Tabla de contenidos para Issue 28 en The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

WE AT T Australia appreciate beauty in its many forms, which is why it’s always a joy to put together our annual Artistry edition — a celebration not only of work found in galleries and museums (though there’s plenty of that), but also of the deeper, more personal journeys of creativity and expression. As the Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt says in our round-up of the fashion world’s favourite films (page 34), “art can and must be a space for experimentation”. Our cover star is the actress Maia Mitchell, who describes her craft as transformative. “When you’re stepping into these costumes, you kind of shed your own skin,” she tells writer Ella Sangster (page 68). “[You’re] wearing a corset and four skirts and a wig, and something happens where you hold…

For the Rome-based jeweller Bulgari, the snake is definitional. Since 1948, the 140-year-old house has invoked the serpent’s sinuous contours, most often in watches, which over the decades have curled around the wrist both in the abstract tubogas — a flexible band created without soldering — and in realistic interpretations with hinged scales, gemstone eyes and dials hidden in the hissing reptile’s mouth. But for collectors who prefer their Bulgari asp with no purpose other than to adorn, this rose-gold bracelet, embellished with jellybean green chrysoprase elements, a 3.23-carat cushion-cut Zambian emerald, a pair of buff-top rubies and alternating bands of pavé diamonds, is its own dazzling reward. Bulgari Serpenti Amazonian Enigma bracelet, price on request, bulgari.com.…

WHAT DO FOUR tiny chocolates have to do with the fine art of Swiss watchmaking? These intricately sculpted treats are the latest stars of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Made of Makers program, an initiative that invites artisans outside of horology to celebrate the communal ground of technical mastery and artistic expression. Designed by the Genevan chocolatier Mathieu Davoine, the chocolates were remarkable not only for their presentation (one was a polished dome, another resembled a vintage shoe polish tin), but also for their unexpected ingredients — olive, mushroom and pollen. Davoine is the latest creative invited to participate in Made of Makers. The program, now in its fourth year, continues to ask a central question: in an age when timekeeping is no longer a necessity, can watchmaking be understood as a form of…

ON A RECENT TUESDAY, all the diners at the New York raw bar Penny, with its marble counter, cream-coloured brickwork and iceboxes of escabeche mussels and fresh shrimp, had come seeking sophistication. So why was there so much white bread? Nearly every customer was eating chef and owner Joshua Pinsky’s oven-warm loaf, served with butter and anchovies. White bread — long synonymous with “bland” and “boring” — is cool again. It can seem it’s all but replaced chewy, slapped-and-folded, tangy sourdough, which for more than a decade was the de facto carbohydrate at stylish restaurants. Only an hour into an early service at Ben Shenassafar’s Los Angeles tavern, the Benjamin Hollywood, all of the Parker House rolls had run out. When Dominique Ansel Bakery launched a limited-edition laminated Japanese-style shokupan…

RAFFIA ACCESSORIES — BAGS, usually — have long been shorthand for summer: a staple slung over a sun-kissed shoulder, stuffed with salt-crusted beach towels and flea market finds, their unique woven texture conjuring visions of endless European holidays. In recent years, however, brands such as Loewe, Prada and Dior have repositioned raffia as a marker of casual luxury — no longer a mere resort-town souvenir destined to be shoved in the back of a cupboard, but a serious investment piece. Today, a raffia tote can set you back thousands of dollars, promising not just utility but an aesthetic. Saint Laurent’s Medium Panier leather-trimmed raffia tote retails at $2,950. A Bottega Veneta iteration — available for a cool $13,740 — features a sardine-shaped metal top handle fastened to the body of…

FASHION AND JEWELLERY brands must strike a balance between preserving traditional techniques and adopting innovative sustainable practices, while navigating increasingly complex environmental regulations. The industry faces systemic challenges around sustainability including resource scarcity, lack of commercialisation of circularity initiatives and difficulty securing ethical supply chains. The European Green Deal, the EU’s ambitious strategy to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, is driving stricter sustainability standards such as eco-design requirements, circular economy initiatives and mandatory corporate accountability for environmental impact. At the same time, the global push for climate-related disclosures and sustainable materials claims assurance is putting pressure on brands to provide transparency and verifiable commitments, reshaping the industry’s approach. In Australia, the Federal Government has launched the Seamless Clothing Stewardship Scheme to tackle textile waste and promote circularity. It aims to…

