Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Town & Country

1963 THE CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIEL According to legend, King Charles II was so enamored of his namesake breed he gave them royal privileges, granting them entry wherever they pleased. (The current Charles prefers Jack Russell terriers; it’s unclear if they have any special rights.) In their prime, King Charles spaniels also roamed the courts of queens Mary I, Charlotte, and Anne and were immortalized by Titian, Rubens, and Van Dyck. The Victorian era saw the rise of the pug, and the spaniels lost their place in the hierarchy—until the 1920s, when a group of breeders engineered a renaissance of the OG kingly dog by creating the Cavalier King Charles spaniel. By the 1960s they had risen to royal status once more, this time in America, where they brought furry joy—and…

Matthew Vaughn didn’t set out to hire a family member. The director of the new thriller Argylle, which stars Bryce Dallas Howard as a spy novelist whose work follows her home, just needed a cat to play Alfie, the sidekick to Howard’s character. “On the first day of filming, we had a trained acting cat that was exactly what you would imagine a trained acting cat to be: a cat,” Vaughn says. However, “he wasn’t very cute, so I decided to fire him, go to my daughter’s room, and borrow her cat Chip for three months.” It wasn’t a bad choice. Although untrained as an actor, Chip has an unflappable mien that plays well as the chaos of Argylle unfolds. Still, Vaughn—who produced the film with his wife Claudia Schiffer—didn’t…

A Cartier Ballon Bleu started it all. Trang Trinh got it for her 20th birthday, and five years later she’s best known as @girlsoclock to her 44,000 followers on Tik-Tok, where she’s one of the more popular voices in a booming ecosystem on the platform that can be summed up by one hashtag responsible for 1.2 billion views in the past year: #watchtok. Besides Trinh, a new class of enthusiasts is leveraging social media to cater to the growing market of female watch collectors. There’s Brynn Wallner, 33, who created @dimepiece. co (a tongue-in-chic name for a cheeky content platform with some 47,000 followers on Instagram alone) after she was laid off from Sotheby’s in 2020, and Zoë Abelson, 34, a dealer and founder of Graal, a vintage watch source,…

THE OMNI HOMESTEAD RESORT Gaze up through an overhead oculus while floating in the salubrious Warm Springs Pools, housed in America’s oldest hot springs bath house. OMNIHOTELS.COM THE RETREAT HOTEL, ICELAND The Blue Lagoon? Iconic, but crowded. Ensure seclusion by checking into this luxe hotel with a guests-only stretch of lagoon and a stellar spa. BLUELAGOON.COM THE GAINSBOROUGH, BATH, ENGLAND The city’s ancient Roman baths are off-limits to modern bods, but you can ease your aches like a centurion in this hotel’s private pools. THEGAINSBOROUGHBATHSPA.CO.UK DUNTON HOT SPRINGS, COLORADO For the best sleep of your life, retire to one of this restored ghost town’s cozy log cabins after soaking in its steaming lithium-rich springs. DUNTONDESTINATIONS.COM CASTLE HOT SPRINGS, ARIZONA Rockefellers, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and JFK immersed themselves in these famously restorative—and picturesque—hot springs. CASTLEHOTSPRINGS.COM…

One of my earliest memories is of looking up at my father, pinned against the sky, and thinking that the sky must be coming right though his eyes—they were the same shade of blue. His hand was large and folded around mine as we walked up a hill to fly kites. His hands would also hold me in the water as he taught me to swim, first in the pool and later in the ocean. He was a swimmer, a former lifeguard, and water was his element. I would swim through huge waves to follow him and listen to his instructions on how to ride a wave in to shore. I anchored my world around him—the sound of his voice, the expression in his eyes, the lessons he imparted about…

AQUARIUS JANUARY 21–FEBRUARY 19 Shifts of perspective are in the air this month. Powerful Pluto is making a number of important aspects in your sign early in February, and whatever challenges you encounter, you should be ready to assume command and show some grace under pressure. With fortune-boosting Jupiter at the foundation of your chart, though, all change at this time is for the good. LE VIAN ($3,798), LEVIAN.COM PISCES FEBRUARY 20–MARCH 20 Whatever is going on around you this month, you’re better off remaining on the sidelines until you can gauge how various situations are shaping up. Pisces have an ability to tune in and stay one step ahead, and by the time the Sun enters your birth sign on the 19th, you’ll be able to take control. The…

The magazine you hold in your hands marks the first issue in our 178th year. At least two themes have been with us from the beginning: family and philanthropy. The images on this page are portraits taken by photographer Emilio Madrid backstage at our 10th annual Philanthropy Summit, held on November 2 here at Hearst Tower. It was, as it has been for a decade now, a remarkable day of thought and action, with incredible hearts and minds. Some of our speakers were returning guests, many were longtime advisors, all are now part of T&C’s history and members of our extended family. Which also happens to be the theme of T&C February 2024, the Family Issue. We begin with our cover profile of the model and aspiring filmmaker (and USC…

The rocky marriages, sibling rivalries, and family feuds fueling pop culture. “What. A. Dump.” Those are the first words Elizabeth Taylor says in the film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Taylor’s Martha is mimicking Bette Davis, but there’s another Davis line just as apt: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the play by Edward Albee, premiered in 1962 and shocked audiences with its frank portrayal of marriage. The story follows a long, boozy night with George and Martha, a couple living on campus at the college her father runs and where he’s an associate professor. After a party, they invite a new professor, Nick, and his wife Honey to their home for a nightcap, and things go off the rails: Secrets…

