a younger population. Couples with children in their 30s and 40s, who grew up visiting the area, are now making Palm Beach their own. Behind the impeccably manicured hedges, Palm Beach is ultimately a small beach town where thirtysomething entrepreneurs, young families, and those in their golden years exist in harmony. As such, stiff formality has given way to a more laid-back sophistication. You certainly won’t see white tablecloths or stereotypical pearl clutching at Buccan or Imoto, the island’s two reigning hot spots run by James Beard Award nominee

Clay Conley. But you will find Chanel bags paired with denim and a local IPA on the same table as steak tartare with black truffle and a crispy cured egg yolk. Beginning in 2011 with the opening of Conley’s restaurants, Palm Beach’s food scene has served to elevate the island’s cachet. In 2019, Mauro Colagreco, the three-Michelin star chef who helms the top-rated Mirazur in France, put his name behind Florie’s at the recently renovated Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach. Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud has been a longtime island resident, and as Northeasterners flee south, many of the restaurants they frequent, such as Upper East Side favorites like La Goulue and Le Bilboquet and the Hamptons’ beloved Almond, have followed. “What I love about Palm Beach today is that there’s still a nod to tradition and to the Old World—jackets, great shoes, pretty dresses,” says Eric Lemonides, restaurateur and owner of Almond. “The only difference now is that there’s a little more fun involved.”

COURTESY OF THE BREAKERS

ROLLS-ROYCES ARE OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE “PALM BEACH MERCEDES.”

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PARADISE CITY Clockwise from opposite: A seagull’s view of the Breakers Palm Beach; en pointe at the Royal Poinciana Plaza; and a Mizner masterpiece on Worth Avenue.

ROYAL POINCIANA: NICK MELE; WORTH AVENUE: DDMITR/GETTY IMAGES

LOLA 41 AND THE WHITE ELEPHANT HOTEL Working in Palm Beach in the ’90s, restaurateur Marco Coelho remembers the days when there were only a handful of places to eat on the island. “It was all the same food,” he laments. “For something different, you had to cross the bridge.” Today, the PB location of his Nantucket restaurant LoLa 41 allows diners to cross continents without ever leaving its sultry lounge or intimate courtyard with towering poké “nachos,” decadent burgers with foie gras sauce, and expertly prepared sushi. LoLa anchors the White Elephant Hotel—another Nantucket-based newcomer— inside of a whitewashed Mediterranean revival where the defunct Bradley Park Hotel once stood. With the most contemporary furnishings and artwork of any lodging in Palm Beach to date, the White Elephant is a breath of fresh air.

THE ROYAL POINCIANA PLAZA Recent renovations and new tenants like Hermès, Oscar de la Renta, Kirna Zabête, Zimmerman, and LoveShackFancy have restored architect John Volk’s 1950s outdoor plaza into a hip shopping mecca and community gathering space for Palm Beach’s next generation. Make a day of it and visit public art exhibits from Pace Gallery, renowned for its contemporary collections worldwide, and Acquavella, a noted Upper East Side gallery that opens its first location outside Manhattan this

season. Then, be sure to refuel with the crispy chicken sandwich at the Hillstone Restaurant Group outpost Honor Bar; Mexican street food and spicy margaritas at Coyo Taco, a favorite of Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood; or the divine strawberry gelato from that purveyor of all things Italian and delicious, Sant Ambroeus.

outside of France from Loïc Bakery and impressive single-origin brews from Pumphouse Coffee Roasters while shopping for the week’s necessities: greens from Swank Specialty Produce, a fresh loaf from Bread by Johnny, and artisanal cheeses from La Montagne Des Saveurs.

HENRY’S PALM BEACH Everything the Breakers touches turns to gold, and Henry’s is no exception. The resort’s newest restaurant, located on Royal Poinciana Way, perfects the art of comfort food, elevating appetizers like pigs in pretzel dough blankets with Pilsner fondue, and serving true luxuries like stone crab claws and butter crumb Dover sole. An approachable yet posh interior designed by Adam Tihany and over-the-top touches like the leather-backed menus monogrammed with Henry M. Flagler’s initials—truly, they could be mistaken for a Goyard clutch—go a long way with well-heeled Palm Beachers.

GREENMARKET Pop over the bridge to visit the waterfront farmers market frequented by Dr. Oz and Martha Stewart. Located downtown with the Intracoastal as its backdrop, the West Palm Beach GreenMarket greets visitors with mimosas, the smell of cider doughnuts wafting in the air, and incredible dog watching. Discover the some of best croissants JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

LIVING

SOCIETY OF THE FOUR ARTS

RAPTIS RARE BOOKS

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART

Beautiful days in Palm Beach start with a bike or walk along the Lake Trail, visiting the nearly 200-year-old giant kapok tree, and ending at the island’s cultural hub—the Society of the Four Arts. Stroll through the tranquil gardens, where you’ll discover a sculpture garden, tropical flora and fauna, and an installation from master glass artist Dale Chihuly arriving this spring. Or, venture indoors to attend a lecture, workshop, book discussion, concert, or exhibit. This season’s remarkable lineup includes the “Charles and Jackson Pollock” exhibit, which will showcase 70 paintings and works on paper from Charles, the “elder Pollock,” as well as a selection of Jackson’s rarely seen works, from January 30 to March 28.

Just down the avenue, New England transplants Adrienne and Matthew Raptis share their love for reading, history, collecting, and travel with the local bibliophile community at their antique bookshop and firm. “Palm Beach has a unique cachet and population,” says Adrienne. “We enjoy seeing people who appreciate arts and literature face-to-face.” Inspired by some of the couple’s favorite European libraries, the brick and mortar’s stately bookshelves house everything from a first edition of The Great Gatsby to handwritten Isaac Newton manuscripts, to a collection of original Harper Lee drawings and letters.

