C California Style & Culture

AMERICAN DREAMER Ralph Lauren’s California Comeback F

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Spring 2023

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Cover

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Aubrey MS. PLA ZA Enters the Spotlight

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PLUS HAUSER & WIRTH’S NEW HOUSE + CELINE ROCKS THE WILTERN THEATER

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Hermes

Hermes

Prada

Prada

Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent

Miu Miu

Miu Miu

Chanel

Chanel

Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta

Givenchy

Givenchy

MaxMara

BEVERLY HILLS / COSTA MESA

MAXMARA.COM

MaxMara

Cartier

Cartier

Cartier

Cartier

Valentino

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Michael Kors

Michael Kors

Bulgari

Bulgari

Salvatore Ferragamo

Salvatore Ferragamo

Jimmy Choo

Jimmy Choo

Van Cleef & Arpels

Van Cleef & Arpels

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Compass is a licensed real estate broker (01991628) in the State of California and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdraw without notice.

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STATEMENTS Hauser & Wirth makes a splash in West Hollywood.......................................................................

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The tortoiseshell shades to reframe your face................................................................................... face...................................................................................52 52 Beach-ready bucket hats from luxury brands..................................................................................... brands.....................................................................................54 54 Modernism Week and Desert X hit the Coachella Valley......................................................... 56

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The Expert expands from design consultation to e-commerce..........................................68

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FEATURES 128.

Aubrey Plaza’s time is now................................................................................ 76 Ralph Lauren reflects on 50 years in fashion....................................86

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Taking the utility trend for a spin on the farm..................................94 Celine rocks The Wiltern with its latest show...................................110 Inside the Chrome Hearts co-founder’s Malibu abode........... 114

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DISCOVERIES Three fashionable getaways to book now........................................... 123

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The catwalk trends to copycat...................................................................... 128 Zen Moments: Tina Craig..................................................................................130

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BRUNELLO CUCINELLI Natural straw hat, $1,595, shop.brunellocucinelli.com.

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y late father was raised in a Frank Lloyd Wright home and considered good design integral to life. And who was his ultimate arbiter of taste? Ralph Lauren, whom he first discovered in the 1970s while the designer was launching his career. To have had Lauren’s latest collection (which was something of a greatest hits) premiere on the West Coast at San Marino’s esteemed Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens was a thrill, and it brought back wonderful memories of the brand that felt very familiar. To have C (a magazine I founded because of a father who encouraged me to dream big and is dedicated in large part to his memory) land an exclusive interview with Mr. Lauren for this milestone event feels very full circle.

In this spring fashion issue, you will also find coverage of Hedi Slimane’s Celine spectacle at the Wiltern, a comeback of sorts to the city he called home for years—a place that continues to inspire him, as it does us.

An actor who consistently delivered on quirky, critically acclaimed roles for years but now seems to be really having her moment (hello, The White Lotus season 2!) is our cover subject, Aubrey Plaza. Her shoot for C in this season’s sartorial finest took place in between filming a Francis Ford Coppola movie, the awards season hoopla and darting off to New York to begin rehearsal for Saturday Night Live less than 24 hours after our shoot.

While her schedule is booked up for the foreseeable future, she ultimately dreams of being at her second home in West Marin on our NorCal shores.

And speaking of shores, the fashion family of all families, Chrome Hearts’ the Starks, is about as Malibu as it gets. I am so honored that they allowed C into their normally very private sanctuary on the sand. The abode is as authentic as they are, with an open-door policy for cool kids (both their own and their tribe of friends), but it is their amazing eyes and fingers-onthe-pulse collective work ethic and sense of loyalty that catapulted them to win the 2022 CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. With over three decades now behind them, their staying power stems from our western vantage point. As always, California is the common thread tying many a fashion creative together, as well as their point of inspiration.

DAVID WEBB Fluted Dome Crystal ring, $32,000, davidwebb.com.

Founders Note

Founder, Editorial Director and CEO

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Shoes, $2,050, miumiu.com.

ON THE COVER

Photography by JACK WATERLOT. Fashion Direction by JESSICA PASTER .

Hair by MARK TOWNSEND at A-Frame Agency using Sol de Janeiro.

Makeup by KATHY JEUNG at Forward Artists using Charlotte Tilbury.

Nails by JOLENE BRODEUR at The Wall Group.

AUBREY PLAZE wears GUCCI top and pants; POMELLATO jewelry.

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ILLUSTRATION: DAVID DOWNTON.

JENNIFER SMITH

MIU MIU

Giorgio Armani

South Coast Plaza 714.546.9377

C

P E O P L E

GRAHAM DUNN

BRIDGET FOLEY

Informed by his Ojai upbringing and adventures with his travel writer father and family, Graham Dunn’s photographs embody simplicity, nature and nostalgia— all of which are evident in “American Pastoral,” p.94, shot by the L.A.-based lensman. MY C SPOTS • Model Citizen in Ventura (my childhood best friend started this restaurant) for the roasted carrots and epic cocktails • Bronson Canyon Trail is a great steep hike to an overlook above Griffith Observatory where you can see the whole city • Ideal Seafood stand in Ojai is a sleeper hit with the best cold-smoked salmon I’ve ever had

“Ralph Lauren is a titan of global fashion,” says longtime fashion journalist and critic Bridget Foley, who interviewed the legendary designer for “Ralph Lauren Returns,” p.86. “He is also kind and remarkably generous—a genuinely good-guy-makes-great story.”

MY C SPOTS • The Eames House in Pacific Palisades for a slice of L.A. history, breathtaking ocean views and the glam tableau that is Charles and Ray’s artfully cluttered living room • New Beverly Cinema in L.A. for its eclectic repertoire of revival screenings • L.A.’s Dries Van Noten— its only store in the U.S.—for pure magnificence

JESSICA PASTER

BRAD TORCHIA

With over 26 years in the styling industry, L.A. native Jessica Paster has dressed Hollywood elites including Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Uma Thurman and Mariah Carey, and is a go-to for major red-carpet events. For this issue, Paster curates sizzling looks for cover star Aubrey Plaza in “Red Hot,” p.76. MY C SPOTS • Something about the air in Ojai is just so spiritual • L.A.’s El Compadre is my favorite Mexican restaurant, with the best food and drinks • Olympic Spa near Koreatown offers the best scrubs and massages—my skin always feels baby soft after each visit

L.A.-based photographer and filmmaker Brad Torchia has traveled the world, collaborating with a diverse range of clients including Lululemon, Apple, L’Officiel, GQ and The New York Times. His penchant for warm light and rich color lends itself seamlessly to the Stark family home in Malibu, as seen in “Home Is Where the (Chrome) Heart Is,” p.114. MY C SPOTS • I regularly spend hours perusing art books at Skylight Books Arts Annex in L.A. • Vibes Beach Cafe in Long Beach is a favorite stop for a matcha latte • Sespe River Trail in Ojai—I hike up here in the summer on a hot day and take a cold dip in the creek

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GRAHAM DUNN: TYLER ASH.

Contributors

Spring Summer 2023 Photographed by David Sims

327 North Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills loewe.com

Loewe

Cast

Fine Jewelry for the Curious

NOW OPEN The Village at Corte Madera, Marin — castjewelry.com

S T A T

Artist MARK BRADFORD guides students at HAUSER & WIRTH’s Education Lab Los Angeles workshop in 2022.

Below: ZENG FANZHI’s E Series 2022 no.14,oil on canvas, 2022.

LOVE ME TWO TIMES

CONTRIBUTORS KELLY ATTERTON

Statements - Opener Hauser & Wirth doubles down on L.A., converting a

ANDREW BARKER ANUSH J. BENLIYAN KELSEY McKINNON

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former West Hollywood car showroom into a jewel box of contemporary art

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DAVID NASH JESSICA RITZ REBECCA RUSSELL

BRADFORD: SARAH M. GOLONKA/SMG PHOTOGRAPHY. FANZHI: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH.

ELIZABETH VARNELL

STYLE

n the mid-1990s, before Swiss gallerist Iwan Wirth would become one of the world’s most powerful art dealers, he along with his wife, Manuela, and his mother-in-law, Ursula Hauser, his business partners in Hauser & Wirth, would often visit Los Angeles to meet new artists. On one such occasion, Wirth befriended the well-connected installation artist Jason Rhoades. “[He] became a friend and my guide, really opening up the city to me,” remembers Wirth. Rhoades would pick up his European friend at LAX, take him to friends’ studios (many of whom, including Paul McCarthy and Mark Bradford, would go on to show at Hauser & Wirth), and they would inevitably swing by Heritage Classics, a vintage car shop on Santa Monica Boulevard to check out rare European sports cars. Before his untimely passing, Rhoades even traded a

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Chevrolet Caprice for a blue 1989 Ferrari 328 GTS that belonged to Ursula Hauser.

Three decades later, Hauser & Wirth now represents more than 90 artists and estates, and has 15 locations across the globe, including Switzerland (their headquarters are in Zurich), the United Kingdom, Spain, Monaco, Hong Kong and New York. In 2021, Wirth received a call from the company’s L.A.-based partner and executive director, Stacen Berg, about a potential new gallery site: a historic 1930s Spanish Colonial Revivalstyle car dealership on a busy corner in West Hollywood. “When I started describing this building, he knew exactly what I was talking about,” says Berg. The structure was such an integral part of Hauser & Wirth’s history that, for Wirth, it was kismet.

Never mind that it has only been seven years since Hauser & Wirth opened a

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Clockwise from above: The new West Hollywood gallery.

RITA ACKERMANN’s Vertical Vanish, 2022.

Co-presidents (from left) MARC PAYOT, MANUELA WIRTH and IWAN WIRTH. GEORGE CONDO’s Constellation II, 2022.

Fanzhi’s Untitled, 2022.

sprawling 116,000-square-foot complex in the former Globe Mills factory in Downtown L.A., an art-world destination in and of itself with a museum-quality exhibition schedule, public programming, a bookshop and a destination restaurant (Manuela).

While DTLA will remain Hauser & Wirth’s home base in the region, the new West Hollywood site checks an entirely different box: a traditional-style gallery with proximity to clients and contemporaries (Gagosian and Pace are both within striking distance), and the ability to do things on a smaller scale.

The team called in longtime collaborator Annabelle Selldorf, the famous German architect who happened to be on the West Coast finishing up her redesign of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. “Adaptive reuse and architectural preservation have been hallmarks of Hauser & Wirth’s activities from our gallery’s inception 30 years ago,” says New York-based co-president Marc Payot. Over the course of a year, concrete floors were repoured and polished, skylights were upgraded, trussed pine beams were sandblasted, and garage

doors were replaced with modern retractable glass windows. In addition to ample gallery space, the triangular floor plan boasts a library space, sales offices and a sunny kitchen where Manuela chef Kris Tominaga will cater intimate dinners. “This is a business based on relationships,” says Berg. “It’s such a simple thing, but just to sit down with people over a meal and have that intimacy is everything.”

The debut exhibit is an approximately 10-piece show by celebrated New York artist George Condo called “People Are Strange,” a title which Condo borrowed from the 1967 song by The Doors, a quintessential Los Angeles band. “[George] is an artist with a love of L.A.,” says Payot. “[He] has a very particular insight into and an interest in the atmosphere that makes L.A. so unique— simultaneously solemn and euphoric, connected and entropic, logical and ineffable, beautiful and ugly.” A series of fragmented Cubist-style portraits and abstractions hold a mirror to the world on the other side of the windowpane.

(Perhaps not coincidentally, the famous Troubadour nightclub, The Doors’ frequent hangout, is just down the street.)

The opening also coincides with the Frieze Los Angeles art fair at the Santa Monica Airport, where Hauser & Wirth will have a booth. Meanwhile, the DTLA complex will host the first L.A. solo exhibition by Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi and an exhibit of new pieces by Hungarian painter Rita Ackermann. Then there’s the justlaunched Performance Project, which offers music, dance, film screenings and live performance in a new dedicated space, and the return of Education Lab, a unique collaboration between the gallery and the local community (last year, it was a nearby high school) to foster a dialogue between art, artists and a diverse audience.

With a constant stream of creative energy radiating from the West Coast, Iwan and Manuela, whose primary residence is in the U.K., were compelled to establish a home here, too. In 2021, the couple purchased Richard Neutra’s iconic Lovell House, a modernist masterpiece of cantilevered steel and glass in Los Feliz, in between the DTLA complex and the new WeHo gallery.

