Town & Country May 2021

2021 THE ONE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN T&C’s April issue was dedicated to celebrations, and, fittingly, we commissioned Ruben Toledo to create an illustration for the cover. His depiction of an effervescent dinner party captured the right spirit, but this painting of a maypole dance was too beautiful to leave unpublished. “It’s a rite of spring, a ceremony of fertility and renaissance. What’s not to love?” says the Cuban-born artist, who credits his late wife, fashion designer Isabel Toledo, with teaching him to dance. “To move to music is good for the soul and body.”…

One morning, in Departures magazine’s old offices at the Hippodrome on Sixth Avenue, my beloved boss and mentor Richard David Story sat down in my cubicle. He did that often, and I loved hearing about where he had been the night before, what he had seen and whom he had talked to. Sometimes in those conversations an enduring obsession would be born. He sat in that chair and told me about his first meal at Il Posto Accanto, his first stay with the Sersales in Positano, his first lunch with Lee Radziwill. This particular time it was his first day back in the office after an accident had kept him out for a period. He was in great spirits, but he wanted to ask me something: Would I promise to read…

WHAT’S #VERYTANDC HERE? The history: From woodworkers to Broadway legends, artists to Pulitzer Prize winners, one indispensable tool unites them all: a pencil known as the Blackwing 602. Created in the 1930s by Eberhard Faber, this writing instrument, characterized by its unique ferrule design and rectangular eraser, is famous for its smoothas-silk graphite. “The calligraphy pen of pencils,” according to T&C contributor Will Kahn. “It turns note taking into an artistic experience.” The fans: John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, Truman Capote, Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones. The news: In 1998 Blackwings were discontinued, which created a frenzy; Sondheim allegedly bought a lifetime supply. In 2010 the 602 returned, along with new styles (pictured). Today, at a time of stillness and creativity, they’re essential—for finally making plans again.…

Lately, with spring upon us, I’ve taken to holding a heavy art book as I walk around my San Francisco apartment, tucking it beneath my arm like a fine treasure. Savage Beauty is a collection of photos from the fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s 2011 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it’s filled with vibrant, fantastical images so life-giving that I often find I’m staring at the gilded feathers and painted silk jacquards with my nose all but touching the page. The colors! The textures! The complexity! I half want to eat the pages, just to have the photos that much closer to me. The last time I saw a lot of these designs, I was at the Met, pushed and crowded by strangers, dazed by the extravagance before me.…

The ubiquitous Calgon commercials from the 1980s all followed the same formula: Exasperated woman rattles off her woes (The boss! The baby!) before crying out, “Calgon, take me away!” and being immediately transported to the blissful solitude of a bubbly bathtub. Over the course of this past year, my version of that Calgon bath wasn’t a bath at all but looking at art; scrolling through a museum’s neatly archived online collections teleported me to a similarly euphoric place. The soothing palettes of Etel Adnan; Jacqueline Marval’s pastoral scenes of women lounging around in beautiful frocks; Edward Hopper’s lovely depictions of solitude; and countless images of New York—especially photos chronicling its nightlife and street life by Meryl Meisler and Robert Herman—to remind me of my home’s pre-pandemic spirit. That looking came before…

Constantin Brancusi’s Sculptural Ensemble in Targu Jiu, Romania. My grandfather used to take me as a kid, and to this day the smell of the park and the faint sounds of baby doves are too much. — Nelida Mortensen, Hearst Visual Editor The courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in late spring, when the Roman sculpture garden is also a riot of hydrangeas. — Adam Rathe, T&C’s Culture Editor I get lightheaded thinking of the paellas I devoured, sometimes with a strawberry mojito in hand, at the byzantine Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid. We’ll meet again. — Lauren Tappan, Assistant to the Editor in Chief Galloping again on an Arabian horse along the dunes of the Great Sand Sea near the Siwa Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert—just as Alexander…