Margot Friedländer, a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor whose family was murdered at Auschwitz, would seem an unlikely — even radical — choice to front a fashion glossy that customarily features comely models and celebrities. But a weathered and white-haired Ms. Friedländer is the latest cover star of Vogue Germany, a distinction she seems to wear as lightly as the tailored coat she models on the magazine’s July/August issue.

One of the world’s oldest and perhaps best-known Holocaust survivors, Ms. Friedländer is no stranger to fame. She has met with world leaders like Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, and has rubbed shoulders with A-listers like Helen Mirren.

Ms. Friedländer (nee Bendheim), who lives in Berlin, is a vociferous champion of Holocaust remembrance. She has made it her mission to tour hundreds of schools throughout Germany, urging her young audiences to neither forget past traumas nor cling to the grievances that continue to polarize people.

In the Vogue Germany interview, as in those talks, she expresses concern at the rise of right-wing populism and antisemitism in Germany and throughout the world.

Her multilayered message resonates with Anna Wintour, the editor in chief and global editorial director of Vogue and chief content officer at Condé Nast. While Vogue’s American edition did not feature Ms. Friedländer on its cover and has yet to feature a cover star of her ilk, Ms. Wintour, in an email, called the German Vogue cover “brilliant and inspiring.”

“Margot Friedländer is a wonderful subject, and a meaningful one,” Ms. Wintour said, “given the political currents across Europe.”

People like Ms. Friedländer “are the last living testament to a dark period in history,” said Masha Pearl, the executive director of the Blue Card, an organization in New York that provides financial and emotional assistance to Holocaust survivors across the United States. “To raise awareness for remaining survivors, whose numbers are dwindling, is imperative,” she added.

At 102, Ms. Friedländer has several decades on the eldest American Vogue cover stars, a group that includes the fashion designer Miuccia Prada, who appeared on the magazine’s March cover at 74 this year. But Ms. Friedländer is not the oldest person to appear on a cover of Vogue: Apo Whang-od, a tattoo artist, appeared on the April cover of its Philippine edition at 106 years old last year.

Ms. Friedländer was 12 when Hitler came to power, and in her early 20s when the Gestapo arrived in 1943 to round up her family, herding her mother onto one of the Nazis’ infamous transports to Auschwitz.

Ms. Friedländer wasn’t home when her family was detained. Soon after, she dyed her hair, started wearing a cross and was hidden for 13 months by anti-Nazi sympathizers whose names she was never permitted to learn, she told The Forward in a 2013 article.

In 1944, she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in what is now the Czech Republic. There, she witnessed, and suffered, Nazi atrocities. She also met Adolf Friedländer and, after liberation in 1945, married him in a traditional Jewish ceremony. The following year, the couple emigrated to the United States, settling in Queens, New York.

It was only after her husband’s death, in 1997, that Ms. Friedländer thought of mining her life experience for a memoir. While she was writing it, she was approached by a documentary filmmaker, who persuaded her to tell her story on camera — and to return to Berlin in the early 2000s to film the project.

The documentary, “Don’t Call It Heimweh,” came out in 2004, and her book, “‘Try to Make Your Life’: a Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin,” in 2008. Two years later, Ms. Friedländer, then in her late 80s, moved back to Berlin.

She has since addressed thousands of people, speaking, as she told Vogue Germany, “in the name of the victims who can no longer speak for themselves.” Her message is not of forgiveness precisely, but of endurance and the loving embrace of humanity.

Ms. Friedländer told Vogue Germany that, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, she has been asked by many young people whether she supports Israel or Palestine. Her answer is not to take sides. “Don’t look at the things that separate you,” she tells them. “Think of the things that bind you, that bring you together.”

She is grateful that she “made it” and especially thankful, she told Vogue Germany, that she took to heart the advice of her mother, who, as she was being deported by the Nazis, hurriedly left a note for Ms. Friedländer. In it she wrote: “Try to make your life.”

“I am grateful,” Ms. Friedländer said, “that, yes, I have.”

Lucie Lott said she knew she would marry Eladio Fabregas even before the two had spoken.

Their paths first crossed in September 2021 outside the cafeteria at Samford University in Homewood, Ala. Ms. Lott, now 22, was starting as a freshman, and Mr. Fabregas, 25, who goes by Lalo, was a junior.

“We did a triple take,” Ms. Lott recalled. “I remember telling my roommate right after that I had met my future husband.”

Mr. Fabregas, a native of Galicia, Spain, came to the United States on a tennis scholarship. During that brief encounter, Ms. Lott noticed he was wearing a shirt for Samford’s tennis team. She found his photo and name on the team’s roster and sent him a message on Instagram that same day.

“I asked if it was him who I had seen earlier,” she said.

“I replied, ‘Yes, I think you are the beautiful girl I noticed,” he said. “I hate texting and messaging and asked if I could call her.”

That first call led to a first date, during which ice cream and stargazing on a hilltop followed dinner at a local pizzeria.

The night almost didn’t happen. Mr. Fabregas said that he had toyed with the idea of canceling for fear of falling in love. “I was so taken with Lucie and knew that if we went out, we would get serious,” he said. “I was young, in the country on a scholarship and here to make it. Part of me thought that a relationship might be distracting.”

Despite his hesitation, Mr. Fabregas stuck to the plan, which had Ms. Lott picking him up in her car from Samford’s tennis center after practice.

“I gave him a hug when he came out and told him that I was excited to see him,” Ms. Lott said. “From then on, we talked nonstop and shared our goals and different upbringings.”

Ms. Lott grew up on a 250-acre horse farm, Augustus Hill, in Paris, Ky. The property hosts events and has been used for fashion shoots for brands like Peter Millar. She graduated from Samford with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and mass communications and now runs Augustus Hill’s events business remotely.

Mr. Fabregas has a bachelor’s degree in business and an M.B.A. from Samford. He is a financial analyst at the private equity firm Regent in Beverly Hills, Calif., where the couple currently resides.

After that night, the pair was inseparable. “We studied, ate, exercised and enjoyed every bit of free time together,” Mr. Fabregas said.

Early on in their relationship, he accompanied Ms. Lott to her family’s vacation home in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., introducing him to her mother, Diane Lott.

“My mom made sangria and served Spanish olives to bring a little of Lalo’s background to the evening,” Ms. Lott said.

In the fall of 2022, Mr. Fabregas asked Ms. Lott to accompany him on a trip to Galicia to meet his family.

“I was overwhelmed and nervous,” she said. “They didn’t really speak English, and I don’t speak Spanish, and I wasn’t sure how all the translation would work out. But his parents greeted me with hugs and were genuine and warm.”

Mr. Fabregas’s and Ms. Lott’s courtship continued over the next few years. When Mr. Fabregas finished the M.B.A. program and got hired for the financial analyst job in California, Ms. Lott relocated with him and switched to Samford’s online program until she graduated.

Before moving, the couple made their annual trip to visit Mr. Fabregas’s parents in Spain.

“Lalo told me that he wanted to add on a weekend getaway to an island called La Toja for some sun and relaxation,” Ms. Lott said. “I knew that he was going to propose at some point, and when he mentioned the trip, I was sure that it would happen then.”

However, rain interfered with Mr. Fabregas’s plans. “I was going to ask Lucie in front of a church that’s made out of seashells,” he said. “But when the drops started coming, I postponed.”

The following morning, on June 1, 2023, Mr. Fabregas and Ms. Lott returned to the church and he presented her with a center-cut diamond ring embellished with two shield-cut diamonds.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

On June 15, the couple wed at Augustus Hill before 160 guests, including Ms. Lott’s grandfather, Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, as well as several members of Mr. Fabregas’s family from Spain.

Hunter Bates, a close friend of Ms. Lott’s family and a former chief of staff to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, officiated. He was ordained by Christian Global Outreach Ministries.

Ms. Lott, wearing a lace Monique Lhuillier dress, arrived at the altar with her father, Chet Lott, in an open-air, wicker horse carriage as a harpist played Pachelbel’s Canon.

Mr. Fabregas was dressed in a European morning suit from Stuart Mercer Gentleman’s Shoppe in Lexington, Ky.

At the reception, an alfresco sit-down dinner included Kentucky beef and Spanish paella. A dance party followed with an Ibiza nightclub theme.

“The day was a joining of two distinct cultures,” Mr. Fabregas said. “And a reflection of our relationship.”

Chloe Hurst dons a black veil to keep the bugs out of her eyes while planting flowers that would be at home in a Tim Burton film: black hero tulips, New York Night hellebores and black mamba petunias.

She sees her garden as a reflection of herself. “I’m a Scorpio, so I’ve always been spooky,” said Ms. Hurst, a 29-year-old graphic designer. She said she began reconnecting with her earlier emo days through landscaping after purchasing her home in Ottawa, Canada, six years ago.

Many of her plants are dark red or purple. Ms. Hurst also has a potted vegetable garden with the darkest varieties of eggplants, bell peppers and not-so-green beans.

