A New “Cultural Biography” on Karl Lagerfeld Illuminates the Person Behind the Image
Few people in history have managed to maintain an image as precise and immutable as that of the late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Invariably uniformed in jet-black sunglasses and high-collared white shirts, his hair always neatly pulled back and powdered white à la eighteenth century French bourgeoisie, Lagerfeld made of himself something of a walking portrait, over time reaching icon status. His nearly seven decade–long career was nothing short of revolutionary, from creating brand-defining collections for houses including Fendi and Chloé; to launching his eponymous Karl Lagerfeld label in 1984; to helming Chanel as creative director from 1983 until his death in early 2019—a period during which he wholly revitalized the legendary French house, propelling it into modernity.
Prolific and ubiquitous as he was, Lagerfeld’s uncompromising appearance lended him a mystique that few were able to permeate. By the end of his life, much of the world may have known who he was, but few ever truly knew him. In Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld (Harper Books), a new biography on the designer, out next week, the journalist William Middleton, who befriended Lagerfeld during his time as Paris bureau chief of the fashion magazines W and Women’s Wear Daily, sheds light on the person behind that facade. Beginning with Lagerfeld’s long-concealed childhood in Nazi Germany and continuing through his first years in Paris as an adolescent and on to his rise to international celebrity during his tenure at Chanel, Middleton presents an unprecedented panorama of the designer’s life and work. Along the way, via dozens of interviews with people ranging from Lagerfeld’s chauffeur and butler to the more elusive figures in his life—Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, author and social commentator Fran Lebowitz, film director Sofia Coppola, and actress Tilda Swinton among them—Lagerfeld’s values, aspirations, and even fears come into view. (The book’s release is fortuitously timed: This year’s Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, opening in May, will honor his legacy with the theme “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” Following Alexander McQueen in 2011 and Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, in 2017, Lagerfeld is only the third designer to become the focus of the annual thematic presentation.)
Here, Middleton discusses his concept of the book as a “cultural biography,” his personal relationship with Lagerfeld, and the mark the designer has left on the fashion world and on culture at large.
What was your overarching mission for the book? How did you want to portray Karl, his life, and his work?
From the beginning, I was thinking about this book as a “cultural biography.” I knew Karl starting in 1995, here in Paris, and I was always so struck by how completely connected he was with the culture of his time. He knew everything about everything that was going on, in art and architecture and design and music. So the idea was to write a book that tells the story of his life, that’s biographical, but that really has an emphasis on his intellectual and cultural development.
A big point you emphasize at the beginning of the book is the influence that the French eighteenth century and historical figures like the German diplomat Harry Kessler had on him. I appreciated that you set the stage with his adolescent influences, and how they inspired him later on.
Right. Even his interest in the French eighteenth century becomes more understandable when you explore where that began, when he’s sitting there as a boy in [1930s] Germany, in one of the darkest moments in history—a completely devastated country, morally, physically. Suddenly, he finds out about this incredible, glittering world—the world of eighteenth-century France—and he becomes obsessed with it for the rest of his life. If you’re surrounded by all of this darkness, and you read about this moment of enlightenment, of course that’s going to be appealing.
It was also interesting for me to think about the writers from that era who were important to him. Princess Palatine, for example. Karl wanted to write a biography about her at one point. He was so obsessed with her. Or [Henri de] Saint-Simon. Karl loved his voice. There are so many elements of the eighteenth century that were important to him. But I realized that, for someone who is sensitive and creative in the middle of such destruction and such dark times, when you hear about something like this, of course you’re going to be interested in it.
I loved that quote of his, “To be more French than the French, you have to be a foreigner,” because only an outsider can develop a love for the culture that’s purely aesthetic, and not driven by patriotism or chauvinism. And this adolescent fascination is really where that started.
Yes, exactly.
You write about how you and Karl developed a friendship during your time as Paris bureau chief of Women’s Wear Daily and W magazine. Can you describe that relationship? What compelled you to write his biography?
