January 13, 2024
The Best
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No. 235
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In This Week’s Issue
FAME AND MISFORTUNE

When Ronald Reagan’s shooter revealed he’d attempted the assassination in order to impress Jodie Foster, the actress’s world descended into madness. Nancy Jo Sales talks with Foster about her fight for a normal life …

MINORITY REPORT

Aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric among the Black community is prompting a number of Jews to respond in kind. David Christopher Kaufman cuts to the core of the simmering Black-Jewish hostility …

SPANISH INQUISITION

A tell-all from an alleged ex has driven Queen Letizia of Spain and King Felipe VI’s William-and-Kate-esque marriage to the brink of tabloid hysteria, reports Joseph Bullmore …

FAILURE TO LAUNCH

Dana Brown tried shopping at Angelina Jolie’s new sustainable-fashion boutique, in NoHo, so you don’t have to—and found there’s nothing more sustainable than not being able to buy anything at all …

UNHOLY MATRIMONY

If you thought there was nothing left to learn about Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the tempestuous road show that was their marriages, think again, writes James Wolcott of Roger Lewis’s rollicking new book, Erotic Vagrancy …

WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE

Jeremy W. Peters reviews Swamp Monsters, a reporter’s superb account of how Florida governor Ron DeSantis rose to power—and why Trump was his kryptonite …

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

The designer Karl Lagerfeld owned more than 10 homes during his lifetime, one more grand than the next. A coffee-table book offers a sumptuous look inside all of them …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

A submersible super-yacht perfect for a Bond villain … the personal trainer who kept Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other Supreme Court justices on their toes … a German countess turned TikTok star’s inconvenient truth … how working hard—or appearing to—became cool … Lea Carpenter answers life’s most pressing questions … the world’s most luxurious train journeys … Cast your vote in this week’s Attention-Whore Index Poll! …

But First …
Issue No. 235

The View from Here Among the casualties of the Israel-Hamas war: harmony between Black and Jewish Americans

By David Christopher Kaufman
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
State of Affairs

Battle Royale In a warped tale of lust and betrayal befitting a telenovela, Queen Letizia of Spain’s former flame alleges that they had an affair during her marriage to King Felipe

By Joseph Bullmore
Photo Illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
Hollywood Lives

Jodie Foster’s Coming of Age The actress looks back at the time a shooter attempted to assassinate President Reagan on her behalf—and discusses the unexpected perks of being an older woman in Hollywood

By Nancy Jo Sales
Read On
Market Research

Waiting for Jolie With her new downtown boutique, Angelina Jolie may have created the most sustainable clothing store ever—by making it virtually impossible to shop there

By Dana Brown
Read On
Air Supply

Organized Affairs

The new year presents an oft-needed excuse to de-clutter your home—and perhaps even cleanse your mind in the process. Herewith, everything you need to achieve lasting peace and order, from French soap flakes to handwoven nesting baskets
Shop
Photo: ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images (Randall and Klugman)
Guest Edit

My Favorite Things For more than 25 years, Maria Cornejo has quietly appealed to smart sartorialists. Here, the New York designer shares her own enduring essentials, from the book she regularly re-reads to the perfect everyday pant

By Maria Cornejo
Shop
Photo: Carolina Isabel Salazar (Cornejo)
Small Talk
“Singing cowboy and notary public!”
“Singing cowboy and notary public!”
T.G.I.S.

The Attention-Whore Index Donald Trump is going big, or going to the Big House. Can anyone, even a ketamine-fueled Elon Musk, stop him from attracting all your attention? Plus, strange news from around the world

Read On
Super-yachts

“We’ve Been Waiting for You, Mr. Bezos” How to one-up your fellow Bond-obsessed billionaires

By David Crossland
Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop
Read On
Small Talk
“Oh, Gary, I wish you could see this.”
“Oh, Gary, I wish you could see this.”
Social Studies

Poor Little Reich Girl? Countess Lara Cosima Henckel von Donnersmarck gleefully paraded her lavish Euro-nobility lifestyle to a huge TikTok following, until it was wrongly suggested her ancestors had helped the Nazis

By Joseph Bullmore
Read On
Best
Wear Ole Andreas Devold Our affection for Devold, a heritage knitwear brand from Norway, is well documented. We rely on its wool sweaters, socks… Listen Joanna Lumley & the Maestro If anyone can make talking about classical music scintillating, it’s Joanna Lumley. The English… Read What Really Happens in Vegas What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Wrong. James Patterson and Mark Seal… Read Dressing the Part Twenty-five years later, it’s impossible to eat a Magnolia Bakery cupcake or sip on a Cosmopolitan, much less to carry a Fendi… Watch Fool Me Once The gods of streaming must love the novelist Harlan Coben, since the 12 (so far!) adaptations of his thrillers are all twisty… Watch Prayer for the French Republic Unless you read Marie Brenner’s 2015 article in Vanity Fair about the terrorist acts that drove… Wear Ole Andreas Devold Our affection for Devold, a heritage knitwear brand from Norway, is well documented. We rely on its wool sweaters, socks… Listen Joanna Lumley & the Maestro If anyone can make talking about classical music scintillating, it’s Joanna Lumley. The English… Read What Really Happens in Vegas What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Wrong. James Patterson and Mark Seal… Read Dressing the Part Twenty-five years later, it’s impossible to eat a Magnolia Bakery cupcake or sip on a Cosmopolitan, much less to carry a Fendi… Watch Fool Me Once The gods of streaming must love the novelist Harlan Coben, since the 12 (so far!) adaptations of his thrillers are all twisty… Watch Prayer for the French Republic Unless you read Marie Brenner’s 2015 article in Vanity Fair about the terrorist acts that drove…
Modern Times