Between Billie Eilish’s jet-black locks to the success of “Wednesday” on Netflix and the forthcoming “Beetlejuice” sequel in September, all things gothic are in the air — and in the ground. Searches for “goth garden” nearly doubled on Google this month from last, and the marketing firm Garden Media Group clocked “goth gardening” as a trend in its 2024 trends report. On TikTok, gardeners like Ms. Hurst rack up hundreds of thousands of likes when sharing their goth gardens and offering tips on how to grow one.

Over the last few years, so-called gothic seeds have appeared to become more popular, too. In 2018, Ed Hume Seeds introduced a gothic vegetable packet with spiky artichokes and bull’s blood beet that remains a top seller, according to the company. Hudson Valley Seed Company, which began selling a goth flower mix with Dracula celosia and black knight scabiosa in 2020, said they had noticed an increase in sales of the product this year.

“There’s a renewed interest in making one’s garden fit one’s personality and vibe,” said Kelsea Hume, who manages Hume Seeds’ social media accounts. “It’s wonderful to watch new generations of gardeners express themselves.”

Just as there may be no one type of “goth” person, there is more than one interpretation of what a gothic garden entails.

In Wichita Falls, Texas, Felicia Garza says her garden is an extension of her “darker soul.” Ms. Garza, a 39-year-old social media manager, weaves eerie plants into her otherwise colorful garden. “I wasn’t feeling it at first,” said Ms. Garza of her foray into gardening. “Then I came across all these other darker plants and I just fell in love with them.”

Ms. Garza added other goth elements to her garden’s décor: Black vintage lamps hang from wrought iron-adorned trellises, which are also black and surround raised beds in the center of the garden. But she said she also had “girlie” elements, like sun catchers and a pink flamingo lawn ornament.

When Shannon Crosby, 39, began planting her backyard garden six years ago, she had to work with the humid, hot climate of Plant City, Fla. She couldn’t rely on black plants alone in the subtropical climate, so instead she incorporated a variety of macabre elements. One section of her yard is dedicated to poisonous plants like angel trumpets, cassava and foxgloves. (That section is fenced in to prevent wildlife from eating the plants; she also noted that she did not have children or pets.)

Then there are spiky plants, such as the silk floss tree, which Ms. Crosby, who owns a plant nursery, described as “super punk rock.”

An angel statue, which she purchased broken from a secondhand shop, adds to the overall effect. “It’s like an old, decrepit Victorian garden that’s in ruin,” Ms. Crosby said. “I call it beautiful decay.” Other items include skulls, a flying witch spinner and solar-powered spider lights.

These types of gardens can set the stage for moody gatherings. In Ms. Hurst’s Ottawa garden, she occasionally wheels out a cart with teapots for an evening tea party with friends. “You never think to see those colors in nature, so having that element makes it more mysterious,” she said.

When it comes to planting a gothic garden, Daryl Lindsey, a landscape designer in Salt Lake City, urged gardeners to use as many native plants as possible: “The ecological benefits of native plants are massive for the health of the soil, for water conservation and for the benefit of wildlife.”

Something like black mondo grass — a purple-black grass with thin blades that sprout out like a spider — might be aesthetically pleasing, but it can take over a garden, she said. “I would recommend, in those cases, that somebody puts them in some cool Victorian topiary pot,” Ms. Lindsey added.

She also suggested planting white flowers beside a dark shrub like black lace elderberry for contrast: “Then you actually can appreciate how moody and goth-y those dark plants even are.”

In gardens, as in life, there’s a natural push and pull between life and death.

“I love day and night, life and death,” Ms. Crosby said. “I feel like it’s all kind of a metaphor — everything that once was returned to the ground creates new life.”

To the political strategy that might in the future be called “transparent efforts to change the narrative and repair the damage done to Joe Biden in the first presidential debate,” add the dress that Jill Biden wore to accompany her husband to his next-day rally in Raleigh, N.C.

As President Biden attempted to address some of the concerns about his age and energy on Friday, his wife, a political spouse who often seems to choose clothes that recede into the background, took her place by his side in a navy blue crepe dress plastered with one word over and over again: “Vote.”

Given the many post-debate reaction stories that focused on viewers’ anxious feelings about Mr. Biden’s shaky performance, that could not have been a coincidence.

Especially given the fact that Dr. Biden has often seemed reluctant to engage in the game known as first lady fashion diplomacy, largely wearing clothes by designers she feels comfortable with rather than ones with any obvious tactical connection to an event. For her to choose a dress so guaranteed to call attention to itself, and to do so at a time when any attention that is not about her husband’s age is probably good attention, is a statement in itself.

After all, there could be no doubting that all eyes would be on the president in his first rally after the debate, in part to judge whether his weak showing the night before would be repeated. Or that the pictures of that rally would be disseminated far and wide. And that, as a result, what his wife wore, as with every detail of his performance, would send a signal not just to the general audience, but also to the political pundit class that has been calling for Mr. Biden to step aside. The one that has noted that the key influencer would be his wife.

He might have been speechifying, but that dress did the talking.

It was by Christian Siriano, a designer known for his inclusive approach to fashion and who created the iconic blue dress Michelle Obama wore at the 2016 Democratic convention. In an email, Mr. Siriano said the first lady’s team had reached out to him about a month ago to request a new version of a “vote” dress he had made for his spring 2021 collection.

Rebecca Feinglos, the founder of @grieveleave, a grief support platform, said she was wearing one of the original Siriano “vote” dresses when she met Dr. Biden at an event a few months ago. The first lady “asked me where I got my dress,” Ms. Feinglos wrote in an Instagram post, “and I was so excited to tell her its story.”

Mr. Siriano said that when Dr. Biden’s team called, he “came up with this shape that felt classic but modern and hopefully tasteful for this event today.”

He added, “I think we all knew after the first debate that it was going to be an important one that could send a message to the world.”

This is the third time in the last four years that Dr. Biden has worn a garment with a message written atop it.

In 2020, before the last presidential election, Dr. Biden wore a pair of Stuart Weitzman knee-high boots that also read “vote.” And in 2021, at the first Group of 7 meeting in Britain after the president took office, she wore a jacket with the word “love” on the back. The choice was widely interpreted as a riposte to the jacket Melania Trump notoriously wore during her husband’s administration with the words “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” scrawled on the back.

Now the matchup is back, and so are words on clothing. It is, perhaps, only to be expected. Dr. Biden is an English teacher. She knows exactly how much succinct language matters — even if it is on a dress.

The internet celebrities Kouvr Annon and Alex Warren married over the weekend on a bright, sunny day in California. Their guest list was laden with content creators, including Charli D’Amelio, which wasn’t surprising given their history. The pair, who began dating in 2018 and got engaged on New Year’s Eve in 2022, were once members of the social media collective Hype House and have more than 30 million TikTok followers collectively.

One of the creators in attendance, Lilah Gibney, has since received blowback after posting several videos taken during the wedding on June 22 at the Ethereal Gardens, a wedding venue in Escondido, Calif. On TikTok, Ms. Gibney posted a teaser video the next day, featuring intimate moments from the couple’s ceremony, including their first kiss and Ms. Annon walking down the aisle. In her TikTok post, Ms. Gibney directed viewers to her YouTube channel, where they could watch a longer vlog she had made using clips she filmed during the event.

Online, some social media users were quick to criticize Ms. Gibney for sharing content from such a personal moment, particularly given that Ms. Gibney had posted her video before the couple had a chance to put up their own wedding video. “Did you even ask if you could vlog her wedding?,” read one comment on Ms. Gibney’s TikTok account. (Ms. Annon and Mr. Warren have since posted their official wedding video.)

Neither the bride nor groom responded to a requests for comment, but Ms. Annon reposted a video from another influencer, @mattiesbasement, which called out people who vlog at weddings. “Why would you do that? It’s a wedding, it’s not a theme park,” the creator said in the video. “Maybe be in the moment like a little bit.”

“Period,” Ms. Annon commented on the video. Mr. Warren also responded: “This is a very VALID take,” he wrote.

Ms. Gibney, who initially agreed to discuss the situation, was not available for an interview on Thursday afternoon. She has since deleted her YouTube video and posted a video on TikTok addressing the situation. In her response, Ms. Gibney explained that vlogging is her way of showing affection. “It is very, very, very tragic that people, you guys, millions of people can’t understand that my way of showing gratitude and love for anybody is showing my experiences,” she said in the clip.

She also stated that she had not noticed any signs at the ceremony or reception location, nor had she been asked not to share wedding-related content online. (On TikTok, social media users have shared an image of Ms. Annon holding a sign from the wedding requesting guests put their phones and cameras away for the ceremony.)

Meredith Bartel, a wedding planner and the owner of Plus One Planning in Wisconsin, said that having signs like these are a good step if couples want to ensure a phone-free wedding. She also suggested that couples include a section on their wedding website detailing phone rules for the event, and that the officiant make a verbal announcement just before the ceremony begins.

“Then the guests have either been told three times, or at least they’ve just been told one time that they can’t deny. The officiant said it, put it away,” Ms. Bartelsaid. If a couple knows a wedding guest might not comply with the rules, she suggested having a designated person — like a trusted relative or an event coordinator — on duty to keep an eye out and intervene if necessary.