I first met Karl in January 1995. At that point, W and Women’s Wear Daily were two of the most important publications in the world of fashion. So something I tried to be fair about in the book is that we had a relationship that began as something that was mutually beneficial, in that I was a journalist, and it was my job to cover Paris. Karl was a major player in the city, so it was in my interest to cultivate him. Meanwhile, I represented two magazines that were important for him, so it was important for him to cultivate me. I just think it’s important to be clear on that. But then, also, you can tell when you have a relationship that begins in that way, that becomes more of a friendship, and that’s what happened. We worked a lot together over the years, and I was able to see that we did have a friendship. Karl was a worker, and I think he enjoyed people who were workers—he surrounded himself with people who really worked hard. I think he appreciated that in me.
I also try to be honest about the fact that I was not one of Karl’s best friends, but we were friendly. Then, to complicate things a little, I left Paris in 2000, and I moved back to New York. Then I moved down to Texas, to work on my first book [Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John de Menil]. So I was away from here for nineteen years. During that time, I would see Karl from time to time, and I would do a story, and I would interview him. He even came to Texas one time when Chanel did a show in Dallas. I saw him there. Then, interestingly, the last time I saw Karl was December of 2016 in Paris, at this public event or fundraiser that is done every year during that time. He knew that I was working on this book in Texas, and I said to him, “I just want you to know that that book is going to be done. And it’s going to be good. And after it comes out, I want to talk with you about the idea of maybe doing something together.” And he said, “Huh, huh…” You know, he didn’t say no, but he certainly didn’t say yes. Also, I didn’t know it at that point, but he had already been suffering from cancer for about a year. So the last thing he wanted to do was to let someone in when he’s trying to shield everyone around him from that knowledge.
When Karl died in February 2018, I knew that he did not want to have a book about himself when he was alive. But when someone dies, maybe it sounds kind of callous to say this, but they become a historical figure. And I think he was too important of a person to not explore his life. It took a while to build relationships with people who were close to him, I think because a lot of people were protective of him and of his legacy, and knew that he didn’t want to focus too much on that when he was alive. For example, with my relationship with Chanel, it took a while to make them feel comfortable with the project and for them to see that it was a serious book. But they have been very helpful in providing unprecedented access to archival documents, and members of the national archives have very graciously fact-checked every version of this manuscript. They’ve done a very thorough job, and they’ve been very positive about the results.
Of course, when writing a biography, you come to know a person quite intimately. Has writing the book altered your perception of Karl at all from when you knew him personally? Or was it more of a magnification of what you knew?
There are definitely things that I learned about Karl. I’ve seen him differently in some ways. For instance, what we were saying about his interest in the eighteenth century, I have a deeper understanding now of where that comes from. One of the things I learned, which sounds like such a small piece of information, is that I knew that Karl always lied about his age, that he always shaved five years off of his age. But it wasn’t until I asked Gerhard Steidl, who worked with him for three decades as a publisher, about that issue. And he told me, “I don’t know if it was just because I was young, or because I was just starting out with Karl, but I decided to ask him, ‘Why do you always shave five years off your age? Why do you say you were born in 1938 when you were really born in 1933?’ And Karl answered, ‘I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I was born in the year when Hitler started his project of killing the Jewish population of Germany. And I did not want to be connected to that year.’” No one had ever asked him that—or he certainly had never responded in that way—so that was revelatory for me.
I think we all shade our story a little. So it was fun to discover that certain things were not entirely accurate. For instance, Karl always said that he was self-educated, which in a general sense is true, in terms of his historical knowledge, in terms of his literary knowledge. But I found through this amazing resource—a 1954 notebook that his mother put together from the year that he won the [International] Woolmark Prize—that he went to this fashion illustration school, the Cours Norero. No one had ever heard of the Cours Norero. No one had ever associated Karl with it. He was not a student there for a long time—it was for less than a year. But it was important for his development, and he always maintained a relationship with Madame [Andrée] Norero [Petitjean]. He invited her to his shows, he went to her funeral. This was a really important moment in his life that he never talked about.
Yeah, I definitely picked up on those little pieces. There are a lot of really interesting details of how he was shaping his narrative.
Right. And there are some things that are not knowable in real life. For example, to be honest, one thing that I have a hard time bringing into focus is his mother. When Karl recounts these incredibly harsh things that his mother said, they sound exactly like things that Karl would have said. Then there’s that one quote from a friend of Karl saying that she was like an ice pick. Then others say that she was incredibly cultured and charming. Others say she just kind of drifted through in the background. I think all I can do is put on the page what I know, and people can decide for themselves.