They’ve enlisted architects Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena to help restore the home to its former glory.

“We are expanding our commitment to L.A.,” says Wirth. “I still find Los Angeles to be one of the most exciting and dynamic art centers in the world.”

Harkening back to the building’s roots, which displayed masterful pieces of automotive art, the new space honors its past while embodying forward progress.

Perhaps, it’s a subtle reminder always to keep accelerating. Undoubtedly, it’s a sentiment Rhoades would have enjoyed.

8980 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, 213-943-1620; hauserwirth.com. •

Statements - Hauser Wirth

Words by KELSEY McKINNON 50

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EXTERIOR: ELON SCHOENHOLZ PHOTOGRAPHY. CO-PRESIDENTS PORTRAIT: SIMCANETTY-CLARKE. ACKERMANN AND CONDO: THOMAS BARRATT/COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS AND HAUSER & WIRTH. FANZHI: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH.

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LOEWE x Howl’s Moving Castle Howl and Sophie Amazona 23 in nappa calfskin, $3,750. Below, left: Calcifer small Puzzle bag in satin calfskin, $3,300.

ANIME MAGIC

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Statements - Style News

Creative director Jonathan Anderson’s bold new Studio Ghibli collaboration gathers the characters and spirit of Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 epic animated film, Howl’s Moving Castle, into an inventive new capsule for Loewe. Headlined by a bag depicting the rickety assemblage of the castle itself collaged from bits and remnants of Puzzle, Flamenco, Amazona and Hammock bags, the Spanish house’s third collection with the Japanese animation studio is as creative as it is evocative.

Beloved characters—including the young milliner Sophie, the wizard Howl and the fire demon Calcifer, plus Turnip Head, the Witch of the Waste and the apprentice Markl—all turn up in leather, shearling intarsia and embroidery across ready-to-wear and accessories. Film scenes play out on jackets, sweaters, pants, shirts and shorts, as well as Loewe’s signature bags, card holders and even a smoky new Calciferinspired candle. loewe.com. E.V.

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1. CARTIER Tank Française watch, $3,550.

2. BULGARI x LISA limited-edition watch, $6,750. 3. HARRY WINSTON Premier automatic watch, price upon request.

4. HERMÈS Kelly watch, $6,350. R.R.

SHELL OUT On tortoiseshell sunglasses

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1. PRADA sunglasses, $517. 2. LOEWE curvy acetate aviator sunglasses, $310. 3. GUCCI oversized square recycled acetate sunglasses, $940.

4. L’ÉCURIE PARIS Barbara sunglasses, $360. 5. CELINE BY HEDI SLIMANE Triomphe 08 sunglasses, $510. R.R.

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The new ANINE BING flagship on Melrose.

DISNEY x GIVENCHY Oswald the Lucky Rabbit collection.

Prices range from $255 to $5,690.

RABBIT RUN

Oswald and Ortensia are the latest cartoon couple making their mark on pop culture, emblazoned across Givenchy creative director Matthew M. Williams’ latest capsule collection of varsity jackets, T-shirts, totes, tennis shoes, crossbody bags, caps, denim pants and more. In honor of Walt Disney Company’s centenary and the Lunar New Year, the Givenchy pieces incorporate the so-called Lucky Rabbit (a character Disney reportedly deemed saucy) and his gal pal. The collection debuts in tandem with a new short film from Walt Disney Animation Studios—the first to depict the mischievous precursor to Mickey Mouse in nearly 95 years. Williams’ designs play on Oswald’s adventurous spirit. On one jacket Oswald sits astride a horse heading to Los Angeles, while on a shirt he’s sporting an impish grin while revving his motorcycle. Denim patches show the intrepid hare’s softer side as he gallantly offers Ortensia (a cat with voluminous eyelashes) a flower. givenchy.com. E.V.

SAY AHLEM

ANINE’S HALL Multihyphenate creative Anine Bing, who launched her namesake line in Los Angeles over 10 years ago, is celebrating the brand’s first decade with a new 2,300-square-foot flagship on Melrose Avenue housing signature pieces including blazers, moto jackets, denim in a variety of cuts, plus slouchy sweaters and Rooney mules. The minimalist space, dotted with a Platner armchair and marble shelves, is a nod to Bing’s embrace of Scandinavian simplicity, while the only-in-L.A. natural light streaming onto white waxed concrete floors evokes her creative base in California. Prints shot by youth culture photographer Terry O’Neill—including a blackand-white shot of Brigitte Bardot—hang beside antique mirrors reflecting the line’s spring collection.

Flowing dresses, tops, hoodies and T-shirts take inspiration from ’90s and early 2000s silhouettes and prints. 8211 Melrose Ave., L.A., 213-651-1444; aninebing.com. E.V.

Statements - Style News

One look inside Ahlem Manai-Platt’s new Hayes Valley boutique, and it’s clear she’s channeled her favorite designers, Isamu Noguchi and Pierre Jeanneret, for the spare interiors of her newest eyeglass outpost. Manai-Platt’s full assortment of smallbatch collections produced in France and Japan is on offer here, including her new Spring/Summer 2023 frames inspired by the kindred subcultures of midcentury jazz and the postindependence Congolese style of Les Sapeurs. The designs—which bring to mind improvisational avant-garde artists Pharoah Sanders, AHLEM Sacre Coeur Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, as well as the Sun sunglasses, creativity that follows social and political restrictions—come on $550. the heels of Ahlem’s recent introduction of a titanium collection and a capsule with Los Angeles-based musician Beck. The 8-year-old eyewear house partnered with Bay Area artist Yvonne Mouser on a sculpture exhibition in the new space, and a limitededition hand-drawn cleaning cloth by artist Alphonse Bardou-Jacquet commemorates Ahlem’s arrival in San Francisco. 416 Hayes St., S.F., 415-400-4442; ahlemeyewear.com. E.V.

STEP IT UP With pastel sneakers

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1. ALEXANDER McQUEEN Sprint Runner sneakers, $790. 2. CHANEL tweed and suede calfskin sneakers, $1,175.

3. FENDI Flow sneakers, $995. 4. GIVENCHY TK-MX Runner sneakers, $925. 5. MIU MIU x NEW BALANCE sneakers, $1,100. R.R.

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BUCKET UP Don’t pale by comparison

From left: NICK FOUQUET NF Checkerboard knitted cotton hat, $260. BRUNELLO CUCINELLI linen hat, $1,295.

CHANEL cotton cloche hat, $1,125. JANESSA LEONÉ Kenna crocheted raffia straw hat, $257.

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Photography by MARK GRIFFIN CHAMPION Fashion Direction by VANESSA SHOKRIAN 54

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Clockwise: A 1963 home by architect WILLIAM KRISEL. MODERNISM WEEK celebrates midcentury modern marvels in and out of Palm Springs, like the EERO SAARINEN-designed General Motors Technical Center in Michigan. The 11 days of events include interior tours of iconic homes.

“Entanglements: LOUISE BONNET and ADAM SILVERMAN at HOLLYHOCK HOUSE.”

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THOROUGHLY MODERN MILIEU Every year, midcentury modern aficionados, collectors, dealers and savvy interior designers quench their thirst by trekking to the greater Palm Springs area for Modernism Week. And, if you don’t have your calendar marked, you’ll likely miss out on the 11-day event (Feb. 16 to 26), which draws crowds from all over the world. This year sees tours of iconic homes rarely open to the public, including the former residences of Hollywood’s Golden Era stars such as Kirk Douglas and William Holden, as well as Frank Sinatra’s Villa Maggio—which had previously never been open to visitors. Other events include a midcentury mixology “cocktail clinic” at the historic restaurant Mr. Lyons, a presentation by Joseph Giovannini—a three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee in architecture criticism—about his recently published work, Architecture Unbound: A Century of the Disruptive Avant-Garde, and the annual Modernism Show itself, which features 125 renowned dealers offering an array of treasures from the era. modernismweek.com. D.N.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Los Angeles commission, the Hollyhock House, for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, remains one of the city’s most important architectural landmarks and its only UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This spring, the property becomes home to a few more “firsts”: “Entanglements: Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman at Hollyhock House” is the first artist intervention at the site, and the exhibition is the L.A.-based creative couple’s first formal collaboration. Long inspired by the property and its history, Bonnet’s paintings and drawings and Silverman’s ceramics act in direct dialogue with Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival design. Even for the well-initiated, it’s a chance to see the house in an entirely new light.

Feb. 15 to May 27. 4800 Hollywood Blvd., L.A.; hollyhockhouse.org. K.M.

ROOM SERVICE Her social circle included Jean-Michel Frank, Coco Chanel, Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti, yet Frances Elkins got her decorating start at her Monterey adobe home, Casa Amesti, and soon found herself designing for friends in Pebble Beach and San Francisco. One of last century’s most prominent interior designers, alongside Elsie de Wolfe, Elkins, who is credited with helping to hone the look of California design, is the subject of a new volume by Scott Powell, Frances Elkins: Visionary American Designer (Rizzoli New York, $65). Among a trove of images and magazine spreads of rooms Elkins designed, Powell also includes interiors dotted with furniture and fabric collaborations between Elkins and Frank, as well as architects including her brother David Adler. Famed decorator Billy Baldwin called her “the most creative designer we have ever had, and perhaps the greatest,” and here her influential work stands in concert with fellow Northern California innovators Anthony Hail, Michael Taylor and John Dickinson. E.V. Frances Elkins: Visionary American Designer comes out in April.

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MODERNISM DOG: NANCY BARON. MODERNISM SOFA: PS MODCOM. HOLLYHOCK: JOSHUA WHITE. BARBARA T. SMITH: GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, LOS ANGELES. FRIEZE: WHY ARCHITECTURE.

Statements - Art + Design News

Clockwise: Oracle by SANFORD BIGGERS at the HAMMER MUSEUM. Works by BRIDGET RILEY. RITA McBRIDE, Particulates, 2017.

Xerox, Coffin, Die-Cut, Rick, circa 1970, by BARBARA T. SMITH.

COPY THAT

BLOCK PARTY After a two-decades-long renovation, the Hammer Museum is opening the doors of its newly transformed building at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards. Included is a Michael Maltzan-designed street-level cultural center named for philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick, a new lobby, expanded gallery space and an outdoor terrace now home to Sanford Biggers’ 25-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture Oracle. After acquiring an adjoining office tower, the museum now stretches across a full city block, adding 40,000 square feet to its existing footprint and stretching from Westwood Boulevard to Glendon Avenue. Works from the Hammer’s permanent collection, including contemporary pieces by Mark Bradford, Rita McBride, John Baldessari, Lauren Halsey, Eva Hesse, Laura Owens, Paul McCarthy and Roland Reiss, join temporary exhibitions such as a retrospective showcasing op art pioneer Bridget Riley’s drawings and a new woven installation by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., 310443-7000; hammer.ucla.edu. E.V.

Barbara T. Smith wasn’t your typical Los Angeles housewife.

In the mid-1960s, after graduating from Pomona College and bearing three children, she leased a 650-pound Xerox copier and installed it in her house to make art. Over the course of a year, she produced an extensive body of work that laid the foundation for a decadeslong career addressing topics including sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, technology and death. Now on view at the Getty Museum, “Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be” explores a half century of the artist’s work. After she got divorced, she devoted her career to making avant-garde art and paved the way as a performance art pioneer (she co-founded the experimental F-Space Gallery with fellow artists Nancy Buchanan and Chris Burden). A memoir of the same name will be released alongside the exhibit where Smith, now 92, offers a firsthand account of her life and practice. Feb. 28 to July 16. getty.edu. K.M.

Statements - Art + Design News

AIR FAIR After staging massive shows in years past at the Paramount Pictures Studios lot in Hollywood and at the Beverly Hilton hotel, the international Frieze art fair continues its westward progression as the bazaar descends on the Santa Monica Airport, reuniting dealers, connoisseurs, collectors and revelers alike. The new digs allow for even more galleries to set up shop, alongside collaborations with nonprofit organizations and a series of ambitious new activations and pop-ups from some of L.A.’s most celebrated restaurants. In total, Frieze Los Angeles 2o23 will feature more than 120 galleries from 22 different countries including international heavyweights such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Gallery Hyundai, Pace Gallery and David Zwirner, while the local contingency includes Blum & Poe, The Box, Château Shatto, Commonwealth and Council, Jeffrey Deitch, David Kordansky Gallery, Regen Projects and Various Small Fires (VSF). It’s safe to say, the gang’s all here. Feb. 16-19. frieze.com. K.M. A rendering of FRIEZE LOS ANGELES 2023 at the Santa Monica Airport.