“It should be socially understood that we shouldn’t be taking photos during the ceremony,” she added. “It’s disruptive and what does the couple want with an iPhone photo that’s taken between two people’s heads when they’ve hired a photographer.”

Couples who want social media content to post on their wedding day might consider hiring a professional wedding content creator. Lauren Ladouceur, a New York-based wedding content creator and the founder of Plan With Laur, works with couples to capture their wedding day and edit photos and videos specifically for social media.

“In more traditional wedding media, you are paying a photographer or videographer for a service,” Ms. Ladouceur said. “However, you may not see those deliverables for a couple of days. Could be a week, could be a couple of weeks. This allows you to start reliving your wedding day instantly.”

As for rules for guests about what and when to post, Cameron Forbes, a New York-based event planner and the founder of Forbes Functions, suggests taking cues from the couple. “Wait for them to start sharing any imagery or posting before you do,” Ms. Forbes said. “You don’t want to beat the bride and groom for the punch.”

The Balenciaga couture show opened with a meditation and ended with a storm cloud — one designed to disappear. That’s either a statement of faith in the future or a lot of hot air. Maybe both.

In place of the usual finale wedding gown, Demna, the brand’s mononymous designer, offered up 47 meters (155 feet) of the kind of black nylon normally used inside ball gowns wound round and round the model’s head and body like mist, with neither seams nor fastenings.

“Thirty minutes before the show, the dress didn’t exist,” Demna said backstage. After the show, it wouldn’t either. When you are talking about couture, where the hours of handwork that go into a piece contribute to what is often an outrageous price, and the result is meant to last forever, that’s blasphemy of the highest kind.

It’s also the next step in Demna’s quest to upend the hierarchy of value — what is precious, what is elegant, what is worth keeping (why you keep it) — and challenge the luxury status quo.

Before the disappearing dress, for example, there was a white evening gown made from old plastic bags that had been melted to create a sort of shiny dégradé effect, and one made of gold foil, scrunched around the body. Before those there were classic Balenciaga columns for society swans pieced together from strips of upcycled sweatshirts and soccer jerseys. And before that there were oversize concert Tees and sweatshirts that were actually hand-painted oils by the artist Abdelhak Benallou, featuring images of members of the Balenciaga atelier as a heavy metal band and lined — like the denim jackets — in thick Italian scuba satin to preserve their cocooning volumes.

Couture has always been about what’s on the inside, and invention, but this was taking it to the extreme: in silhouette and theory.

“Nobody really needs couture, to be honest,” Demna said. “To me, it’s an experience of clothes” — the ordering in the atelier, the handwork, the secret knowledge — “and I wanted to bring it even further to this idea.” Instead of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, think of it as 15 minutes of fashion.

He was leaning into the concept that getting dressed is essentially, as he put it, “a performance.” And in the case of the ephemeral look, one that got awfully close to “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” That doesn’t make it any less entertaining or thought-provoking. Especially amid collections where performance of all sorts has been something of a trend.

Acting Out

It was there at Iris van Herpen, where the designer suspended her models in the middle of enormous plaster-covered canvases that she then hung on a wall next to additional artworks, turning the people into a living series of bas reliefs in organza, silk and lace and redefining the whole concept of wearable art.

There at Viktor&Rolf, where Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, the harlequins of fashion, engaged in their usual game of performance art, this time revisiting their 1998 show “Atomic Bomb” and transforming the human body into a variety of geometric compositions using what looked like very fancy nursery school building blocks. And it was the subtext of Giorgio Armani’s 89 variations on velvet and pearls at Armani Privé.

Well, what else are you going to wear to the theater?

Maybe one of the many 1950s-inspired sheaths at Schiaparelli, where Daniel Roseberry turned away from what he called his “meme-weaver” approach (remember the robot baby in his spring show, or the life-size animal heads of an earlier collection?), as well as the crutch of his signature gilded body parts, in favor of a focus on shape and suggestion. Shoulders were broad, skirts narrow, the effect often magnetic.

“The risk for me is there’s nothing here that’s meant to break the internet,” Mr. Roseberry said. (In fact, he forbade his team’s members from looking at their phones when they designed the collection.) The reward was more intimate drama.

A pale pink silk corset dress offered a play on Schiaparelli’s famous stiletto hat of 1937 (it was a Salvador Dalí collaboration), this time with a shoe cupping each breast, the heel like a warning spike about getting too close — except you couldn’t really tell what they were until you got close. A pair of black tuxedo pants was topped with a befeathered white shirt, like Odette and Odile in a single outfit.

Dressing Down

Still, no one addressed the subject of the role that clothes play in the performance of self quite as cleverly as Nicolas Di Felice, the artistic director of Courrèges, in his guest designer spot at Jean Paul Gaultier.

Rather than offer up his own “best of” parade of Gaultierisms (cone bras and tattoo shirts and marinières) like some of the guest stars who came before, he said in a preview that he instead had decided to focus on the more abstract question of what he thought made Gaultier special: That, in putting all sorts of bodies and individuals on his runways, the designer had offered a place and a means to “be who you are, and show who you are, and reveal who you are.”

In Mr. Di Felice’s case, that would be a very talented designer.

On the base of a rectangle and a corset (itself one of Mr. Gaultier’s signature garments; Madonna, anyone?), and with only hook and eye closures for both fitting and decoration, he built a carefully calibrated treatise in cloth on how we use clothes to reveal, or disguise, ourselves.

From the first look, an all-enveloping coat that swallowed the head, he slowly peeled away the layers, stripping off a slice of material here and replacing it with lace; dropping the shoulders there, so the torso of a slip dress puddled around the waist to expose the inner boning; undoing the hooks at a seam, to show a slice of skin. The metal closures glinted like diamanté under the lights, the last sleight of hand in a magic show in (yes) 15 minutes and about not just dress, but inner life. Presto, change-o.

My First Inkling

When I was 7, my grandmother told me she saw Halley’s comet in 1910. As a young woman in rural Tennessee, she was amazed. She explained it would return in 1986, when she’d be in heaven and I’d be a grown man. That was my first inkling, lovingly and mysteriously rendered, that all things change — and people we love pass away, though the stars appear to stay the same. In Seattle, 1986, I watched the comet scar the darkness, my grandmother’s memory burning bright within me. By the time Halley returns in 2061, I will have joined her in infinity. — T.S. Davis

Little Allies

My 10-year-old nephew and his friends were playing in the yard when my sister overheard them using the word “gay” as a put-down. She pulled my nephew aside: “You know Uncle Corey’s gay, right? Have you ever told your friends that?” In the school parking lot the next day, my sister overheard the same boys using “gay” pejoratively again. “Do you even know what that word means?” my nephew asked his friends. “I have a gay uncle and he’s awesome.” The boys didn’t respond, but a little girl standing nearby chimed in: “I have a gay uncle, too!” — Corey Gerard Lambert

Three Shots After it Was Over

I called you when I left the gynecologist. You, whom I’d been with for years until recently. We’d already started seeing other people. Yet we found ourselves together at Dr. Chiu’s office treating an S.T.D. one of us had given the other. While there, we were recommended a course of vaccines for HPV. Three shots over the course of the next nine months became our relationship’s post-mortem. You squeezed my hand as I flinched at the needle. I laughed at you for always forgetting your vaccine record. After, we rewarded ourselves with Dairy Queen and banter. — Lauren Lim

Accidental Thief

Today I came across a butter knife that we’d accidentally stolen from our wedding reception. My memories are not quite as vivid as they used to be, although I thought I’d be able to recall all of it. The one thing I’ll never forget is how I felt that entire day, excited and bursting with joy. I was the happiest woman on earth, without a care in the world, including no guilt for stolen things. I was stealing time and memories. — Mesa Fama

Earlier this month Virginie Viard, the creative director of Chanel, the second-largest luxury brand in the world by sales, left the house. She had been in her job for approximately five years — ever since the 2019 death of Karl Lagerfeld, her mentor and the brand’s former designer, with whom she had worked closely for decades.

Though critics (including this one) had generally disliked her work, which was awkward and seemed to equate shorts with fresh ideas, brand management had always declared its loyalty to her, and the revenue kept going up: to almost $20 billion last year. The break seemed abrupt and unexplained. One week Ms. Viard was showing her cruise collection in Marseille, France; a few weeks later, she was gone.

According to Bruno Pavlovsky, the president of fashion at Chanel, Ms. Viard did not have anything to do with the couture show held this week. Instead, it was designed, a news release said, by the “Fashion Creation Studio.”

Whether that is true or not — three weeks is an awfully fast turnaround for a 46-look handmade collection, even with 150 people working in six ateliers, as the release stated — the result was even more mediocre than what Ms. Viard had produced. That’s saying something, given the most memorable feature of her last couture was that every look was paired with shiny white tights.

And it revealed, as much as anything, why a designer matters, what the real impact of Ms. Viard’s (brief-ish) tenure may be, and why the question of who gets the job next has become the single most popular subject of conversation alongside the runways — even more than complaining about the road closures for Olympic preparation or fretting about the coming elections in France and the United States.

