Look, did I mean to take nearly the entire month of August off? No, I did not. But I did reach a point in which I felt distinctly August-brained, which is not in any way related to the meaning of the word “august” (“marked by majestic dignity or grandeur,” thank you, Merriam-Webster), but to August itself, which is to say, saltwater-sodden and overripe and lazy. Really, that’s the only way to be at the end of summer. Leave industry and resolve to the cooler months! We’ll pick them up when we get there. The only thing I want in August is a tan and a good view and cheerfully pointless conversation and a better tennis game. So I decided to take a break, without making a whole thing of it. But now I’m back—back home in LA, after three months away(!), and back in your inbox, hopefully with some regularity(!!). I hope your summer was wonderful and restoratively lazy and perfectly pointless, too. Enjoying yourself without any goals in mind is pretty #goals, if you think about it.
So, Here We Go! I have a handful of treats for you.
A new favorite hotel: the Drei Berge in Mürren, Switzerland. A spectacular re-imagining of a classic Swiss hiking hotel by design geniuses and husband and wife team Ramdane Touhami and Victoire de Taillac (co-founders of Officine Universelle Buly and Cire Trudon and various insanely fabulous well-documented homes, among other projects). Chic interiors, mind-bendingly beautiful scenery, once-in-a-lifetime-hikes, a Japanese-Swiss restaurant that’s just much better than it has any right to be. And it’s the exact right size: small. (I loathe big hotels, I will happily tell you why later at length.) Anyways, I’m still thinking about it. I can’t wait to go back during ski season.
An extremely good podcast. We did a lot of driving this summer—our annual cross-country Hugo haul from coast to coast in June and back again just this week, with stops in a few incredible National Parks (Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, Big Hole, Sequoia, etc.), but for the stretches that were less thrilling, visually speaking, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, Andrew Hickey’s exhaustively researched history podcast, kept us merrily occupied as we rolled along. It’s no small undertaking, Hickey’s project, and in fact is a decade-plus-long endeavor Bill McKibben in the New Yorker compared to nothing less than the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. I get it! Half of the joy of listening is just really marveling in the research.
I like two kinds of podcasts, I have realized: ones that are like your friends talking (and preferably talking shit—see SUP, Celebrity Book Club, The Watch, Who Weekly, Normal Gossip, Sentimental Garbage), and ones that make you smarter (Radiolab, Hidden Brain, Invisibilia). This is the latter, and it asks you to tune in, rather than out, braiding together all these little pivotally important moments around iconic songs, many of which you’ll likely know already, of course, but some you’ve probably never thought too much about, with facts scattered throughout that if you’re like me you’ll keep bringing up at parties. (Did you know that the American soldier who intercepted and decoded the message that Stalin had died was none other than a 21 year old Johnny Cash?!) Anyway, I have, as a result, become rather fascinated with Hickey. (He was basically on our road trip, too.) The New Yorker gave a glimpse into his story, but no more than that—reportedly he is utterly uninterested in any press about him, rather than the project. No matter, writes TNY:
The only background necessary to grasp a bit of Hickey is his bibliography: he has completed a guide to the first fifty years of “Doctor Who”; a book about “The Strange World of Gurney Slade” (a surreal comedy series that ran for six episodes on ITV in 1960); histories of the Monkees, the Kinks, and Los Angeles pop music of the nineteen-sixties; an “unauthorised guide” to a comic-book series called “Seven Soldiers of Victory”; and a three-volume catalogue of every track the Beach Boys have recorded. He is, in other words, a fan—but not the gushy kind. He’s the sterner kind, a judicious completist who tries to read and pigeonhole everything about a phenomenon. And, as it happens, he has the kind of mind—rare, I think, for a fan—that can make all kinds of connections across time and place. It seems entirely possible that he was born to take on this particular project, and it also seems entirely possible that it will kill him, because in its scope it summons up Gibbon or Pepys. Put simply, Hickey has selected five hundred songs that he thinks delineate the history of what came to be called rock and roll, and he is devoting an episode to each.
…At this pace, Hickey will eclipse every literary project in history; the current plan is to reach the five hundredth song sometime late in this decade, but that presupposes he can keep writing what amounts to a book every fortnight or so. We shall see.
