Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com. COVET THIS Italian Table Linens From a Storied Textile House and the New York Clothing Brand Attersee
In 2022, Isabel Wilkinson Schor hosted a dinner in Milan to celebrate her clothing brand, Attersee. To cover the tables, Wilkinson Schor (a former T editor) purchased linens from a favorite Florence-based textile house, Loretta Caponi. Now, three years later, the two brands have collaborated on Attersee’s first housewares collection, inspired by the archival pieces used that night. The two new patterns feature hand-embroidered twists on classic Loretta Caponi motifs and styles. One, called Frames, is an Art Deco look with a trio of lines stitched in custom bordeaux-red thread around the edge of the linen to create the illusion of a picture frame. The other, Ajour, is inspired by a 1970s Loretta Caponi openwork pattern and named for the French embroidery technique it employs to create a delicate series of small squares with pointelle lines. The designs are available on runners, place mats and napkins. Both collections also include cocktail napkins adorned with small clovers, a Loretta Caponi signature. From $350, shopattersee.com. STAY HERE A Serene Boutique Hotel in Miami’s North Beach
Miami’s North Beach is the more laid-back counterpart to the better-known South Beach but with the same white sand, plus its fair share of Argentine bakeries and Peruvian ceviche spots. Maison Felix, a hotel that opens this week in the area, channels that relaxed feel with a palm-shaded swimming pool in its courtyard and rooms painted in terra cotta or deep blue. Housed in a 1948 building, the 29 rooms are spread across two stories: Those on the ground level open onto the courtyard, while the ones above have vaulted ceilings. The décor, which includes custom cream-colored bouclé sofas, handmade patterned cushions and vegan leather headboards, is earthy yet elegant. Each room also features a painting by the Miami artist Mark Cherry, commissioned exclusively for the hotel, that can be purchased by guests. From $300 a night, maisonfelix.miami. IN SEASON A Late-Autumn Fruit That Requires Special Treatment
The medlar, a gnarled fruit that was cultivated by the ancient Greeks and Romans, is often the last fruit of the autumn harvest across Britain, picked after the first frost and left to undergo what’s called bletting, a softening that turns its skin yielding and its flesh sweet by the holiday season. At Quo Vadis in Soho, London, the chef Jeremy Lee says, customers have come in with brown paper bags of medlars from their gardens in October and November, unsure what to do with them. “They’ve puzzled folks for so long because they’re quite unique, unlike anything else,” says Lee. He began making medlar jelly for lamb, then pushed the fruit through a sieve to create a thick paste that he infused with prunes, Armagnac and sherry. These days, most of his medlars go into a riff on a Mont Blanc dessert: Instead of the traditional chestnut paste, Lee combines his medlar version with crème pâtissière and serves it with walnuts and chocolate sauce atop brown bread ice cream. For Lee, the fruit’s flavor is “subtle and delicate, with a whisper of apple and pear.” At Fallachan Kitchen, a communal dining restaurant in Glasgow, the chef Craig Grozier first experimented with the fruit after a friend brought him some. He makes a medlar Marmite for wild mallard, a preserve that becomes a glaze for grilled meats and a jelly for cheese. In New York, Jeff Sloan of Pushcart Produce sourced his first medlars from Vermont’s Scott Farm Orchard, one of the only commercial growers of the fruit on the East Coast. This year, most of his medlars will be used for a cocktail at the soon-to-open Brooklyn bar Golden Ratio. “Medlars are an effort to process but quite special,” he says. “I’ve always thought of sourcing them as a labor of love, a thank-you to chefs.” For Lee, the fruit’s resurgence reflects a heightened commitment to seasonal cooking. “If you’re trying to find a medlar in July,” he says, “good luck with that. Like any great seasonal produce, it has its moment in the sun and then goes to sleep for the rest of the year.” VISIT THIS Museums Built of Sand and Salt in Egypt’s Siwa Oasis
Some hotels expand with villas or a spa complex, but since last year, the Adrère Amellal Nature Lodge in Egypt’s Siwa Oasis has been adding small museums. Adrère Amellal was founded 25 years ago by the Egyptian environmentalist Mounir Neamatalla, who designed its sand and salt structure with the help of the Paris-based architect India Mahdavi. Last year, Neamatalla added a three-story building with a tower about a mile from the main lodge and dedicated it to the work of the American photographer Lee Miller (who lived in Cairo for five years with her first husband, the Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey). This month, the hotel opened another exhibition space, this one displaying pieces by the artist Peter Beard. Like the rest of Adrère Amellal, the museums were purposefully built without electricity, so at night they’re illuminated by candlelight. “In my opinion, a museum should be a place of emotion and preserve the message of the art as well as the art itself,” says Neamatalla. Both buildings also feature bedrooms: The Lee Miller museum has 10 suites that are offered to artists and photographers in residence, while on the second floor of the Peter Beard Museum there’s an apartment that’s available only for Beard’s family when they visit. adrereamellal.com. SHOP HERE Local Produce Rules at This Grocery Store in Honolulu