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DOT MATRIX Nonagenarian conceptual artist Yayoi Kusama sees the world as dense fields of infinite dots, which she first spotted in hallucinations she experienced as a child.

Kusama has created mirrored rooms evoking the phenomenon—two are at Los Angeles’ Broad Museum—and her lifelong obsession with polka dots, infused throughout her art, is now dancing across Louis Vuitton’s latest launches. The French house, which last collaborated with Kusama in 2012, is releasing two drops this spring

encompassing the artist’s painted dot motif made with visible brushstrokes, her spaceage mirrored circles, her infinity dots and distinctive psychedelic flower emblems— precisely applied to Capucines and Dauphine bags, Soft Trunks, silk scarves, silk twill pajama suiting, jackets, mini dresses, Squad high-tops and fragrances. The collection extends to menswear with colorful and grayscale dots enveloping everything from zipped overshirts to baseball caps, belts, eyewear and LV Trainers. louisvuitton.com. E.V.

Formula Fig founder JJ Walsh chose Los Angeles, which she calls “the wellness capital of the world,” to debut her Canadian chain of experiential, design-driven one-stop shops for hightech facials, injectables and skincare products stateside. Known for her signature color palette of greens and pinks, Walsh, a former fashion editor, drew inspiration for this location from old Hollywood art deco architecture, and combined it with sleek, geometric forms made from industrial and luxurious materials. “All our Fig Bars are anchored by central, multi-use islands,” she explains. “In WeHo, it’s 12 feet of honed, faceted green marble around which you can try products, learn about treatments and host skincare master classes.”

The space will offer a menu of treatments and injections delivered by medical pros and visiting industry experts. You can also shop brands including Asystem, Epi.logic and Tronque. 926 N. Sycamore Ave., West Hollywood, 888477-6199; formulafig.com. K.A.

Lady DIOR bags from BRIAN CALVIN (right) and ALEX GARDNER (below).

Dior is again launching its annual collaboration pairing global artists with the unique architectural canvas and charms of the French house’s Lady Dior bag, and this year two California artists, Alex Gardner and Brian Calvin, are mining their figurative practices for the seventh limited-edition project.

Long Beach native Gardner’s designs incorporating black velvet echo his works depicting long-limbed, faceless figures, while Ojai-based Calvin’s sundrenched faces are rendered in bright beads, sequins and embroidery thread. Their concepts join equally enthralling bag transformations by Egyptian painter Ghada Amer, Canadian conceptual photographer and filmmaker Sara Cwynar, Brooklyn-based painter Shara Hughes, South Korean ink-and-paper abstract artist Minjung Kim, Russian tapestry maker Zhenya Machneva, Qatar’s Bouthayna Al Muftah, French sculptor and painter Françoise Pétrovitch, Chinese multidisciplinary artist Wang Yuyang, and the late boundary-pushing artist Dorothy Iannone, who was based in Berlin. dior.com. E.V.

RINGS OF POWER Geometric jewelry

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1. BULGARI B.Zero1 ring, $2,860. 2. CARTIER Trinity for Chitose Abe of Sacai two-finger ring, $3,900. 3. POMELLATO Sabbia ring, price upon request. 4. TIFFANY & CO. Tiffany Lock ring, $4,800. 5. KATKIM Grande Cerré Tri-Tone ring, $4,500. R.R.

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FORMULA FIG: KIARA SCHWARTZ

Statements - Style News

CALI-DIOR-NICATION, ANYONE?

Rosewood Mayakoba

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GREAT WHITES A sun-bleached bag is a shore thing

From left: BOTTEGA VENETA Andiamo woven bag, $4,100.

MIU MIU leather bag with pockets, $2,750.

ALEXANDER McQUEEN Slash bag with silver knuckle handle, $3,290.

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X MARKS THE SPOTS The site-specific international art exhibition, Desert X, returns to the Coachella Valley for its fourth edition (March 4 through May 7), activating majestic desert locations with installations by acclaimed emerging and established artists from around the world. Presenting public exhibitions that connect to the environment and indigenous communities, the months-long event is produced by The Desert Biennial, a charitable nonprofit promoting cultural exchange and education. This year’s exhibition is

JOHN GERRARD’s Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017, from the 2019 edition of DESERT X.

co-curated by returning artistic director Neville Wakefield and Diana Campbell, the founding artistic director of Samdani Art Foundation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit.

Must-see immersive installations include works by artists Rana Begum, Gerald Clarke, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser), Torkwase Dyson and Mario García Torres. Visiting the approximately 12 commissioned works is free to the public. desertx.org. D.N.

SAAR POWER Born and raised in Laurel Canyon, Alison Saar seemed destined to become an artist. Her late father, Richard, was a ceramicist and art conservator, and her mother, Betye, 96, is a well-known sculptor and installation artist. Saar studied studio art and art history at Scripps College and earned a Master of Fine Arts from Otis-Parsons Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) before becoming an accomplished artist in her own right with sculpture, mixedmedia and installation pieces that are deeply influenced by folk art and spirituality. (She has even produced work with her mother.) This spring, L.A. Louver presents “Uproot,” a series of new sculptures and paintings

by Saar that focus on the female African diaspora and culture—two continuous themes in her multifaceted oeuvre. Through March 11. lalouver.com. K.M.

Statements - Art + Design News

LIGHTEN UP

LARRY BELL’s Glass Cube, 1966, vacuumcoated glass.

Industrial materials, including fiberglass, sheet acrylic and polyester resin, form the backbone of Light and Space art and related works by a group of Southern California artists, who began exploring the way we see light through such mediums in the 1960s and 1970s. Now a new exhibition curated by Carol Eliel, entitled “Light, Space, Surface: Selections from LACMA’s Collection” (April 2 through Oct. 1), examines the way in which the artists, including Pasadena-based Helen Pashgian, sought to create works that reflect and refract light throughout their decades-long practices. “I was always interested in seeing into my sculptures and through them,” Pashgian has said. Also on view are pieces Eliel calls “visually seductive,” created by several perception-exploring artists, such as Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Judy Chicago and Hap Tivey. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., 323-857-6000; lacma.org. E.V.

CENTER STAGE In 1925, Santa Barbara experienced a devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake that decimated the vast majority of its downtown. One of the only buildings left untouched was the Lobero Theatre. As the famed architect George Washington Smith set about rebuilding the city, he looked to the venue (which he had helped redesign with Lutah Maria Riggs a year prior), to inform the city’s Spanish Colonial style, a tone that has endured. Now, the Lobero celebrates its 150th anniversary as the oldest continuously operating theater in California (and the fourth-oldest performing arts theater in the country), having hosted performances by the likes of Clark Gable, Lucille Ball, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Neil Young and Jeff Bridges during its illustrious past. For the Ovation Celebration in February, Jack Johnson (who attended UC Santa Barbara) takes the stage. 35 E. Canon Perdido St., Santa Barbara, 805-963-0761; lobero.org. K.M. The Spanish-style facade of the historic LOBERO THEATRE in Santa Barbara.

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DESERT X: LANCE GERBER, COURTESY OF DESERT X. LACMA: LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, GIFT OF THE FREDERICK R. WEISMAN COMPANY, © LARRY BELL, PHOTO © MUSEUM ASSOCIATES/LACMA. SAAR: COURTESY ARTIST AND L.A. LOUVER. NEUEHOUSE: YOSHIHIRO MAKINO. COUP D'ETAT: DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN.

Congolene Resistance (bust), 2022, by ALISON SAAR .

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COUP D’ETAT’s Los Angeles showroom.

CULTURE CLUB “There has been a dearth of genuinely inspirational, design-forward and functional spaces for creatives in Venice Beach for years,” says Jon Goss, chief brand and marketing officer of CultureWorks and NeueHouse, which opened NeueHouse Venice Beach. “Now that work has become more social and the need for in-person connection is stronger than ever, we want to bring together a community that thrives at the intersections of work and play.” Torontobased DesignAgency oversaw the transformation of a two-story, centuryold building, deftly synthesizing a range of aesthetic references throughout 23,000 square feet to support working, gathering and compelling cultural

programming. “We wanted this rich mix of perspectives, provenance, craft and innovation to infuse every space,” says DesignAgency founding partner Anwar Mekhayech. Amenities such as a podcast studio and surfboard storage cater to members’ needs and expand their horizons, while Reunion, a full-service restaurant and bar, offers front-row sunset views from its dazzling rooftop perch. 73 Market St., Venice, 424-430-3500; neuehouse.com. J.R.

AGAINST THE GRAIN Biomorphic sofas, kaleidoscopic butterfly mirrors, rattan pendants that resemble sea urchins dangling from the ceiling—these are the kind of radical, imaginative pieces that make up the arsenal at the aptly named contemporary design emporium Coup D’Etat (meaning a rebellious upheaval). Nearly 20 years after Darin Geise opened his first outpost in San Francisco, he recently unveiled a second location in Los Angeles. “We are turning up the volume at this new location,” he says. “There is a playfulness and risk-taking design aesthetic in L.A. that we are excited to entertain.” On offer will be pieces from California-based artists including Chuck Moffit, Jocelyn Marsh, Edwin Maldonado, Damian Jones and Linda Fahey, along with curated contemporary art, furniture, lighting and select vintage pieces. Let the uprising begin! 100 N. Robertson Blvd., L.A., 323-825-5880; coupdetatsf.com. K.M.

Statements - Art + Design News

Clockwise from top: NEUEHOUSE VENICE BEACH. The entrance to the members-only club. DESIGNAGENCY is behind the coastal-inspired interiors.

BEYOND A DROUGHT As fashion houses continue to embrace innovative plant-based leathers (think Stella McCartney’s Mylo mushroom leather), the interior design industry has admittedly fallen behind, with polyester-based faux leathers still dominating the market. Enter Natasha Baradaran, the Los Angeles-based interior and furniture designer who is cementing her reign as textile queen with Livwell, an industry-first vegan cactus leather that is sustainable, biodegradable and free of toxic chemicals. The groundbreaking plant-based material is crafted from the sundried mature leaves of the perennial plants, which Baradaran sources from an environmentally conscious organic ranch in Central Mexico, where the cacti are grown using rainwater and minerals—i.e., not an irrigation system. The resulting fabric comes in three embossed styles—a textured solid, a graphic patterned design and a pebbled version—and muted earth tones such as terracotta and desert. natashabaradaran.com. A.J.B. Designer NATASHA BARADARAN and her signature LIVWELL cactus leather furniture at Ganna Walska Lotusland.

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David Webb

DAVIDWEBB.COM T: 310 858 8006

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HOT STEPPERS Come on, get strappy

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From top: MICHAEL KORS COLLECTION Chrissy silver sandals, $650. SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO Jerry black satin and strass sandals, $1,650. JIMMY CHOO black and ultraviolet suede sandals with crystal embellishment, $2,950.

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The Margherita pizza at L’ANTICA PIZZERIA DA MICHELE.

NAPOLI STYLE

Clockwise: Healdsburg’s intimate, 20-seat TROUBADOUR BREAD AND BISTRO. SingleThread alum MELISSA YANC. Duck à l’orange.

SO SONOMA Having trouble with your sourdough starter? Husband-and-wife team Sean McGaughey and Melissa Yanc are breaking bread, quite literally, with the opening of their new French dining concept inside their Healdsburg sandwich shop, Troubadour Bread and Bistro. The locale is a sandwich-proffering boulangerie by day that transforms into an intimate, 20-seat bistro by night. For the couple—who cut their teeth at the Michelin-starred SingleThread— the news marks their third local business venture in less than three years, having opened a bustling bakery, Quail & Condor, just down the road in 2020. The evening’s French-inspired five-course prix fixe menu celebrates the bounty of Sonoma County with dishes subtly incorporating the house’s leavened specialties, including truffled croque monsieur, steak tartare with homemade bread and a coq au vin with pommes lyonnaise. 381 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg, 707-756-3972; troubadourhbg.com. K.M.

Pizza purists rejoice!