Worth venturing over the bridge to see, the Norton will celebrate its 80th anniversary this year. Founded in 1941 by two art collectors, Chicago-born industrialist Ralph Hubbard Norton and his wife, Elizabeth Calhoun Norton, the museum has become a must-visit arts destination for its contemporary collections and work highlighting emerging mid-career artists. In 2019, a $100 million renovation led by famed architect Lord Norman Foster added 12,000 feet in gallery space and a striking entrance wrapping around a banyan tree. This year’s provocative exhibits address issues surrounding immigration and racial injustice.

STUBBS & WOOTTON Whether sporting a tuxedo at a charity gala, a sundress at brunch, or a bathrobe while quarantining at home, handmade smoking slippers in velvet, needlepoint, or raffia are required footwear in Palm Beach. Founded on the island in 1993, Stubbs & Wootton allows shoe lovers to create their own bespoke pair at its Worth Avenue location. 90

SOCIETY OF THE FOUR ARTS, THE NORTON MUSEUM OF ART: NICK MELE; SLIPPERS COURTESY OF STUBBS & WOOTTON

WALK THIS WAY Clockwise from right: The welcoming Society of the Four Arts; Claes Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser, Scale X at the Norton Museum of Art; footloose and fancy (but not free) slippers from Stubbs & Wootton.

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PALM BEACH OPERA Palm Beach’s professional opera company returns this season with its first-ever festival from February 19–27 at the outdoor iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre at the South Florida Fairgrounds. The opera will stage three popular pieces in a concert and semi-staged format: La Bohème, a romance set in 1830s Paris; Pagliacci, a tragic love-triangle tale; and Mozart’s family-friendly Die Zauberflöte. Seats at the open-air, covered venue will be socially distanced, sanitized, and filled to only 30 percent capacity. Audiences can expect to hear some of the art’s top performers. “It’s turning out to be a veritable who’s who of the opera world,” says general director David Walker. “It will be an artistic experience that we hope will deliver healing, hope, and excitement.”

“WHAT I LOVE ABOUT PALM BEACH TODAY IS THAT THERE’S STILL A NOD TO TRADITION AND TO THE OLD WORLD —JACKETS, GREAT SHOES, PRETTY DRESSES. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS NOW IS THAT THERE’S A LITTLE MORE FUN INVOLVED.” ERIC LEMONIDES, ALMOND RESTAURATEUR

UNDER MY UMBRELLA Colony Club kids relax during mocktail hour.

THE COLONY HOTEL This landmarked property is a modern-day Slim Aarons paradise. Since purchasing the Colony in 2016, CEO Sarah Wetenhall and her husband, Andrew, have lovingly infused the boutique hotel with their playful flair. Under the Wetenhalls’ watch, the former Polo Lounge was transformed into the bright and airy CPB, a restaurant led by chef Tom Whitaker that infuses Floridian fare with his British sensibility—something the Duke and Duchess of Windsor would have likely appreciated during their frequent stays way back when. Last season brought a well-received popup of Upper East Side icon Swifty’s to the Colony, which will extend this year into Swifty’s POOL for alfresco cocktails, dinner, and lunch beneath the hanging poolside garden. Finally, the arrival of Bluestone Lane will offer guests both grab-andgo and sit-down options for breakfast and lunch.

NICK MELE

ALMOND When restaurateur Eric Lemonides and chef Jason Weiner opened Almond’s third location in the former Nick & Johnnie’s space last year, the moody bistro with cozy booths and orange Scalamandré zebra wallpaper quickly became a neighborhood staple. Here, you’re bound to bump into friends and old acquaintances who share the same sentiment about Lemonides’s unfussy approach. “This is the nightclub for my age group,” says Lemonides. “People like me who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s still want sexy music and a great atmosphere, but we can’t party like we used to. Instead, we want to drink a nice bottle of wine and enjoy a proper dinner.” Almond’s menu is familiar, but interesting enough for a night on the town. The Brussels sprouts Caesar has a cult following, likewise the pork Milanese and halal cart-inspired roast lamb. It all showcases produce from the local farming community, just as the partners aim to do at their Bridgehampton and Manhattan locations. “We all want informality,” he says. “But everything still has to be perfect.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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PALM BEACHED: THE BOARD GAME EVERYONE KNOWS THIS IS A BARRIER ISLAND IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. SO IF YOU WANT TO WIN THE GAME, YOU HAVE BE ABLE TO TELL A FANJUL FROM A LAUDER AND A PITT FROM A PHIPPS. YOU ALSO HAVE TO KNOW WHERE TO BE SEEN. BY BOB MORRIS ILLUSTRATED BY TRACY DOCKRAY NICK MELE, THE NEXT SLIM AARONS, SNAPS YOUR PICTURE ASK A SOCIALITE OF A CERTAIN AGE IF THE BLOWDRIED ESCORT ON HER ARM IS HER GRANDSON

COSMETIC SURGERY MISHAP

P L AY E R S

TRUMP MOTORCADE MAKES YOU LATE FOR COCKTAILS AT TOMMY QUICK’S HOUSE

PHOTOGRAPHED WITH GEORGE HAMILTON AND KRYSTIAN VON SPEIDEL FOR THE PALM BEACH POST MEET COLONY HOTEL ORDER THE PATTY MELT PRESIDENT SARAH AND COFFEE MILKSHAKE METENTHALL AT TRIVIA AT GREEN’S NIGHT

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H O W TO P L AY

START

EACH SOCIAL MOVE IS A ROLL OF THE DICE IN THIS PLAYGROUND OF PLUTOCRATS, AND YOU HAVE TO KNOW THEIR RULES BEFORE YOU CAN BREAK THEM. ADVANCE A SPACE WHEN YOU LAND ON A GREEN ARROW AND SLIDE BACK FOR EVERY RED ONE. MARRY INTO A MEMBERSHIP AT THE BATH AND TENNIS

