I apologize that the New and Noteworthy post for May is late this month. Even though I had all the recommendations put together, I didn’t have the necessary time to write the post. But it’s so chock full of good stuff that I hope you will consider it worth the wait.

Everyone’s favorite Chicago store, Jayson Home, has set up shop on the 7th floor of Bergdorf Goodman where you can shop their “sublime mix of vintage and modern goods” until August 19, 2024

A lot of brands have also decamped to the Hamptons this summer. The Row (above) has opened a new store at 216 Main Street in Amagansett that was the old location of Tiina.

Khaite has opened a shop at 47 Newtown Lane in East Hampton for all your cool girl clothing needs.

British retailer ME+EM is making more inroads in America with a new store at 7 Newtown Lane in East Hampton too.

TWP has taken over the old Ryland space at 155 Main Street where you can find classic sportswear pieces like buttondowns, trousers, and shirtdresses.

Los Angeles design duo Nickey Kehoe have returned to their NYC roots by opening a new home store at 49 East 10th Street.

J.Crew has returned to Soho with a new store at 75 Spring Street for all your summer fashion needs.

Le Château de ma Mère is one of my favorite stores in Paris and owner Sophie Douzal has opened a new location in Provence at 16 Rue Carnot, Place Favier, Saint-Rémy de Provence. Makes perfect sense since the brand is Provençal inspired.

Maria de la Orden just had her second baby so she probably won’t be coming to NYC herself but her chic and colorful brand will be here until June 11, 2024 at 228 Mott Street. Hours are Monday to Sunday 11:00am to 7:00pm.

The chic Swedish it brand Toteme just opened a new modernist flagship store in Los Angeles in case you find yourself in the City of Angels.

We are also getting a Toteme store and a Khaite store uptown at the corner of 69th and Madison. I will keep you posted on when they are open.

Zara Home has taken over the old Conran shop location at 117 rue de Bac in Paris for their latest concept store. It will carry furniture, home goods, workout clothing, and more and also includes a cafe and flower shop. It’s right next to Le Bon Marché so you have no excuse not to stop by.

I’m glad I attended the press preview for Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art because I’m sure it’s going to be a very popular exhibition this summer. You must sign up for the virtual queue when you arrive via a QR code and once your time arrives, you will travel a single path in one direction to view the garments on display from the museums Costume Institute. It’s also an interactive in part with scents and even scratch and sniff walls. It runs through September 2, 2024.

Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until September 8, 2024.

A celebrated member of the French Impressionists, Pennsylvania-born Mary Cassatt challenged the conventional expectations of Philadelphia’s elite. In Paris, Cassatt committed herself to a career as a professional artist and made the social, intellectual, and working lives of modern women a core subject of her prints, paintings, and pastels. Though recognized in her lifetime for her intimate depictions of women and children, Cassatt has yet to be appreciated for her serious engagement with the realities of gender and labor in her portrayal of other traditionally feminine activities, such as embroidery, reading, or making social appearances.

These depictions lie at the heart of Mary Cassatt at Work, which will present over 130 diverse works that follow the artist’s evolving practice and demonstrate her interest in the “serious work” of artmaking. The exhibition will present new findings about the materials she used and her processes—which were advanced for her era—as it coincides with a detailed technical study of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s significant Cassatt holdings.

Mary Cassatt at Work is the first major showing of the artist’s oeuvre since 1998–99. By considering her professionalism, her biography, and the wider Parisian world she inhabited, a richer and more complex picture of Cassatt develops, inviting contemporary conversations about gender, work, and artistic agency.

Anyone going to Potsdam, Germany this summer? If not, I think we should all plan a trip to see the exhibition, The Museum Barberini Celebrates 150 Years of Impressionism.

This year, the Museum Barberini offers a wide range of activities celebrating the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, founded in 1874 with the first of the eight so-called “Impressionist” exhibitions in Paris. Visit this page to stay up to date on news, events, and dates surrounding the anniversary year at the Barberini. A century and a half ago in 1874, thirty artists joined forces in Paris and showed their works from April 15 to May 15 at the studio of photographer Félix Nadar, far from the official exhibitions of the Academy. This circle of artists included Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley—pioneers of French modernism, all of whom are represented with outstanding works in the Hasso Plattner Collection.

Closer to home, the National Portrait Gallery has the exhibition Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900–1939 on view until February 23, 2025.

During the early twentieth century, Paris was the destination of choice for talented and independent American women who were determined to move beyond the limitations that restricted them at home. As foreigners in a cosmopolitan city, they escaped the societal expectations and constraints of both the United States and France. Many used their newfound liberty as an opportunity for self-reinvention and discovery.

In Paris, American women explored a variety of options for making their mark on contemporary culture. They carried out transformative work in wide-ranging fields including art, literature, dance, publishing, music, and fashion. An impressive number not only participated in important modernist initiatives but led them.

By crossing the Atlantic to pursue their personal and professional aspirations, these “brilliant exiles” took a leap into the future. They experienced liberties, opportunities, and tolerances that were yet to be achieved in the United States. How much has changed since then? Have the freedoms and possibilities they sought become realities?