Following the success of its U.S. debut in Hollywood, L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele— the world-famous Naples institution originally founded in 1870—is doubling down on California with a new location in Santa Barbara. Taking over the historic Copper Coffee Pot building on State Street, owner Francesco Zimone and head pizzaiolo Michele Rubini import everything from the flour to the tomatoes to the cheese from Italy for their signature pizzas, which are made using a generations-old dough recipe and cooked to perfection in a traditional wood-fired oven, exactly like the original location. But unlike in Naples, the kitchen—helmed by chef and general manager Rick Frame— churns out more than just the classic marinara and Margherita pizzas. The full menu includes seven pizzas, plus Italian and Mediterranean appetizers, mains and swoon-worthy housemade pastas like spaghetti pomodoro and cacio e pepe. 1031 State St., Santa Barbara, 805-7708055; damicheleusa.com. A.J.B.

SALT OF THE EARTH Caviar-studded martinis, Santa Barbara uni toast, and fried lobster and waffles are just some of the delectable—and perfectly salty—dishes on offer at the newly anchored Saltie Girl restaurant and sustainable seafood bar in WeHo. The first West Coast outpost of the beloved Bostonian mainstay brings founder Kathy Sidell and executive chef Kyle McClelland’s menu of delicate seasonal crudos, splendid seafood towers and reimagined classics (lobster rolls, moules-frites, et al.) to California, where they are highlighting local fishers and purveyors. Nautical-inspired interiors by Jessica Schuster set the scene for Saltie Girl’s tinned fish program of more than 130 varieties, while the signature cocktails menu and biodynamic wine list might just have you drinking like a fish. 8615 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood; saltiegirl.com. A.J.B. From left: SALTIE GIRL’s Sunset Boulevard entrance. The Cucumber cocktail with sochu, gin, coconut, lemon and celery.

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TROUBADOUR: EMMA K. MORRIS. L'ANTICA: @EATER_LA. SALTIE GIRL: MIKE COTRONE.

Statements - Food + Drink News

WHITEWALL DESIGN EDITION

by STUDIO BESAU-MARGUERRE

Whitewall

The new WhiteWall Design Edition frames by Studio Besau-Marguerre in yellow, purple and green Images by Kim Holtermand Colorful and extravagant at the same time: showcase your photo ideally with a frame from our new Design Edition, created in cooperation with Hamburg designers Eva Marguerre and Marcel Besau. The frames are available in yellow, purple and green.

The special feature is that each frame consists of four different colored strips of the color tone, which are arranged in a fixed order to really make your image stand out.

The Design Edition will be available in WhiteWall stores and online at WhiteWall.com from February 1, 2023.

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he Expert, a digital interior design consultation platform which launched during the pandemic, has gone one step further with Showroom, a multibrand e-commerce arm with designercurated collections you can buy, not to mention an appointment-only gallery space.

The first five collections come from some of The Expert’s biggest names including its co-founder Jake Arnold, who has completed earthen-hued homes in sumptuous textures for the likes of John Legend and Chrissy Teigan, Dan Levy and Aaron Paul.

“We’ve spent the past year learning from [our clients] and our amazing roster of designers and have translated that experience into building the absolute best shopping curation with the most sought-after brands from around the world,” Arnold says.

So now you can get the look of Gwyneth Paltrow’s preferred designer, Brigette Romanek, whose selection features a Le Corbusier LC1 chair.

Or you can ape Jenna Lyons’ style: The longterm former J.Crew creative director turned interiors guru has a Lawson-Fenning cane headboard bed and vintage-inspired lamps from Roll & Hill inside her digital showroom.

The final two collections (with more to follow) come from Reese Witherspoon’s interiors go-to Mark D. Sikes, whose signature blue-and-white living rooms have graced the cover of many an interiors bible, and Heidi Caillier who redefines rural chic.

With 50 brands on the site, including Anna Karlin, Saved NY, Nickey Kehoe and Hollywood at Home, and over 1,500 unique pieces of furniture, lighting, rugs, fabrics, art and wallcoverings, it’s as if your Pinterest board became shoppable, with the hard part all done for you. Simultaneous to the e-commerce launch, a 2,000-square-foot gallery space has opened in Culver City with pieces from Armadillo, Apparatus and Creative Art Partners, in addition to The Expert’s own vintage and made-to-order collections. theexpert.com/showroom. 2

Clockwise: THE EXPERT’s new Culver City showroom.

Made by Hand KnitWit pendant, $720.

Interior designer and The Expert co-founder JAKE ARNOLD. The Expert Vintage midcentury Danish cabinetmaker easy chair, $9,000, 1950s floor lamp, $2,000, and Goodee Frama AML stool, $582.

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SHOWROOM (2): MICHAEL CLIFFORD. PORTRAIT: JAZMIN ESTOPIN.

Statements - The Expert

Feeling Good Starts Here.

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SCENT-FREE PAIN RELIEF LOTION, RESTORATIVE BATH AND BODY.

Flexpower

Available at

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Clockwise from top left: VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Lucky Animals frog clip, $8,000.

Lucky Spring pendant, $4,000. Lucky Spring plum blossom earrings, $4,550.

Lucky Animals fox clip, $8,000. Lucky Animals bichon frise clip, $8,000. Lucky Spring Between the Finger ring, $6,650.

Lucky Animals dachshund clip, $7,200.

Lucky Animals teddy bear clip, $8,000.

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Statements - Van Cleef GET LUCKY Van Cleef & Arpels’ new collections bring good fortune as well as smiles

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ndearing little animals, reminiscent of Van Cleef & Arpels’ midcentury menagerie, make up the French house’s poetic new Lucky Animals clip collection. The lighthearted creatures—each with an onyx gaze—made with lively combinations of ornamental stones and mother-of-pearl are outlined in precisely placed tiny gold beads. New frog, fox, teddy bear, dachshund and bichon frise clips join previously launched novelties including an owl, cat, pig, horse, rabbit and squirrel. In addition to these playful creatures, the house is adding lily-of-the-valley buds, plum blossoms and the fanciful ladybugs of its Lucky Spring collection to its ever-expanding enchanted garden. Ladybugs have a long history with the jeweler, and here they fly with carnelian wings and onyx heads, all outlined in rose gold, before perching beside white mother-of-pearl blooms. Pendants, bracelets, Between the Finger rings, a clip and a pair of earrings herald the changing season. vancleefarpels.com. 2

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Nizuc Resort

Ultimate Relaxation. Serene Escape.

Transformative Experiences. Mexico.

855-MYNIZUC | NIZUC.COM | RESERVATIONS@NIZUC.COM

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HARRY WINSTON Winston Candy High Jewelry watch, price upon request.

GENTLE MONSTER at South Coast Plaza.

MONSTERS INC.

South Korean eyewear innovator Gentle Monster, known for oversized frames and cultish collaborations with brands such as Hood By Air and Moncler Genius, has launched its third California flagship, this time at South Coast Plaza. The 4,500-square-foot space is a digital wonderland filled with video art and rotating kinetic installations riffing on the concept of evolution. Launched by Seoul-based founder Hankook Kim in 2011, the brand will showcase its coveted sunglasses and specs from the 2023 line, including bold cat-eye silhouettes, voluminous oval shades (think vibrant blue frames with azure mirrored lenses) and sophisticated black selections. Also on offer is the new Bold collection, emblazoned with star formations, a nod to the universe’s galactic systems. South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa, 213-935-8114 ext. 4; gentlemonster.com. E.V.

ROCK CANDY Mandarin garnets, vibrant spinels, pastel sapphires and bold tourmalines comprise Winston Candy, a bright new offering of one-of-a-kind gems set in delectable high jewelry rings, earrings and watch designs. In each iteration, fancy-colored center stones are grouped together with gems and diamonds in complementary and equally lickable shades. Archival sketches of richly colored cocktail rings from the 1950s and 1960s inspired the collection, highlighting the house’s signature pairings of fancy-cut stones with round brilliants. The dimensionality and varied stone-cutting techniques used in each handcrafted piece—house artisans devoted over a year to these designs—reference that bygone era of large stones and the equally large personalities of those who wore them. Now the bejeweled confections are returning anew and perhaps sparking a modern era of outré elegance. harrywinston.com. E.V.

Statements - Style News

SNAKE CHARMS

BULGARI Serpenti rose gold, diamond and black onyx earrings, $24,000.

Bulgari’s creative evolution from luxury jeweler to fashion house knows no bounds, as the distinguished Italian brand commemorates the 75th anniversary of its Serpenti designs. The mythical snake (representing eternal love) takes various forms in the sinuous statement pieces—necklaces, earrings, rings, watches and bracelets adorned with pavé diamonds—that honor the momentous occasion. “Serpenti is an icon that is synonymous with glamour, seduction and mystical femininity,” says Lucia Silvestri, Bulgari’s creative director. “Since the 1940s, Serpenti has evolved from vibrant creations in high jewelry to watches to leather goods. Serpenti has become a timeless symbol, which we are so excited to celebrate this year.” In celebration of the milestone, a pop-up exhibition of iconic jewelry designs and artistry that span three-quarters of a century is slithering its way to Rodeo Drive in late February and will be on view for three months. bulgari.com. R.R.

SOLE MATES Claremont-based sculptor and woodworker Vince Skelly, who transforms salvage lumber into masterfully carved art, is collaborating with Birkenstock on its Bold collection. Heritage-focused upscale versions of Arizona sandals and Boston clogs made from natural materials are meant to gain texture, just as Skelly’s sculptures patinate with time. The new men’s shoes, utilizing the line’s signature nubuck leather and contoured cork footbeds, incorporate double-pronged brass buckles and shearling lining for a modern take on the originals. In this iteration, proper alignment, stimulated circulation and stability accompany the age-old design made anew. The collection arrives as the storied German brand opens a boutique in Larkspur near its American headquarters, stocking limited-edition designer collabs and highlighting the Bay Area’s role in bringing the brand stateside. Marin Country Mart, 1019 Larkspur Landing Circle, Ste. C6, Larkspur, 415-925-1134; birkenstock.com. E.V. BIRKENSTOCK x VINCE SKELLY Arizona Bold shearling and nubuck leather sandals, $250.

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Augustina’s

PHOTOGRAPH DORIAN PROST 2022

LA Dance Project

BUCCELLATI earrings, $64,000.

Well Opener

SPRING 2023 JACK WATERLOT

Aubrey Plaza’s time is now p.76 Ralph Lauren reflects on 50 years in fashion p.86 Taking the utility trend for a spin p.94 Celine rocks The Wiltern theater p.110 Inside the Chrome Hearts co-founder’s Malibu abode p.114 California Style & Culture

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Feature - Aubrey Plaza Over the last decade, AUBREY PLAZA has built a loyal fan base from her indie roles. But after the stratospheric success of The White Lotus, is she ready for superstardom?

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f emotional growth is about turning ghosts into ancestors, putting to bed once and for all the relationships or experiences— or TV characters—that haunt you, then Aubrey Plaza may be experiencing a bit of a regression.

It’s the middle of January, and the last of the season’s atmospheric rivers is hurling sheets of rain against the windows of the Los Angeles house where Plaza, when she isn’t working nonstop, lives with her husband, writer-director Jeff Baena, and their two dogs. She is wearing red pajamas.

She flew in yesterday from Atlanta, where she has been filming Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, in order to shoot the C Magazine cover story before presenting at the Critics Choice Awards. (Elsewhere in the house, a black sequined Louis Vuitton dress hangs at the ready.) Tomorrow she takes a red-eye to New York to begin rehearsal for hosting Saturday Night Live—a childhood dream

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VALENTINO dress, $6,500, tights, $300, and shoes, $920.

POMELLATO earrings, $27,600, and ring, $2,450.

Location THE MAYBOURNE BEVERLY HILLS.

Feature - Aubrey Plaza

SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO dress, $7,500. DAVID WEBB rings (from left), $13,500, $46,000, $4,400 and $9,600.

Opposite: PRADA dress, $3,450, and shoes, price upon request. BULGARI ring, $623.

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Feature - Aubrey Plaza

Feature - Aubrey Plaza

ETRO bra top, $420, top (tied around waist), $1,020, and skirt, $1,020. BULGARI bracelets, from $7,800.

“I’m way more square than people think” AUBREY PLAZA

come true for an actress who once interned in SNL’s set design department and cut her teeth in improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. This was supposed to be the year when Plaza finally shed the skin of April Ludgate, the sardonic, eye-rolling millennial she played for seven seasons on Parks and Recreation. Or was it? She’s not really sure.