BREAK A MOSER BUD VASE WHILE BROWSING AT MCMAKIN AND KEMBLE

ATTEND DINNER AT SANT AMBROEUS AFTER SARAH GAVLAK OPENING

C Y

YOUR DATE GETS INTO A CATFIGHT AT THE LEOPARD LOUNGE

BITSY MARSHMAN LIKES YOUR FERRAGAMO BALLET FLATS

THE SOUTHERN BRIDGE MAKES YOU LATE FOR BRIDGE

MEET COLONY HOTEL PRESIDENT SARAH VALET METENTHALL AT TRIVIA DELAY AT LE NIGHT BILBOQUET

YOUR GAY MARRIAGE PERFORMED BY FATHER BURL AT BETHESDA-BY-THE-SEA

MEET COLONY HOTEL PRESIDENT SARAH WETENHALL AT TRIVIA NIGHT MEET COLONY HOTEL PRESIDENT SARAH METENTHALL AT TRIVIA NIGHT

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YOUR STARCHITECT’S PLAN APPROVED BY ARCOM, THE ARCHITECTURAL GESTAPO

BURN ROOF OF MOUTH ON A CHEESE PUFF AT CLUB COLETTE

RECEPTION AT BETH RUDIN DEWOODY’S BUNKER; COLE RUMBOUGH SINGS COCKTAILS AT THE KESSLERS’ CASA BENDITA

BUY A MEGAYACHT TOO BIG FOR THE TOWN MARINA

YOU GET AMANDA LINDROTH TO DECORATE YOUR INTERIOR

ASK “WHAT IS TOMATO ASPIC?” ON THE CAFETERIA LINE OF THE BATH AND TENNIS YOUR HOUSE ON JUNGLE ROAD WINS THE BALLINGER AWARD FOR PRESERVATION

HURRICANE DESTROYS YOUR BEACHFRONT HOME ON SOUTH OCEAN BOULEVARD

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FALL OFF YOUR TAMARA MELLONS AT BUCCAN AFTER FOURTH NEGRONI RETURN TO THE SAILFISH CLUB MARINA WITH A 100-POUND BLUEFIN TUNA AND A TAN. UNCOVER A VINTAGE LILLY AT THE CHURCH MOUSE

WEAR CULT GAIA BIKINI AT EVERGLADES CLUB, BREAKING REVEALING SWIMWEAR BAN

MISS THE CHOCOLATE BABKA AT PALM BEACH COUNTRY CLUB DESSERT BUFFET

GET MENTIONED IN SHANNON DONNELLY’S SHINY SHEET COLUMN

THE FANJULS INCLUDE YOU ON THEIR HOLIDAY “CARD” NOTABLES LIST

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LIVING

In 1925, the architect and city planner Addison Mizner started work on Boca Raton, which he called “the dream city of the western world” and its “new social capital.” Ninety-six years on, Alyssa Fisher sees how it’s going

TK TK

THE SPLENDID CITY

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YAROSLAV SABITOV / 500PX / GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF BOCA RATON RESORT & CLUB

A ADDISON AVENUE Left: The welcoming waters of the Atlantic. Above: The Boca Raton Resort & Club, designed by Addison Mizner, is the city’s most famous building.

t the beginning of the 20th century, the settlement of Boca Ratone (as it was then spelled) was little more than a picturesque string of farms, whose 100 residents made a living coaxing pineapples out of the sandy soil. But the 1920s ushered in a South Florida land boom, and with it came a literal bridge to the future. Early that decade, the first fixed-span bridge over the town’s inlet connected it to a coastal highway, which brought in a steady stream of vacationers and prospective land buyers. By 1925, the council of the newly incorporated town of Boca Raton had enlisted prominent local architect Addison Mizner—known for his “Mizner Mediterranean” pastiche of Spanish and Latin American styles—to create “the foremost resort city on the North American continent.” A prospectus published by the Mizner Development Corporation that year (which described its boss as doing “more than any other one man to make Palm Beach beautiful”) announced that Boca Raton would be “a resort as splendid in its entirety as Palm Beach is in spots.” In that

hopeful pronouncement, the modern Boca Raton—a bridesmaid to its elder and richer sister city 27 miles up the coast—was born. The architect went quickly to work, setting the tone with his monastic coral stone Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn in 1926—now the Boca Raton Resort & Club—which remains a city landmark. His vision of manicured lawns and gated neighborhoods alongside abundant golf courses and parks still defines the city’s ambience. Beyond its looks, however, Boca Raton also has a brain. Attracted by a favorable business environment, IBM arrived in 1967 (its first personal computer was invented here in 1981), and many followed. Today, the city hosts more than 200 companies and about 40 corporate and regional headquarters, including ADT, Office Depot, and Modernizing Medicine—swelling the population to roughly 100,000 and growing. “We have the charm, natural beauty, and elegance of a smaller city and the strong business presence and cultural offerings of a much larger city,” Mayor Scott Singer tells Avenue. “In business and vibrancy, we punch above our weight.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Singer, a lawyer, grew up 30 miles south in Fort Lauderdale. After graduating from Harvard University and living in Manhattan, where he met his wife, Bella, the couple moved to Boca in 2011.“This was the place we chose to raise our children,” he says. The city’s amenities were especially appreciated by its residents during Covid-19, says Cristy Stewart-Harfmann, president of the Junior League of Boca Raton, a leading local philanthropy. Not only did she already have a family who love aquatic activities, but she also welcomed a second child during the pandemic. “We are in the water basically any time we’re outside. We’re in the pool, at the beach, on the boat,” she says. “You can still be socially distanced but be together and be outdoors. It’s just glorious. It’s hard to think about living anywhere else.” It all sounds lovely—but is there any rivalry with the city’s bigger and more glamorous sister up the coast? “Palm Beach is great, for what it is,” allows Mayor Singer. “They also have a financial services presence, along with their beaches, as well as the Mizneresque shops and eateries. We have all that, and with a far stronger business presence, three universities, grade A schools for all ages of students, 47 parks, and much more.” And another Boca benefit? “Palm Beachers need to leave their city limits to experience the offerings in West Palm Beach, while our residents can learn, work, live, and play within our borders,” he adds. Almost exactly a century on from that game-changing bridge, Boca is still investing in transport infrastructure. In addition to a recent upgrade of customs facilities that will allow for international passengers at its airport, a railway station connecting the city to South Florida’s high-speed Brightline network is planned to open in 2022. “Home values increased and supply has dwindled, as people are coming here as a safe haven from some of the unfortunatel challenges that other cities are facing,” Mayor Singer says. “When you can work from home anywhere, why would you not want to be working in paradise?” In fact, Mizner made exactly the same point in 1925. “Boca Raton recognizes no competition in its claim upon your consideration” reads his prospectus. “There is no substitute for Boca Raton.” 98

TONY ROSENTHAL MARTY’S CUBE, 1983: EDUARDO CHACON / COURTESY OF THE BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

LIVING

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DOWNTOWN BOCA “THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR BOCA RATON.”