For while the venue for the couture show was new — the ornate Opéra Garnier, home of the Paris Opera Ballet, rather than the usual glass-crowned Grand Palais — the clothes looked old.

Officially inspired by the experience of the 19th-century theater, which Chanel has long supported, the designs seemed more like a checklist of familiar Karl-isms, minus the Wharholian imagination that used to dress up his shows with airplanes and supermarkets, turning even his clunkers into Pop Art. So, yup, there were glinting bouclé suits with boxy knee-length skirts and decorative tassels; sweeping taffeta opera capes paired with tiny bodysuits; tutu-esque little black dresses; and some weird forays into what the brand called “lacquered jersey” and fancy sweatpants. There were a lot of puffed long sleeves, the kind with the whiff of historicism that Mr. Lagerfeld favored, a lot of taffeta bows and a meringue of a wedding dress. It was like Chanel by way of St. John.

Continuity is all fine and dandy, but when it turns into treading water, it can drag you down.

The problem with both this collection and, indeed, what Ms. Viard did before, is that they didn’t reflect a key part of the Lagerfeld legacy. One Mr. Lagerfeld himself summed up when he said, “Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.”

That’s an egregious statement (he was given to them), but the point Mr. Lagerfeld was making was that he succeeded because he refused to genuflect to the history of the brand. He came in and kicked the double Cs off their pedestal, and the result was thrilling. (It was also what led to Tom Ford at Gucci, John Galliano at Dior and so on.) Someone needs to do it again, only this time around, do it to the Lagerfeld-shape sacred cow.

The opportunity is so enormous — the platform so big, resources so deep, brand recognition so connected with aspiration and chic, and design vocabulary so endlessly mutable — it was incredibly frustrating to watch Ms. Viard fail to seize it. Not to exploit all that possibility seemed almost irresponsible; a betrayal of the chance that had been handed her, and that, rumor had it, pretty much every other designer under the sun desired. It’s partly why the disappointment with her work was so sharp, the reactions often verging on the edge of angry.

After Ms. Viard left, there were some who thought the pile-on came from misogyny, but I don’t think that’s true; I think it was simply a response to the stalled nature of her clothes. She had five years to move forward, which is more than many designers get these days. But every time a collection showed signs of promise, such as her last ready-to-wear with its lithe Croisette silhouettes, the next one would go right back to souvenir shop, head-scratching norm.

(Though I also don’t think it’s true that it was the chorus of social media criticism that led to her departure. The echo chamber of fashion on Instagram and X and TikTok may be loud, but when you are talking about a multinational corporation, in the end it’s about moving product.)

Maybe that was what Chanel wanted. Maybe Ms. Viard didn’t have a choice. Chances are, no designer is ever going to have the same carte blanche and blank checks and lifetime employment deal that Mr. Lagerfeld had. Budgets have shrunk and control has gone back to management and when those changes happen they are very hard to reverse.

But the current situation would suggest that the powers-that-be at the brand have realized, at least, that Ms. Viard did more to render Chanel minor than most people could have imagined possible.

That may, in the end, be her greatest legacy: underscoring the need for a point of view. For someone to offer a new idea about women and their place in the world and who and how they want to be. That is, after all, how Chanel began.

There are not many brands with the power and influence to create seismic change in fashion. Chanel is one of them. Here’s hoping that is what happens next.

Jennie Suk, 27, has gotten really into wearing blush in recent months, inspired by videos from TikTok influencers and celebrities, like the singer Sabrina Carpenter, whose dewy, flushed cheeks have become her calling card.

Drawing from her personal arsenal of about 25 blushes, Ms. Suk says she enjoys experimenting with layers of different creams and powders for a rosy glow.

“A couple years ago, I probably only had one or two blushes — I would rarely use it,” said Ms. Suk, who lives in Houston and works in social media for a veterinary services company. “Now I can’t leave the house without blush on.”

She found herself using more and more products, until someone finally pointed out that she might be using a bit too much. On social media, this affliction — not being able to tell, empirically, how rosy is too rosy — has jokingly become known as “blush blindness.”

“I first realized that I kind of had blush blindness when I walked into my sister’s house and she was like, ‘Oh, did you get a facial? Because your face is so red,’” she recalled.

Being called out for having blush blindness has women like Ms. Suk reconsidering how much of the product they are wearing. (It is a spinoff of another TikTok trend, eyebrow blindness, in which users post self-deprecating photos of their old eyebrow styles.)

Gone are the days of powdery blushes one might associate with her mother or grandmother. Blush products have exploded in popularity in recent years, thanks in part to new, creamier liquid formulations like those from Rare Beauty, the makeup brand founded by Selena Gomez. Last year, Rare Beauty was reported to have sold 3.1 million units of its liquid blush product.

Laney Crowell, the chief executive of the beauty brand Saie, told The New York Times in an email that her company sells a blush every 30 seconds. “On social media, blush is definitely the new accessory,” Ms. Crowell added.

It was a Rare Beauty blush that made Celine Blumenthal, a rising junior at Yeshiva University in New York City, realize she may be overdoing things.

In a phone interview, she remembered her mother making a comment about the bright shade: “She was like, ‘I’m telling you right now, you’re going to look back that the orange color doesn’t suit you at all. It looks bad.’” Ms. Blumenthal exchanged the product for a different shade.

On TikTok, Ms. Blumenthal posted several photos of her previous pink-cheeked looks and identified herself as a “victim of blush blindness.”

Toni Bravo, a beauty content creator in Los Angeles, attributed the rise in popularity of blush to a cultural shift away from “being afraid of color.” And she said that blush has become a widespread beauty trend could also make it feel more approachable.

“People who might have been afraid of using blush or figuring out how to use it are realizing that there’s all these different kinds of blushes, there’s all these different kinds of shades, tones, finishes, textures,” Ms. Bravo, 24, said. “There’s really something for everyone.”

But as is the case with anything that relies on human perception, blush blindness is highly subjective, Ms. Bravo added.

In a recent video, she responded to a commenter who accused her of wearing too much blush by applying even more.

“I think it’s all just a taste thing,” she said. “I think some people are just not used to bright or bold blushes, especially on deeper skin tone.”

Ms. Bravo is not alone in ignoring what the internet masses have to say about her makeup. Rachel Carlisle, 27, has grown a small following on TikTok for posting videos where she applies her makeup step by step, including a copious amount of blush as a base layer under the rest of her products. Ms. Carlisle, who lives in Biloxi, Miss., and works in health care consulting, said she liked the warm, sun-kissed effect of this blush style.

Commenters often accuse her of trolling, but Ms. Carlisle said her intentions were earnest.

“When people first started doing at-home contour, everybody made fun of that. They made it sound like that was absolutely insane,” Ms. Carlisle said. “But look at it now. I feel like it’s going to be like that.”

The line of Hailey Bieber fans snaked up Greene Street in Manhattan and wrapped around the block, but many were never going to get what they really wanted: a selfie with Ms. Bieber.

“I love the Bieber family, Bieber franchise — I’m here for it!” exclaimed Haleigh Francis. Like hundreds of others who descended on SoHo on Monday, Ms. Francis was hoping to be among the first to experience the “pocket-sized” pop-up put on by Ms. Bieber’s popular makeup and skin care brand, Rhode.

At 11 a.m., Rhode opened its doors to the public, who were invited to buy tubes of peptide lip balm for $18 apiece or a set of six mini-blushes for $130, among other skin care items.

Inside the tiny storefront, employees wore the Los Angeles girl uniform: a form-fitting white tee, semi-baggy jeans and black loafers. The walls were painted a glossy caramel shade, and mirrors emblazoned with the brand name covered the walls. Outside, a baby-pink Cosmic Bliss ice cream truck distributed samples of Strawberry Glaze, Ms. Bieber’s signature ice cream flavor, fashioned after her signature Erewhon smoothie.

With her Gen Z bona fides and the all-important aura of celebrity, Ms. Bieber, 27, a model and socialite who founded Rhode in 2022, is carving out a niche within the crowded, billion-dollar cosmetics and skin care industry. In some ways, the pop-up is an extension of previous experiments by the brand, like a touring photo booth.

“With Rhode, I’m always looking for new ways to reach our customers,” Ms. Bieber said in a phone interview. “I speak so much about how Rhode is a whole world that we’re creating. As a brand, we’re always wanting to bring people into the world of Rhode in fun and immersive ways.”

Ms. Bieber visited the shop the night before, when Rhode hosted a preview event for friends and skin care influencers, but she decided to skip the first day.

“I’m obviously pregnant right now, so I wanted to just do what I was the most comfortable with and kind of just let people go and have their own experience,” she said, adding, “I am being a little bit more protective of my energy and space and time right now.”

“My energy is going to growing this baby,” she said.

Close to 1,000 fans had lined up at the door by 6 a.m. for the pop-up’s first day. (It is expected to continue through July 3.)