Honolulu’s first all-local grocery store, Hō‘ili‘ili, began as a 40-foot refrigerated container in a dirt parking lot on the north shore of O‘ahu. In 2015, Rob Barreca, a software engineer turned farmer, started connecting local growers with buyers online, intent on avoiding “an archaic, traditional, stodgy grocery store,” he says. But he eventually realized that his customers wanted to see and touch their produce in person, and this October, he opened Hō‘ili‘ili — which means “to gather” in Hawaiian — in what was previously a pizza and sub shop. In Hawai‘i, which imports nearly 90 percent of its food, the market stands apart by carrying only items that are either locally grown or produced, or both. One wall is colorful with seasonal fruits that recently included persimmons, some from Maui trees that are more than a century old. Another section showcases Hawai‘i’s local bananas, from the sweet-tart apple bananas to the blue-hued ice-cream bananas to the rare Gros Michel variety. An in-house butchery program offers traditional cuts of meats as well as kālua pig and bulgogi sausages. The ever-changing deli menu has featured ‘ulu (breadfruit) chowder, Japanese-style duck-egg salad sandwiches, and eggplant sandwiches with kalo (taro) leaf chimichurri. Barreca and Claire Sullivan, formerly the local food purchaser for Whole Foods, still operate the online Farm Link Hawai‘i, which delivers throughout O‘ahu. They see Hō‘ili‘ili, which is just 450 square feet, as a curated selection of those offerings. That includes goods from local purveyors such as kalo crunch cereal (with dehydrated kalo bits akin to Lucky Charms’ crispy marshmallows); canned sparkling māmaki tea, made with a stingless nettle endemic to Hawai‘i; and, among their liquor offerings, an agave spirit made on Maui. When Barreca works at the store, he might play LCD Soundsystem — “The vegetables seemed to like that,” he says. farmlinkhawaii.com. GO HERE A New Addition to Marrakesh’s Growing Design District
Sidi Ghanem, an industrial neighborhood about a 25-minute drive outside of Marrakesh, Morocco, has been a hub of fashion and design ateliers and showrooms for over a decade. Some producers, like the home goods company LRNCE and the clothing maker Marrakshi Life, opened their spaces to customers by appointment only, but lately the district has become a more accessible shopping destination. In 2021, the contemporary gallery MCC established an outpost there, and the artist Hassan Hajjaj founded Jajjah, a boutique, gallery and cafe with its own tea and coffee label. Last month, in a 4,300-square-foot space across the street from Jajjah, the French designer Laetitia Trouillet opened a new shop for her accessories brand, Lalla. Bags made of unexpected materials like terry cloth, recycled carpet and vintage caftans are displayed on the wood shelves that line the stucco walls, alongside some of Trouillet’s projects with other brands such as jackets made with textiles from the Marrakesh label Maghribi Mood and smiley mugs from the Lisbon-based Cécile*M. “I want this to be a place of collaboration and community,” says Trouillet. From $50 for a clutch, shoplalla.com. FROM T’S INSTAGRAM
Ceramists refer to several parts of a vessel with the names of body parts: foot, belly, shoulder, neck, lip and mouth. The British Kenyan artist Magdalene Odundo envisions an even closer relationship between the body and her creations, often adopting poses she’s considering recreating in the clay in an attempt, she says, “to try and understand what I’m making.” For an elongated vessel, she might stand on tiptoe; for an hourglass piece, she’ll pinch her own waist. Odundo likes when her vessels go out into the world and this exchange comes full circle: “It’s nice to see people moving their bodies when they’re looking at the work,” she says. Odundo’s pieces, several of which are currently on view in a solo exhibition at Xavier Hufkens gallery in Brussels, are shaped through hand coiling rather than on a wheel, then burnished and coated in clay slip, a watery paste, to achieve a uniquely silky sheen. Hardened in a kiln, they emerge in shades of oxidized, velvety orange-red; lustrous, occasionally iridescent, carbonized black; or a layering of the two. Click here to read Odundo’s answers to our Artist’s Questionnaire and follow us on Instagram.
Read past editions of the T List here.
|