Boca has more than 1,600 acres of recreational space, much of it downtown. “It’s a great destination for its walkability,” said Ruby Childers, Boca Raton Downtown manager. “A one-stop shop, anything you want and more.” She recommends strolling through its lush green spaces, such as Sanborn Square, enjoying the omnipresent fountains, gazebos, and Spanish-Mediterranean architecture. Plans to revitalize the downtown waterfront are in the works, Singer said. Wildflower and Silver Palm Park will be combined into a new six-acre site, with a wide pedestrian promenade, boat launches (public beaches are about 1.5 miles away), and plenty of space to gather.

ADDISON MIZNER, 1925

ART AL FRESCO Clockwise from opposite: Marty’s Cube (1983) by Tony Rosenthal, sibling to the one in Manhattan’s Astor Place, is installed at the Boca Raton Museum of Art; a shady spot in Mizner Park; the garden terrace of Farmer’s Table.

COURTESY OF DISCOVER THE PALM BEACHES / COURTESY OF FARMER’S TABLE

ALL YOU CAN EAT Dining is one of Downtown’s most popular attractions, with nearly 100 restaurants, spanning dozens of cuisines. “The food is all amazing, I try to make the rounds,” Childers says. She recommends downloading its new self-guided walking tour, The Food Lover’s Trail, to experience it all. Alfresco dining is widely available, but with so many parks and public green spaces to picnic in, many restaurants also offer to-go packages, including the option of a bottle of wine. Mayor Singer points to a classic local favorite Max’s Grille as one of his favorite spots, and other notto-miss eateries include Fries to Caviar, Farmer’s Table, Arturo’s Ristorante, New York Prime, Boca Landing, Louie Bossi, and Six Tables a Restaurant.

MIZNER PARK A highlight of downtown, Mizner Park epitomizes the Spanish-influenced vision of its namesake architect. Its park-like plaza features a mix of elegant boutiques and restaurants. The amphitheater hosts socially distanced performing arts events, including concerts and comedy and magic shows. More shopping can be throughout downtown Boca, as well as in Town Center at Boca Raton, Boca Center, and Royal Palm Place.

BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART Mizner Park is also home to the Boca Raton Museum of Art, founded more than 70 years ago. In addition to seasonal exhibitions by American and international artists, works by Andy Warhol, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse are in its permanent collection. Glasstress Boca Raton II, an exhibition of glass pieces by more than 30 international artists; paintings by Paul Gervais; and a collection of Florida Outsider art will be on display beginning January 26. There are two sculpture gardens featuring more than 30 works, which can be found around the museum’s building and in the two-acre garden at the Boca Raton Museum Art School.

TEE TIME There are 34 golf courses throughout the city, including the historic Boca Raton Resort & Club, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, which hosts a championship golf course with 36 holes. When it sold in 2019 to billionaire businessman Michael Dell for an astounding $875 million, Forbes declared it the largest real estate transaction in Palm Beach County history. His group plans to invest $150 million more into the 95-year-old resort. “That’s really going to transform it, that’s an essential driver to tourism, for business,” Singer says. The

property announced it would donate the 130-acre Boca Country Club to become a city-owned and operated facility by this October, featuring an 18-hole championship course, clubhouse, tennis courts, and pool. Other public courses of note include the Osprey Point Golf Course, which has 27 holes spread out in three nine-hole courses on a Platinum Paspalum turf; Southwinds Golf Course, a certified Audubon International Cooperative Sanctuary, with wildlife including otters, foxes, and iguanas milling around, and the Boca Raton Municipal Golf Course, a public championship course for golfers of every level.

GET TO THE BEACH Boca Raton sits on five miles of Atlantic coastline. Visitors may swim and picnic at Spanish River Park, snorkel and fish at Red Reef Park, or visit the turtles and other wildlife at nearby Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. South Beach Park is ideal for avid bird watchers, while Lake Boca is a popular inlet for boaters. “We will never take the beach or the parks for granted ever again,” Stewart-Harfmann said. “We stayed here because of all of the amazing things to do. It’s just a wonderful place to raise a family and enjoy the outdoors, pretty much 365 days of the year.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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MANY YOUNGER NEW YORKERS, UNSETTLED BY CONDITIONS IN THE CITY, HAVE FLED FOR THE COMFORTS OF SOUTH FLORIDA. JOSHUA DAVID STEIN DISCOVERS THAT PALM BEACH AND ITS NEIGHBORING CITIES AREN’T JUST FOR RETIREES ANYMORE

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“It’s not the waiting room of heaven, it is heaven.” YAZ HERNÁNDEZ, RECENT ÉMIGRÉ

hen Covid-19 hit New York City in early March, Scott Hesse, 39, along with his wife, Whitney, and their baby boy had just settled into their brandnew condo on the Upper West Side. It was the home they had always dreamed of, designed by Sasha Bikoff, who, in a feature in Hamptons Cottages and Home magazine, described the aesthetic of the 2,100-square-foot three-bedroom apartment as “feminine and colorful, with some Hollywood glamour and Chinoiserie accents.”