Matthew Angeles, 20, traveled from Dover, N.J., and then waited for five hours to make his way into the shop. The space was small, but there was room enough to display seven blushes and four tinted peptide lip balms at stations spaced throughout the store. Fans stopped to take selfies as they applied products and some took photos of one another. The moment Mr. Angeles walked in the store, he reached for what he had waited so long to try: the Pocket Blush in a peachy shade called Sprinkle that was created strictly for the New York pop-up.

“I definitely wanted to try that,” Mr. Angeles said, while tugging on his Reneé Rapp tote. “I haven’t been able to get my hands on those, and I kind of wanted to test those out, see what I like.”

Marisa Darlene, 22, found out about the pop-up from social media. She arrived at 127 Greene Street at 8:30 in the morning. By 1 p.m., she was still at the back of the line.

“I was super excited to come out and knew I’d be waiting in a long line,” Ms. Darlene said. “I like the excitement a pop-up brings. It’s just so fun to make friends in line. This is so cool.”

Even with all the excitement, however, there was one thing that could burst Ms. Darlene’s bubble: if Ms. Bieber did not show.

“I would be kind of disappointed because there’s so many people here,” said Ms. Darlene, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “I mean, I don’t even know if she expected the turnout to be this big, but I feel like that’d be nice for her just to pop by to see her fans, you know?”

A gaggle of teens from Westchester — one pointed out she was from Brooklyn — stood in front of Ms. Darlene in line. All were established fans of the Rhode skin care line.

“It is very tween makeup,” said Stella DiStasio, 17. “It’s more minimalistic, and all of the packaging is just very … aesthetic.” (Although Ms. DiStasio was the de facto spokeswoman for the group, several said the word “aesthetic” in unison.)

A teenage attendee named Arrens Osorto demonstrated the flushed look that Rhode has made its calling card. He was at the back of the line, with a full face of blush.

“I’m really excited to see Hailey Bieber and all her makeup products from Rhode,” he said smiling shyly from the back of the line. “I think she’s inside!”

This reporter did not have the heart to tell him that Ms. Bieber was not, in fact, at the shop.

For the last few summers in East Hampton, N.Y., many people have gotten up early in hopes of glimpsing Jay-Z on one of his early morning walks amid the shingled mansions of moguls such as David Zaslav, David Geffen and Ron Perelman.

But this season, the world’s most successful rapper has seemingly been upstaged by a new star in town: a wild American flamingo that has drawn hundreds of spectators in recent weeks.

It apparently made its way to this moneyed enclave of celebrities, plutocrats and tourists last month, taking up residence in Georgica Pond, a brackish coastal pond that lies between East Hampton and Wainscott. First to spot the wayward bird was Cathy Blinken, an Amazon Web Services senior marketing manager who spends time on the pond with her husband, David Blinken, a first cousin to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

Ms. Blinken promptly called The East Hampton Star, which sent a reporter and photographer to break the story of the creature’s arrival. In the coming days, those who visited Georgica Pond to see the vagrant flamingo for themselves ended up disappointed. The bird had flown.

Days later, a flamingo with identical plumage was seen sunning itself roughly 200 miles away, on the shores of Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts. It seemed that the bird might be one of those highfliers who, after surveying various summer outposts of the Northeast, had determined that Cape Cod was preferable to the scenic splendor of the scene-obsessed Hamptons.

But on June 9, Pietro Cicognani, an East Hampton architect, spotted the bird and made a call to The Star, which quickly published a follow-up to its scoop.

Jim Colligan, an avid birder who used to serve as a councilman on nearby Shelter Island, helped spread the news of the flamingo’s return. On Tuesday he found himself riding in the car of another area resident, Steven Spielberg, to catch a glimpse of the village’s principal attraction.

As Mr. Spielberg drove, Mr. Colligan directed him to a sandy pathway surrounded by partridgeberry vines and onto an inlet near the end of West End Road, not far from the former home of Kelly Klein, the ex-wife of Calvin Klein. From there, it was easy to spot the flamingo in the pond. This was less because of its distinctive plumage and more because of its stilt-like legs, which enabled it to walk the shallows with the gait of a Louboutin-clad supermodel.

The flamingo went into a routine that looked like a jig — it bent its right leg, then its left, then its right again. After that, it lowered its head into the water to dig up algae and invertebrates from the floor with its hooked beak. On the other side of the pond, nearly a dozen birders stood with binoculars and cameras.

More gawkers showed up as the week went on. Kerry Lyons, a day-tripper from Westchester County, N.Y., nearly doubled over when she was informed that there was a flamingo in the pond.

“Really?” she said. “Shut up!”

A birder in a Hawaiian shirt invited Ms. Lyons to look through his telescope, and her doubts were replaced by questions about how on earth it had gotten there.

“Did it take a wrong turn?” she asked.

According to Jerry Lorenz, a marine biologist and the director of research for Audubon Florida, the wrong-turn theory is indeed plausible.

In a phone interview, Mr. Lorenz said that Hurricane Idalia, which swept into Florida in August 2023, may have had something to do with the bird’s arrival in the Hamptons. To escape the storm, flocks of flamingos flew north, leading to rare sightings of the brightly colored creatures in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Most of those birds went back to where they had come from. But it is not uncommon for a flamingo to break off from a flock, either because it is disoriented or because its pals get killed, Mr. Lorenz said. A few mavericks, he noted, may simply decide to go exploring.

“There are examples of a flamingo hanging out by itself for years,” Mr. Lorenz said, going on to tell the tale of Peaches, a flamingo who spent years living the single life at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in the Florida Panhandle, rejecting multiple flocks before making some friends after last year’s hurricane season.

“Then it left with them,” he said.

Flamingos are found throughout the world, from tropical regions to the Andes in South America. They get their distinctive hue from the carotenoid pigments in the crustaceans and algae that make up their diet. Tough and sturdy, they can fly as fast as 40 miles per hour, according to the American Bird Conservancy.

They tend to make news when they escape their usual habitats. In 1964, The New York Times reported on a flamingo sighting in Niantic, Conn. An African flamingo that escaped a zoo in Wichita, Kan., in 2005 was still generating headlines in 2022, when it was spotted in Port Lavaca, Texas. Pink Floyd, a flamingo that escaped an aviary in Salt Lake City, lived in the Great Salt Lake for part of each year from 1988 to 2005.

The Hamptons flamingo has managed to establish friendly relations with some longtime residents of Georgica Pond — a flock of sometimes ornery swans.

“He gets along with them,” said Lars Svanberg, a surfing instructor who was eyeing the flamingo as swans swam circles around it. “They’re all hanging out together!”

Mr. Lorenz, who has studied photos and videos of the flamingo in Georgica Pond, said it was in no immediate need of intervention from rescue groups.

“That’s a healthy bird,” he said. “It’s flying just fine. It’s feeding just fine. Leave it alone.”

“I tried to make things people would cherish,” Dries Van Noten said on Saturday evening, during a cocktail party and dinner preceding his final runway show. Mr. Van Noten held his first show in Paris back in 1991; now, at 66, he is stepping away from his namesake brand. His retirement was a shock to many in a business in which careers tend to be abnormally truncated or else to exceed their expiration date.

The decision to retire was not taken lightly, Mr. Van Noten said. Whose is? And it was destined to be a disappointment to fans of this gentle Belgian’s presence on the scene. And they are many. Why? There was his evolved craftsmanship. There was his singular gift as a colorist. There was his ability to skew pattern and tweak silhouette without compromising wearability. Perhaps alone among the designers of the vaunted Antwerp Six group he belonged to, Mr. Van Noten produced, for 150 collections, commercially accessible, cherishable clothes.

A pre-show dinner party of a kind the French term a cocktail dînatoire was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris. Fans from throughout the decades — among them, the designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Thom Browne, Glenn Martens, Stephen Jones, Harris Reed and Diane von Furstenberg — floated about a vast space as waiters poured Champagne in abundance and circulated with trays bearing tiny bowls of beet soup, white asparagus with poached egg, foie gras and shrimp on skewers.

As a waiter passed with a flight of beef tartare snacks, Edward Buchanan, the designer and Milan fashion director of Perfect Magazine, waved them away. Raw beef at parties is iffy, he said.

Asked about his relationship to Mr. Van Noten’s designs, Mr. Buchanan told a story. “Two years ago in L.A., all my things were stolen,” he said. For months after the theft, he spent every spare hour obsessively combing the internet for replacements — not of his personal mementos but of his lost Van Notens.

“I didn’t really care about anything else,” he said.

It was like that with Van Noten’s designs. You coveted them when you saw them and hoped to keep them for life.

So it felt keenly bittersweet that Mr. Van Noten’s valedictory collection, shown on a long runway poetically covered with shreds of silver leaf so light they fluttered through the air, encompassed many keystones of his graceful, unostentatious mastery. The show opened with an austere lightweight overcoat that suggested something dour was to follow, an impression quickly offset by a parade of transparent peekaboo trousers, dusters, overshirts and double-breasted suits buttoned low and slouchy in the manner of film noir gangsters.

Hawaiian Punch florals rendered in cool monochrome and paired with snakeskin patterns were followed by iridescent metallic trousers and tunics jackets in a gold-and-silver fabric that moved like molten metal. The effect was both minimalist and wizardly.

