Innehållsförteckning för issue 23 från The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR WELCOME TO T Australia’s first Style issue. Naturally, we have fashion for days. Fans of timeless silhouettes and refined tailoring should turn immediately to page 38 to get their kitten heel on. For those whose tastes run more to the fantastical and the romantic, Levon Baird photographed a (very high-end) dress-up box of fringed and feathered dresses and tactile coats on location in a former milking shed in the Blue Mountains (page 62). Victoria Pearson profiles the rising Australian designers who unapologetically bring their personal backstories and aesthetics — be it a lifelong familiarity with the rag trade or a love of the Great Aussie Flanno — to bear on their collections (page 78). File under names to know. We check in with Victoria Beckham in…

T AUSTRALIA X SEABOURN PICTURE THIS: THE sun rises slowly above still, azure waters, painting the sky with pastel shades of orange and pink. Your skin retains the memory of a day spent alternating between the shore and the ocean in Nafplion, Greece. A multi-course breakfast is en route to your private suite — think fluffy scrambled eggs and freshly ground coffee, followed by an assortment of local fruit, enjoyed on your verandah as you gaze out to the sparkling horizon. This is a typical morning aboard Seabourn’s luxury vessel the Seabourn Encore, as part of its itinerary exploring the stunning coastline from Croatia to Greece — one of the star voyages announced for 2025. The 14-day Balkan Jewels & Ephesus journey is aimed at travellers who are dreaming of…

LAST SPRING, I found myself facing a health issue caused by, among other things, a lifetime of running away from my own body. Getting better and stronger, my doctors informed me, would require the surgical removal of the air quotes I had for years placed around the phrase “aerobic exercise”. Henceforth, working out wouldn’t be optional, and it would need to be defined as more than a brief, daydreaming amble on the treadmill while Bravo played on mute in the background. Like many nonathletic gay guys, I had coasted in and out of the gym irregularly, content to be in it but not of it, and not especially eager to spend a minute more than necessary in a milieu that I still associated with various childhood humiliations — being picked…

FROM KITCHENS TO paddocks, there’s a new story being written, in which locally available, free-roaming animals are being turned into culinary delights, farmers develop nutrient-rich snacks from wasted produce and our recipe books fill with new techniques that use every part of ingredients. It’s about food being treasured, repurposed and given new life. The chef Alex Prichard, currently working his magic at Sydney’s renowned restaurant Icebergs, exemplifies this transformation. “The more I engaged with farmers, producers, growers and fishermen, the more I realised how much potential was being left unused,” he says. As culinary director at Icebergs, Prichard pioneers methods that ensure every part of an ingredient is exploited, from scraping tuna bones and curing the meat with spices and chilli to create a spreadable, flavourful appetiser, to using oysters…

BY CHANCE, THIS has become a gay mecca,” says Jacopo Etro one September afternoon while drinking white wine, his Sicilian partner, Alessandro Genduso, off playing tennis, their five-year-old daughter, Roberta, out with the nanny. “Because the prices are not so expensive and the beaches are nice,” he explains, adding that here in Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot, people wake up each morning and decide, based on the winds, whether the Adriatic or Ionian Sea is calmer for swimming. Etro, who avoids the cruisier spots along the coastline these days, suggests another reason why men from Rome, Milan and other European cities have begun transforming the area’s castles and masserias into hotels and guesthouses, or why discreet foreign dignitaries have set up weekend refuges: for two decades, the region has…

IN 1952, THE German-French artist Jean Arp made several trips to Greece, where he encountered the ideas of Claudius Ptolemy, the Greco-Roman astronomer, mathematician and geographer best known for his maps of the stars, which date to the second century AD. Arp had helped found the radical Dada art movement in Zurich in 1916 and went on to become a leading Surrealist, but by this stage of his career, he was most preoccupied with the forms of the natural world — a fascination that he recognised in Ptolemy’s work. Some years later, back at the artist’s studio just outside of Paris, this discovery would inform Arp’s “Ptolémée” series of abstract sculptures, including “Ptolémée II” (1958), a roughly one-metre-tall biomorphic bronze that is widely considered to be among his masterworks. If…