Busy Is as Busy Does It used to be that doing nothing was the ultimate luxury. Now being productive—or looking it—is everything

By Elena Clavarino
Read On
Listen

What Is Angelina Jolie Hiding? On this week’s podcast, Dana Brown reveals how to sneak into her tightly guarded NoHo outpost

Read On
A Healthy Constitution

Balancing the Court Bryant Johnson, the go-to personal trainer for most of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, looks back at his run at the nation’s most exclusive gym

By Andrew Zucker
Read On
Food

Bread and Better Montreal’s dining heyday was long ago, but Patrice Demers’s astonishing new restaurant, Sabayon, is pointing to a great future

By Alan Richman
Read On
Open Book

Chez Karl A look inside the many homes of Karl Lagerfeld, from Paris to Rome, Biarritz to Lake Champlain

12
Karl Lagerfeld in his Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo, in Paris.
The Pavillon de Voisins, in Louveciennes, France. Lagerfeld christened this neoclassical, mid-19th-century country house the “Villa Louveciennes.”
Top, a bronze mask by Alexandre Kéléty and a pair of vases by Jean Dunand in Lagerfeld’s apartment on Place Saint-Sulpice, in Paris; above, the designer in his apartment on Rue de l’Université, in Paris.
Early-20th-century German advertising posters in the Villa Louveciennes.
Lagerfeld in his bedroom in the Villa La Vigie, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.
Lagerfeld in Le Roccabella, his Gio Ponti–designed apartment in Monte Carlo.
Lagerfeld’s bedroom in his Place Saint-Sulpice apartment.
Lagerfeld’s bed was complemented by a stratified-leather headboard attributed to Eugène Printz.
Lagerfeld in his Rue de l’Université apartment in the early 1960s.
The sitting room at Villa Louvecienne, with padded-velvet furniture attributed to Bruno Paul.
Lagerfeld’s office in his Place Saint-Sulpice apartment, furnished with chairs by Boivinet.
Lagerfeld at work on Place Saint-Sulpice.
Read On
Small Talk
“Sure, we live in a cave, but do we have to dress like we live in a cave?”
“Sure, we live in a cave, but do we have to dress like we live in a cave?”
Arts and Culture

Roman Halaby The Lebanese designer Gilbert Halaby made a name for himself in Rome with a charming jewelry-and-handbag atelier. Thirty years on, he’s also taken up his lifelong passion of painting

By Elena Clavarino
Read On
Books
James Wolcott On

Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

by Roger Lewis
Read On
Jeremy W. Peters On

Swamp Monsters: Trump vs. DeSantis―the Greatest Show on Earth (or at Least in Florida)

by Matt Dixon
Read On

Murder, They Wrote

by Lisa Henricksson
Read On
Close-up

Alexandra Shapiro A native New Yorker revives her family’s 1970s Upper East Side restaurant

By Nina Friend
Read On
Highlight
Frey House ll, the architect Albert Frey’s Palm Springs home, completed in 1964.

California Cool

The pioneering Swiss-born architect Albert Frey (1903–98) was known to welcome students, colleagues, neighbors, and seekers to the home he perched on a mountain foothill overlooking Palm Springs—known as Frey House II and completed in 1964—with a soft-spoken, egalitarian demeanor. Often appearing in a T-shirt and yoga pants, simplicity that echoed the aesthetic of the house, Frey was in tune with the desert sands and boulders that captured his imagination on his very first visit to the city, in 1934. READ ON

Frey House ll, the architect Albert Frey’s Palm Springs home, completed in 1964. Read On
On the Rails

Palace on Wheels $50,000 for a day trip, no problem—a window into the over-the-top rail holidays of the ultra-wealthy

By Elissa Hunter
Read On
Travel

Biarritz’s New Wave The French beach town was looking a little dusty until post-pandemic youth livened up the scene

By Alexander Lobrano
Read On
Small Talk
“It’s your turn to change him.”
“It’s your turn to change him.”
The Perfect Ending

Lea Carpenter

The novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer at Columbia Law School answers 49 of life’s most pressing questions
Read On
Eric Hanson’s Sketchbook
Ice-capades.
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In Memoriam

Peter Bogdanovich Duncan Hannah Douglas McGrath Richard David Story André Leon Talley

Issue No. 235
January 13, 2024
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Issue No. 235
January 13, 2024
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