Tabla de contenidos para Issue 32 en The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

CAN IT REALLY have been another year? If your past 12 months have been anything like ours, they have flown. You’re reading the latest annual Greats issue, in which we spotlight the figures who are devoted to excellence in their field, be it acting, distilling, tailoring, cooking or industrial recycling (check out Kara Hurry’s cute concept feature on sustainability’s “12 gifts of Christmas” on page 30). Our cover star is the truly great Australian actress Rose Byrne, who has re-entered the cultural conversation with her spiky and singular new film — her first as the bona fide lead — “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”. In a candid cover interview with Ella Sangster (stunningly photographed by Nicole Bentley, from page 58), Byrne reveals her intensive meditation on the role…

THE YEAR’S FINAL edition of “Champion, Challenger” — a series in which T Australia compares one class-leading product with an interesting, often underrated alternative — arrives just in time for the holiday season and brings with it an opportunity for occasional dressing. Gone is the era when “occasionwear” was shorthand for dinner jackets, neckties or excessive formality. As the mercury climbs and Australians opt to spend the increasingly long December days amid the great outdoors or on the country’s verdant coastline, our instinct is to champion clothes that thrive in these unbuttoned settings. But a cavalcade of summer weddings, office socials and garden parties mean it can’t hurt to have clothes with a modicum of built-in elegance to hand. To meet this brief, T Australia has turned to a mainstay…

THE ARTIST MARTYN Thompson’s practice has expanded and folded back on itself so many times since he began as a fashion photographer in the 1980s that it’s now difficult to describe him succinctly. Originally known for his collaborations with Ralph Lauren, Hermès and Vogue, Thompson, 64, has since made paintings, wallpaper, totemlike ceramics, glass sculptures and textiles. He largely stopped shooting for clients in 2012, and his shift away from the commercial world accelerated when he returned from New York to his home town, Sydney, in 2020 to be closer to family. “Since I left New York,” he says, “I’ve been focused on creating one-off pieces; I wanted to really immerse myself in my art.” Thompson’s sunlit apartment in the harbourside suburb of Elizabeth Bay is both a refuge for…

IT’S 1AM WHEN an excited voice comes over the ship’s loudspeaker. Ponant Explorations’ Le Commandant Charcot is carving through the ice along the east coast of Greenland when Captain Étienne Garcia announces that there are fresh polar bear footprints on the port side. Parkas zipped up, cameras at the ready, all expeditioners hit the decks. There, we spy the King of the Arctic jumping across ice floes just metres away and looking curiously towards the ship, his eyes momentarily meeting ours. I’m sailing on the 10-night Inuit Spring of Ammassalik voyage from the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, and this is just one of a series of incredible wildlife encounters. Usually, the ice forms a natural border that prevents ordinary ships from passing, but on this, the world’s only luxury icebreaking…

JAMAICA, SEPTEMBER JUST gone. Heavy humidity coats ice-cold martini glasses in a thick layer of condensation as a man with white hair and a warm smile addresses a small group gathered at GoldenEye. It’s an unofficial James Bond fan retreat, and David Zaritsky, a Philadelphian marketing executive who’s channelled his passion for all things 007 into an 82,000-subscriber-strong YouTube channel, knows how powerful this place can be. “This is where [James Bond author Ian] Fleming created everything that has brought us together,” he says. “It’s OK to get emotional, trust me.” “The one thing I would ask,” he adds, “because I know all of you, I get you, is you’re going to want to run straight to his desk. But we have plenty of time, so enjoy yourselves.” As attendees…

LOW CLOUDS DARKEN the April sun as Glenn Close turns onto a country road toward the place where she intends, she says, smiling, to die. The actress, 78, started her day much like any other. Shortly after dawn, she put on a pair of brown Carhartt work pants and a white shirt and fed Sir Pippin of Beanfield, or Pip, her nine-year-old Havanese. Together they drove from her two-bedroom home in a modest section of Bozeman, Montana, a ski town in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, to Main Street Overeasy for pancakes, which she soaked with her own batch of Canadian maple syrup, kept by the diner’s owner in the kitchen. On the side of the jug, she’s listed in black Sharpie those who may use it: Alexander “Sandy”…