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Much of the boom has been driven by big money hedge funds drawn to the laissezfaire regulatory framework of the Sunshine State.

But soon the family bid their Hermès chandeliers and Deco settees goodbye. Hesse, who works as a data scientist for Amenities Analytics, a financial analytics firm, rented a charming rural house in Delaware to ride out the pandemic. “We booked it for two weeks,” he said, “but ended up staying three months.” Eventually they returned to Manhattan to, as he says, “test the waters.” But they returned to a city humbled and a block, according to Hesse himself, besmirched. “They had just opened three homeless shelters near our apartment,” complained Hesse, aghast. “It used to smell like urine every fourth block, now it smelled like urine every block.” Hesse knew he had to leave. “Winter was coming,” he said, ominously. “We had to get out.” Soon the Hesses had joined a massive exodus of the well-heeled from the northeast to the sunny climes of Florida, a population shift made possible by the dissolution of the workplace: preferable by this no-goodnik virus, and perfect by Florida’s lack of state income tax, which has turned the state into a palm-shaded neoliberal paradise. According to a report by ISG World’s Miami Report, more than 1,000 arrivals a day are flooding into Florida, many settling on the stretch between

West Palm Beach and Miami, the lion’s share of those new arrivals hailing from the Northeast. According to Kelly Smallridge, president and chief executive of Palm Beach’s Business Development Board, “Covid has really put us on fire.” And whereas the southeastern coast of Florida once had a reputation as an old folks’ home, many of the new folks aren’t ready to shuffle into oblivion. “The age of our new arrivals has come down dramatically,” she says. “It’s not the waiting room of heaven,” purrs Yaz Hernandez, the former New York City social fixture and current West Palm Beach resident, from her balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, “it is heaven.” In May, Ms. Hernández fled her pad on Park Avenue. Broadway was quiet, restaurants were ghostly, the rain fell sideways, and long nights creaked with loneliness. “I came to Palm Beach for a party and never left.” (The party in question was the 50th birthday of Donald Trump Jr.’s paramour, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Mar-a-Lago but, letting out a nervous laughter, Hernández says, “Maybe I shouldn’t say that, no ?”) No matter, shortly after arriving, Ms. Hernández rented not one or two but three properties in the area. And though she’s keeping her Park Avenue pad, Ms. Hernández isn’t

leaving any time soon. “I love it down here. All of my friends are young and stylish. It has all the energy that’s missing in New York.” Her neighbor, Felicia Taylor, another recent émigré, says she won’t leave either. A longtime television journalist (and daughter of actor Rod Taylor), she put her Park Avenue condo on the market and moved south in February. “I have quite a few friends who have come down here and bought apartments sight unseen,” says Ms. Taylor. Speaking to Avenue from her terrace—“the first time in my life I have a terrace!”—she wondered why anyone would stay in New York. “With online platforms and technology there’s no need,” she said. “I just finished a documentary: the director was in Lebanon, the editor was in Brooklyn, and I’m here. It worked wonderfully.” Ms. Taylor’s new lifestyle, she says, includes plenty of time spent outside, gazing at palm trees or zipping down the coast in her new white convertible, a circumstance seldom to occur in the tri-state area. But much of the boom has been driven by big money hedge funds drawn to the laissez-faire regulatory framework of the Sunshine State. Among those who have recently relocated or are planning to move their hedge fund, wealth management, and family offices to Florida are Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities, whose firm rented out the entire Four Seasons in April; Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corporation; Paul Singer of Elliott Management; Blackstone; and Michael Dell of MSB Capital, who moved his family to West Palm. When they arrive, many are greeted by Ms. Smallridge, who as the head of the BDB acts as a sort of concierge for high-net-worth individuals. “I have a dog and pony show,” she explains. Those contemplating the move might start with breakfast at the Breakers, followed by lunch at the yacht club. Maybe the mayor of Palm Beach might meet you, perhaps some state official will drop by; if you have school-age children, Ms. Smallridge might arrange a meeting with the headmasters of local schools like the well-regarded Ransom Everglades or Palm Beach Day. The evening might end eating oysters at Blue Pointe Bar and Grille as the sun sets—and Ms. Smallridge notes that there is as much state income tax in Florida as there is snow. “We’re looking at the weaknesses of Manhattan,” she says, “and taking advantage.” But of course the influx has been hell for buyers. The market in Florida is, to the say the least, hot. According to figures from ISG, there are only 12,934 single family homes available in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties, down from 3,955 in 2019. Only 0.88% of single family home are for sale or rent in Palm Beach County, 0.96% in Broward. and 0.83% in Miami-Dade. Houses that would sell for $5 million in 2019 are today going for treble that amount. As for the Hesses, they’re still looking to buy. “We’ve responded to a bunch of listings to rent, but by the time we did, they were gone,” complained Mr. Hesse. Luckily, they did find a place in Jupiter. “It’s at the Trump National Golf Club,” says Mr. Hesse, noting its unusual availability. “I don’t know if it’s because of the name or what, but we’re just happy we found somewhere to live.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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TAKE TWO ASPIRIN AND CALL THEM AT 3 A.M. SHIVANI VORA ENTERS THE ELITE WORLD OF CONCIERGE MEDICINE, WHERE DOCTORS SLEEP WITH THEIR CELL PHONES IN ORDER TO BE ON CALL FOR THEIR WEALTHY PATIENTS TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY ILLUSTRATIONS BY DEREK ABELLA

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Doctors Without Boundaries

t’s an unfortunate truism that money can’t buy health. But, as Hippocrates himself might have noted, it’s also true that it does no harm. So it’s no surprise that a city like Palm Beach, which seemingly has a billionaire over every fence, has emerged as a world leader in innovative personal healthcare— for those who can afford to pay. For the wealthiest of patients, the new must-have is an on-call, private medical team. Among this elite group of so-called “concierge doctors,” the names to see include Dr. Bina Rashid, Dr. Dean Mann, Dr. Bruce Moskowitz, and Dr. Gabriela Goldstein. These professionals charge an annual fee in exchange for making themselves available to their patients 24/7, according to Sharona Hoffman, codirector of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. “Patients have their [doctors’] cell phone numbers, and they’re always at the ready to drop all else to tend to them whenever they need. Some even make house calls,” says Hoffman. Physicians respond immediately to everything from pressing concerns like an allergic reaction, a heart attack, or these days Covid-19, to more minor ailments like a cold or a pulled muscle. Of course, there will always be hypochondriacs. One patient is known for (regularly) mistaking his indigestion for appendicitis. Another accidentally slammed a car door on her young child, diagnosed herself with (nonexistent) Covid and declared the only explanation could be that her reflexes had been diminished by the virus.