WHEN DORIS FREEDMAN founded the non-profit Public Art Fund in 1977, New York City was at a crossroads in its history. Vibrant and chaotic, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, plagued by rising crime rates and scarred by years of urban decay, New York was nevertheless on the cusp of a renaissance, brimming with potential for renewal. Freedman, a visionary who believed that art should be accessible to all, recognised an opportunity to use public art as a catalyst to reignite the city’s spirit. Her idea was as simple as it was radical: deliver groundbreaking art for everyone to enjoy — art that would spark conversation, provoke thought and transform even the most ordinary of urban spaces. For almost five decades since, Public Art Fund has played a pivotal role…

POWERFUL ART LEAVES a powerful wake. “Art can capture and distil a moment in the culture that resonates with the collective consciousness,” says Shaun Gladwell, an artist who is celebrated for his work across a range of media including video. Perhaps the most famous example on these shores is, notoriously, Jackson Pollock’s “Blue Poles”, purchased for the then-yet-to-open Australian National Gallery (now the National Gallery of Australia) in 1973. In a rapidly changing nation, the painting’s purchase for a record price of nearly $1.4 million (equivalent to about $16 million today) triggered ferocious backlash and debate about not just the dollar value of art, but also what an artistic masterpiece should look like. Politicians, celebrities and other commentators weighed in, many deriding the squiggles and slashes of Pollock’s drip-painting technique…

THE DEFINITION OF luxury is kaleidoscopic, shifting according to the light. Is it the feeling of wearing heavy silk, slipping like water over skin? Is it durability, longevity, shoe soles that can withstand the attrition of time? Or maybe the promise that something was made with care, with those who made it compensated fairly? Even for those designers with the most cachet, balancing high-quality craftsmanship with a positive — or at least not frighteningly detrimental — impact on the environment has always been a push-and-pull, an exercise in spinning plates where one is always in danger of crashing down and splintering. But for the fashion designer Stella McCartney, this balance has been a prerequisite for her willingness to play the game. In McCartney’s world, there is no luxury without sustainability…

THE GREEK DESIGNER Leda Athanasopoulou — whose practice spans jewellery, furniture and interiors — has spent her life in Athens, London, New York and Paris. But when the 35-year-old thinks of home, her mind immediately goes to Patmos, the rocky, secluded Dodecanese island near the coast of Turkey where her mother, Katerina Tsigarida, an esteemed Greek architect, and father, Dimitris, a businessman, started buying property in the early 1990s, when their three children were young. As a girl, Athanasopoulou spent every summer in Chora, the island’s preserved, whitewashed village, baked into a hill and crowned by an 11th-century Christian monastery, roaming between her family’s house and those of her friends. In the middle of Chora, where cars are forbidden (not that they’d fit through the winding stone paths anyway), she…

There’s always a particular buzz around an incoming creative director at a fashion house. An announcement can herald a fresh take on established codes and, historically, the first handbag designed by the new boss is more than just commercially strategic — it’s almost always a thesis statement, a cultural signifier of what we can expect under their leadership. In the case of Hedi Slimane at Celine, the 16 (pronounced as the French seize) bag — created in Los Angeles in 2018 as a nod to the brand’s Parisian address, 16 Rue Vivienne — was his first word and a prelude to his Celine look that would debut four months later. The bag’s boxy, ’60s-style silhouette and discreet gold luggage-inspired hardware winked at the past while asserting Slimane’s signature polish. It…

THE R&B SINGER-songwriter Muni Long has a voice that people say could sing the dictionary and they’d still listen. In 2007, as a teen growing up in Gifford, Florida, she put that claim to the test, recording a five-minute YouTube clip in which she sings from Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary (“aardvark, aardwolf, Aaron . . .”) to the tune of Fergie’s “Glamorous” (2006). That playful stunt, along with a handful of covers, caught the attention of Capitol Records. Under her given name, Priscilla Renea, she recorded her 2009 debut, “Jukebox”, an album of pop originals that earned good reviews but modest sales. By her 22nd birthday, she no longer had a record deal. Reinventing herself as a songwriter, she spent the next decade building a chameleonic career, writing the…

IN 1925, ADELE Casagrande and Edoardo Fendi opened a small handbag boutique and fur workshop on Rome’s Via del Plebiscito. They created coats from unusual pelts (squirrel, Persian lamb) and introduced a collection of luggage and other leather goods implementing the Selleria method, which involved a topstitching technique inspired by the centuries-old hand embroidery of master saddlers. The pieces were soon coveted by Italy’s alta moda clientele, and Fendi became an international force after the founders’ five daughters, who had spent their childhood napping in the store, joined the family business and brought on a young Karl Lagerfeld as creative director in 1965. But perhaps the house’s most recognisable design came in 1997, when Silvia Venturini Fendi, now the artistic director of menswear, had the idea for a bag that…