Tabla de contenidos para issue 20 en The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR WELCOME TO OUR “Structure” issue, in which we explore the theme from several angles, from the shape that cuisine takes in the social media age, to the anatomy of the contemporary luxury flagship store, to the fabrication of some of the most impressive artworks in the world. For our cover story (page 62), the writer Lance Richardson travelled to upstate New York to visit the workshop of Urban Art Projects (UAP), a company created to realise artists’ wildest dreams. Amid the noise and heat and mess of the workshop floor, artisans construct works on an epic scale from molten bronze, ceramic slurry, paint and timber. Lance talks to the company founders, twin brothers Daniel and Matthew Tobin, who started out with a humble welding shop in…

THE WATCH INDUSTRY is responsible for more than giving the world a way to tell time: it has often been involved in advances that affect our lives in unexpected and surprising ways. It might be a bit of a stretch, but not much, to say that if it weren’t for the watch company Breguet, there might be no Air France. And commercial air travel might be a bit different, too. The route between the founding of Breguet watches in 1775 on the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris and air travel as we know it today has been circuitous. But it principally involves Louis Charles Breguet, a great-great-grandson of the founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet. Given the family’s background in the watch business, Louis Charles grew up exposed to mechanical and electrical systems.…

NOTHING HAS BEEN more influential in the wine world in recent years than the natural movement. Terms like “low-intervention”, “biodynamic”, “organic” and “orange” can now be found on labels and wine lists from Dan Murphy’s to three-hatted restaurants. A key component of many natural wines is the concept of spontaneous fermentation, often called wild fermentation. This method, which is also increasingly popular in spirits and beer production, allows hyper-local yeasts to ferment beverages naturally. Yeast is an incredibly diverse beastie, hugely different from place to place. But the vast majority of the world’s commercially produced alcohol is made with specific strains of lab-cultivated yeast. These commercial strains will overpower any naturally occurring yeast in the environment, creating a consistent and predictable product. At Melbourne’s newly opened Bar Spontana, owners Josh…

THOUGH LOUIS VUITTON’S name is now synonymous with luxury fashion, his beginnings were remarkably humble: the designer was raised by his father, a farmer, and his mother, a milliner, in the rural town of Anchay in eastern France. In 1835, a 14-year-old Vuitton embarked — by foot — on a 450-kilometre, two-year pilgrimage to Paris, where he spent nearly two decades mastering the art of box making under the tutelage of a prominent malletier. Following his appointment as the official trunk maker for Napoleon III’s wife, Eugénie de Montijo, Vuitton opened his first luggage shop in 1854 near Place Vendôme, where he sold leather travel goods and canvas steamer trunks. Vuitton’s business was strong enough that in 1888, his only son, Georges, trademarked his now-signature checkerboard Damier print. The company’s…

IN STORE PEOPLE PLACES THINGS WALKING INTO THE new Van Cleef & Arpels store on Murray Street in Perth is a bit like entering your grandmother’s house as a small child. It’s exciting and welcoming, but there’s an unspoken sense of reverence that lingers over the shiny things, telling you it’s probably best to be quiet and not touch. The French jeweller is the latest luxury brand to join the designer stores filling the Federation-era buildings in Perth’s CBD. City of Perth figures show that spending on luxury goods in the city rose 28 per cent between 2022 and 2023, during the post-lockdown boom, meaning there’s certainly an appetite for showpiece stores here. (The fit-out of the Chanel boutique on the corner of William and Murray streets in 2022…

SOMETIMES, YOU DON’T know how much you’ve been missing something, or even that you’ve been missing it, until you have it back. That may explain the unexpected nostalgic pang I felt while watching Nathan Lane connive and conspire with an array of imperiously behatted women on the second season of HBO’s real housewives of New York costume drama “The Gilded Age”. Or the similar pang I felt while watching Mario Cantone reprise his role as the embittered confidant Anthony Marentino on the second season of HBO’s other real housewives of New York costume drama “And Just Like That . . .” In both instances, it seemed suddenly clear that, for a long time now, popular culture has been moving forward without a once-essential style accessory: the Gay Best Friend. We’re…

THE LAST TIME Phoebe Philo, who has been called “the Chanel of her generation”, gave a formal interview was a decade ago. The designer, whose work offered women respite from the limits of the male gaze, has never been all that interested in explaining herself. “I say most of what I feel, and most of what is worth me saying, through what I make,” she offers now. Although she became famous for transforming both Chloé and Celine, she walked away from the industry almost seven years ago and pretty much dropped out of sight. When she returned, late last year, under her own name, she did so to sky-high expectations and with a succinct, online-only offering of practical pieces for complicated characters who are unapologetic about their idiosyncrasies and inner…