Was there an aspect of Karl’s life that you were most concerned with doing justice, or, in other words, about getting just right? Was there a certain aspect of his character or worldview that you were intent on getting across to the reader?
One of the biggest challenges is that Karl was so effective at crafting his public persona. He has this incredible image, and [as a biographer], you can just focus on the image. But my editor gave me the most incredible piece of direction. It might sound really obvious, but at the beginning of this process, she said, “We want to feel like we’re in the same room with Karl.” No one had ever given me that exact direction before, and it was super helpful because we don’t want to just look at the image. The image of Karl is there, and you see it throughout, but you really want to get to the person behind that image. You really want to be there with him. And the way to do that is through his words, and it’s also through interviews with people who knew him really well, and were in the room with him. I think that was the overarching biggest challenge: to get behind the mask, and to really look at the person.
Another thing that was important is that, while I have worked at fashion magazines, I’m not a fashion writer. My first perception of Karl, when I knew him in the nineties, was that there were other designers that were more important in terms of fashion, but that Karl was more important in terms of the culture. So I began this project thinking that, but the more research I did, and the more I looked at interviews with him in the sixties, reviews in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties before he even joined Chanel in 1983, I saw how important he was considered, decades before he started at Chanel, which is when everyone thinks he really established his reputation. When Karl started at Chanel, some people reacted with, “What is this German designer doing at Chanel? It’s outrageous: a German designer, a French institution.” But by the time I finished reading all of these reviews and studying all of this [material] from people who are fashion critics, I realized, of course Karl is going to Chanel. It just seems obvious to me when you really study where he was, and where he’d been for a long time. So that was interesting for me, to try to get his significance as a fashion designer right.
And what he did at Chanel is remarkable. No one had ever done that before: reinvigorated a historical house that was essentially bankrupt, and turned it into such a thriving force. It’s been done since, but he was really the first one to do it. And that is already fascinating. And then, in 2004, with H&M, he fused this idea of high fashion with the power of the mass market, and turned himself into, intentionally or not, a kind of global superstar. Up to that point, Karl was what might be called “fashion famous,” but after that, he was known by everyone, every socioeconomic level, every age group, all over the world.
You interviewed a wide swath of characters from Karl’s world for the book. Which of your interviews shed the most light on Karl’s inner life? Was there anything you learned from these conversations that surprised you?
Two interview subjects that were essential are Michel Gaubert, who did the music for all of Karl’s shows from 1989 until he died in 2019, and Stefan Lubrina, who did all the sets for Chanel, and for every show that Karl did. Both of those interviews are fascinating, because, particularly once Karl was doing Chanel shows at the Grand Palais in Paris, they were these incredible shows that were covered all around the world, that made news on the BBC and news programs everywhere. But those didn’t just happen. It was a team that made them happen. So to really speak with Stefan Lubrina about the way that he worked with Karl to develop these ideas was fascinating. There’s a little moment that I love with one of the most spectacular shows they did. Karl said, “I want to do a show with a rocket,” and Stefan is thinking about it: “So there has to be a launching pad, and then what’s going to happen?” And then eventually, he says, “Karl, well, I think the rocket has to lift off,” and Karl says, “Well, of course it has to lift off.” But he didn’t say that at the beginning. It’s been said that that’s the way they would work. They had this kind of collaboration, this thought process, and they would spend nine, ten months on a twelve- or fifteen-minute show. The show with the rocket was news all around the world, and not just fashion news. It was, “Chanel now has a rocket taking off at a show at the Grand Palais.”
So many people who were close to Karl in a specific area of his life, or at a specific time, brought something interesting to the book. The Anna Wintour interview is important when it comes to Karl as a designer, but she also shows a very human side of Karl. She talks about how sad and how difficult the last show that he did in New York in December 2018 was, because it was clear that he was very sick. He died two months later. Or there’s Silvia Venturini Fendi, who knew Karl from the time she was five years old, I believe. She was the last person to talk with him on the telephone the night before he died, and they were still talking about the Fendi show that was happening in two or three days in Milan, and they were trying to find a way to get him there.
