Innehållsförteckning för issue 27 från The New York Times Style Magazine: Australia

WELCOME TO OUR annual travel issue, which explores not just the delights at the end of an overseas flight (though there are plenty of those), but also more personal journeys of the soul. On page 22, columnist Lance Richardson reveals how the writer Peter Matthiessen’s descriptions of self-imposed isolation in a monastery on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau inspired his own longing to escape to the silence and space of the Himalayas. Richardson made the bucket-list trek to Nepal’s Shey Gompa monastery and was struck by a thought that may or may not be put down to the altitude: “Maybe I should have abandoned my loved ones, my obligations, my whole life, in favour of eternal solitude in the Himalayas.” He didn’t — a fact for which we’re very…

More than just feats of micromechanical engineering, timepieces designed for women often suggest Modernist sculpture paired with the refined sensibility of fine jewellery. Over the decades, Cartier has played with shape and geometry like almost no other brand. One of its newest creations is a bangle called Reflection de Cartier, which, especially in this audacious yellow-gold version (it also comes in white gold studded with diamonds and in rose gold), squares the circle with a vengeance. The simple Roman numeral dial occupies one end of the open cuff; on the other, the gold is polished to a mirrored surface on which the delicate dauphine hands seem to move backwards, bending reality. Rarely has the mutability of time been expressed so elegantly. Reflection de Cartier watch, $63,500, cartier.com.au.…

IN A TENSE moment midway through Edward Berger’s recent movie “Conclave”, a pulpy thriller about the process of selecting a new pope, Isabella Rossellini, playing a nun named Sister Agnes, enters a room full of cardinals from around the world. A series of uncovered secrets and shifting alliances have turned this initially serene council into a rat’s nest of backstabbing, grandstanding, explaining, interrupting men. After asking permission to speak, Sister Agnes discreetly delivers a piece of information that will upend the papal election and expose some of the most powerful figures in the Roman Catholic Church to public, career-ending humiliation. Her short speech concluded, she bobs at the waist ever so slightly, giving a tiny curtsy whose performance of feminine deference is a put-down in itself. For the rest of…

IN THE FOOTHILLS of the Italian Alps, Villa Antonelli sits like a sugar cube on the western shore of Lake Como. Tommaso Spinzi, the Milan-based interior and furniture designer, recently completed a redecoration of the house, which was cast in concrete and covered in off-white plaster in 1959 by Luigi Zuccoli, a disciple of Guiseppe Terragni, one of the fathers of Rationalist architecture. But though Spinzi, 41, was born and raised in Como, where Italian Rationalism was also born, he confesses that it wasn’t until he started the project that he learned the extent to which the movement is entrenched in his hometown. The fascist dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini, approved of Rationalism’s formulaic approach to order and proportion, and one of the most important architectural examples of the style,…

IN 2022, SYLVAIN Berneron, an industrial designer by training, began sketching a gold watch with an unusual asymmetric silhouette — a bit like a circle that had been put through a wringer. After showing the sketch to a handful of potential suppliers, he named it the Mirage, because the piece seemed so unlikely to get made. “The only way I could make it happen was to pay 100 per cent of my order in advance — 750,000 Swiss francs with zero clients,” Berneron says by phone from the Swiss city of Neuchâtel, where he lives and where his brand, Berneron, has its headquarters. Generally known as a shaped watch, an industry category describing any timepiece that is not round, the Mirage takes its cues from the design of its hand-wound…

the writer Joan Lindsay’s 1967 historical fiction novel, “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, tells the story of a group of schoolgirls and their teacher inexplicably disappearing during a Valentine’s Day picnic at Hanging Rock, a real geological formation in Victoria. The novel negotiates many narrative themes: identity, societal expectations and the landscapes of colonial Australia, both explicitly and subtly, but perhaps most profoundly, it has become a cult classic — alongside Peter Weir’s 1975 film adaptation — for its portrayal of time. Lindsay’s characters wrestle with time — its fluidity, its inexorable march, its cyclicality — and their eventual surrender to fate. An oft-cited quote from the novel, “Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place”, reflects why Lindsay’s text still resonates in 2025: our fascination with temporal…

THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY, once concerned solely with surface-level aesthetics, has evolved into a more holistic pursuit of wellness, blending skincare with health, sustainability and mindfulness. Today, beauty is no longer just about what we apply to our skin; it’s about the choices we make for our bodies and our planet. This shift from “skin deep” to a broader, more integrated approach is redefining what it means to look and feel good. The Beauty Chef, founded by Carla Oates, has championed the concept of ingestible beauty and holistic wellness since its inception. The brand had its genesis in Oates’s daughter, the model Jeet Pavlovic’s, struggles with eczema and allergies (which Oates also experienced as a child). Adopting a gut-healing protocol involving fermented foods and the removal of “gut-compromising” ingredients such as…

IN 1906, THE Belgian lapidary and diamond dealer Alfred Van Cleef and his brother-in-law Salomon Arpels opened a jewellery boutique on the ground floor of the Hôtel de Ségur, an 18th-century private mansion in Paris’s First Arrondissement that had once belonged to a prominent winemaker. That same year, the pair produced one of their first custom orders: a scale model of the then-ultramodern Varuna of New York yacht that featured a yellow-gold double-masted deck and hull set in green, alabaster and crimson enamel on a sea of solid jasper. Meant to ornament a tabletop, it initially had an electric butler’s bell inside its funnel. Over the following decades, the house’s decorative objects and jewellery would return to their maritime iconography: a 1935 minaudière was adorned with a three-pronged platinum-and-diamond-encrusted clasp…

IN THE BARS and restaurants of Australia, 2024 was the year of the spicy margarita, the boozy soft drink and the rebirth of classic French and Italian restaurant chic. Not to mention a steady march of no- and low-alcohol options from beer to craft cocktails. So, what does 2025 have in store? Here are three key predictions for the year to come, with cocktail recipes for each to keep you ahead of the curve. See Ya, Spotify Since the streaming service Spotify was founded nearly 15 years ago, it’s become the go-to tool for hospitality soundtracks. But Spotify tends to favour a limited number of well-known songs, which can make the music at your favourite bar or cafe feel a bit “Groundhog Day”. If I hear the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy…

THE COVERS ARE what draw you in first, just as they were designed to do. They promise sex but, more strikingly, they promise shock — the jolt of the taboo, the sinful. They’re illustrations of women, usually two, sometimes more, often half-dressed or undressing, in slips and bras, a strap provocatively sliding down the curve of a shoulder. A knee is raised as a nylon stocking is tugged off. They generally seem to show dusky rooms; if a window is visible, it’s curtained because what has been happening inside is not for decent eyes to witness. The women might be lounging on a couch or, more daringly, on a bed with disarranged sheets. In those poses, they have much in common with their counterparts on the covers of any cheap…

TOP SPEED The TAG Heuer Carrera Chronosprint x Porsche Rallye pays tribute to one of motorsport’s most legendary moments: the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally. Inspired by the Porsche 911 “147” and its scorching 8.4-second sprint to 100 kilometres per hour, the limited-edition timepiece captures that same cocktail of precision and performance. A sleek black dial is accented with racing-inspired red details and features a nonlinear chronograph seconds display — a nod to vintage rev counters. Available in stainless steel and yellow gold, with only 911 and 11 numbered watches made, respectively. $15,250 (steel) and $36,550 (gold), tagheuer.com. SEEING GREEN For the Swiss watchmaker Hublot, innovation is never detrimental to artistry. The latest chapter in the brand’s Big Bang narrative, the Big Bang Tourbillon Automatic Green SAXEM, is a vibrant combination…