Concierge doctors can lavish this kind of attention on each individual because they limit the number of patients they accept. The average medical practice has between 2,000 and 3,000 patients and sees as many as 40 a day; a concierge practice generally takes on only between 200 and 600 and sees fewer than eight. Naturally, there’s a price for this kind of access, and concierge doctors—like anything else in a marketplace—have their own hierarchy ranging from affordable to elite. Their annual fee can be a palatable $1,800 or an eyebrow-raising $25,000, or more. At the lower end of the scale, some doctors even accept insurance to help cover their costs of appointments beyond annual physicals. But at the higher end, some patients regard it as a point of honor that they pay out-of-pocket to be attended by experts too rarefied to be covered by insurance plans. While these doctors have become more common around the country in recent years, says Hoffman, particularly in wealthy areas such as Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Beverly Hills, they seem to have especially taken off in Palm Beach: MDVIP, a national network of more than 1,100 concierge doctors, has 24 affiliates in Palm Beach County, an increase of 33 percent since 2015. In comparison, most markets grew between 5 and 10 percent during that period, according to MDVIP’s CEO, Bret Jorgensen. “Palm Beach has a lot of demand because of its affluence,” he says. “Concierge doctors are a well-known concept there.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“People want that comfort, now more than ever before, of being able to reach their doctor in case anything goes wrong.” DR. BINA RASHID

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“The point of having a concierge doctor is that you never have to wait.”

DR. DEAN MANN

Forget any notion that these doctors are hot in Palm Beach because the city’s population is aging. The 2010 Census indicated that more than half the residents were 65 or older, but concierge doctors say their growth area is patients under 50. Rachel Scher, a 37-year-old Palm Beach Gardens resident, is a prime example. The publicist and her family, including her husband and their two sons, ages 11 and 9, are among the thousands of locals and snowbirds who rely on a concierge doctor for their medical needs. “All of my friends also have one, and people here in general are moving toward using them,” says Scher. “It’s a privilege for sure, but well worth it to us.” Their doctor, Bina Rashid, founder of Palm Beach Boutique Medicine, started her business in 2019 and has already become one of the most sought-after doctors in town. She also treats several prominent celebrities and polo players. With a yearly fee ranging from $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the number of family members who join (Scher pays $5,000), plus extra for house calls, Dr. Rashid says that there’s nothing she won’t do to accommodate patients. “I sleep with my cell phone on next to me, and my patients know they can call me any time of day or night,” she says. Educated at St. Matthew’s Medical School in the Cayman Islands, then in Belize, and with experience that includes several years at both JFK Medical Center and Palms West Hospital, in Loxachatchee, Dr. Rashid, 44, is as stylish as she is competent. Always toting a Chanel or other haute designer bag and dressed in the latest Veronica Beard jacket, even when seeing patients, she was a regular on the charity circuit pre-Covid. She went into the concierge field, she says, because her regular patients at the primary care office where she previously worked started asking her to be their private doctor. “I wasn’t able

to devote the time to them that they wanted or needed because I was juggling so many patients,” says Dr. Rashid. Now, instead of rushing patients out in ten minutes or less, Dr. Rashid says that she doesn’t watch the clock. “An appointment can take an hour or even two, and that’s okay because I have the time,” she says. Her gleaming new office in Wellington, a town where Bill Gates has a house and about a 20-minute drive from Palm Beach, has a sleek modern design with marble floors and contemporary art by Florida artists. But most of her business consists of house calls in West Palm Beach. “There’s a fear associated with going to the doctor’s office, and being in their home takes that away,” says Dr. Rashid. “I can draw blood and even give an IV on house calls.” Dr. Rashid reached her 300-patient limit within six months of starting Palm Beach Boutique Medicine. Part of the reason is because her sister, Dr. Asma Rashid, runs a concierge practice in the Hamptons called Hamptons Boutique Medicine, and the two share patients who summer on Long Island and retreat to Palm Beach come winter. In the wake of Covid, her office phones have been ringing nonstop with new business—a development also noted by the other doctors in the field—indicating a significant increase in demand. “People want that comfort, now more than ever before, of being able to reach their doctor in case anything goes wrong,” says Dr. Rashid. This instant availability is exactly why Scher wanted to use Dr. Rashid’s practice. “She has been nothing short of phenomenal. I love that I call and get her directly, not an answering service or an assistant,” she says. “That’s super important to me if it’s an issue related to one of my kids.”