BEHIND HIS TORTOISESHELL spectacles, Philippe Delhotal looks more like an artist than a watch brand executive. The 61-year-old creation and development director of Hermès Horloger is wearing a navy chore coat with a flamboyant silk scarf tucked into the collar. Above it, his greying facial hair has reached that bristly hinterland somewhere between 10-day stubble and tangible whiskers, while on his wrist he wears an Hermès HO8 with a rubber strap in blazing tangerine. Delhotal looks great, to be fair, and in everyday life there would be nothing particularly radical about his get-up. But I’ve just spent four days in Geneva at Watches and Wonders, the world’s biggest watch fair, interviewing a succession of brand CEOs and watchmakers dressed almost entirely in charcoal-hued suits and the most sober of ties.…

FOR MOST OF his 23-year career, Simone Bellotti, the creative director of Bally, worked behind the scenes. In fact, that was the plan when, in October 2022, he became the Swiss brand’s design director under Rhuigi Villaseñor, the then-30-year-old founder of the Los Angeles-based streetwear line Rhude. Bellotti, a well-liked veteran of the Italian fashion industry, was to quietly help Villaseñor run the 173-year-old house. But when Villaseñor left Bally in 2023, after a little over a year, Bellotti was pushed into the spotlight. “I was happy and surprised,” he says. “And a bit stressed.” Bellotti was born about 20 miles north of Milan in Giussano, a town known for producing furniture. His father, Romano, was an upholsterer; his mother, Bruna, assisted Romano and looked after their three children: Bellotti,…

IN RECENT YEARS, the beauty industry has been revolutionised by celebrity-owned and -promoted skincare products. Hailey Bieber’s Rhode line caused a frenzy, selling out within 10 minutes of its initial release in 2022. The following year, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty was valued by Forbes at $US2.8 billion (about $AU4.3 billion) and recognised as one of the highest-grossing beauty brands. Among this cohort is the German luxury beauty label Augustinus Bader, which has no shortage of celebrity endorsements. Gwyneth Paltrow is a firm believer in its Retinol Serum, Bobbi Brown claims The Rich Cream makes her skin smoother and, within a year of entering the market, Victoria Beckham Beauty launched a collection in collaboration with the company. But in such a competitive industry, oversaturated with labels fronted by high-profile fans, how did…

No piece of furniture better embodies English tradition than the leather Chesterfield. Originally stuffed with horsehair, the sofa, whose rolled arms flow into a high, button-tufted back, is thought to have been commissioned in the mid-18th century by Lord Philip Stanhope, the fourth earl of Chesterfield, reportedly as a place for his male guests to sit without rumpling their frock coats. Although Sigmund Freud used a Victorian day bed covered with a Persian carpet for his psychoanalysis sessions, his grandson the artist Lucian Freud posed his daughters on a Chesterfield in his studio in 1988 and painted “Bella and Esther”. This provenance made the sofa an ideal inspiration for the French designer Michel Ducaroy at Ligne Roset. In 1976, a few years after the debut of his still-ubiquitous slouchy Togo…

Aristotle is revered for his contributions to philosophy but, as the original multitasking polymath, he also had a lasting influence on the study of marine biology. Among the creatures he catalogued during a couple of years on the Greek island of Lesbos in the fourth century BC was the sea urchin. He was taken by the uniquely efficient and strikingly beautiful circular arrangement of its five pointed teeth on the underside of its geometric body. He also noted that the configuration resembled a candle sconce of the era fashioned with thin slices of horn through which the flame shone; even now, nearly 2,400 years later, biologists refer to the invertebrate’s mouth as Aristotle’s Lantern. The designers at Cartier were similarly inspired this season by the mysterious life-form, creating a white-gold…

IN 1973, THE painter Stanley Whitney moved into a long, skinny loft overlooking Cooper Square in downtown Manhattan. In the course of the next 50 years, he’d meet and marry the artist Marina Adams, who makes rhythmic large-scale paintings in vibrant jewel tones, and together, they’d raise their son, William — all in that loft. For decades, Whitney also used part of the 185-square-metre space as his studio, a room without natural light where he painted and drew his abstract works, including his signature gridlike compositions of startling, luminous colours: chlorine blue, taxicab yellow. By 2019, the couple were looking for more space, so their real estate agent took them to Long Island’s eastern end. Though the Hamptons’ open landscapes and light have long attracted artists, perhaps most famously the…