COASTAL STYLE HASN’T always been synonymous with whitewashed, sun-soaked spaces. In fact — as Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer, the husband-and-wife design team known as Roman and Williams, learned a decade ago while working on Nantucket’s circa 1850s Greydon House hotel — shadowy interiors were the norm along America’s Northeastern shore until the mid-20th century. “It wasn’t like, ‘How can there be more glass?’ ” says Alesch. “You wanted to protect the interiors and the fabrics.” Alesch, 60, and Standefer, 61, who started their careers as production designers in the 1990s and have since imagined everything from celebrity homes to hotels and their own restaurant and store, La Mercerie, in New York’s SoHo, were entranced by that dark and moody seaside aesthetic. And so in 2019, when they were hired…

ONE COULD ARGUE that Andy Warhol — who amassed hundreds of Bakelite jewellery pieces and ceramic cookie jars — was as enthusiastic about collecting objects, which he’d source from flea markets or Madison Avenue antiques shops, as he was about making art. His four-storey townhouse on East 66th Street in Manhattan is said to have contained so much ephemera that he could walk through only the kitchen and the bedroom. Among his most prized pieces were his watches: the Pop Art pioneer, who started obsessively buying them in the 1970s, owned more than 300, including eight handcrafted pieces by Piaget. In 1979, Warhol was introduced to Yves Piaget, the great-grandson of Georges-Édouard Piaget, who founded the Swiss watchmaking company in 1874. He became Yves’s confidant, and the Piaget family considered…

MORNING LIGHT SPILLS through the glass towers of Midtown Manhattan. Inside, the Australian Consul-General in New York, Heather Ridout AO, is redefining diplomacy through culture and creativity. A few blocks away, Steven Marshall, the president of the American Australian Association, is steering one of the oldest bilateral institutions toward a new era of artistic and innovation-driven exchange. Between them, a modern alliance takes shape — one grounded in art, collaboration and a distinctly Australian openness that feels at home in New York. The American Australian Association (AAA), founded in 1948, has long served as a low-key architecture supporting Australia’s relationship with the United States — a platform for business, government and culture to meet in meaningful dialogue. Under Marshall’s leadership, that mission has entered a new chapter. “It’s an enormous…

1. Amouage Guidance 46 extrait $859 (100ml) at Libertine Parfumerie Warm, woody accords give way to an Arabian holy trinity of rose, frankincense and ambergris (collected from a sperm whale and treasured for its longevity), to deliver an opulent scent on the skin. Courtesy of the collaboration between the reigning monarch of perfumery Quentin Bisch and the House of Amouage, Guidance 46 has made a claim on the next wave of iconic fragrances. Taking its inspiration from the fruitier, floral release of Guidance in 2023, Guidance 46 is pitched as an extrait rather than an eau de parfum thanks to its 46 per cent concentration of perfume oil, which gives this fragrance its luminous dry-down and lasting finish. Commissioned by the Sultan of Oman in 1983, the Amouage portfolio has…

Collectors greet every new model introduced by Rolex, the 120-year-old Swiss watchmaker, as an event. That may be because the company tends to innovate on its signature style incrementally, magnifying even small tweaks. But its much-awaited Land-Dweller, which comes in rose gold, as shown, platinum or white gold and stainless steel, combines so many novel touches that the fanfare is justified. With a slender profile housing a new movement (among the most accurate the company has ever engineered, it can be glimpsed through the sapphire crystal case back), a bold white honeycomb face that sets off the fluted bezel and an angular integrated bracelet, the Land-Dweller is an elegant counterpart to the Sky-Dweller, introduced more than a decade ago to appeal to world travellers. Earthbound, yes — but transcendent too.…

Over the past four years, Bottega Veneta has made a concerted effort to broaden the horizons of intrecciato — its signature leather-weaving technique — beyond the expected realm of statement handbags and daily carries. Under Louise Trotter, the craft-forward Italian fashion house’s new creative director, the highly recognisable braided motif is stealing the spotlight in a variety of worn, often runway-bound guises. It’s one thing to hold a coil of intrecciato leather in your palm — as a wallet, belt or bag charm — and quite another to see it exploded into a jumpsuit, bone-white and life-sized. Beyond the catwalk, Bottega Veneta’s designers have begun to transport this technique into hitherto unfamiliar territory. A swell of interest from A-list actors and the fashion set has made the brand’s Odyssey Cabin…