Scher decided to go the concierge route, she says, because of a scary incident with her younger son three years ago, when he had a severe reaction to a bee sting. “Our doctor sent us to the emergency room where they treated him for an anaphylactic reaction and kept him in the hospital for five days and even gave him the wrong IV,” she says. “It was completely unnerving.” Further, despite having good insurance, the hospital presented her with a $5,000 bill for the ER visit. “We discovered after he was discharged that he didn’t need to go to the ER or stay in the hospital at all,” says Scher. “Spending the $5,000 on a concierge doctor back then would have actually been more cost-effective, and a positive experience, instead of the nightmare we went through.” If Dr. Rashid is the glamorous and fashionable on-call physician who you want to befriend, Dr. Dean Mann, another prominent name in the Palm Beach concierge cadre, is her teddy bear-like endearing counterpart. He’s less expensive, too, with an annual fee of $1,800 that includes a two-hour wellness appointment, and he accepts commercial insurance and Medicare for other services such as sick visits. Unlike Dr. Rashid’s house call business, Dr. Mann sees most of his patients in his ritzy office in downtown West Palm Beach. Situated next to Good Samaritan Hospital, the 1,400-squarefoot light-flooded space is adorned with contemporary furniture and has oversize windows in the five exam rooms, which overlook the scenic Intracoastal Waterway. Dr. Mann made the switch to concierge from a traditional practice in 2004 (a time when the industry was nascent), he says, after becoming increasingly frustrated with the bureaucracy of insurance companies. “I was seeing more than 20 patients a day, yet my income was going down each year because it was becoming harder to get reimbursed,” he says. Even though he’s earning significantly more as a concierge doctor than he was before—a big reason why many physicians go into the field—Dr. Mann insists that he’s not in it for the money. “I’m not projecting myself as a saint because, of course, I want a decent income, but this is a lifestyle that’s less stressful. I don’t have the pressure to jam in so many patients in a day,” he says. Fewer patients equals higher quality of care for the ones he does have, according to Dr. Mann. Take Larry Signori, an attorney in Jupiter, who joined Dr. Mann’s practice more than decade ago and says that the doctor has helped him on countless occasions. On a business trip to Chicago last year, for instance, Signori realized that he had forgotten his blood pressure medication. “Dr. Mann called the pharmacy near my hotel, and I had my prescription in minutes. There’s no way that would have happened with a regular doctor,” he says. Similar to Dr. Rashid’s view, Dr. Mann explains that this VIP level of service is feasible in a concierge model. Suddenly, midsentence, he cuts off our conversation “My patient just walked in ten minutes early, so I have go,” he says. “The point of having a concierge doctor is that you never have to wait.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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BEACH BUNNIES Peter Pulitzer and his first wife, Lilly, in 1955. They were young, gorgeous, and rich—attributes that drew the eye of famed Palm Beach society photographer Slim Aarons.

Prints Charming Publishing heir Peter Pulitzer cut a stylish swath through Palm Beach with his fashion designer first wife Lilly, writes Aria Darcella. Later, he became tabloid fodder during a scandalous divorce from his second wife, Roxanne 108

oseph Pulitzer was the Gilded Age newspaper baron who successfully laundered the questionable reputation of his tabloids by endowing a prestigious and eponymous prize still given annually by Columbia University. But his grandson, Herbert “Peter” Pulitzer Jr., wanted nothing to do with the media legacy to which he was an heir. Handsome, ambitious, and a bit of a wild card, Peter wanted to make his own name and fortune. He succeeded with the fortune part. His name, however, will forever be tied to one of the most salacious divorces in Palm Beach history. Born in New York in 1930, Pulitzer was raised in luxury. Blessed with great looks, he had an adventurous streak that friends found exciting. “He was racy…in the sense of just jump-

ing into his plane and flying off,” Peter Duchin, the legendary band leader and a family friend, once told Vanity Fair. “He eschewed the normal social crap.” Defying the expectations of his rank, Pulitzer dropped out of college and used $500,000 of his family’s money to fund early businesses, which included a bowling alley and a liquor store. By the time he met Lillian Lee “Lilly” McKim, who would become his first wife, he also owned citrus groves in central Florida. In many ways, Lilly was his perfect match. A young woman of equal social stature, she also found the charmed life stifling. They were two of a kind, and eloped soon after meeting in 1952. The Pulitzers became the toast of Palm Beach. The couple eschewed grand galas in favor of casual house parties. Peter flew a plane and Lilly had a pet monkey. They weren’t just attractive, they were interesting. But after having three children, it all became too much for Lilly. While she loved her kids, she lost interest in her husband, and needed something of her own to do. She and her friend, Laura Robbins, set up a juice stand on Pulitzer’s grove. Needing clothing that could hide stains, they asked their seamstresses to make simple dresses out of brightly patterned fabric. The clothing became a huge hit. Leveraging her family name, they established the fashion brand Lilly Pulitzer, Inc. Lilly became president, Peter stepped in as VP, and an empire was born. Meanwhile, Peter was also cofounding an international hotel group. With their bustling careers, things seemed to be going so smoothly for the Pulitzers that when they divorced in 1969, friends and family were shocked. Ever the ladies’ man, Peter soon found love again. Like Lilly, his next wife, Roxanne, was also a free spirit. And at 21 years his junior, she was young and fun, and had a flirtatious energy. But unlike Lilly, Roxanne came from a humble background. Originally from upstate New York, Roxanne attended college in Florida after her first divorce, selling insurance to make ends meet; she met Pulitzer at a party thrown by her boss. Although she had Pulitzer’s stamp of approval, his social circle remained cool to the newcomer. They even went as far as requesting Peter attend events by himself, she would later recall. Roxanne finally started receiving social invitations when they married in 1975, although she still had trouble making friends. “I got along very well with the men. They loved me. But the women didn’t,” she told the Washington Post in 1985. “I got so sick of saying hello to people who wouldn’t even give me the decency to say hello back. I’d purposefully go over and talk to their husbands. Not flirt with them, but let them [other women] think I was.” The marriage went smoothly for a while—but just like Lilly before her, Roxanne became rest-

SLIM AARONS/GETTY IMAGES

NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS

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BATTLE ROYALE Peter and his second soon-to-be-ex wife Roxanne face off during their divorce.