Some of the people who were around Karl on a daily basis were the people who were most interesting for me, like Sébastien Jondeau, his right-hand man, bodyguard, and chauffeur, who was with him when he died. To try to do justice to that relationship was important for me. The butler, Frédéric Gouby, was super interesting, too, because again, he was there every day, and he really gives you a sense of what Karl was like when he was off-stage. Even someone like Françoise Caçote, who oversees Choupette, Karl’s cat. I think she helped me to see the significance that Choupette had, and what she really meant to Karl. When I thought about it, I realized that he hadn’t had an emotional relationship like that since Jacques de Bascher died.
I loved all the details about Choupette, and that quote where Karl says, “I don’t have any boss other than myself and Choupette.” It really goes to show how important she was to him.
There’s that moment from Silvia Venturini Fendi, where she said she would get a little text from Karl with a picture of Choupette: “Choupette says good morning,” “Choupette says good night.” And she’s like, of course it wasn’t Choupette, it was Karl. But Karl could sometimes have a hard time expressing his emotions. And Choupette was a way for him to say you’re a part of my little family. To me, that’s lovely.
This year’s Costume Institute exhibition is dedicated to Karl. You mentioned earlier that Karl didn’t want a book released about him during his life, and he also adamantly refused to attend the opening of his own retrospective toward the end of his career. In reference to his own death, he even once said: “My own grave? Quelle horreur! Burnt—tossed—done! I hate the idea of burdening people with remains. Just get out of town—disappear. I admire these animals that just go off into virgin forest—when it’s over, it’s over.” I’m wondering, given these views, how do you think he would react to these grand tributes this year?
Had he been alive, he would’ve been horrified. But he also said that [Cristóbal] Balenciaga and [Coco] Chanel never had retrospectives while they were alive, but he wasn’t opposed to Balenciaga and Chanel retrospectives, because retrospectives clarify their significance as a designer. So I think that Karl now would probably approve. He worked hard, and he felt like designers who focus on their recent past while they’re alive are sort of admitting that it’s all over—that there’s something funereal about that. That’s what he didn’t want. That’s actually where the title of the book comes from: the fact that he’s completely focused on the present.
What do you think Karl will be most remembered for?
I think he will be remembered for what he did at Chanel, and for having turned himself into almost an avatar—for having become a public figure that creates as much interest as his work. As far as his work at Chanel—he was also incredibly successful at Chloé, incredibly successful at Fendi, and eventually, Karl Lagerfeld, his own brand, became incredibly successful as well, and still is—but I think that the idea of taking the spirit of an older, historic house and making it modern in a way that is historically accurate, and playful, and exciting, is an idea that really began with Karl.
Then there’s what he did with his own persona. I mention this [anecdote] in the acknowledgments where he’s being photographed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and he has to leave to go into the other room to have his hair and makeup touched up, and he says, “Time to go freshen up the marionette!” That’s someone who’s very conscious of the effect that they’re having, and that it’s an act, and that it’s a persona that they’ve created. I think those, for me, are the two biggest lessons from Karl: how to reinvigorate a historic house like Chanel, and [how he invented] his own character.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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Nearly 150 years ago, on April 14, 1876—the eleventh anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death—Frederick Douglass spoke befDouglass said, “I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spi
For Lesley Lokko, plurality comes naturally. Born in Scotland to a Ghanaian father and a Scottish mother, and moving freThe Laboratory of the Future,” she’s bringing exactly this outlook to the main exhibition. On view from May 20 through Nov. 26, the six-part presentAfrican Futures Institute in Accra, a new architecture school and research institute that, as with her Biennale show, positions Africa as a labor
Jonah Takagi comes across as laid-back and casual, but the truth is, he keeps pretty busy. The bulk of his time is splithis namesake design studio, and Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches a Herman Miller–inspired furniture design course at the Rhode Island Sc
For the past 20 years, Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been teaAwe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin Press).