“The ghost of April Ludgate is swirling around right now,” says Plaza. “Because lately I’m trying to decide, well, what do people want from me? What do I want from me?

“SNL is an interesting exercise in deciding for yourself what version of yourself you’d like to put on display.

Starting with the monologue—which I’ve thought about my whole life—when you walk down the steps and you go out there and you say, ‘I’m so excited to be here hosting Saturday Night Live,’ and everyone starts clapping, and then joke-joke-joke.

My brain starts to short-circuit, because I have a hard time knowing what people expect. Of course, the first thing I go to is the April Ludgate deadpan weirdo persona that people project onto me. But then I don’t know anymore. I must be on this show because everybody saw The White Lotus, or everybody saw my movie Emily the Criminal, or some combination. When I see someone else tapped to host SNL, it makes total sense, and I can say, ‘Oh, it’s because he did that.’ But I can’t figure out what that is for me, because I’m doing the same thing that I’ve always done. It just seems that all of a sudden people started paying attention.”

People wanted and got April Ludgate in all her snarky, hoodied glory on Plaza’s

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CHANEL swimsuit, $950, shorts, $1,500, belts, $1,900, and $2,800, boots, $2,025, and earrings, $900. Opposite: GIORGIO ARMANI bodysuit, price upon request, and pants, $3,995. VAN CLEEF & ARPELS bracelet, $17,800, and ring, $19,600.

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“I’m suspicious of fame. I have parents who came from nothing” AUBREY PLAZA

brilliant turn hosting SNL. But she gave them a lot more: a pugnacious Puerto Rican bartender, France’s full-throated candidate for Miss Universe, and a film noir femme fatale, among other reminders of her comedic bona fides.

If the last year has proven anything about Aubrey Plaza, it’s that, far from being a serial weird girl, she’s got range. The post-pandemic on-screen landscape has been rife with class commentary (Triangle of Sadness and The Menu come to mind), and in 2022 Plaza delivered a pair of performances that grabbed hold of that zeitgeist. “Apparently I’m having a moment,” she says in that flat style that has sometimes made it hard for late-night talk show hosts to tell if she’s kidding or not. “I hope it doesn’t go away soon. Robert De Niro once said, ‘Everybody’s dispensable.’”

In last summer’s Emily the Criminal, Plaza played the titular character, a young woman who resorts to credit card fraud to pay off her crushing college debt before sliding into more serious crime. Plaza also co-produced the film through her own company, Evil Hag Productions. (The name harks back to her comedy days, when she liked to make fake websites—one of those was saltyseahags.com, in which she blogged from the perspective of a sea witch living in a cave.)

“Emily was one of those characters where I felt like, I really got it,” says Plaza, who worked with a dialect coach to nail the New Jersey accent. “I understood the kind of rage that people feel being thrown into an

economy and a job market that are so stacked against them, and I feel excited that people could watch that movie and feel that it’s for the underdog. Those characters are more interesting to me.”

But it was the newly moneyed and frequently appalled Harper in The White Lotus, Mike White’s murderous, satirical anthology series now preparing for its third season, that has pushed her into the spotlight.

An attorney whose husband has just made a fortune in tech, Harper often seems like the only sane person in the fun house of a Sicilian luxury hotel, and Plaza’s highly emotive face, with its myriad contortions, makes her a sort of viewer-participant, a natural ally for the show’s audience.

Plaza has said that Harper is more like her than any character she has played—perhaps inevitable given that White, the show’s creator, is an old friend and wrote the part specifically for her. “I haven’t really played a mature, professional, married woman,” explains the actor, who has excelled at hot messes and permanent adolescents in films such as 2017’s Ingrid Goes West. “Most people think I’m 10 years younger than I am. I’m going to be 39 this year. It’s funny to me: People think I should be starring in Wednesday or something.”

It’s hard to believe that Plaza shares Harper’s prissiness in the face of her new friend Daphne’s conjugal compromises, but she insists that she isn’t as world-weary as her gimlet eyes sometimes suggest. “I’m way more square than people think,” she says.

“I was raised very traditionally. I’ve been in a relationship for 12 years—that’s just how it happened for me. Harper’s an extremely intelligent character, but she’s not as evolved as Daphne in certain ways. There comes a point when people discover something about someone they’re close to that kind of opens their eyes to what people are really doing out there. Daphne has kind of cracked open her reality. That really does happen.”

Plaza grew up in Wilmington, Del. Her mother is one of nine children adopted by what she describes as “a very Irish Catholic family.” Her father’s parents immigrated to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico. “I got to experience what many people experience growing up in this country: a pretty normal, middle-class upbringing,” she says. “I feel very connected to that, which is probably why I’m suspicious of fame. I

have parents who came from nothing, and I grew up watching them make something of themselves, real American dream-style.

That’s always an underlying thing for me, and I feel lucky that I can tap into some of those experiences and play characters who, I hope, people feel seen by.”

As a kid, she was a prankster, a lover of the public spectacle. “I was either performing in some way or leading a weird protest or drumming up something to make life interesting,” she recalls. One day in middle school, she followed the principal home in a giant cardboard box. She was president of her high school class two years running— “very Tracy Flick,” she says—and was always looking for ways to bypass the Catholic school’s rigid rules. On one occasion, she convinced her entire class to come to school wearing mustaches—technically not a handbook violation, though the nuns were not amused. By the end of the day, Plaza was the only student still in her mustache.

Megalopolis, the self-funded passion project that Coppola began developing in the 1980s about an architect trying to create a utopia out of postapocalyptic New York City, will be Plaza’s first big-big-budget film. She auditioned over Zoom from Sicily while shooting The White Lotus, and while she cannot reveal much about her role, she believes that Coppola was looking for someone who could play funny and sexy at the same time.

“It’s like working with an excited child,” Plaza says of the legendary director. “He’s not jaded in any way. He loves actors, and you’d think that all directors would, but it’s not true. A lot of directors don’t care about the acting process; actors are like pieces of furniture to them. But Francis is really interested in collaboration. I’m not a very technical actor. I’m not really a line memorizer, and every take I like to do completely different. Francis has the number one quality that I think makes a successful director: He lets the movie evolve. He has no preciousness about what he has written. He’s the first person to throw it out the window and say, ‘You know what? Do what you did just there again.’ That’s why I like him.”

Even before Megalopolis wraps, Plaza will begin shooting Agatha: Coven of Chaos, a spinoff of the television series WandaVision and her point of entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although Continued on p.129

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MICHAEL KORS COLLECTION top, $990, skirt $1,490, and shoes, $175. CARTIER ring, $4,950.

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Hair by MARK TOWNSEND at A-Frame Agency using Sol de Janeiro. Makeup by KATHY JEUNG at Forward Artists using Charlotte Tilbury. Nails by JOLENE BRODEUR at The Wall Group.

The American Feature - Ralph Lauren

dreamer began his $7.6 billion empire on Rodeo Drive. Fifty-plus years later, his blockbuster show at The Huntington Library was a homecoming of sorts for the unstoppable designer who’s done it all

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RALPH LAUREN at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino in October, on the occasion of his brand’s Spring/Summer 2023 runway show.

Opposite: The designer and businessman in the south of France in 197 7. This photograph, taken by Buffy Birrittella, was one reference point for the L.A . show.

COURTESY RALPH LAUREN. OPPOSITE: BUFFY BIRRITTELLA

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T

he Rhinelander Mansion on New York’s Madison Avenue is as iconic a retail locale as any in the United States.

When Ralph Lauren installed his brand flagship into the French Renaissance Revival structure in 1986, he changed the face of American shopping with shock-and-awe bravado. From then on, the storied multibrand luxury retailers would have some serious competition: the vertical brand retailer.

Yet before there was Rhinelander, there was Rodeo Drive. Despite his scrappy-guyfrom-the-Bronx-makes-gold narrative—a cornerstone of American fashion lore— Lauren opened his first freestanding store not in his beloved hometown but on the hallowed Beverly Hills shopping street, in partnership with Jerry Magnin, a scion of the famed I. Magnin retail family. That happened in 1971, when Rhinelander was just a dusty relic of Gilded Age residential excess.

Lauren notes that milestone early in our conversation. We’re sitting in his spacious New York office, which is intensely appointed with a carefully curated menagerie of meaningful brand-related artifacts—books and photos galore; race car and airplane models; Polo teddy bears. He references the Rodeo Drive store to make a point, since today’s primary topic is his recent fashion show, which he presented in October 2022 in Los Angeles. Yes, he’s native New York to the core, but he’s no stranger to California; he offers that the Rodeo store’s opening “was the beginning of a lot of firsts.”

Still, it was a long time between that West Coast first and the fashion show, held at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens (and staged coincidentally on the eve of Lauren’s 83rd birthday).

It proved worth the wait, attracting a highoctane celebrity audience, some of whom made it a couples or family affair: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck; Jessica Chastain and her husband, Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo; Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher; Lily Collins and Charlie McDowell; Robin Wright and her daughter, Dylan Penn; Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin with daughters Sistine and Sophia. Also there: John Legend, Chris Pine and Diane Keaton, the latter of whom

goes way back with Lauren—to Annie Hall.

(When I reference the impact of the iconic fashion look Lauren created for the 1977 film, I get a politely firm rebuke. “I did some of the clothes, but it was Diane’s own style,” he says.)

Keaton and the others settled in for a trek through the wonderful world of Ralph.

Determined to show the full breadth of his signature aesthetic, he enlisted more than 100 models from multiple generations who wore clothes from across the Ralph Lauren product range—Polo Ralph Lauren, Collection, Purple Label, Double RL, Children’s—covering all his revered classics, from Western to preppy and polished sportswear to soigné evening gowns. It was his most in-depth runway display since his remarkable 50th anniversary show in Central Park in September 2018. While many of global fashion’s mega brands (most notably Chanel and those within the LVMH and Kering stables) embrace the itinerant show concept as core to their operations, particularly for resort, Lauren has mostly shown in New York, with some digressions to Milan for his menswear. (For the Fall 2017 show, he famously transformed the garage of his private home in Bedford, New York, into a runway, his models walking past spectacular, shiny beauties of the Bugatti, McLaren and Ferrari sort.) Once he decided to venture to Los Angeles, he knew expectations would be sky-high.

“I didn’t want to come to California and not say something exciting and special,” Lauren says. “So I really worked on this.

Living in California, what does that feel like?

What could it feel like? And it came out of me.

I had my whole team together. I said, ‘We’re going to do something really special.’ It was exciting for everybody. It was alive and young and spirited. That’s [the mood] I wanted to leave L.A. with.”

To that end, Lauren worked his signature tropes with sass and sparkle, injecting newness in tweaked silhouettes and a punched-up color palette. It all looked smart and fresh while utterly signature. Read: refined and optimistic.

By now, it’s a truism to note that Lauren is a fashion lifestyle maestro. As depicted through years of elegant, laser-focused brand imagery, his is a world populated by beautiful people behaving beautifully while always impeccably dressed. They love the rugged outdoors as much as spectacular interiors, decorated to elegant perfection with furniture and accessories from the Ralph

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BEACH: LES GOLDBERG. FAMILY: PAMELA HANSON. POLO SHIRT: PAUL CHRISTENSEN.

“Living in California, what does that feel-like?

AliveLauren Feature Ralph and young and spirited”

Clockwise: Lauren, his wife, Ricky, and their children in the Hamptons in 197 7. The mogul surrounded by his family, including David Lauren, Max Walker Lauren, Dylan Lauren, Ricky Lauren, Lauren Bush Lauren, Kingsley Rainbow Arrouet, Paul Arrouet, Cooper Blue Arrouet, Andrew Lauren and James Lauren.

The classic POLO RALPH LAUREN shirt.

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ZOFIA BORUCKA RENO in RALPH LAUREN COLLECTION, photographed

by Perry Ogden in 1994.

Opposite: Former President BARACK OBAMA, QUEEN ELIZABETH II and former first lady MICHELLE OBAMA (wearing a Ralph Lauren gown) in London in 2011.

GWYNETH PALTROW in Ralph Lauren Collection at the 1999 Academy Awards.

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Lauren realm. It’s a world sans ugliness or angst—aspirational, not in the traditional fashion sense (a young customer buying in at a brand’s entry-level price point), but in the larger, human sense. Even in ugly times such as now, we aspire to the core civility that radiates through the Ralph Lauren oeuvre.