“In 1936, watercolor painting in America reached a new phase, as a new national art form, one with proud historical roots and a new relevance for artists both progressive and traditional. Enter Andrew Wyeth.”

-Patricia Junker, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art Emerita, Seattle Art Museum

Andrew Wyeth was 20 when he burst onto the New York art scene. His solo exhibition of works at Macbeth Gallery in 1937 made headlines. It was a sold-out exhibition of watercolors inspired by Maine, a place of deep personal significance to the artist. The Wyeth family is part of the fabric of Maine and Wyeth had spent summers there since childhood. A critic for Art in America wrote in one of many euphoric reviews of the artist’s coming-out exhibition, “Wyeth uses his brush with a really almost spectacular freedom.” This energetic and unbridled approach to watercolor launched Wyeth’s career and fame.  

Schoelkopf Gallery is delighted to present Enter Andrew Wyeth, the inaugural exhibition in the gallery’s ongoing programming dedicated to the artist. On view until June 28, 2024, the exhibition features 25 works in tempera, watercolor, drybrush, and pencil, and examines the stirring emotional resonance of Wyeth’s work. The exhibition is composed of works created between 1939 – the year Wyeth met Betsy, his future wife and steward of his artistic legacy – and 1994. The gallery is honored to be supported in the exhibition by Patricia Junker, Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art Emerita, Seattle Art Museum. 

Willem de Kooning, one of the most revolutionary and influential artists of the 20th century, will be the subject of a major exhibition in the Temporary Exhibitions Halls at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice until 15 September 2024.

The exhibition will be the first to explore the time de Kooning spent in Italy in 1959 and 1969 and the profound impact those visits had on his work. It brings together around 75 works, making it the largest presentation of the artist ever organized in Italy.

The curators of the exhibition, Gary Garrels and Mario Codognato, will establish the influence of Italy on de Kooning’s subsequent paintings, drawings and sculpture in America, which has never before been thoroughly researched. The lasting effect of these two creative periods will be revealed in an outstanding selection of works, ranging from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.

Giulio Manieri Elia, Director, Gallerie dell’Accademia, said: “We are convinced that proposing de Kooning was the right choice for several reasons: first of all for the importance of the artist. Secondly, because of its subject and special connections with Italy, which is dear and close to us. It should be added that following de Kooning’s death, his works have rarely been seen in Italy, with the last exhibition dedicated to his work dating back eighteen years ago. Finally, what convinced us was the quality of the curators’ selection, featuring around 75 works that represent the breadth of de Kooning’s most expressive periods.”

The Forest Leads to the Sea, an exhibition of paintings by Jean-Philippe Delhomme, is on view in the summer studio at The Madoo Conservancy through June 29, 2024. Madoo is open to the public Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 12:00 – 4:00pm and by appointment.

The exhibition of Jean-Philippe Delhomme conceived specifically for Madoo brings together landscape paintings executed in two locations dear to his heart.  A Greek island where he sojourns several times throughout the year and the countryside around a family residence in France.   The works are executed from the direct observation of the landscape and not mediated through photography.  The wooded countryside brings back the origin of the “peinture de plein air” that imposed landscape painting as a genre in itself, with the first impressionists depicting the Fontainebleau forest near Barbizon.  The leisurely pace of the country painting invites one to walk along bucolic paths or lay in the grass, while the Greek landscapes position the observer in a stationary lookout towards the sea, like the lighthouse he represents often. In The Forest Leads to the Sea we can see nods to artists he admires like Alex Katz, Fairfield Porter, Milton Avery, and the presentation in the Long Island location grants a fortuitous proximity with these American painters to Delhomme’s musing from the forest to the sea. 

In Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, directors Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill put a female perspective back in the official narrative of rock ‘n’ roll. This intimate documentary reveals the story of an unapologetic rock ‘n’ roller, actress, mother, and muse to the Rolling Stones, who rose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. Using the words of her unpublished memoir, read by Scarlett Johansson, Anita draws us deep into her world with the help of her family – Marlon, Angela, and their father Keith Richards. Never-before-seen home movies and family photographs explore life with the Rolling Stones. This is a bittersweet tale of both triumph and heartbreak; Anita Pallenberg was a woman ahead of her time.

I saw Hit Man at the New York Film Festival last fall and it was one of the best films I saw during the two weeks. Do yourself a favor and don’t watch the trailer and don’t read too much about it and most importantly, try to see it in a theater instead of waiting to see it on Netflix. At one point during the screening, the entire audience started clapping. It’s such a fun wild ride of a film that’s actually based on a true story. I’m really disappointed that Netflix waited so long to release it and didn’t capitalize on the buzz it received during many film festivals because it’s such a great film. Glen Powell not only stars in the film but co-wrote it with director Richard Linklater. This is the film that will cement him as a leading man and someone whose career I really look forward to following.

The Jim Henson Idea Man documentary on Disney+ takes us into the mind of this singular creative visionary, from his early years puppeteering on local television to the worldwide success of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and beyond. Featuring unprecedented access to Jim’s personal archives, Howard brings us a fascinating and insightful look at a complex man whose boundless imagination inspired the world. 