From its classic swoosh logo, to its signature Air Jordan silhouette, to its legendary “Just Do It” tagline, to its recent 50th anniversary video short by Spike Lee, Nike knows how to expertly engineer and craft its brand down to the tiniest detail, and how to subtly zoom out and in
Marina Koren, who covers science and space exploration as a staff writer for The Atlantic, realizes her job doesn’t sound real. “But I promise it is,” she says. “When I tell people I’m a ‘space reporter,’ they
When Janet Malcolm first wrote for The New Yorker in 1963, her debut wasn’t in the form of the piercing prose she became known for, but instead a slim poem titled “Thoughts on Living in a Shaker House.” On the surface, it may seem an odd starting point for Malcolm, who would become one of the foremost writers about—andNew Yorker staff writer until her death, on June 16, 2021, at age 86. But the poem’s lines are indeed pure Malcolm: plainspoken, cu
Anne Helen Petersen resides on Lummi Island, a small land mass in the Puget Sound seven minutes off the coast of WashingThe Tome, the island’s newsletter, which arrives in their (physical) mailboxes once a month.
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, and with it, the lockdowns of March 2020, I sat at home in Brooklyn Heights, alone,
The old’s been rung out, the new’s been rung in. We’re now all looking out on the year ahead, thinking about what it migthe tide turning on travel restrictions and peace of mind slowly being restored to the masses. 2023 is forecast to be the year when, for better or worse, travel will make a full return to its pre-pandemic patterns.
It’s a late afternoon in early November, nearing dusk, and I’m sitting with Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic, inside the West Village outpost of Daily Provisions, a café from the New York City restaurateur Dawrote about another Meyer establishment, Union Square Cafe, unpacking the implications of the then-new location and layout of the l
That the first work of art I saw during this year’s Miami Art Week was a newscast seems somehow appropriate in our precaage of misinformation and sped-up media ecosystem?” the artists behind it, from the civic-engagement coalition For Freedoms, appeared to be asking. “And really, what’s t
What’s the purpose of a museum—and who decides which objects are worthy of value, attention, and care? These two questioYoung Lords and Their Traces” at the New Museum, the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’s first-ever museum survey exhibition to be staged in New Y
Home is unequivocally where the heart is. But in a world that far too often embraces soulless or downright bland furnituSight Unseen, comes in.
In February 2009, some 500 miles above the Siberian tundra, a defunct Russian satellite and a U.S. communication satelli
While the Danish design firm HAY is just celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, it has achieved a rarefied place in
It’s a serene, bluebird-sky day, a slight chill in the air, and I’m walking with the Paris-based, Austrian-born designerSculpture Gallery, a transfixing space of light and shadow built in 1970 that’s home to works by artists including Michael Heizer, Robert
Ever Heard of Noh Theater? Our Primer to Three Major Productions Arriving in New York City This Fall
Two winters ago, I picked up a copy of Penguin Classics’ Japanese Nō Dramas, a volume of two dozen translations by Royall Tyler I’d been meaning to read since tearing through Yukio Mishima’s Five Modern Noh Plays a decade previous. I had moved into a New York City gem (an apartment with a fireplace), and with Covid cases skyrocketi
As changes in weather patterns, economic realities, and public perception have triggered a wave of climate consciousness over the past few years, renewable energy sources have enjoyed a newfound level of attention, no longer relegated to thlong-sputtering industry of solar power. Factoids like how an hour and half worth of sunlight hitting the earth could provide the world’s total energy consumption in a year have been employed to tease out the industry’s transformative power for decades. Now, with technological advances makincheaper and more efficient than ever, it seems better poised than ever to take on a greater role in weaning humanity off of its fossil fuel and coal depende
Since 1997, when she founded her eponymous (now shuttered) gallery, Elizabeth Dee has been a fixture of the New York artIndependent Art Fair. An elegant, tightly curated event that remains an outlier in its efforts to elevate overlooked, underrepresented, and
What does it mean to revisit a photograph? When a camera shutters, it locks a moment in time, forever trapping the imageGathered Leaves, the latest book by the Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth, whose work has long documented lonely souls and fractured dreams in spaces across the United States. In Gathered Leaves, Soth revisits five of his previous books, including in its pages new notes, annotations, text excerpts, and even photo
In 2016, a stampede of people flooded the streets of Taipei, stopping garbage trucks and buses in the wake of their single-minded pursuit. What unifi
Kate Berry’s glowing personality transmits what she seems to desire most: a breath of fresh air, and time to care for her myriad plants; raise her 9-year-old daughter, Quinn; or host intimate dinner parties for friends on the garden-covered terrace of her Domino and of the food, wine, and travel magazine Saveur, Berry has interactions with media that, due to her demanding schedule, tend to be brief and light—and meaningful. She lives her work, which leaves plenty of time for creating media, but not so much for taking it in. As she puts it, “You don’t
Consider the flower. What image blossoms to mind? What emotion does it elicit? For centuries, flowers have persisted as Flora Photographica: The Flower in Contemporary Photography (Thames & Hudson), out August 30, editors William Ewing and Danaé Panchaud compose a selection of vibrant modern floral
Lush fruit trees bursting over a roof. A canopy of plants covering a facade. Intricate bamboo constructions spiraling frVõ Trọng Nghĩa: Building Nature (Thames & Hudson), readers get an inside look into how the celebrated architect has embraced two core themes throughout
As the director of archives and brand heritage at the Michigan-based furniture powerhouse Herman Miller—now known as MilIni Archibong.