In real life, Lauren seems to live in that kind of a world. He has been married for 58 years to Ricky, who, he says, “has always been an inspiration. She’s smart, she’s not overly conscious of fashion.” Which suits him fine, since he has always positioned himself as anti-fashion, disinclined to engage in trend-mongering. His oft-stated mantra is “I do what I do.”

The couple has three children. Their daughter, Dylan, owns the well-known confectioner chain Dylan’s Candy Bar. Their son Andrew, primarily a film producer, takes on various creative projects; he did the music for the L.A. show. Only their son David was interested in joining the business, and now oversees all marketing and advertising. “He’s got a big job,” Lauren says. One other family member is involved in the business: Lauren’s brother Jerry Lauren has consulted on menswear practically since day one.

The family spends a good deal of time together. Though Lauren attends major events, he’s never been a regular on the social circuit, including industry outings, such as the CFDA Fashion Awards and the Met Gala, often preferring to have David and other staffers represent the company. “It’s just not my style,” he notes, citing two reasons: “I enjoy my own privacy and enjoy my own family.” And “I don’t have that much time.

You’ve got to do work.”

And work he does. Lauren remains an incredibly hands-on steward of the $7.6 billion empire he built. He holds the titles of executive chairman and chief creative officer, having relinquished the CEO title in 2015 when he brought in Stefan Larsson for that role. The hire proved to be the proverbial “wrong fit,” and Larsson exited the role in 2017. (He is now CEO of PVH Corp.) Patrice Louvet took on the role swiftly thereafter. Lauren was a bit concerned that Louvet came from a very different, larger corporate culture, P&G Beauty. Still, “I liked him,” Lauren explains.

“I said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’ He is a very warm, loving guy and works with people in the company in a great way. I don’t worry about the company because I have him.”

OBAMAS: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. PALTROW: JEFFREY MAYER / WIRE IMAGE. OPPOSTIE: PERRY OGDEN.

“My wife has always been an inspiration.

She’s smart, not overly Feature - Ralph conscious of Lauren fashion” RALPH LAUREN If “warm” and “loving” strike as unusual descriptors for a founder and majority shareholder of a multibillion-dollar public company to note of his CEO, it’s because kindness within the workplace has always mattered to Lauren. “It’s important to be as sharp and as strong as you can be,” he maintains. “You build a team of people that work with you. So equal to the concept of shareholders is the people that work for me.”

Lauren is renowned for the longevity and loyalty of much of his staff, many of whom have stayed with him for decades, working side by side with the younger employees who rotate in, keeping the mood and vision vibrant.

That approach has worked over the long haul. Growing up in the Bronx, Lauren was fascinated by the Hollywood icons of the time

(Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra were at the top of his list), and he became a keen observer of their styles. He also took from the movies the notion of storytelling, of building a world and opening it up to others.

Early on, he identified a dearth of chic in the American menswear arena and saw opportunity via one small aspect: neckties. He brought swagger to the staple, cutting it extra wide, and went to the menswear company Beau Brummell, which offered him showroom space—a single drawer—from which to sell.

He did so with audacious confidence.

When Bloomingdale’s offered to buy with a double caveat—to cut the ties narrower and remove the Ralph Lauren label—he passed.

The store ultimately relented and became a major supporter. Lauren’s temerity paid off quickly. He soon added a full men’s range, followed by women’s in 1971.

Today, Lauren describes his brand-extension process as a series of inevitabilities—sort of a fashion mogul’s version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. “I started making ties and I went to shirts, I went to suits, I went to womenswear, I went to children’s. I went to home. As soon as you do a tie, it’s nice, but I figured, it’s not my whole statement. I wanted to express myself and what I believe in, and what my world is.”

Through the years, as that world has grown, the defining vision has remained consistent yet agile. Right now, the company is focused on brand elevation within the luxury sphere.

Given that goal, one might think that Lauren and the brand would be all in on fashion’s celebrity obsession. They aren’t. However, Lauren certainly isn’t immune to star power

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“For For the wedding, [Jennifer Lopez] said, ‘I want Ralph Lauren’”

Lauren takes a bow at the Spring/ Summer 2023 show.

Left: Ready-to-wear looks from the runway.

RALPH LAUREN and has had his share of big red-carpet moments.

Among the most memorable, spanning decades: Alicia Keys at the 2022 Met Gala; Lupita Nyong’o, 2014 Golden Globes; Gwyneth Paltrow, 1999 Oscars. Lauren is delighted with such affiliations and certainly understands their marketing resonance. But unlike the major European luxury brands, he hasn’t made it a pillar of his strategy, and even sounds a bit ambivalent about the whole thing. “I don’t look for red-carpet moments,” he says. “I love doing a show where I create the whole story and there’s a dream.”

Nevertheless, Lauren has, almost out of nowhere, become a go-to guy for celebrity nuptials. Somehow, he managed to avoid the bridal aisle, sartorially speaking, for just over 40 years until, in 2011, he dressed two very important brides: Dylan, for her marriage to Paul Arrouet; and David’s now-wife, Lauren Bush Lauren. Give or take a decade, and others have come calling. He dressed Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas for their Western wedding, with her look one of regal glam. When Collins married McDowell, he wore a velvet tux, and she a sweeping, ethereal hooded lace cape and sensual gown that seemed straight out of a romantic fable. And for presidential granddaughter Naomi Biden, who had worn Ralph Lauren to the 2020 inauguration, Lauren delivered a classic, Grace Kelly-esque vibe, in a collaboration that came about casually. One night, she was dining at his hot-spot New York restaurant, The Polo Bar. “I said hello to her, and she said, ‘I love your things,’” he recalls. “‘I’m getting married. I would love if you would consider doing a wedding dress. It’s going to be the first major wedding in the White House [in years].’” Then there was the event that might just be the bridal “get” of the decade—the

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Bennifer nuptials. Lauren dressed both Affleck and Lopez, including three gowns for Lopez, as well as the attendants (the couple’s kids).

Photos remain scarce, but enough have been released to show that each dress portrayed a different aspect of Lopez’s glorious divagoddess persona.

A prior relationship proved significant here, as well. “We made something for one

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THE HUNTINGTON: COURTESY RALPH LAUREN

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of Jennifer’s shows, a long trench dress that dragged onto the floor,” Lauren recalls. “She loved it and she sort of put a toe into Ralph Lauren. She knows what she wants to look like, and [for the wedding], she said, ‘I want Ralph Lauren.’”

J.Lo is but one of the millions around the world who want Ralph Lauren. The brand is unique in the luxury arena for its range,

from high evening to those iconic Polo shirts.

It’s remarkable, too, for the long-running, hands-on involvement of its founder. In luxury fashion, only Giorgio Armani compares, and his house is eight years younger than Lauren’s. (Similar but different: Miuccia Prada remains highly engaged at the family company she took over in 1978.)

One may wonder if Lauren considers

stepping back, now well into his brand’s sixth decade. While he may “ultimately, somewhere,” for now, he maintains, “I don’t consider retiring.” He will indulge in a bit of positive self-assessment. “I’m proud of the work,” Lauren offers. “I feel like I created a world that was new and special, with integrity. I’m proud about how I live with the people I work with. I’m a lucky guy.” •

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A lifeFeature on the land - Fashion necessitates a working wardrobe of pragmatic, utilitarian garments ... which just happens to be the big trend for Spring/Summer

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RALPH LAUREN coat, $3,290, shirt, $690, shorts, $890, and loafers, $995.

FALKE socks, $22.

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AUBRIA ABELL (left): LORO PIANA shirt , $1,925, and pants, $1,625. Vintage kerchief from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request .

ALYSSA MILLER (right): LORO PIANA coat , $2,800, and hat , $1, 250. Opposite: MA X MARA bra top, $315, skirt , $1,165, and sandals, $895.

Vintage scarf from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request .

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FENDI sweater, $2,850, and skirt , $1,450. ROGER VIVIER boots, $2,695. Vintage hat from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request .

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BOT TEGA VENETA shirt , pants, and earrings, prices upon request . Opposite: ALYSSA: HERMÈS coat , $14,400. ROGER VIVIER boots, $2,695. AUBRIA: HERMÈS jacket , $6,950, pants, $8,400, and sandals, $3,350.

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AMIRI shirt , $890. MARINE SERRE dress, $1,050. Opposite: SACAI dress, $995. Vintage apron from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request .

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ALYSSA: DOLCE & GABBANA tank , $125, corset, $1,195, pants, $1,045, and sunglasses, $410. Vintage belt from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request.

AUBRIA: DOLCE & GABBANA bra, $495, dress (worn as a skirt), $2,745, hoodie (worn around the waist), $1,125, and boots, $2,245. ZANA BAYNE harness, $340. Vintage kerchief from PALACE COSTUME, price upon request.

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LOEWE dress, $4,450. LOUIS VUIT TON boots, $1,590.

Gardening belt and gloves from PALACE COSTUME, prices upon request . FALKE socks, $2 2.

Opposite: DIOR jacket , $4,700, blouse, price upon request , and jeans, $1,650.

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GIVENCHY jacket , $1,390, skirt , $820, and bag, $2, 250. MARINE SERRE boots, $895. Opposite: ALYSSA: FERRAGAMO jacket , $4, 200, and skirt , $3,400.

AUBRIA: FERRAGAMO top (worn as a dress), $3,900. LOUIS VUIT TON Ruby ankle boots, $1,590. FALKE socks, $2 2.

Models ALYSSA MILLER at Vision Los Angeles; AUBRIA ABELL at Freedom Models Los Angeles. Hair by ANDRE GUNN at Art Department using T3micro. Makeup by ELAYNA BACHMAN at Art Department using Westman Atelier.

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Part-time Angeleno Hedi Slimane rocked The Wiltern theater at his recent show, updating the iconic early-aughts styles he helped put on the map and inviting his heroes to perform Words by MAX BERLINGER 110

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Models including KAIA GERBER walk the runway at CELINE’s Fall/Winter 2023 show at THE WILTERN theater.

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Clockwise from top left: Celine Fall/ Winter 2023. The lobby of The Wiltern.

CINDY CRAWFORD and AUSTIN BUTLER .

EMMA ROBERTS and DOJA CAT. KELEIGH SPERRY, MILES TELLER and KID CUDI. IGGY POP. KAIA GERBER .

THE KILLS.

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CAT WA LKS : F R A Z E R H A R R I S O N / G E T T Y I M AG E S . C E LE B R I T I E S A N D A M B I E N C E : M AT T W I N K E LM E Y E R / G E T T Y I M AG E S .

F

rom Dior Men’s takeover of Venice Beach to Ralph Lauren’s starry show at The Huntington Library near Pasadena to Gucci’s extravaganza on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s official: The fashion world is obsessed with Los Angeles.

And in December, the luxury brand that epitomizes Parisian chic meets Los Angeles cool closed out the year with one more, at The Wiltern on Wilshire Boulevard. Celine’s show, however, was no mere catwalk strut but a full-on concert featuring a clutch of rock royalty from the early aughts and before: Iggy Pop, The Strokes and Interpol, along with a DJ set from The Kills. Suddenly that girl on the posters lining Sunset Boulevard during the buildup to the show made total sense— she was rocking out, dancing her heart out.

This should come as no surprise. Hedi Slimane, Celine’s creative director, has always taken inspiration from guitar bands and the scenes that reverberate around them. Not only that, but he’s an on-again, off-again Angeleno himself. Both those things—L.A. and its music scene—have long been touchstones of his design work.

Those inspirations were all over the fashion show this winter, especially in the skinny leather pants, the mid-shin boots, the sparkling, slim, rock-and-roll tailoring, and

Slimane, it should be noted, has a longer and deeper connection to Los Angeles than most. He frequented the city in the late 1990s and, starting in 2008, became a part-time resident before later decamping. But more than just a place of residence, what’s notable is the way that L.A.—or at least a certain idea of it—has influenced Slimane’s visual language: the rockstar leathers, the skinny jeans, the louche tailoring and the sexy red-carpet gowns. And wherever Slimane sets his gaze, others will, no doubt, follow suit.

After the runway show, there was a brief intermission when hamburgers, tacos, popcorn and french fries made the rounds and free drinks flowed. Carnival-style carts served up ice cream and cotton candy. The crowd, already buoyant from the fabulous show, started to loosen up. Laughter and chatter filled the lobby until all were invited back into the theater for part two.