If there were no other single reason to lament Mr. Van Noten’s retreat from fashion, there is his color sense. Could another designer layer a taupe field jacket with bellows pockets on the breast and sleeves over a pair of salmon-colored fuzzy shorts with unfinished hems and a rosy-beige shirt whose color, in more benighted times, Crayola crayons marketed as Flesh?

Let’s hope so. Until that time, the smart money is on a serious uptick in online sales of vintage Dries Van Noten. As Mr. Buchanan realized when his bleach-dipped denim jacket was swiped, Joni Mitchell was 100 percent correct about not knowing what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Kevin Kwan used to do some of his best napping in jewelry stores.

This was decades before Mr. Kwan, 50, wrote his new novel “Lies and Weddings”; before the three books in his “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy became best-sellers; before it was announced that Jon M. Chu, the director of the “Crazy Rich Asians” movie, would also direct its Broadway adaptation. It was even before Mr. Kwan’s previous job as a photo editor for Elizabeth Taylor’s 2002 book “My Love Affair With Jewelry.”

“In the strangest way, jewelry has always been a part of my life,” Mr. Kwan said on a recent video call. He recalled being “dragged to jewelry stores around the world” by his mother, grandmother and aunts. He grew up helping these women select precious stones — and occasionally falling asleep under stores’ counters.

In “Lies and Weddings,” characters gossip about a set of mothball-size pearls so large that they are said to either cost millions or be fake. Descriptions of jewels have become such a trademark of Mr. Kwan’s writing, he said, that strangers will often approach him to show off their jewelry.

In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, Mr. Kwan discussed his own jewelry — specifically, an Art-Deco-cut imperial jade ring that he doesn’t wear, but has held close to his heart ever since it was passed down to the author by an aunt who helped him develop his love of writing.

Talk about this ring.

The ring belonged to my grandmother: A lozenge-shaped imperial jade piece, flanked on each side by three small diamonds. What really gives it its Art Deco style is the silver band; it has this detailing that looks like a ribbon that’s been cinched. I think a jeweler would better be able to describe it.

When I opened the box for the first time and saw the ring, I gasped because it’s a huge piece of imperial jade. They say jade has to be worn against your body because it reacts to the oils and the warmth, and that it actually gets greener the longer you wear it. This ring was such a beautiful, intense green.

Which grandmother did this ring belong to? And how did it get passed down to you?

My paternal grandmother. Her name was Egan Oh. She gave it to my aunt, her middle daughter, whose name was Mary Kwan. And then Mary left it to me in her will. Mary very sadly passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. So it’s lovely, but it’s also bittersweet, because in one sense, I wish I never had this ring. But in another sense, it really connects me to my lineage in a very meaningful way.

Did you know this piece existed before you received it?

I was lucky enough to view some pieces owned by my grandmother, but never possessed anything until years later when this ring came to me. It’s very special because it’s the one connection I have to her and to a world that really no longer exists. Singapore in the 1930s was her heyday; she would get dressed up and had these fabulous clothes and the most amazing shoes from Paris. That world and the opulence and gentility is gone. Everything now is about athleisure and quiet luxury.

What’s also really meaningful to me about this ring is that it was passed from my grandmother to my favorite aunt. We were super close. We used to live in the same house, with my grandparents. She really, really instilled in me a love of reading and writing, and challenged me.

Do you ever wear the ring?

It spends most of its life in a vault. But it’s deeply symbolic, and it’s reassuring to know where it is. I also don’t wear jewelry at all. I prefer not to have displays of anything that’s ostentatious. I am similar to my aunt in that way. I don’t wear visible brands.

But I am not opposed to wearing a jade ring with diamonds, and I actually think it’d be cool one day to wear it. Harry Styles wears pearls, right?

Do you plan to pass it down?

I’m just the custodian of it for this generation. I’m not a pharaoh. I don’t believe in burying treasured possessions with me. And also objects, to me, take on a life of their own. They’re meant to have another life beyond you, right? And they’re just things, ultimately. For me, it’s the meaning and the memories that I attach to the ring. Those are the most important things, and they stay with me forever.

Tucked away on a side street behind Père-Lachaise, the largest cemetery in Paris and perhaps the most visited necropolis in the world, Colm Dillane, a.k.a. KidSuper, stood at the cyclonic center of a studio strewed with clothes, bags, shoes and props and crammed with models, stylists, photographers, videographers, the designer’s parents and the rapper Lil Tjay. Mr. Dillane looked for all the world like a man whose fashion show was far off in the future, not the following night.

“What’s up, what’s good?” Lil Tjay asked Mr. Dillane. The question was rhetorical. Lil Tjay, whose given name is Tione Jayden Merritt, knew the answer before Mr. Dillane opened his mouth.

“It’s all cool,” the designer said. Of course it was.

While some in fashion prefer to work in semi-clinical settings, surrounded by white-smocked assistants, and others in solitude, delegating to distant teams, Mr. Dillane is the embodiment of crowdsourced creativity.

If anyone around him, be it Wisdom Kaye, his stylist, or his 21-year-old assistant Clara West, who only recently graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, has a good idea, his ears are open. If a concept looks as if it may tank, he will improvise. If, for instance, the 6-foot-8-inch model cast to wear a headless costume figure in a fashion show designed in collaboration with the entertainment megalith Cirque du Soleil has legs too long for the available samples, order a pair stitched overnight.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do about feet,” Mr. Dillane said, referring to the model Kaylann Balde’s size 12 shoes.

“Don’t worry about it,” an associate said. “We’ll figure it out.”

Improvisation is a default setting for Mr. Dillane. Coming out of nowhere as a Brooklyn Tech nerd who went from selling T-shirts from his New York University dorm room to building a booming streetwear brand, he finds himself going head-to-head with the biggest names in fashion on its most competitive stage. The cliché has always held that moxie is a New Yorker’s superpower, the ultimate flex.

Whether that still holds, the reality is that with no formal training and only his abundant reserve of ideas and drives to propel him, Mr. Dillane has thus far managed to stage 11 fashion showings — two off the official calendar in Paris, one off-calendar in his hometown, four on the official roster of Paris Fashion Week and four films, also presented in Paris during the Covid-19 lockdown. One of these was a stop-motion claymation-style film featuring miniature replicas of famous figures.

It was most likely that film that brought him to the attention of the judges of the LVMH awards, who granted him the prestigious Karl Lagerfeld prize in 2021. That, in turn, brought him to the attention of LVMH, which handed Mr. Dillane the creative reins at Louis Vuitton for the label’s second presentation after the designer Virgil Abloh’s death.

“One thing I learned at LV was that they were just as unprepared as I am,” Mr. Dillane said on Friday, as models from a casting call that brought in more than 400 prospects for 31 available slots trooped into the studio. “Two days out from the big LV show, there was no choreography. They were chill about it. The difference is they had money. They can throw money and people at anything.”

What KidSuper has is talent and a vibe. That is why shows like the one planned for Saturday night tend to draw out celebrities, ballers and the hip-hop elite. It is why models forgo big money jobs to work for him.

“We don’t have any problems at all getting models,” the casting director Maxime Valentini said. “Everyone wants to work for Colm because of his energy. Models even try to crash the castings.”

“Fashion is like a Trojan horse for all these other concepts,” said Mr. Dillane, who views himself as a multimedia artist and who has variously staged shows imitating a comedy roast and starring real-life comics; a filmed “docuseries” on his life; a fake art auction; and a short of vignettes inspired by Wes Anderson. That one was titled “If the Plan Doesn’t Work, You’re Insane, If the Plan Works You’re a Genius.”

Whether his latest effort will be viewed as brilliant or crazy remains to be seen. Yet the elements are coming together, he said. He had already constructed a pair of giant hands using 3-D printers and choreographed a presentation with eight circus performers who will be manipulated on the stage of the Le Trianon theater as if they were marionettes. Earlier in the week, he rehearsed the show’s opening scene with a hair suspension artist.

“She’s a hair-hanging person, and the hands pick her up onstage like she’s on strings,” Mr. Dillane said, abruptly pulling off his T-shirt and walking around half-clad. “I’ve always liked that idea of fashion and puppetry.”