“THIS ISN’T JUST about putting a logo on a boat,” insists Alessandro Ficarelli, Panerai’s chief marketing officer. Ficarelli is talking about the watch brand’s partnership with the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli sailing team at this year’s America’s Cup (until October 27 in Barcelona) and, to be fair, its commitment to the Italian team does seem unusually devoted. We’re sitting at the Watches and Wonders fair in Geneva in the brand’s 560-square-metre booth that’s been built to replicate the industrial hangar of the Luna Rossa base in Cagliari, Sardinia. To further hammer home the nautical synergy, suspended by wires directly above our heads is the team’s two-ton prototype training yacht. Each of Panerai’s five new releases at Watches and Wonders is also explicitly tied to the partnership, bearing the Luna Rossa…

IN THE GLITTERING world of precious gems and stones, pearls stand apart. There’s an ethereal quality to these lustrous pieces, a romantic allure that has endured from the times of Cleopatra till the present day. At the core of the appeal of pearls is the fact that they are not mined from the earth, but rather farmed. And Australian South Sea Pearls are among the world’s rarest, and most valuable. The largest producer of Australian pearls is Paspaley, the last of Australia’s original pearling families, who dates its involvement in the industry back to 1935, when Nicholas Paspaley (senior) bought a single pearling boat. Today, Paspaley operates a network of remote pearl farms stretching almost 2,500 kilometres along Australia’s northwest coast, with a sophisticated fleet of specialised diving vessels. This…

IT’S NOT OFTEN that a bar can make you feel sexy. I’m not talking about the kind of self-conscious, “look at me on a rooftop with all the shiny people” sexy, either. I’m talking about the kind of Tony Soprano sexy that has nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with attitude. That’s how Bar Olo makes you feel. A new venture from the team behind the outstanding Italian restaurant Scopri in Melbourne’s Carlton neighbourhood — an area long associated with Mediterranean hospitality — Bar Olo is in many ways the perfect bar. It both speaks to something specifically Melbourne in the mould of longstanding favourites such as Geralds Bar, Bellota and Supper Club, and also expresses something universal about how the world wants to drink…

YOU COULD NEVER accuse Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran of being understated. The Sydney-based contemporary artist radiates an exuberance in life and in work. Audacious and politically charged, his genre-defying sculptures explore themes of gender, eroticism, religion and popular culture — all in hypercolour — and this latest exhibition probes the motif of the mask and the intricacies of self-representation. This year marks a decade of professional art practice for Nithiyendran, who studied painting at the University of New South Wales’s College of Fine Arts before shifting much of his focus to ceramics. His new exhibition, “The Self Portrait and the Masks”, which runs until October 12 at Sullivan+Strumpf gallery in Sydney, expands on his material exploration, with ambitious new works in bronze. The central work is a large-scale, multi-limbed, robotic-like figure,…

ACCORDING TO NADÈGE Vanhée, the artistic director of womenswear at Hermès, rock stars were her first brush with the fashion world. “Music was really instrumental for me,” says the designer, 46. “I’m from a provincial town in northern France; we didn’t have [much] exposure to culture.” As a teenager in the mid-1990s, she’d attend concerts by British and American acts like Moloko and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. “I’d go to flea markets to create looks [to wear to the shows],” she says, including, once, a black crepe dress layered over leather pants and worn with moccasins. But they were more than just outfits, she now knows: “I was really creating my identity.” Vanhée was born to an Algerian mother and a French father in Seclin, a town of about…

THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR position at a decades- or centuries-old fashion house is a dream gig for many, and one that calls for confidence. However, an equal, if not greater, measure of self-belief is required to court consumers under your own name, with your personal aesthetic defining the branding. Amassing a strong local following for her cool-girl spin on classic wardrobe staples, the designer Courtney Zheng says her family’s experience in textile manufacturing — particularly denim — was a driving force in her professional journey. Zheng recalls spending her school holidays alongside her mother and father in their workshop, and while she flirted with the idea of a career in banking, she instead learned the family business. Courtney Zheng the label officially launched in 2023, with style signatures that include razor-sharp…