SAFTA Las Vegas This winter Alon and Emily Shaya bring their Denver restaurant Safta to the Wynn Las Vegas for a residency. Expect king crab tagine and pomegranate braised lamb shank, with additions like Osetra caviar and black truffle. EATWITHSAFTA.COM BIRDIE’S Austin Arjav Ezekiel and Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel offer French and Italian fine dining and a smart wine list—alongside a commitment to sustainability and equity, marking a new era in Austin’s restaurant culture. BIRDIESAUSTIN.COM DARLING J A C K’S TAVERN Philadelphia For more than 20 years Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran’s restaurants have defined Philly’s Midtown Village. Their latest offers refined comfort food, echoing neighborhood joints around the world. DARLINGJACKS.COM LOVESKI Larkspur, CA Christopher and Martina Kostow’s Napa Loveski opens a second location in the Marin Country Mart, blending their Jewish…

If they weren’t going to come for the movies, they were going to come for Giorgio Armani. The actors strike had kept the Venice Film Festival light on star power, but the A-listers poured in anyway. They were just hanging out at Armani’s One Night Only, the pop-up celebration he has orchestrated in cities around the world, from Rome to Beijing. Armani finery was on glorious display, both on the runway, where the designer staged an encore presentation of his spring 2023 Armani Privé collection, and in the front row, which was studded with the likes of Jessica Chastain, Kerry Washington, and Sydney Sweeney. But it was Sophia Loren who stole the show. Not only because she’s, well, Sophia Loren, but because she understood the assignment: She wore pants. Today…

Was Coco Chanel secretly a New Yorker? She did wear a lot of black, and she was quick with a comeback. Legend has it that designer Paul Poiret once looked her LBD up and down and asked who she was in mourning for, and she shot back, “For you, monsieur.” That seems like grounds for immediate OG New Yorker status. If not, then this should do it: A Chanel Watches and Fine Jewelry flagship has just been planted on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, jewelry crossroads of the world. The store, says Frédéric Grangié, president of watches and fine jewelry at Chanel, “is a celebration of our dedication to savoir faire, but also of Gabrielle Chanel’s lucky number 5. And the first Chanel boutique on one of the world’s most…

When Natalia Bryant was very young, her parents, Kobe and Vanessa Bryant, didn’t tell her bedtime stories when they tucked her in at night. She was the one doing the storytelling. “My parents would ask me, ‘Do you have a story?’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, okay! There was this princess…’” She says this over lunch in downtown L.A., gently futzing with the sleeves of her navy cashmere crewneck from the Row. (Like most of the pieces she favors from her closet and jewelry box, it was handed down from her mom.) If you wanted to, you could draw a straight line from that toddler being taught by her parents that her imagination was as important as theirs to the 21-year-old sitting here, currently enrolled at the University of Southern California’s…

The trouble on American campuses started soon after the attacks on Israel on October 7. At a library at Cooper Union in New York, pro-Palestinian protesters were briefly recorded on video banging on a glass wall while students inside, including some Jewish counter protesters, watched nervously. At Harvard and Columbia, a “doxxing truck” drove around the campuses displaying the faces and names of students who had signed an anti-Israel letter. An Israeli student was beaten outside the library at Columbia. Three college students of Palestinian descent were shot and injured in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend. The violence that was set off when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded by invading Gaza has put U.S. colleges and universities in the crosshairs of a kind of political controversy that hasn’t been seen…

WHERE ARE WE GOING? Venice is never far from the cultural conversation. Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, now dominating the awards circuit, first screened at the city’s 80th film festival. The milestone was marked by Cartier, a main sponsor for three years, with a commission from musician Solrey for the legendary Teatro la Fenice, the first effort in the maison’s new initiative to support the upcoming season at the opera house. WHAT ARE WE WEARING? The season’s signature work is Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia, a masterpiece with comic timing undiminished 200 years after its premiere. Count the seconds until conductor Renato Palumbo leads the orchestra in that famous overture on an evening watch set with 165 brilliant-cut diamonds, each as luminous as the many divas who have graced la Fenice’s historic…

It’s late summer, and superyachts worth more than the combined economies of several small countries are wedged into Port Hercule for the Monaco Yacht Show. The signs of wealth are everywhere. One night during my visit I watch a $3 million Bugatti Chiron pull up at the steps of the Casino de Monte Carlo while commission-hunting yacht brokers knock back $30 cocktails next door at the Bar Americain. Up by the Palais Princier de Monaco, the view is one of tradition and stability. Carabiniers dressed in starched white uniforms guard the home of Albert II of Monaco. Fluttering everywhere in the September breeze, flags commemorate the centenary of the birth of Rainier III, Albert’s father, who, with his wife Grace Kelly, transformed a shady constitutional anomaly into a tax haven…

Upstairs at a house in Southampton, Gil Schafer is up to his old tricks: exquisite Colonial Revival millwork, precisely proportioned molding profiles, and stair stringer details researched from 18th-century Newport houses. Downstairs, the tables are turned: We find ourselves in a world of ebony lacquer and theatrically lit netsuke skulls, stainless steel Louis XVI furniture and serpentine suede banquettes. Welcome to the most exclusive invitation in Southampton, known to those in the know as Club Sandwich. Think Mr. Chow in your own basement, or a meditation on François Catroux’s early work, circa 1970 (Catroux was in fact a family friend and did two houses for these clients). Lenny Kravitz has a legendary boîte under his hotel particulier in Paris where he brings guests after dinner to keep the party going,…