My friend Natalie Obradovich has just published her first coffee table book, Italian Summer, that features an exclusive collection of her most iconic photos, as well as unreleased images from Capri, Amalfi, Puglia, Ischia, Liguria, Sicily, and Calabria. It’s the summer hostess gift or thank you present for that Mediterranean yacht trip.

World-renowned interior visionary Veere Grenney opens up his impressive residences in Tangier; Suffolk, England; and, for the first time, his new London home in his new book Veere Grenney: Seeking Beauty that was just released this month.

The book begins with his beloved Tangerine villa—a decade-long labor of love and must-see for all garden enthusiasts, completed with the help of friend and expert in wild garden design Umberto Pasti and a regency gazebo designed by architect Cosimo Sesti. Next, a visit to the Temple, his 18th-century Suffolk “pocket Palladian” set within the parkland of Tendring Hall and with views of the fishing lake and geranium-filled garden. Grenney called this picturesque sanctuary home for much of 2020. Finally, with exclusive photographs and annotations, Grenney opens the doors for the very first time to his brand-new London home.

One of my favorite Instagram accounts is @Sean_Anthony_Pritchard who shares photos of his beautiful home and flower arrangements in England. Now in his first book, Outside In: A year of growing and displaying, garden designer Sean Pritchard shows you how to plan a garden so that every month of the year there’s something to bring indoors and display in an engaging way. It’s divided by season with additional chapters on vessels, scent, color, texture and how to plan for the gardening year. From the cheery joy of early spring daffodils to the velvety richness of late-summer dahlias, the deep glow of golden autumn leaves to the optimism of late-winter catkins, Sean explains how to grow, harvest, and arrange an abundance of nature’s treasure – whatever size your plot or your level of horticultural experience.

For the sports fan, there is FILA Timelapse, a visual narrative that recapitulates FILA’s 110 years of history through short circuits and jumps in space and time, the volume is an enormous, fluid time-lapse that reveals its meaning in the unexpected contrast of archival images. FILA was the first brand to leave the playing field, whatever it was, to enter into everyday life, as well as the collective imagination of the Italian and international public. The driving force and testimonials came from the sports figures themselves, rising to a level of fame comparable to that of rock stars. Associating a wide variety of materials, from catalog images to rotogravures, in Timelapse, FILA’s supremacy within the sport/lifestyle crossover emerges in and of itself, with the evidence of a pop document.

Since opening its doors a century ago, Gleneagles has remained one of Scotland’s most iconic luxury hotels and sporting estates. This celebratory volume, Gleneagles: Stories from the Glorious Playground, published to coincide with the hotel’s centenary, explores the heritage, glamour, and timeless sophistication of this enduring Scottish treasure.

I actually ordered an advance copy of Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes off eBay because I didn’t want to wait for the US release date. It’s a fun and frivolous summer beach read that spends a lot of time describing the fashion and style of each character.

I started reading Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy over the holiday weekend. I’m very much enjoying learning more about her upbringing and facts about her from people who actually knew her in real life, many of whom I recognize from the fashion world.

The Other Side of Paradise by Vanessa Beaumont is not available in the US yet but I’m including it for my UK followers and those of you who might be traveling to London soon. I found a copy on eBay but I haven’t had time to start reading it yet.

It follows Jean Buckman, a young and innocent American heiress who arrives in England to find a society decimated by war but resolutely clinging to the status quo. She marries Edward Warre an engaging but complex man and the owner of a once great but now struggling estate. As the marriage falters, Jean spends her summers in the South of France where she embarks on a passionate affair that will have repercussions for the rest of her life. Two sons arrive, the oldest, heir to the estate, is not the true bloodline. But Edward needs Jean’s money to survive, and she needs her husband’s silence.

As you know, I love Regime de Fleurs fragrances. So far, I’ve purchased Là Bas and Al-Dukhan for myself and will probably buy more. So it was incredibly kind of them to send me a bottle of their rereleased perfume Cacti this month. It’s a perfect light summer scent.

The online description reads, “To me, a cactus represents the inherent power of nature: even as the desert scorches, an aquatic world is hidden within this incredible plant’s secretive interior. On the hottest day of the year, an oasis appears–sparkling cucumber water and the earthy freshness of black tea and maté. Juicy Italian bergamot and the zest of shiso leaf, adorned with mimosa blooms. Grounded on a bed of sensual and crisp amber, this fragrance is a memorable, uplifting, and universally beloved summer splash.”

I’m reposting this amazing Electronic Foot File since we are finally in sandal season. I get Russian Manicures which are very expensive and I feel like I can’t justify getting Russian Pedicures too but this device allows me a similar result to one at home. It’s also great for touch ups in between pedicures but I would advise against going too crazy with it before a big walking trip or you’ll end up with blisters. They show that you can use it wet but I think it works best on dry skin.

I asked favorite phone case maker on Etsy, Ninety Degree Design, if they would make a burgundy woven case and they obliged. I have have multiple cases from them and change them to match my outfits.

Again, I apologize for the delay but hope you find something interesting to see, do, read, or watch from this post.

Bon week-end !

XOXO,

HC