Tenderness in Three Minutes or Less

I love my husband, Igael, and like to show him attention, but what can I say? I’m busy! I’m a practicing physician and the president and chief executive of NYC Health & Hospitals, the nation’s largest municipal health care system. I also have two children and a futile desire to die with perfect abs. So there’s little time to be affectionate. That’s where our microwave comes in. In the 90 seconds it takes to warm coffee or the three minutes to heat dinner, I find my husband, then hug and kiss him. In our family this is known as “microaffection.” — Mitchell Katz

Suspended in Love

He was my world and I his avid explorer. He was a swimmer in high school. I never learned how to swim but loved the water. Off the Panamanian coast, he taught me how to float. We cooked Creole food, followed the open road and made incisions in our palms, letting our blood mix into the Mississippi River to consecrate our love and honor our respective Southern ancestors. Our disharmony was equally passionate. After an ultimatum, our two-year relationship ended on Juneteenth. My greatest lesson was that I am capable of giving and receiving love. That is my sweet liberation. — Cleola Payne

Babushka’s Luck

“You’re protected on your path,” the psychic said, “by an ancestral matriarchal presence.” I nodded. “That’s my grandma.” Babushka Dina died a few months prior. I had no doubt she would protect me from over yonder — why wouldn’t she? “Good luck,” she’d say when I’d tell her something inane on the phone, such as, “I have to go to the store.” “Good luck!” she’d respond wholeheartedly in her Brooklyn-Yiddish accent. “But why, ‘good luck,’ Babushka? I’m only going to Foodtown.” “You always need luck,” she’d insist. “Luck is always good to have.” And now, she is my luck. — Jessie Kanzer

Not a Perfect ‘Moom’

When my younger son was in kindergarten, he wrote me love notes. One said, “I love my moom.” Fine spelling for a 5-year-old. Back then, I was confident in my mothering. But recently, I’ve been doubting myself. Am I too quick to anger? Too focused on my career? Am I leading my sons to happy futures? Reassurance arrived in a poetry collection my older son wrote. He dedicated the book to me, noting that I am an author and someone he appreciates. I realized that motherhood is not about being perfect, but loving wholly while pursuing your own passions. — Anita Jari Kharbanda

When my wife proposed that we stop being monogamous, she said it would make us stronger. I said it would make us divorce. We were both right.

She had planted the seed seven years into our marriage as I was finishing seminary. At the time, I was exiting a phase of my life perhaps best described as “worship pastor bro.” My Christian faith was undergoing a meticulous and scholarly deconstruction. I could begin to imagine a life without God, but with my new, expensive master’s degree in theology, I struggled to imagine a career without Him.

By contrast, Corrie’s turn away from religion a year earlier had been quick, uncomplicated and annoyingly joyful.

One night, seven years into our marriage, she said, “Do you ever wish we had slept around a bunch in college before getting married?” Corrie was a fiery social worker whose face could never hide what she felt — annoyance, attraction, embarrassment. Behind this question was an expression of excitement.

I stared at her in disbelief. By “college” she meant the Bible college where we met, both of us in student leadership. It was the kind of Christian university that prohibited dancing.

Like many of our peers, Corrie and I married the summer after graduation. We were in love, but we were also motivated by our desire to explore that part of the human experience marriage would finally sanction: sexuality.

“What? No!” I said, incredulous, but quiet enough not to wake our then-5-year-old daughter. Still, her newfound liberation was infectious. Soon we were naming all the classmates we might have hooked up with, given the chance. As it turned out, for Corrie, they were mostly women.

Thus began a game we would play, called, “Do you think they’re hot?” One of us would pause the TV show we were watching or gesture slyly at a neighboring table, then look at the other with arched eyebrows. The Venn diagram of who we each found attractive were two separate circles, except for a sliver of overlap occupied by Jennifer Lawrence in “The Hunger Games.”

Gradually, the game took on a more serious tone as Corrie’s type came into clearer focus. “How about them?” I would ask, nodding toward a particularly androgynous woman. “Do you think they’re hot?”

Corrie started identifying as bisexual, then pansexual, then queer. It was hard to know how to feel about her transformation. On the one hand, it became harder to place myself and our heterosexual marriage on the new map of her sexual interests. On the other hand, the more freedom she felt to explore her fantasies, the more erotic energy she brought into our relationship. After years of being fairly disinterested in sex, Corrie was finally turned on. Just not by me.

It was after an episode of “Orange is the New Black,” the Netflix show featuring incarcerated women — many of them lesbians — that Corrie said, “I wish we hadn’t gotten married so young. I don’t regret marrying you, but I regret that I never got the chance to explore first. What if we had that chance now? Both of us.”

It hurt. It was the first time we talked about divorce. Neither of us wanted to end our marriage. But the idea of opening it also felt wrong — or it did to me.

Like Corrie’s embrace of atheism, the prospect of having other partners seemed uncomplicated to her. Non-monogamy was a sign that our marriage was strong and could withstand threats. Plus, the idea of me with another woman somehow excited her.

By contrast, the thought of her with someone else sent my mind spinning. I imagined them being able to satisfy Corrie in a way that I couldn’t. I wanted to be enough for her, but I also didn’t want to be an object of regret or a gatekeeper to her happiness.

We started seeing a couple’s therapist who specialized in non-monogamous relationships. And then we started seeing other people.

My reintroduction to dating was a disaster. I spent the moments before my first date dry heaving in an alley behind the restaurant. Months later, in another woman’s bed for the first time, I was unable to become aroused.

And I felt even more uncomfortable watching Corrie date. I knew she wouldn’t leave me for someone else, but I felt utterly debilitated, something bigger than jealousy.

Among the stack of books about non-monogamy and polyamory that now sat on my night stand, I learned the term “primal panic,” a destabilizing jolt to one’s nervous system coming from the potential abandonment of an attachment figure. I didn’t like to think of myself having a childlike attachment to my wife, but I had spent too much time sobbing in the shower not to see that simple truth.

We were children when we first got together. It wasn’t just that neither of us had dated or slept around before getting married. We also had never been dumped, been single in our 20s, or lived alone. Corrie was now finding an identity that transcended our relationship. I had no idea who I was outside of us.

I started seeing an individual therapist and attending a men’s process therapy group. But perhaps most helpful was the exposure therapy of continuing our non-monogamy experiment. Jealousy was like a tight muscle that I learned to stretch and relax. As many times as I watched Corrie leave on a date, I watched her come home. I learned to comfort the panicked child inside me rather than outsource that job to Corrie.

One night, laughing with a date as we walked home from a performance of “The Producers,” I realized I was having fun. Years later, when another woman I was seeing slapped my behind playfully at a restaurant, I realized I was having feelings.

Becoming emotionally attached to other partners had always seemed like the biggest threat to our relationship. Now, romantic feelings for others just felt like part of the territory. When I suggested that we remove our wedding bands, Corrie happily agreed. We started using the term polyamory, saying to other partners that we wanted long-term relationships, not just sexual connections.

“I accidentally said ‘I love you’ to Tamara,” I told Corrie one day over lunch. With our children at school and our work calendars blocking off the hour, these midday check-ins had become a ritual for us, a time to process all the drama — and increasingly, comedy — that filled our lives as a polyamorous couple.

“What?” she yelled. “Jason. Seriously?”

“We were having sex and it just sort of slipped out,” I said.

“On your second date?” We were both laughing now. “Dude, you are going to scare this girl away.”

I had matched with Tamara on OkCupid, which includes options for seeking monogamy or non-monogamy. Her profile said she was open to either. I swiped right.

We quickly hit it off. Tamara was cheerful, a bit cautious and deeply curious. Given our shared love for the outdoors, we soon were planning canyon hikes in Utah and a backpacking trip near Aspen.

But what I found most endearing about Tamara was the way our physical connection fostered emotional connection. For the first time, I felt like my sexual desire for another person was reciprocated.

“Healing” was the word I found myself using as I described this to Corrie over lunch one day. The word caught in my throat as I said it. She had met Tamara a few weeks earlier and seemed uncharacteristically pensive as our relationship developed.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give you what she can. The way Tamara feels about you is the way I feel about the women I’m dating.”

It was the truth we both had pretended not to know: Corrie was gay. After years of confusion and dread, this clarity came as a relief, casting light onto years of tortured conversation about sexual desire and our fundamental compatibility.

She asked if we could stay married as platonic partners. I said no. We held hands across the dining room table and cried. We would divorce later that summer.

I had always been so focused on what Corrie wasn’t getting from our marriage that I didn’t realize what I wasn’t getting. Our non-monogamy had given me the chance to explore what I wanted. And what I wanted was a monogamous relationship with Tamara.

We moved in together that fall. Next year, we’ll be getting married, with Corrie attending as my “best person.”

I maintain a beautiful relationship with Corrie. She and Tamara maintain a beautiful relationship with each other and our children. They’ve each given their blessing for this story to be published.

Our lives together require an expansive view of love. Although I have stopped being non-monogamous, I have also stopped depending on romantic love for a sense of identity. For that, I’m grateful for polyamory.

As Alexis Major walked down the aisle to a violinist’s rendition of John Legend’s “All of Me,” she could see her beloved, Karim Butler, seated beneath the ceremonial white floral arch, crying. She settled into the chair across from him, wiped the tears from his face, and the traditional Muslim wedding ceremony commenced.

From the ceremony to the after-party, the entire evening was a lavish affair — and the logo of their cannabis company, Gumbo, was a motif throughout the wedding.

The idea for Gumbo — the couple’s “baby,” as Mr. Butler called it — started in October 2019, after they noticed that many of their friends in the music and major league sports industries were becoming addicted to opioids. Both had long careers in those industries: Ms. Major, 45, was a manager for N.F.L. players; Mr. Butler, 47, who goes by Luka, worked with various musicians and record labels in management, marketing and promotion.

They wanted to develop an alternative pain management option, Ms. Major said, so they created Gumbo, which sells cannabis products in a variety of consumption forms. “It’s a mixture of a bunch of different strains that we say melted in a pot and became gumbo,” she said.