The climate writer and essayist David Wallace-Wells has a knack for translating the unimaginable into the painfully realarticle for New York magazine and subsequent book of the same name, The Uninhabitable Earth, played a critical role in jolting the conversation, detailing the varied plagues and, finally, apocalyptic conditions The New York Times, who added him to their Opinion section, where he has begun a weekly newsletter to reflect on the latest in our Anthropocene Age.
“A forest in Norway is growing.” So begins the cryptic text printed on a certificate for the Future Library, or Framtidsbiblioteket, an artwork by Scottish artist Katie Paterson that, over the span of a century, cumulatively builds a collection of wri
At New York’s Lisson Gallery, an unfettered approach to sculpture is the driving force behind a new group exhibition. OnThe Odds Are Good, The Goods Are Odd” presents the work of 11 groundbreaking New York City–based contemporary artists. In the exhibition, sculptures are a m
Earlier this year, Burkina Faso–born Diébédo Francis Kéré became the first African, and the first Black architect, ever
Rising from a patch of spiny ornamental grass on New York’s High Line park, a 9-foot-tall tornado spins in place, whirliWindy”, a new (and first-ever) sculpture by the Moroccan-born, New York–based artist Meriem Bennani, installed near West 23rd2 Lizards” (2020), made with filmmaker Orian Barki and launched on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, depicted the bewilderi
“We think we invent things and create things and define ourselves by ourselves, but that’s not the whole story,” BaratunAmerica Outdoors, a six-part travel series that premiered last week on PBS. Thurston—a writer, comedian, and podcaster who has advised tThe Daily Show, and authored the best-selling memoir How To Be Black—has a knack for navigating nuanced conversations around race, culture, politics, and technology, framing these discussi
The jagged spine of the Rocky Mountains is too beautiful to mar. Yet over the years, developers and builders have manageBuckminster Fuller, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eliot Noyes, and Eero Saarinen completed commissions in the Western United States, transforming it into a hub for architectural modRocky Mountain Modern: Contemporary Alpine Homes (Monacelli Press).
A recurring theme in design critic Alexandra Lange’s work is unpacking how—and for whom—objects and spaces are designed.The Dot-Com City, and surveyed how kids’ toys and physical environments impact their development in her 2018 book, The Design of Childhood. The ways in which outdoor public spaces, with their basketball courts, playgrounds, and skate parks, fail teen girls wa story she wrote for Bloomberg CityLab—one of many publications she has contributed to over the past two-plus decades.