“WE ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WOULD BE EATEN BY A SHARK OR KILLED BY A BEAR IN THE WOODS OR FALL OUT OF A SEAPLANE.” BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

LIZA CALHOUN, DAUGHTER

less after her twin sons were born. She wanted to party more; Pulitzer did not. This time it wasn’t the announcement of a divorce that shocked, it was the trial. Things quickly and publicly became acrimonious, with the couple accusing one another of sordid affairs. He claimed she significantly reduced his fortune through frivolous spending, had extramarital relationships with both men and women, and introduced him to cocaine. Roxanne played just as rough. She accused Pulitzer of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter from his first marriage, which both parties denied. (When the daughter took the stand, she claimed that in fact it had been Roxanne who propositioned her.) Still, Roxanne suffered the brunt of the negativity, as the Palm Beach set stayed firmly in Pulitzer’s corner. Things only got worse for her reputation as the story gained national attention. The divorce became a media sensation. Hunter S. Thompson reported on it for Rolling Stone, and the New York Post ran the headline “I Slept With a Trumpet,” purportedly quoting Roxanne. The instrument had been used in a séance, which played into a storyline smearing Roxanne for her interest in the supernatural. In fact, she later explained, she merely kept it in her bedroom closet—which was close enough to her bed for the smart-alecky Post. Still, the story became part of

her legend, and in 1985 she posed with a trumpet on the cover of Playboy magazine, touting a nude spread. In the end, the divorce played out like a soap opera showdown, with Roxanne unfairly cast as a trashy, social climbing party girl. “My gut feeling is that it was more a power situation,” she said years later. “The name, the money behind it, Palm Beach being very close-knit…. I really felt the power more than anything else.” After 19 days of testimony, Pulitzer was granted custody of their two children. Roxanne walked away with only her Porsche, $60,000 worth of jewelry, and $2,000 a month for two years. Bizarrely, the frisson of the divorce briefly reignited the couple’s feelings for each other, and they “dated” for another year before finally breaking up for good. Decades later, she got the last laugh. In 2011, Forbes reported that an orchard Pulitzer coowned with their sons was on the brink of bankruptcy and foreclosure after citrus canker wiped out 88,000 grapefruit trees. They were bailed out by Roxanne’s fifth husband, Tim Boberg. Pulitzer died of natural causes in 2018, a peaceful end that surprised many who knew him. His daughter, Liza Calhoun, was quoted in a Palm Beach Daily News obituary saying: “We always thought he would be eaten by a shark or killed by a bear in the woods or fall out of a seaplane.” JANUARY—FEBRUARY 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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ON THE

Li Jing

WALL FLOWERS

In December, artist Gabriela Gil presented a solo show of paintings from her recent series, “Time and Space,” at 484 Broome Street in SoHo.

Michelle Herbert

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Maribel Lieberman

Gabriela Gil

PHOTOS BY ROMMEL DEMANO/BFA

Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin

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COUTRNEYGUTTER BACHRACH, CREDITS THOM TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK; BROWNE AND ANDREW BOLTON: MATTEO PRANDONI/BFA; DAVID HURLEY AND OLIVIA STEELE: MADISON VOELKEL/BFA; KATIE HOLMS, IGEE OKAFOR AND DALE MOSS: BFA

Courtney Bachrach at The Cultivist x Maison Ullens brunch

Thom Browne and Andrew Bolton at the opening of “About Time” at the Met

SIX FEET A-PARTIES

Socially distanced dos for “About Time” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute; Watches of Switzerland x Olivia Steele; Boss x Justin Teodoro; The Cultivist x Maison Ullens, and Blue&Cream

Katie Holmes at the launch of Overt streetwear at Blue&Cream

First Lastname and FirstSteele Lastname David Hurley and Olivia at Watches of Switzerland

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SPRING 2020 | AVENUE Igee Okafor and Dale Moss at the Boss x Justin Teodoro launch event MAGAZINE

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SOCIAL SKILLS

Aries: In hindsight, it was incorrect to advise, “Your ruling planet, Mars, goes retrograde in 2020, but don’t worry! As a warrior fire sign, you always come out on top.” In fact, Mars took you down with it. I regret the error.

Star-Crossed Astrology columnist Posey Wilt has received complaints about inaccuracies in her January 2020 year-ahead horoscope. She wishes to issue the following corrections

Taurus: I promised, “2020 will be a year of unprecedented money-making opportunities,” and it was. After you lost your finance job in April, you pivoted to crafting homemade masks out of fabric scraps to sell on eBay. Unprecedented! Gemini: “Career-ruling Neptune moves through emotional Pisces this year, which may cause your professional and romantic spheres to overlap in unpredictable ways.” Since Jeffrey Toobin is a Gemini, I’m calling this one as correct. Cancer: “The stars are literally aligned for you lucky crabs, and the coming year is the perfect time to pursue your dreams,” I wrote. JK. Say hi to your mom for me, the next time you leave her basement. Leo: “2020 is your time to roar, brave lion!” I’m not retracting this one, since it was technically right, even if the roar was more of a sob/wail combo. Virgo: “Virgos love to give, but 2020 challenges you to take what’s rightfully yours. Will you be up to the challenge?” Welp, that was a no. Sorry about it. Libra: “As a Libran you crave balance, and 2020 may finally be the year everything in your life comes into equilibrium.” Since you probably put on an equal ten pounds in each thigh last year, this prediction qualifies as correct. Scorpio: “This year will require all your charm as you successfully network your way to career advancement.” I neglected to mention it would all be on Zoom, and the specific challenge for Scorpios would be hitting the mute button when you’re venting about how stupid everyone is. Sagittarius: “Neptune moves through Pisces this year, bold archer, meaning now is your time to shoot for the stars!” If you shot and missed, I’m not responsible. Capricorn: “2020 is your year, Capricorn, as money-ruling Uranus spends the year in dependable Taurus.” Since most Capricorns are too cynical to read horoscopes, I’m hoping I can just skate by on this one.

GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

Aquarius: “Venus moves retrograde in Gemini from May to June, which may cause minor disruptions in domestic life.” In fact, Venus moved in, took her shoes off, and has been sleeping on your sofa ever since. The best you can hope for in 2021 is that she stops clipping her toenails in the living room. Pisces: “2020 is your time to shine, as Mercury’s path will bring the emotional calm you need to focus on business success in the year ahead.” What can I say? The polls were wrong.

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AVENUE January|February 2021

Articles inside

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