The Casita on Calle Colima: Reflections on a shape-shifting Mexico City
“Hermosa casita en la Colonia Roma,” read the listing that popped up on Airbnb when I was searching for a rental in Mexico City in the spring of 2022. The main image showed an elegant, periwinkle-blue row house with white trim, beside an identical house painted deep indigo and another, bubblegum pink. Potted plants and... More
The California Dream of Elysian Landscapes
For Judy Kameon, the most important role a garden can fulfill is to create community, so there is a poetic synergy in the fact that her career as a garden designer began almost by chance, in 1996, when she was hosting a pop-up restaurant in her Elysian Park backyard. Hotelier Sean MacPherson was one of... More
Sara Ruffin Costello’s Southern Charms
Seven years ago, Sara Ruffin Costello and her family did what so many New Yorkers dream of but never dare—they left behind the urban rat race for a slower, sweeter pace of life. For Costello, the founding creative director of Domino magazine, and her photographer husband, Paul, the draw was one of America’s most intriguing... More
On a Dark Desert Highway: The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
Driving on the freeway, usually wanting to be someplace far from wherever we are at any given moment, we fixate on the speedometer, the exit signs, the lines in the road: proof that we are moving. In this liminal state, billboards become a sort of visual white noise or worse, a perceived assault that we... More
Smoke Signals: Incense for Every Style
For many, the idea of incense evokes nothing so much as college dorm rooms and hippie shops that smell more like car air freshener than exotic spices. But lately that stigma has started to lift, as fragrance artisans and boutique brands offer new variations that leave Nag Champa up in smoke. Historically, incense was used... More
What Warpaint Packs on Tour
When Warpaint returned to Los Angeles in July after a two-month tour that spanned the western hemisphere, Emily Kokal, one of the all-female quartet’s vocalist/guitarists, would often find herself wandering the hills of her Echo Park neighborhood instead of relaxing at home. “I’m so used to moving and seeing new things,” she said over coffee... More
Now Reopening: Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum
While the decade-long renovation of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum left some grumbling about delays and costs, the weekend’s grand reopening, counted down on a huge digital clock on the neo-Gothic building’s facade, couldn’t have come at a more fitting moment. In just a few weeks, the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix will turn the throne over to her son... More
Highland Fling
With its elegant, Commune-designed interiors and fresh, market-driven cuisine, the restaurant Ammo has been luring art world power players and tastemakers to a semi-desolate stretch of Highland Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard for more than a decade. The eclectic interior design studio Blackman Cruz, down the street, boasts a similar following. Still, until recently one... More
Citizen Jane
As a child in London, Jane Goodall carried a torch for Tarzan and dreamed of becoming a female Dr. Doolittle, so it’s fitting that another children’s adventure story – Dr. Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go! – will provide the theme for this year’s Rose Parade, starring Dr. Goodall as Grand Marshal. The world’s most... More
Desert By Design
Some architects want their work to be admired; John Lautner wanted his to be experienced. “He designed from the inside out,” says interior designer and hotelier Tracy Beckmann. “He wanted you to feel.” Beckmann and her partner Ryan Trowbridge opened the Hotel Lautner, a small boutique property in Desert Hot Springs, last September after a... More
Food For Thought
Steve Rudicel grew up at the historic Zane Grey Estate, a rambling 18,000 square foot Mediterranean-style mansion in Altadena, the former home of the famed Western novelist. When his father died in 2004, Rudicel, a restaurateur who owns The Press in Pomona, and his girlfriend Gloria Putnam, a trained physicist who works for Kodak, moved... More
This Side of Paradise
A secluded hillside haven just above Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air is one of the world’s most prestigious – and private – communities. It’s a place populated by movie moguls and former presidents, where property values only go up, never down. Like its namesake, the iconic Hotel Bel-Air also wears its luster more discreetly than its... More
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