Rock legend Iggy Pop kicked things off with his signature stage prancing and flailing, rasping his songs and egging on the crowd in between. The Strokes played a set of some of their best-known songs, a bit of nostalgia that got the audience so riled up they charged the stage, erasing the line between performers and spectators. Interpol then took the stage, playing a short set to the cheering crowd.

If Slimane was out to re-create the glittering decadence of the indie era before social media made it a thing of the past, then he succeeded and then some. •

If Slimane was out to re-create Feature - Celine the glittering decadence of the era before social media, he succeeded the sexy cutout dresses that closed the show.

The whole collection had a Paris-via-L.A. feel to it, a pitch-perfect mix of grit and glamour, shown to a front row so starry you needed sunglasses to look at it—Kim Gordon, Paris Hilton, Priscilla Presley, Austin Butler, Brie Larson, Dustin Hoffman, Cindy Crawford, Kid Cudi, Miles Teller and on and on and on.

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Laurie Lynn Stark is one half of Chrome Hearts, the quintessential California rock-and-roll fashion brand. Here, she gives a tour of her Malibu home and tells C what’s in store for the next generation taking the stage

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Photography by BRAD TORCHIA Words by ALESSANDRA CODINHA

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LAURIE LYNN STARK of CHROME HEARTS stands beside her beachfront 1971 Malibu Colony home.

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31-year-old daughter (and Chrome Hearts vice president), Jesse Jo, and 19-year-old twins, Kristian and Frankie Belle, show up with others in tow. One has a small dog. One has a soda. One has a fast-food bag.

All are friendly and seem very at home— and all are wearing a variety of Chrome Hearts items: a tank top, a bracelet, a pair of those oft-imitated gothic cross-embroidered jeans. “I don’t actually know who that is,” Laurie Lynn says, sotto voce, as a nice young man in some combination of the above helps himself to a fish taco in the kitchen, near the dining table set with the plates she personally designed with artisans in Positano, Italy, and her Baccarat x Chrome Hearts crystal.

“That’s just how it goes here.” Because, as it turns out, not only is Laurie Lynn an integral part of what Vogue has called one of “fashion’s most rebellious success stories,” she’s also everyone’s favorite mom. “They’re my best friends,” she says of her three kids.

A badass business titan and her teenagers still want her at their parties? She’s doing something right.

Chrome Hearts is not a typical fashion success story. Founded in the late 1980s by Laurie Lynn’s husband, Richard Stark, it’s a rock ’n’ roll cult favorite turned industry powerhouse. Famed for its premium-priced leather motorcycle jackets, biker gangstyle branded hoodies and dagger motif jewelry, the brand (privately owned by the Stark family) is beloved by everyone from Rihanna to Rick Owens, The Weeknd and Billie Eilish. That means retail clout: 34 stores across the world (plus one redesign on Paris’ Quai Voltaire coming in the next two years by starchitect Jean Nouvel). Laurie Lynn and Richard trade off on who builds and who designs the interiors of which store, a contrast she says is obvious when you know where to look. “It’s a ‘his is black, mine’s white’ kind of thing,” she says, though some things, such as the lack of any exterior signage and “fuck you” carved into the floorboards, remain consistent throughout.

Stockists include Maxfield in Los Angeles, Bergdorf Goodman in New York and Dover Street Market Ginza in Japan. Last year, the brand picked up the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award at the CFDA Fashion Awards, the gold standard of industry recognition. Cher, an early customer and close friend of the family, presented it to the Starks on stage; Ralph Lauren wrote Laurie

Feature - Stark House

Laurie Lynn and her three children (from left) JESSE JO, KRISTIAN and FRANKIE BELLE.

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n a wintry Malibu morning, Laurie Lynn Stark, resplendent in an oversized navy cricket sweater she co-designed with Drake, perches on the back of her large off-white sectional couch and surveys the foot traffic at her beachfront home. Attractive young people, including her

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“I knew by age 10, fashion was my ticket out” L A U R I E LY N N S T A R K

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Clockwise: The Stark home offers prime views of Malibu sunsets. A motorcycle parked out front beckons for a ride up the coast. The Perfect Religion photograph by Laurie Lynn hangs above a BROYHILL BRASILIA credenza. Chrome Hearts towels hang at the ready for a beach day.

Feature - Stark House

Lynn a congratulatory note. “Getting a note from him personally was so heartfelt to me,” she says. “I literally just stared at it.”

Bella Hadid, Rei Kawakubo and the late Virgil Abloh have all collaborated with Chrome Hearts, a label worn by a wide range of stars such as Lenny Kravitz, Orville Peck, Future, Lou Reed and Martha Stewart, among many others. “I want to be Martha Stewart,” says Laurie Lynn, a professed

homebody who dries and bundles her own sage. “I’m a huge fan. I call her my alter ego.

My nickname is ‘Martha’ in my kitchen.” But at the CFDAs, decked out from head to gold peep-toe in what Highsnobiety would later call an “immaculate CH drip,” it was Stewart who took cues from Laurie Lynn.

There are Stark family homes all over the world, from St. Barts to Aspen, Colo., and L.A. to Malibu, but this one, a sleekly

“This house was a monumental goal. I manifested it” L A U R I E LY N N S T A R K

modest surf shack from the street, is perhaps a singular reflection of Laurie Lynn’s unique blend of design prowess and relaxed, confident charm. The 1971built five-bedroom is comfortable and understated—a throwback to when Malibu was truly a weekend escape for celebrities and a primary residence for hippies—with a private deck and panoramic views of the coastline. Yes, that’s a monumental one-off Chrome Hearts table in the living room, and a huge John Baldessari piece on the wall alongside her own large-format black-andwhite photography and works by artists including Peter Beard, Ellen von Unwerth, Bert Stern and Marina Abramović. Yet it’s also a beach house: a casual place to curl up with the kids and watch locals hunt for shells in the sand along Malibu Colony beach, or to host an impromptu party for 30 or so friends from the neighborhood. Everything about the place is considered, down to the vibes: Laurie Lynn is a believer in feng shui. She’s placed crystals strategically throughout the house—and outside, buried in the ground— to clear and protect visitors’ energy. Every morning that Laurie Lynn and her daughters are together, they dance and do morning gratitude practice in the crystal-bedecked meditation spaces she’s created in each of their houses for that very purpose. (She has also been known to host full-moon sound baths for friends.)

Laurie Lynn grew up here, on Point Dume, surfing these breaks, seeing this house from the sands. “It was sort of a goal, a monumental goal,” she says. “It’s like driving down that street and you’re like, ‘I’m gonna live here one day.’ I was 14 or 15.” The Starks couldn’t really afford it then, she says, but she and Richard made it work, renting it out to pay off the mortgage and renovation costs. “I manifested it,” she says. “It was meant to be.”

There was no indication, in the beginning, that Chrome Hearts would become the kind of company whose wares were so coveted that the eco-friendly coffee cups from its in-store cafés would turn up on resale sites like Grailed.

Laurie Lynn was already a designer when she met Richard. She’d been a designer since she was a preteen, really, wearing low hip-huggers she had dyed pink to wear to school, before Dittos came along and made that a thing. She’d stud jeans and sell 10 pairs to buy the new ones she wanted. “I knew by 10, fashion was my ticket out,” she says.

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A JOHN BALDESSARI print from the 1970s holds pride of place above the piano. Opposite: MATT DIGIACOMO’s Focal Point painting anchors a cozy vignette, replete with a Chrome Hearts blanket and cone fireplace.

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“They have to have a purpose higher than mine.

A conscious purpose”

From top: Laurie Lynn dreamed of owning the home since she was a teen.

A blanket fit for the founding family.

The kids take a joyride through the neighborhood. Opposite: Laurie Lynn lounges on her waterfront deck .

Prop styling by SCOTT HORNE.

L A U R I E LY N N S T A R K

Feature - Stark House

When Laurie Lynn met Richard, she already had a business, and he became her leather manufacturer. “I was designing bikinis, super successful, written [about] in the papers,” she says. “The top of my field [at a] very young age.” She’d send accounts his way so he could afford to keep making the biker jackets he was passionate about on the side. “And I said, ‘What’s going to distinguish your biker jackets from everyone else’s?’ He goes, ‘I don’t know.’ And I’m like, ‘Put nickels on ’em, Indian head nickels.’ And then a rocker guy came along and said, ‘I want an Indian head nickel jacket.’ And he got one client, and was like, ‘I think I’m going to quit and do a business.’ I’m like, ‘Good luck with that! Bye! I’m going to Australia!’”

Laurie Lynn was traveling the world, styling and designing for about five different clients (including, at one point, Chippendales), producing TV commercials. “I was just having a blast doing everything and living in Europe,” she says. Richard stopped his other business to focus on Chrome Hearts, and then he asked her to stay with him and the brand. “I’m like, ‘Oh, no, no, no. We’re not working together. I like you, but we’re not working together.’ And we ended up working together. He needed clients.

I needed a manufacturer. Continued on p.129

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CASTELLO SONNINO in Montespertoli, Tuscany, one of seven “GUCCI Places” anointed by the brand for their unique beauty.

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The interiors of the historic property have been restored by the baron and baroness since inheriting it from an uncle in the late-1980s.

Below, left: An outdoor dining terrace overlooking the 40-hectare estate of vineyards and olive groves. Below, right: PORTRAIT MILANO’s pool, which sits within The Longevity Suite spa, specializes in rejuvenation treatments.

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CASTELLO SONNINO Located on rolling hills in the Tuscan town of Montespertoli, this 16th-century villa, replete with a 13th-century watchtower and working estate, is surrounded by postcard-perfect vineyards and cypress trees. Since 1987, the property has served as the residence of Baroness Caterina de Renzis Sonnino and the late Baron Alessandro, who inherited it in a dilapidated state from an uncle in the late 1980s, and it has since been restored it to its stately former grandeur. In 2012, Caterina set up the Castello Sonnino International Education Centre, inviting

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academics and students to learn and assist with tending and harvesting the vineyards and olive groves, which produce chianti and olive oil. Then, in 2018, the fashion world took note of their efforts, and the castle became one of seven “Gucci Places,” locations selected for their unique beauty and power to inspire, where the brand’s VIP clients can enjoy private visits. (And the baroness became a Gucci model too.)

Castello Sonnino’s farmhouse rental apartment with a large kitchen, fireplace and private garden is traditionally decorated in the Tuscan style, serving as the perfect base from which to explore the estate and experience the tastings, cooking classes and horseback riding it offers. If it’s good enough for Gucci… castellosonnino.it.

Leonardo Ferragamo and Valeriano Antonioli, who run the brand’s hospitality arm, known as Lungarno Collection, were won over by the building’s history and the fact that it was once the workshop of famed architect Mario Bellini. Built around a 16thcentury colonnade and an open piazza, the three-story hotel has 73 rooms, 20 of which are suites. Inside, it’s all very midcentury— heavy on walnut and rattan, decorated in vibrant greens and reds synonymous with the city’s apartment interiors. Retail is a big draw for the property, boasting a branch of the Antonia concept store (including a dedicated sneaker space) and Ferragamo’s daughter Maria Sole’s jewelry brand So-le Studio. The hotel’s restaurant is the international chain Beefbar’s first home in Italy, and the cocktail bar is

PORTRAIT MILANO After opening hotels in Florence and Rome, the Ferragamo family is stepping into Milan’s Golden Triangle shopping district, having transformed a 500-yearold, 30,000-square-foot structure that had variously served as Europe’s oldest seminary, a library, a prison and a hospital.

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distinctly 1950s in feel. Specializing in anti-aging treatments including detox and cryotherapy, the in-house spa, known as The Longevity Suite, is crowned by a vaulted-ceiling pool. Retail plus therapy. lungarnocollection.com/portrait-milano-hotel.

AMAN NEW YORK Overlooking Bergdorf Goodman in midtown Manhattan, a stiletto’s throw from Central Park and the flagship stores of Madison Avenue, the sleek Aman New York is housed in the landmark, century-old Beaux-Arts Crown Building. You enter via a 14th-floor double-height atrium in the hotel, where open fire and water features, wooden screens and ikebana-style flower arrangements transport you away from the city and into the middle of Japan. There are two dining rooms: Arva, offering haute Italian fare, and Nama, a Japanese restaurant serving charcoal grilled fish, Wagyu dishes plus toro, king crab and whatever the chef dreams up for the omakase counter.

