Innehållsförteckning för Issue 15 från The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

WHEN I COMMITTED to launching an Australian edition of T: The New York Times Style Magazine three years ago, it was out of a desire to buck the trend. It was at the height of the pandemic and many of my favourite magazines had recently folded. So I decided to start T Australia as an antidote to the media cutbacks and the dire predictions engulfing the world. I wanted the local edition to showcase the best of Australia in a global context and also provide a platform for quality, long-form journalism that captures the cultural zeitgeist. It was a huge leap of faith. But 15 issues on, we’ve gone from strength to strength, having increased our publishing frequency and built a loyal following of people who love magazines as much…

Four years after the 1892 death of Louis Vuitton, who had built his humble trunk-making business into a Victorian-era colossus, his son, Georges, created a repeating quatrefoil motif to distinguish the brand’s canvas-and-leather goods from widespread copies. Combining medieval simplicity, neo-Gothic refinement and the tasteful Japonisme of the time, the four-pointed mark continues to adorn the maison’s designs today, including collaborations with the architect Frank Gehry and the artists Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami. Now, Francesca Amfitheatrof, the artistic director of watches and jewellery at Louis Vuitton, has found a new way to express the symbol’s enduring power: an elaborate proprietary diamond cut, as seen in this dazzling white-gold-and-platinum bejewelled collar. Set directly above the brilliant centre emerald, among 51 other custom-cut diamonds, the many-faceted, two-carat flower is a subtle…

EDOUARD HEUER WAS 16 when he began apprenticing under a local watchmaker in Saint-Imier, the Swiss Alpine village where he spent part of his childhood. Four years later, in 1860, Heuer opened a small workshop on his parents’ farm, where he made silver pocket watches. Within a decade, he’d acquired his first patent — for a crown-operated winding system — and in 1887 he filed another, for an improvement on the design of the oscillating pinion, which allowed his chronographs to start and stop more efficiently. Known for its accuracy and technical precision, the brand gained popularity among athletes and aviators, and was the official timekeeper for three Olympic Games in the 1920s. In 1958, Jack Heuer, Edouard’s great-grandson, joined the family business. A skier and car-racing enthusiast, he oversaw…

SHOULD YOU GO swimming in the Kimberley, it’s anyone’s guess what might kill you first. As I sail through the region on Le Ponant, a 32-passenger luxury yacht, I’d put my money on the sharks. At anchor in the evenings, when the ship’s lights illuminate the surrounding sea, there are hundreds of them in every shape and size, attracted to the fish, attracted to the lights. Other guests are putting their rhetorical bets on the crocs — estuarine crocodiles, that is. You might know them as saltwater crocodiles, but that’s a misnomer: in these parts you can find them a long way from sea. They can even climb sheer rock faces to get to freshwater pools you’d probably consider safe to swim in. They’re the largest reptiles on earth, with…

AS A CHILD growing up in the centre of Paris, Matthieu Blazy, the 39-year-old designer at the helm of Bottega Veneta, had a robust imagination. Though his father, Jacques, an art expert, and his mother, Christine Philips, a historian and researcher, would often take him and his twin sister, Julie, and their brother, Quentin, on trips abroad — to China, Mali and Burkina Faso — Blazy discovered more adventures in stories and cartoons. “I loved comics,” he said this past June at a cafe near his apartment in Milan. “Tom Sawyer was my childhood hero.” By his own account, he was a similarly spirited boy, which partly explains how he ended up at a Catholic boarding school in France and later at a military academy in England. The tension between…

MOST PLAYERS IN the fitness industry have by now bounced back from the dark days of pandemic shutdowns, but the providers who’ve embraced a feeling of renewal — especially regarding interior aesthetics — have fared the best. Big franchise gym brands, with their dark interiors, corporate grey carpeting and fluorescent lighting, can feel jarring after the comfort of rolling out the yoga mat or livestreaming HIIT classes in the living room. Now, the spaces in which we exercise need to be more welcoming and interesting to lure us back — and to inspire us to cough up for ongoing memberships. Consequently, savvy fitness professionals are putting a previously nonexistent focus on the aesthetics of their gyms, studios and centres. Walk into your local yoga studio and you’re likely to spot…

WE’VE COME TO expect a lot from hotels: sumptuous decor, trendy onsite bars and eateries and an array of amenities are de rigueur these days. But an in-house book club and artist talks? Family-owned The Calile Hotel in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley offers guests unique cultural experiences that are designed to provide connection and pique curiosity. “Curiosity is one of our most important values. Artistically, it breeds creativity, favours individuality over sameness, and keeps us open to possibility,” says co-owner Catherine Malouf. The cultural programming explores art, design, literature, performance and music — activities that The Calile believes enrich lives and connect community. Current and future events include conversations with authors Anna Funder and Trent Dalton and playwright Suzie Miller, as well as a long lunch with landscape designer Paul Bangay.…

IN FEBRUARY OF 1969, by a first-floor window that looked out onto 53rd Street, the Museum of Modern Art in New York installed a work by a then-34-year-old artist named Sheila Hicks called “The Evolving Tapestry: He/She” (1967–68). Made of more than 3,000 “ponytails” of linen thread, as the artist called them, stitched together and piled atop one another, it looked at first glance like something one might encounter in a commercial fabric store. Neither traditional sculpture nor painting, it conjured both, a monumental object made from the humblest materials. The show that featured Hicks’s work, “Wall Hangings”, was a rare American institutional endorsement of artists who make ambitious work out of fibre and broadened the idea of what art could be. Most of the artists included were women. But…

When Modernism arrived in Scandinavia in the 1930s, Finnish designers quickly became known for their handblown coloured glass, which was more substantial and elemental than that of their Italian counterparts in Murano. Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck and Tapio Wirkkala were unconcerned with delicacy, employing richly hued cased glass in geometric dimensions shorn of ornament and taking inspiration from abstract stone sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. Today, one of their spiritual heirs, the 53-year-old Helsinki-based Harri Koskinen, has electrified that uniquely moody Finnish aesthetic in a series of glass table lamps for Hermès. These 25-centimetre-high domed fixtures, in smoky tones of cassis, fern and amber, don’t merely illuminate but smoulder with a volcanic light. Souffle d’Hermès lamps, price on request, hermes.com.…

THE VIEW FROM the top, albeit thrilling, can be disorienting — a fact the Australian supermodel Ajak Deng knows all too well. Standing just shy of six feet, Deng naturally towers over many in her company, but there are moments when even she can’t quite fathom the height. Take a recent skydiving experience. “It was all fun and games until we reached 5,000 feet,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is it?’ And they were like, ‘No, we’ve got 10 more thousand feet to go.’” Deng is afraid of high altitudes, and in the aftermath of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 she developed a phobia of air travel, a major inconvenience for someone required to commute internationally for work. The skydiving, she explains, was an attempt to…

ALTHOUGH CRUISE SHIPS carry people across the world’s oceans, it’s possible to spend an entire cruise — especially on one of the behemoths that resemble an apartment complex — without having much to do with the sea. Passengers huddle in bars and restaurants and fight for space on the pool deck, often accompanied by the noise of a movie playing on a big screen. Even on the small luxury ships, outdoor space is limited and private verandahs coveted. Ultra-luxury cruise line Silversea is pitching a point of difference with Silver Nova, the first in a new class of ships. The concept was to give passengers an experience of being immersed in the ship’s destination, rather than imposing on it. Although the vessel resembles a larger version of Silversea’s other ships,…