BORN IN 1936, Yves Saint Laurent grew up in a house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Oran, Algeria, where his father managed an insurance company and owned a handful of cinemas. As a teenager, Saint Laurent became fascinated with the theatre — even creating a miniature stage set with a wooden crate and cardboard characters in costumes that he designed himself using fabric snipped from his mother’s dresses. In 1954, at age 18, he moved to Paris and studied fashion design at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Less than a year later, he met Christian Dior, who hired him on the spot as a studio assistant. After Dior’s sudden death in 1957, Saint Laurent, then 21, became the world’s youngest couturier. In 1960, he was…

A LOT CAN be learned about a clothing brand by who wears it. Take Miu Miu, the label overseen by Miuccia Prada, who is also the designer, with Raf Simons, at Prada. Many of those who clamour to wear Miu Miu today are not necessarily its intended audience. While Miu Miu officially trades in women’s clothes, its most recent surge in popularity is due, more specifically, to the men who are now seeking, buying and wearing it. “I wear Prada, but Miu Miu feels a bit more fun,” says Corey Stokes, 34, a stylist and a senior vice-president at Essence Ventures, the venture capital firm behind the Black media brand Essence. Over the past few years, Stokes has accumulated around 15 items from the brand, including a bejewelled tracksuit jacket,…

IN A LOFTY office in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, Shani Lechan gives her clients the hair of their dreams. It usually takes only a couple of weeks. In one room she offers initial consultations, taking their measurements and learning about their preferences. A few months later, they’ll visit a second room, where Lechan will make sure everything is the perfect fit. The Shani Wigs office is painted cream with a concrete-like finish, the moulding is elegant, the windows are floor-to-ceiling and there is a marble fireplace in the waiting room. Not far away, a tufted pink space cloud of a sofa provides a place for visitors to sit as they wait for an audience with the wigmaker. In this minimalist, Kardashianesque space, Lechan greets customers from around…

FOR THE FAMED Parisian jewellery company Van Cleef & Arpels, the world is a garden. Its beauty serves as a seemingly endless source of inspiration for the brand, which bends gold and cunningly crafts precious stones into stunning interpretations of nature. The latest update to the verdant Frivole collection, characterised by carefully positioned floral displays, captures this spirit of beauty and renewal. Five new pieces have been added to the collection. There’s a bracelet in white gold with seven flowers, all set with diamonds. Offering a richer hue is a set of rose gold jewellery: earrings and a pendant necklace with single blooms featuring a central diamond, and a between-the-finger ring with each terminal a diamond-set bloom. Arguably the most dazzling new addition is the 8 Flowers ring, a bouquet…

CHANEL’S PREMIÈRE SOUND is many things. Functionally, it’s a timepiece, a necklace and a pair of headphones all at once. Conceptually, it is so much more. It’s a curiosity, a frivolity and a profound statement about the nature of luxury in 2024, all at once. The Première Sound was first spotted draped around the neck of Chanel creative muse Jennie from the South Korean girl group Blackpink, and it quickly captured the hearts, minds and curiosity of the house’s faithful. The design, which sprung from the imagination of Arnaud Chastaingt, the director of Chanel’s Watchmaking Creation Studio, takes as its inspiration 2022’s Première Édition Originale watch, itself a reissue of the house’s first ever watch, from 1987, which references the iconic No. 5 fragrance bottle stopper and features a double…

QUESTIONS OF GENDER have become increasingly complex in the modern age, and the watch industry has not escaped this predicament. In 2022, for example, Zenith was moved to stop defining its watch collections along binary gender lines, preferring to classify them by case size instead. Yet not every brand has opted to shy away from gendered labelling. Chanel’s Monsieur de Chanel line is, as the name makes explicit, a collection primarily aimed at men. And if you are going to design a watch that’s unapologetically skewed towards a male audience, what’s the logical colour to make it? The answer, of course, is black. That’s because, whether you blame Darth Vader, Johnny Cash or the gang in “Reservoir Dogs”, men continue to be magnetised by a colour that has become supercharged…