You really could while away a whole weekend without leaving, luxuriating in the 25,000-square-foot spa and fitness center across three floors, enjoying massages, a steam room or sauna between dips in the 65-foot-long pool, before retiring to one of the 83 suites and throwing on a Frette robe.

Inside, the walls feature ink-painted murals, panels dividing the serene spaces and egg-shaped bathtubs begging to be filled— decadently designed yet exquisitely refined. aman.com/hotels/aman-new-york. •

From top: The 65-footlong pool of AMAN NEW YORK. One of the hotel’s 83 Japaneseinspired suites. The bar of the Ferragamo family-run Portrait Milano.

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The structure had served as a seminary, a library, a prison and a hospital

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I S C O V E Clockwise: CHRISTINA HINDS. The DRUMBOXING studio in Malibu.

Live percussion accompanies the active meditation.

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Beauty RHYTHM NATION Elite athletes Gabrielle Reece, Laird Hamilton and world champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore are among the early adopters of Drumboxing, a unique mind-and-body workout buzzing around Malibu’s wellness scene. Now that a new 1,800-square-foot studio has

RILE full product bundle, $49/set.

opened at Malibu Country Mart, anyone can experience the 45-minute classes that combine boxing and drumming.

“Drumboxing is a flow-state experience utilizing the rhythm of drumming and the movement of boxing to stimulate the brain and body,” explains co-founder

Christina Hinds.

Percussionist John Wakefield originally developed Drumboxing to help train professional boxers in mental fitness, agility and adaptability. Together, Hinds and Wakefield believe music and rhythm are an extremely effective way to improve focus and concentration and are logical tools in the evolution of athletic training. Classes fly by as you play progressive rhythm patterns on the drums while bouncing around, working up a sweat. The studio, surrounded by a collection of notable art curated by Blaise Patrick, offers three levels of instruction: Restorative (low impact with soothing shamanic harmonies), Creative (medium cardio rounds to up-tempo patterns) and Performance (high cardio rounds to iconic music). $40/class. 23410 Civic Center Way, Ste. E9, Malibu; drumboxing.com.

ALL RILED UP “Going to war with your face is so ’80s—inexplicably, young teens are still being told to get scrubbing,” says C beauty director Kelly Atterton, who founded Rile, a genderless personal care brand, as an antidote to the cartoonish and dated choices regularly marketed to teens and in-betweens. “There’s a jump from baby to acne products, when most young teens just need to get into the habit of gently cleaning their face and body,” explains Atterton, who employs a team of young adults, because she believes that message is best delivered by other teens and not parents. Launching in March, the range includes five gentle products formulated for adolescents: cleanser, hydrator, deodorant, lip balm and foaming micellar water. rile.co. A.J.B.

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HERBITUAL: DIEGO UCHITEL. RATIONALE: ANGIE SILVY PHOTOGRAPHY.

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STATE OF CALM “Most of my life I’ve suffered from chronic eczema,” shares branding expert Pete White, who has spent decades bringing brands like Shani Darden to life. Now White is debuting a product he’s been perfecting for over 25 years. “The first meaningful relief I experienced was from traditional herbal remedies, which inspired my journey to create Herbitual,” he says. White experimented with herbal combinations, traveled the world consulting practitioners, and even tried to formulate a homemade cream. Eventually, he was able to pinpoint an optimal balance between centuries-old herbal traditions and the latest in skin science. He says, “Our first

product, Herbitual Atopic Skin Defense, is an intensely moisturizing skin protectant cream fortified with our proprietary blend of ancient botanicals, combined with a highly moisturizing, FDA-approved skin protectant, ensuring the potency of the herbs while they bolster the skin barrier.” It’s great way to calm sensitive skin and achieve a state of skin zen. myherbitual.com.

RATIONALE’s L.A. flagship.

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RATIONALE DECISION

Beauty

OVERNIGHT SENSATION Resolved to launch product only when they have something innovative to offer, Marin County-based skincare specialists Kristina Holey and Marie Veronique are not afraid to spend years in research and development. The pair challenged themselves to “rethink how to deliver retinol effectively and safely so that more people could benefit from its superpowers without experiencing its drawbacks,” says Holey. The result? Multi-Retinol Night

“Eighty percent of facial aging is caused by the sun, and Angelenos, like many Australians, experience some of the highest levels of sun damage in the world,” says Richard Parker, founder of the Melbournebased skincare brand Rationale. Known as a world leader in researching and developing groundbreaking formulations that prevent and repair skin photodamage, the 30-year-old brand recently opened its first U.S. flagship clinic on Melrose Place. In addition to carrying Rationale’s renowned Essential Six skincare collection, the clinic offers in-depth skin consultations and an array of facial treatments, including its not-to-be-missed four-handed Melrose Signature Facial. 8441 Melrose Place, L.A., 323-210-3543; us.rationale.com.

KRISTINA HOLEY + MARIE VERONIQUE Multi-Retinol Night Emulsion, $135.

Emulsion, a research-backed, highly effective, microbiomefriendly alternative to prescription retinoids. Holey and Veronique’s unique take—a synergistic approach to skin health combining three retinoid actives: encapsulated retinol, retinyl sunflowerseedate and bakuchiol—offers intense corrective action in a rich, creamy texture. marieveronique.com.

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Continued from p.84

RED HOT she is focused for the moment on acting— “got to strike while the iron is hot, you know?”—Plaza looks forward to producing and, eventually, directing. She is also pitching the third in a series of children’s books she co-authored about the long-lost tales of the “Christmas Witch.” She has read live from the books, voicing all the characters, on KWMR, the Marin County community radio station that she adores.

Plaza recently surprised herself and bought a house in West Marin. “It’s just a wild, dreamlike place that is really my happy place,” she says. “I honestly feel like there’s no more beautiful place on earth. And the oysters are the best in the world.” Despite her new fame, the actress is perhaps better suited to the mist and fuzzy sweaters of Northern California. “I’m not an L.A. scene-y person,” she says. “I don’t go anywhere.” She and her husband are happiest at home watching old movies.

Plaza has an almost instinctive mistrust for what’s popular. (Although, she says, she gets there eventually—such as The Sopranos, which she finally watched while shooting The White Lotus so that she could come downstairs and pick cast member and writer Michael Imperioli’s brain between episodes.)

At home, she has an exhaustive collection of classics on DVD. “I like to watch old movies.

That’s my thing,” she says. “Friends come over, and everybody picks two or three DVDs from the closet, and we put them in a pile and start to argue over which one we want to watch. Oh, and lately I’ve been playing darts.

I watch old movies, and I play darts, with a cigar in my mouth.”

She’s probably kidding about the last part, but you can never tell. • Continued from p.121

HOME IS WHERE THE (CHROME) HEART IS He needed help. I was his muse.” And then she became his partner.

Now Chrome Hearts has done collaborations with brands ranging from Ladurée to Comme des Garçons, and they sell—and sell out—everything from tanks and tees to furniture and multithousand dollar “oddities,” such as staplers, tape dispensers

and meat cleavers. Because they feel like it.

What’s more rock ’n’ roll than that?

Take, for example, the heart surgeon who came and asked for a Chrome Hearts stethoscope: “It was my best work, because he’s using that stethoscope to save a life,” says Laurie Lynn. “That makes me feel better than dressing anyone that can get any designer in the world.”

In a conceit worthy of Marcel Duchamp, turning the ordinary extraordinary, their $6,000 ebony and gold toilet plunger reportedly sold out at Maxfield. Creating a meat cleaver or potato peeler isn’t just a vanity project, she explains. “It’s a nightmare to make a meat cleaver—you gotta have 10 artisans. I can barely make 50. I’m not making any money on the meat cleaver, but it’s more important to me. It’s more important to the family. And it’ll be around a lot longer. If I made millions of shirts and millions of sweatshirts, I’m going to make a lot more money than on this stupid meat cleaver,” she says.

The Starks see Chrome Hearts as a brand with a future that stretches into the next 150 years, instilled with the kind of integrity that begets longevity: Richard is fond of telling reporters that Chrome Hearts “isn’t in the fashion business, it’s in the Chrome Hearts business.” What Laurie Lynn would like to do, now that she’s dressed the cool kids of every generation since the brand’s inception, is to dress someone less likely to get invited to the Grammys, the Oscars or the CFDAs. “What I’d like to do is dress a humanitarian that has completely not expressed themself in a way of dressing,” she says. “Somebody that isn’t interested in fashion at all.

Someone that doesn’t have the perfect body, that doesn’t have the know-how. To empower them through clothing, through a look—that really excites me.”

She’s also keeping an eye on the future.

This next generation of Starks has access and opportunities she never could have dreamed of at their age: Jesse Jo has amassed nearly 500,000 Instagram followers and has a music career in addition to her role at the company; Kristian is the artistic director of the store in St. Barts; Frankie Belle has followed in her mother’s footsteps with her own bikini line, Dipped in Blue.

“I wanna say, look, your biggest accomplishment may not be the same as mine, but you could do so many things I wasn’t allowed to do because I didn’t have

the means. I didn’t have the connections.”

She tells her children: “Use your connections wisely. Use your platform wisely, and excel in another way that I did not. We made money and we made a brand. To keep it going, they have to have a purpose that is higher than mine. Right? A conscious purpose.”

Hers lately has been making Chrome Hearts more environmentally conscious and more progressive, whether that means commissioning groups of women weavers in Kenya to make the straw hats for the St. Barts store, or pulling carbon out of the air to make dyes, or ensuring its suppliers aren’t polluting somewhere out of sight. At this point, she refuses to place an order at a factory if it doesn’t take responsibility for its environmental impact, even if it slows down production. “I feel good about trying,” she says, as the sun begins to dip toward the horizon in Malibu. Truth is, she has a lot to feel good about. •

Runover

From top: LAURIE LYNN STARK at home in Malibu. A vignette features the CHROME HEARTS cross logo.

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De-Stressed” massage and “I Am Glowing” facial.

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Where do you take visiting friends?

To the calming Hsi Lai Temple, a Buddhist monastery in Hacienda Heights that my grandmother would take me to whenever she visited from Taipei.

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What’s in your cosmetics bag?

Jones Road Beauty Face Pencils in shades 5 (for lining my waterline) and 8 (for concealing), Westman Atelier Baby Cheeks blush stick in Poppet, Charlotte Tilbury Lip Cheat pencil, U Beauty The Plasma lip treatment, and Chantecaille Faux Cils Longest Lash mascara.

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T I N A Zen C R A IMoment G

The OG influencer and founder of U Beauty Where do you live?

North Dallas, but I travel between L.A. and NYC almost weekly.

Favorite health food fix?

Extra-virgin olive oil over super greens with grilled salmon.

Where do you feel most zen?

Bike riding through palm treelined streets in L.A., where I spent most of my childhood.

Do you follow a diet?

I do intermittent fasting and I try to stay away from processed foods, but I indulge in good pasta when in Italy.

Favorite hike?

A hike overlooking Santa Monica.

If I’m outdoors, I want an ocean view.

Favorite hotel?

The Maybourne Beverly Hills for the rooftop pool with endless views of the Hollywood Hills.

Favorite beach?

Laguna for a perfect beach day, chilling by the water with a good read.

Favorite workout?

FlexIt, an on-demand app that allows you to work out with the best private trainers no matter where you are.

Favorite relaxing getaway?

Shutters on the Beach for a relaxing quick fix. Globally, anywhere in Italy.

Favorite spa? Treatment?

The Maybourne has the most sumptuous spa. An “I Am

Interview by KELLY ATTERTON 130

Favorite skincare?

U Beauty Resurfacing Compound and The Super Hydrator for healthy, glowy skin. The Mantle Skin Conditioning Wash, a luxe oil balm that replaces double/ triple cleansing, and The Return eye concentrate.

Hair products?

The Olaplex system No.3 to No.9, Fable & Mane’s amazing-smelling hair oil, and OWay Silk’n Glow nurturing serum to keep my bleached hair smooth and silky.

Favorite home items?

Max Mara cashmere throws and the Bora Bora candle by Le Paradis.

Favorite flowers?

Night-blooming jasmine, lilies and gardenias for their intoxicating scents.

What book are you reading?

Remembering Shanghai. I’m obsessed with World War II books and pre-Cultural Revolution tales.

Favorite podcast?

You Can Heal Your Life by Hay House has really shifted my mindset. 2

CARLOS LOPEZ

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