Perhaps the ultimate exercise in personal branding, naming a baby can cause endless consternation for expectant parents. Some keep prospective names to themselves, lest friends and family barrage them with unsolicited opinions: “Really?! Agatha. Huh.“ Others turn to the experts—and pay up.
After one of India’s top government lawyers appeared to side with the British in a long-running dispute over the Kohinoor diamond—a colonial-era acquisition that is one of the most famous gems in Britain’s crown jewels—the Indian government scrambled to backtrack, saying it still wants the priceless rock back from the UK.
I will come right out and say it: I have expensive taste—a truly uncanny knack for gravitating toward the most ridiculously overpriced item in any establishment, be it a smoothie with raw cacao and cold-pressed coconut oil, or a cloud grey turtleneck sweater that evokes a sleeping baby alpaca.
Few purchases are as fraught as a diamond engagement ring. Frequently the most expensive accessory we ever buy, engagement rings carry the totemic weight of representing one’s love and commitment, and are meant to be timeless in their perfection as we gaze upon them forevermore. And yet, although the sellers of those diamond rings can rhapsodize endlessly over a ring’s design and the cut, clarity, color, and carat size of the rock inside it, it’s rare that they disclose that diamond’s origins. This despite the relatively common knowledge that diamonds have helped finance unspeakable violence in war-torn countries, lined the pockets of corrupt billionaires, and wreaked environmental havoc all over the world.
A new women-only ride-sharing service, Chariot for Women, is set to launch April 19 in Boston, Massachusetts. Surprisingly, its founder is not a former female passenger who felt unsafe in an Uber—as many of us have—but Michael Pelletz, an Uber driver who had a revelation when he felt threatened by a passenger.
In Braunau am Inn, Austria—a town of 17,000 just across the Inn River from Bavaria—a three-story, butter-yellow house has caused decades of consternation. It looks benign, but it was the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, and has plagued the residents of Braunau with indecision, shame, and stress ever since American troops prevented German soldiers from destroying the structure after the US army took Braunau in May 1945.
It was a grey afternoon in February when I gave Martin his diamond back. He was already waiting at a window-side table at the Gramercy Park Hotel when I arrived. It felt like it could snow at any second, but he was suntanned, just back from the British Virgin Islands. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.
This post has been updated.
Basel, Switzerland
It has not even been a year since the New York-based artist Kelly Beeman typed the “@” that would launch her career.
When the San Francisco-based apparel brand Everlane launched in 2011 with its simply designed t-shirts, ties, and bags in luxe materials, it could easily have been yet another e-commerce site seeking to “disrupt” the crowded market for high-end basic clothing.
For me, awards shows are all about the red carpet parade: Who is dripping in diamonds? Whose spray tan went wrong? Who is Ryan Gosling with? And most importantly, who is that dress by?
This post has been updated.
Mona Kowalska has a smart, measured approach to running her small business, which is reflected in its very name: A Détacher (translation: to detach). Kowalska’s company happens to be a New York City-based fashion label—a sector that’s not exactly known for its healthy balance—which makes her 17-year run of sustaining a boutique and wholesale business, sanity and integrity intact, all the more admirable. In a culture where the pressure to produce bigger! faster! more! is relentless, Kowalska purposefully keeps her business at a size that’s manageable for her—and her management style is one many of us could learn from.
A diamond is carbon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth. But as anyone who has ever shopped for, admired, or worn a diamond can tell you, there’s a lot more to them than just a tetrahedal crystalline structure of atoms.
This post has been updated to include comments from Waris Ahluwalia and Aeromexico.
By now, many of us have at least seen the trailer for The Revenant, with Leonardo DiCaprio cast as Hugh Glass, a fur trapper and hunter who embarks on a mission for vengeance after being left for dead by his cohorts in the wake of a bear attack. As it turns out, Hugh Glass was a real guy who had a pivotal role in the westward expansion of the fur trade, and by extension, America. And he was even more of a badass than we see in the movie—though not for the reasons you might expect.
Vogue’s beloved creative director, Grace Coddington, is stepping down, Business of Fashion reported this morning. She has held the post for nearly 30 years.
I first encountered David Bowie in the basement of my friend Catherine’s house. Catherine was my “David Bowie friend”: a first-grade fan-girl, one year my senior. The majority of our activities—pretend games, dance parties, sleepovers—revolved around Labyrinth, the 1986 Jim Henson musical starring Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King.
This year’s Golden Globes, hosted by Ricky Gervais, felt disjointed, off the mark, and not entirely comfortable. Gervais’s humor was edgy, to be sure, but lacking the refreshing, progressive air that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have brought in recent years. Instead, the incessant bleeping out of racy comments made some speeches incomprehensible; drunk guys rambled; and Mel Gibson made an inexplicable eleventh-hour appearance.
Speaker Paul Ryan, like so many of us on social media, is not immune to Instagram-ing his own haircut. In this case, Ryan felt compelled to share the news that he shaved the “beard” he made a big deal about growing in November.
Donald Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson appeared on CNN this week wearing a fetching necklace made of real bullets in gold, silver, and, um, gunmetal tones. Lest viewers think this was solely a fashion statement and not a political one, Pierson, responding to CNN correspondent Jim Sciutto on Twitter after he inquired about the necklace following the Dec. 29 segment, referenced the Second Amendment.
The hardest part of changing your life is getting started.