Time standards are one of the many seemingly invisible societal constructs we interact with every day but seldom ponder.Mountain / Time,” the show is a nod to both the local time zone in Aspen, Mountain Standard Time (MST)—which the writer and critic Kylehas hailed for its “apartness” and “sense of detachment from the economic and cultural centers of the nation”—and the conceptual d
Detroit is a city of craft. Of carmakers and Carhartt. Of Motown Records and Eminem. Of iconic midcentury design (Isamu Noguchi’s Hart Plaza and Dodge Fountain, buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Minoru Heidelberg Project. So it’s fitting that, following previous iterations in Copenhagen, last fall, and in Turin, Italy, last month, the Freits latest “Hermès in the Making” exhibition (through June 15). A playful, Willy Wonka factory–like presentation of the company’s know-how, the display offers “an o not to smile while walking through it. Divided into four sections—”A Culture of Traditional Craftsmanship,” “High-Quality Msecret!” Beyond, stations feature artisans in saddle-stitching, porcelain painting, gemstone setting, glove-making, leather wor
Emerging from the pandemic, the design industry, like most of us, has changed. The past two and a half years, which havean increasingly pressing climate crisis, have formed a solemn backdrop. In March 2020, almost at once, in the locked-down lives of many, the notion of “home” a
The concept of the Golden Age was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod, around 700 B.C., in a refereDesign Miami Basel (June 14–19), taking place at the Swiss city’s Messeplatz. Organized around the theme “The Golden Age: Rooted in the Pa
In her new book, Generation Dread, author and researcher Britt Wray delves into the psychological consequences of the climate crisis. Combining scientifi
May’s colors, textures, and sense of renewal seem to be essential ingredients in Paris-based artist Alexandre Benjamin Navet’s exuberant work. A self-described “spring and summer boy,” his expressive drawings—often made in watercolor or oil pas
How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in theThe Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the UnEp. 52 of our Time Sensitive podcast)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences
In 1938, two years after completing one of his first realized public artworks, “History Mexico,” a sculptural, colored chis namesake museum in Long Island City, Queens, which he founded in 1985).
In the early 1860s, an advertisement in The New York Times offered $10,000 to anyone who could invent a new material for billiard balls. At the time, elephant ivory was the matercamphor, a waxy substance found in the wood of the camphor laurel tree. Though celluloid would later prove to be less than idea
Think about the last time you felt a sense of awe about the world. Perhaps you were hiking among trees in a lush forest,
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs (one-of-a-kind digital assets created using blockchain technology), have divided the art woEp. 59 of our Time Sensitive podcast), see them as pathways to a promising future, while others express concern around the sky-high price points and carbon emissions they generate.
A sobering 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization laid out the striking impacts industrial animal agriculture has
At 35, Maggie Doyne is the mother of more than 50 children. One is her biological child, who lives with Doyne, her husbaBetween the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother’s Story of Hope and Love (Harper Horizon), out last month. Through telling her extraordinary story, she demonstrates the life-altering power of
For most of the 20th century, breaking a sweat was seen as unladylike. Popular opinion considered working out dangerous
One afternoon in February of 1966, Stewart Brand took half a tab of LSD, sat on a rooftop in San Francisco’s North Beach
Eating ramen is a multisensory experience: the fragrant steam coming off of the broth, the slurping sound of enjoying thThe Art of the Ramen Bowl” (March 18–July 5) that’s on view at the Los Angeles location of Japan House, an initiative with additional hubs in Londonburi, the porcelain receptacles in which ramen is traditionally served, and renge, the compact, teardrop-shaped spoons that often accompany them, made by 30 leading artists, architects, and designers.
Anicka Yi’s intoxicatingly sensory installations don’t just surround the viewer—many of them literally permeate the body, their sEp. 14 of our At a Distance podcast), in which three industrial steel tanks saturate the air with an aroma concocted by fusing secretions from carpenter an
Integrative nutritionist Daphne Javitch helps people develop their versions of a healthy life—a potentially daunting tasDoing Well, Javitch, a former womenswear consultant at Theory and Uniqlo, offers private health and career coaching as well as groEp. 46 of our At a Distance podcast.)
Born in Grandin, North Dakota, in 1904, the artist Clyfford Still was among the first generation of Abstract Expressioni
In a single word, how does the future make you feel? A towering sculpture by architect Suchi Reddy, founder of the New Y
Darrin Alfred, the curator of architecture and design at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), has wrangled subjects as mesmerizi
Thick, wobbly lines branch out across a wall of Pace Gallery’s global headquarters in New York. Follow each stroke to itwomen, grandpas, and singers craning toward the ceiling, and donuts, hairs, and holes reaching into the ground. Part absurdist diagram, part heart-melting poem, and part consciousness-shifting artwork, thiDavid Byrne: How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic” (on view Feb. 2–March 19), a restorative survey of drawings the musician has made over the past two decades.
With their audacious, gravity-defying forms, skyscrapers have captured the public’s imagination for more than a century.Skyscraper Page, a zany website with a skyscraper discussion forum that has spread to some 100,000 threads. But what’s the point of obs