On an afternoon this spring, Rony Elka Vardi and Leigh Batnick Plessner stood outside the Bedford Avenue storefront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that for years was a location of their jewelry boutique, Catbird. The cramped space, now a cafe serving coffee and Argentine pastries, has little more than 200 square feet. “It’s even tiny for a…
At the award ceremony for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève last November, one winner provoked a few double takes. The victor among six finalists in the annual design competition’s Challenge category which, last year, focused on watches priced at 2,000 Swiss francs, ($2,203) or less, was the Millesime Automatic Small Seconds, a 39.5-millimeter vintage-inspired…
In cooking, timing is everything. So much so that if the chef Kei Kobayashi spots diners heading to the restroom as he sends a dish out from the kitchen, he stops them. Nature’s call can wait; his culinary offerings should be tasted at peak flavor. Such imperiousness and exactitude align with what Mr. Kobayashi, the…
The video shows Asa Akira lying on the bed, naked from the hips down, with her legs splayed open. Her hair is thrown into a messy bun. Then she reaches for some lubricant and a long, curved device. “You might want to insert it,” she says, “but that’s not the idea.” The device is a…
It took Guillaume Laidet and Théo Auffret four weeks to raise a million dollars for what they called their “neo-futuristic horology” watch company. And a split second to lose it. Having funded their project on Kickstarter, the two Frenchmen readied their first Argon watch for delivery in the summer of 2023, investing half of the…
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, debuted an Instagram account on Thursday that announced a new venture, American Riviera Orchard, which appears to be a kitchen and lifestyle brand. Little is known about the brand beyond a 15-second video that features grainy footage of Meghan arranging roses and hydrangeas, posing from afar in a black gown and…
For even those who have only a passing interest in golf, one of the sport’s most memorable images is of Tiger Woods playing his way to another major tournament victory while wearing a red polo shirt with a white Nike swoosh. That image is officially in the past, however. In January, Mr. Woods announced the…
About half an hour after the Area show ended in New York on Super Bowl Sunday, Taylor Swift appeared in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas wearing a pair of the brand’s “crystal slit jeans” — a high-waist denim style sliced diagonally at the center of each thigh, the patently faux “rip” framed by diamanté. It…