The episodes start out quite appealingly bite-sized, though apparently grow more unwieldy fitting, as so too rock and roll does: “There may not be a better—and certainly no more listenable—approach to dissecting race in America, the rise of youth culture, the triumph and tribulation of consumerism,” writes McKibben. Highly recommended if you have a long trip ahead, a lot of mundane tasks to do, a music (or recent US history) nerd in your life—or aspirations of becoming one yourself.
A perfect book to read right now. When it’s hot out, as it has been all summer nearly everywhere, and will continue to be this weekend, I don’t want to read anything particularly strenuous. Enter: Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. This 1922 novel is basically Under the Tuscan Sun meets Cold Comfort Farm. (If that doesn’t mean anything to you, my god, get it together!) It is a complete and utter delight. It’s charming, and sweet, and really very funny, and it is apparently responsible for making Portofino a fashionable destination for English tourists. It’s the kind of book you’ll wish went on forever. I wish I could crawl into the pages and live there. It is by far my favorite thing I read this summer, and an excellent, gentle book for this exact moment when it’s still too hot and spring’s early wisteria seems very far away.
Speaking of too hot and early fall, I wore these Slvrlake wide-legged white jeans everywhere—really, from St Tropez to London to Corsica to the Bernese Alps, to Nantucket, to the Crystal Bar in Bozeman, Montana (as seen on Yellowstone, apparently!) and beyond. They’re perfect. Comfortable enough for a plane ride, nice enough (not being blue jeans) to wear out to most dinners, in just the right shade of cream so that you’re not constantly worried they look dusty. (The last plane I wore them on the flight attendant stopped me in the aisle to ask where I got them. I’m telling you!) If you think white jeans aren’t flattering, one trick is to buy a size up, so they’re fetchingly loose. You can always belt them (or tailor, if you’re fancy/ have the time and follow-through). Too tight and white is never your friend. (And no, I do not subscribe to the “no white after labor day” rule, and neither should you. To do so is extremely lame behavior, we cannot support it.)
TenoverTen hand serum. I’ve been applying this every night to the backs of my hands. It’s light, not sticky or slimy, and comes from my favorite non-toxic nail salon in New York. My nails after this summer are a total mess. I am trusting this routine at least to keep my hands ageless forever. (Or at least well moisturized.) That’s reasonable, right?
A new favorite restaurant: Tonino, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain, is a tiny spot, with twenty-something seats and a tight, decadent menu of Roman-inspired breads and pastas and a shockingly good cocktail and wine list. When I was there the chef’s mother turned up with a Yeti cooler for him to fill up with food for her to take away, and you know what, if I was her I’d do the exact same thing. I would gatekeep (it’s hard enough to get a reservation there now), but it’s hard out there for a small joint, and it’s really that good. Should you find yourself in Boston—go.
A skincare product I actually finished (and then immediately reordered): Valmont’s DetO2x cream. Swiss-crafted magic. That airy, whipped texture! It’s so good, and so light, and so effective, and during a summer of trains/planes/automobiles and a real grab bag of different elevations/humidity levels, it’s kept me smooth and dewy (but not too dewy) and bright throughout. Highly endorse.
Maskgirl (Netflix). A totally insane South Korean series revolving around the traumatic repercussions of the extremely specific beauty standards of that plastic-surgery-happy country, peppered with scenes of extreme violence that has people comparing it to Oldboy. It’s so weird, it’s so engrossing, it’s utterly off the rails, I watched the whole thing in a week.
An important new addition to your library/coffee table/carefully styled shelf: I moderated a conversation between Carolina Herrera's wonderful creative director Wes Gordon and his frequent collaborator, photographer Elizaveta Porodina, for the new Rizzoli book COLORMANIA. They collaborated across an ocean during the pandemic, sending clothes and pictures back and forth over lockdown. The results are really spectacular. It’s a beautiful tome, hot pink and fabulous, inspiring and escapist and vigorously fun, just like you’d expect from the house of Herrera. It’s a perfect addition to your library, if I do say so myself. “Very often, we abandon the idea of beauty, or we consider it to be old-fashioned or irrelevant,” Gordon told me. “We shouldn’t: Beauty is good for our soul and good for the world. It’s essential.” Can’t say I disagree. Check it out and let me know what you think?
That’s all for this week. I’m still unpacking! More to come. And as always, if there’s anything particularly that you want to read about, any questions you may have, send me a note and let me know. Hearing from you is the best part of all of this.
Love.