One night in 2022, the five-person team behind the MáLà Project Chinese restaurant franchise, which has four locations in New York City, were enjoying oysters and martinis after their shift when they began discussing their ideal bar. “We knew we wanted something approachable but sophisticated,” says co-founder Christian Castillo, “and we’re all a little romantic, so we thought incorporating live jazz would add that dreamy touch.” This month, the band plans to open Only Love Strangers, a bar, jazz lounge and restaurant in a two-level space in Manhattan’s East Village, a few blocks away from the original MáLà Project. The interiors are retro-futuristic, with a blue and chrome palette reminiscent of the surrealism of the 1960s and 70s. In the ground floor main dining room, a Mediterranean menu includes appetizers and seafood towers served under a custom mobile by Brooklyn artist Max Simon. Adjacent to the dining room is a bar that wraps guests in floor-to-ceiling cobalt tile with a ceiling painted a matching blue and dinners upholstered in Verner Panton’s 1969 Optik fabric. At a round-edged, aluminum-clad bar, you can order cocktails named for jazz genres like the Acid, made with lemon vodka, anise liqueur, basil and citrus. The 55-seat jazz lounge on the lower level, also dressed in blue, hosts nightly performers. Only Love Strangers opens on April 13. onlylovestrangers.com.
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Exhibition of faceless portrait painter in Venice
For over a decade now, Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz has been recreating portraits of women painters from the Renaissance to the 19th century, with one major intervention: she variously obscures the sitters’ faces with fabric, hairstyles, and extravagant arrangements of flowers and foliage. The artist’s subversive approach arose out of a desire to disrupt an “idealization of the female image,” she says. Juszkiewicz’s work draws from wide sources, including medieval fashion and those of contemporary designers such as Simone Rocha and Rei Kawakubo. The painter then collects a variety of wigs, fabrics and old jewelry, constructs installations, and uses models to serve as reference. He paints in a classic European style, using layers of oil paints. The 15 pieces in her new show, “Locks with Leaves and Swelling Buds,” opening at the Palazzo Cavanis in Venice, echo works by 18th-century painters such as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and François Gérard. “I want to challenge the existing rules and build my own story based on them,” he says. “Ewa Juszkiewicz: Locks with Leaves and Swelling Buds’ runs at Palazzo Cavanis, Venice, from April 20 to September 1, fabarte.org.
In a forest-green corner storefront a few blocks from Brooklyn Bridge Park, just before Cobble Hill gives way to the East River, the team behind Brooklyn restaurants Oxalis and Place des Fêtes is opening a bakery called Laurel. Starting Friday, diners will find sweet potato Pullman baguettes and loaves displayed on shelves behind the register, while pastries — flaky floccats stuffed with ramps and Cantal cheese, glazed cannelloni — await on silver trays. Chef Nico Russell, who oversees the menus at all three locations, hired Craig Escalante, whose 12 years of experience include time at New York’s Bien Cuit, as head baker. At noon, Laurel will offer focaccia sandwiches that Escalante makes using amazake — a koji-fermented rice liquid — for added flavor. Danishes are made with mascarpone and blueberries picked in Maine and Canada Tama Matsuoka Wong. “He has a giant network here on the East Coast, so he has access to so much great stuff every season, especially wild blueberries,” Russell says. Other house-brewed specialties include salty half-pound blocks of butter for sale and alternative milks (almond and sunflower) to mix with coffee from Brooklyn roaster Sey. Laurel is geared toward takeout, although there are three tables outside. Those looking to enjoy the bakery’s bread in a sit-down setting can find its sourdough at Place des Fêtes in Clinton Hill, and baked sandwiches at the old Oxalis space in Crown Heights, which is slated to reopen as an (as yet unnamed) all-day coffee in mid-May. Laurel opens on April 12, laurelbakery.com.
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Thom Browne brings his Signature Stripes to a bedding collection
Frette, the Italian textile company founded in Grenoble, France in 1860 and now based in Monza, outside Milan, has long been known as a maker of luxury linens. The company counts among its clients storied hotels such as the Danieli in Venice, the Plaza in New York and the Savoy in London, as well as more than 500 royal families. Now, Frette has collaborated with American fashion designer Thom Browne on a 10-piece collection that will be unveiled during a show at this year’s Salone del Mobile, the annual furniture and design fair held in Milan. The designer says the pair were quite organic, having slept on Frette sheets for over 20 years. The resulting collection includes sheet and comforter sets, a wool blanket and throw, a towel set and a cotton plush bathrobe, all decorated with four serial bars, an instantly recognizable Thom Browne motif. Some offerings extend beyond the home with cotton gym towels and a beach bag, both highlighted by the home but striped signature, a three-way band of red, white and blue. The show, titled “…bedtime…”, will take place on April 16 at Milan’s late 18th-century Palazzina Appiani, after which the collection will be open for the remainder of the exhibition. Browne says the show will feature Frette-clad beds and touch on themes he has long explored in his performances, such as multiplication and repetition. “It’ll be interesting—it might put everyone to sleep!” from $130, thombrowne.com.
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New York Skin Care Studios with interiors inspired by Le Corbusier
“For so long, I was this underground facialist,” says esthetician Cali Strauhs. “People have found me through word of mouth, all kinds of silence: ‘I got this girl in Chinatown.’ But now, with its opening Strauhs Studios – yet somewhat tucked away on the second floor of a TriBeCa office building in which many fashion brands have their showrooms — the beauty specialist gives old and new clients somewhere to meet for personalized treatments focused on improving and maintaining skin health over the long term by treating the underlying issues such as acne and inflammatory conditions. “I always felt there was a gap between the holistic and the scientific,” he says. “And sometimes, in fluffier face settings, you don’t really get results. it’s more of an experience. But I want to do both.” This approach is reflected in the clean, calm, somewhat brutalist interior design of her space—a mirror resting on stones, gray throughout—the look of which was inspired by artists’ lofts and Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect who died in 1965. .lasting style has also updated Amended States, a massage and wellness spot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, attached to the Persons of Interest barbershop and paneled and painted like Le Corbusier’s famous colorful seaside Cabanon. In addition to offerings such as “energetic healing” facials that incorporate reiki massage and CBD oil, the tiny boutique out front sells cute ceramic, non-alcoholic bottled cocktails by Three Spirit and the entire line of hair and skin care products from Italian line Oway for customers to continue their regimens at home.
Orior, a family design studio, often returns to its Irish roots. Founded in 1979 in Newry, Northern Ireland by Brian and Rosie McGuigan, it is now mainly run by their son, Ciarán, with a workshop in Newry and a showroom in New York. The company works with many of the same craftsmen it did four decades ago, sourcing materials such as Connemara marble and Irish crystal to make contemporary credenzas and tables, and producing Irish green chairs and sofas. Orior’s latest collection, Fearn, consists of sculptural planters made from three Irish limestones: Armagh, Kilkenny and Lecarrow, each named after its hometown. “Taking these raw blocks of material extracted from the earth in their purest form and reimagining them in a new shape is part of our practice,” says Ciarán. “It’s about mixing materials and introducing curvature and detail.” There are three planter shapes, though each has a stone base that features engraved symbols from the Irish Ogham alphabet (Fearn is the third letter). At the top is a handcrafted marble basin, meant to resemble the centuries-old stones that were once placed in front of houses to welcome visitors. The Fearn Collection will be available from April 15th. from $12,250, oriorfurniture.com.
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