The couple hadn’t intended to build a large business, but as word of the strain spread, there proved to be a demand. “We were just medicating the people we knew,” Mr. Butler said. “And then it metamorphosed because the people wanted it.”

From there, Gumbo took off, and today it is sold in dispensaries worldwide. Mr. Butler is the chief executive of Gumbo, and Ms. Major is the chief financial officer. (“He’s the beauty, and I’m the brain,” Ms. Major said, jokingly.)

Many of Gumbo’s earliest supporters attended their wedding on June 8 at Park Château Estate and Gardens in East Brunswick, N.J., including the musical artists Davido, Quavo and Fat Joe — some of whom gave impromptu performances at the reception.

After guests snapped photos outside and dined on seafood and pasta during the cocktail hour, they made their way down a candlelit hallway draped in white silk fabric and adorned with life-size photos of the couple to the reception.

Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers, dressed in a black tuxedo with silver sparkling lapels, serenaded the couple for their first dance as a billow of smoke enveloped them and fire sparklers lit up the hall.

Guests joined the couple on the dance floor and belted out the lyrics to some of the Isley Brothers’ biggest hits, including “Contagious” and “Footsteps in the Dark.” (One 24-year-old guest asked his mother, “Is this the actual artist?” She said, jokingly, “All the kids today only know the samples and the remixes. This is the real thing.”)

Ms. Major said that watching the young guests get excited by Mr. Isley’s performance was a highlight. “Little girls and little boys that look like us have never seen anything like that,” Ms. Major said. “If you don’t see it, you don’t know it’s possible. And we really showcase our life just to let people like us know that if you want something, you can have it. It’s obtainable.”

She added, “You work hard and you play hard.”

The couple plays hard, indeed. The reception turned into a mini music festival. During the reception, Davido, the Afrobeats star and a friend of the couple, grabbed a mic and started singing “Sensational,” his song with Chris Brown and Lojay, and dancing with the bride, who had a drink in her hand.

“Make some noise for my people,” he said before singing “Fall,” a popular wedding song that starts with the lyrics: “Money fall on you.” In fitting fashion, guests threw cash in the air.

From there, the rappers Quavo and Moneybagg Yo, who were on the stage dancing with their sunglasses on, spontaneously performed a few of their songs. “They were just there as guests,” Ms. Major said, “but they all were so excited, they performed.”

Ms. Major and Mr. Butler first met at Tajia Diamonds, a jeweler in New York’s diamond district, in September 2017. Both were there for the same reason: The locks on their chain necklaces needed fixing.

Ms. Major approached him first, and though he was blushing, he said, he kept it professional. He handed her his business card.

Instead she told him, “Take my number.”

“She was feeling me, I was feeling her, but she was going a little bit harder,” Mr. Butler said. “I think she knew what she wanted.”

Asked if she agreed with that narrative during an interview the day before the wedding, Ms. Major said, “I plead the fifth, I gotta marry this man tomorrow.” Ms. Major was in her suite, getting her hair and makeup done for their rehearsal dinner at Orchard Park by David Burke in East Brunswick, N.J. Mr. Butler was calling in from his car. They have playful personalities, poking fun at each other while they reminisced about their journey together.

A few days after meeting at the jewelry store, Mr. Butler called her on FaceTime. Ms. Major was in the shower at the time, but she was so excited to receive a call from him that she answered the phone, forgetting where she was.

He immediately hung up. “I was so taken aback,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t call this woman again.’”

But she called him back and apologized, and they got to know each through subsequent phone calls. In October, they made plans to meet at Made in Mexico, a hot spot restaurant in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan.

When she showed up at the restaurant, she stood around waiting for him. But, despite his boasts about being “the man of the area,” she recalled, Mr. Butler accidentally went to a different restaurant with the same name. By the time he finally showed up to the correct place, she needed to make her way to the singer Keyshia Cole’s birthday party at Philippe Chow.

Mr. Butler wanted to accompany her there to make up for lost time. He insisted on sitting at the bar while she attended the party in a private room at the restaurant.

Ms. Majors friends asked her why she was so late. “I met up with this guy,” she recalled saying. “I think I really like him.” They didn’t believe her because Ms. Major was famously hard to please.

Ms. Cole convinced the entire group to go to the bar and meet the man who had seemingly achieved the impossible. And, to impress her friends, Mr. Butler offered to buy everyone a shot.

Little did he know that they were drinking expensive Martell cognac shots. Through hand gestures, Ms. Major tried to communicate to him to not order a round of shots. He didn’t get the memo.

The bill came to $15,000, and he paid it. “I liked her — I was going to do what I had to do to impress her,” Mr. Butler said. But Ms. Major was not impressed. She was mortified that he picked up such a pricey bill.

Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.

Their first official date was at Lure Fishbar in SoHo on Nov. 1, 2017, which they considered a do-over.

“And after that, we’ve been inseparable,” Mr. Butler said. In January 2018, the couple moved in together to an apartment in Englewood, N.J.

At the time, Ms. Major was in a rough period in her life. Her mother had just died, and Mr. Butler was a pillar of support.

“Luka was a ray of sunshine,” she said. “He pushed me to be a better person and to be happy — just a very positive influence, driving and motivating.”

Part of that included building Gumbo together, a labor of love. Another was his role in her spiritual journey. Mr. Butler is Muslim, and in 2018, she observed Ramadan, a month of fasting for Muslims, for the first time. Last year, she converted.

“Embracing Islam has brought a sense of peace to my life,” Ms. Major said. “His support and deep understanding of faith guided me through every step, making the experience not just a personal evolution, but a shared bond that strengthened our connection.”

Before her first Ramadan, Mr. Butler proposed in front of the Grant Projects in Harlem; he had grown up between there and the Bronx. A previous marriage ended in divorce. He has three sons — ages 18, 24 and 26.

Ms. Major is from New London, Conn. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology with an associate degree in marketing and a bachelor’s degree in merchandising. A previous marriage ended in divorce. She has a 9-year-old daughter.

On June 8, the couple were married in front of 320 guests by Imam Izak-El Mu’eed Pasha of Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, a mosque in Harlem.

After the reception, a portion of the venue was converted into a club with fire dancers, a dance floor and lounge seating. The after-party ended around 2 a.m. Some guests on their way out headed directly to the airport, including Donny Flores, an A & R executive who flew from Miami just for the wedding. He has known Ms. Major for 20 years.

“To see her happy with Luka makes everything feel Godsent,” Mr. Flores said. “I had to be there for their special day.”

On his way out of the after-party, blunt in hand, Mr. Butler said: “I hope everybody enjoyed the wedding of the century.”

On This Day

When June 8, 2024

Where Park Château Estate and Gardens, East Brunswick, N.J.

Custom Couture Ms. Major made five trips to Paris to perfect her custom silk Zuhair Murad gown. Her daughter wore a miniature version of the dress. During the reception, Ms. Major changed into a strapless gown from Edyth Couture. Mr. Butler wore a custom suit by Frère.

New York Pride Mr. Butler wanted to inject New York pride into the wedding. A yellow food truck, called Bodega Truck, was parked outside of the venue during the after-party so guests could grab chopped cheese sandwiches on their way out.

A Gumbo Pop-Up Shop A room in one corner of the club was stocked with goodies, including Gumbo flower in zipped pouches embellished with a cartoon drawing of the bride and groom, T-shirts, mugs, Sour Patch Kids and ashtrays. Guests grabbed shopping bags to fill. For the couple, the gift bags were about “giving support to our community, letting them know that Black love is here and alive and thriving,” Ms. Major said.

This is what happens if you stay put, and keep digging holes: An effort that begins innocently enough — planting a garden at home — may grow on you. And it could morph into an arboretum.

Hortus Arboretum & Botanical Gardens, a 21-acre expanse in Stone Ridge, N.Y., with about 11 acres under cultivation, got its start as Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano’s much smaller backyard. It has been 25 years since the couple, both visual artists, moved from San Francisco to Ulster County, where they now count more than 240 genera in their plant collection.

And it all began, as most gardens do, by making space for irresistible finds from local nurseries — no master plan involved.

More than a few were plants that bore fruit.

“Scott was channeling his inner bear, planting a lot of berry plants,” Ms. Levy recalled. They both favored species whose leaves or seeds might inspire their artwork.

A few years in, with a young family and a budget to consider, she forced a reckoning, voicing the concern that they should focus their gardening efforts. “If we’re going to plant salvias,” she proposed, “let’s just have different species. If we’re going to plant anything, let’s start thinking about an overall design, and how we’re planting and where.”

Before long, they had exhausted the possibilities at nearby garden centers and began ordering tiny rooted cuttings of shrubs and trees from rare-plant nurseries. Others, they grew from seed — even trees.

They once lived three blocks from Strybing Arboretum (now the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum). That was “our first really hard-core introduction to trees,” Mr. Serrano said. “And we have planted a lot of what we saw there. A lot of that stuff lingers in our heads.”

An early visit to Brooklyn Botanic Garden made an impression, too.

“I said, ‘Oh, I would like a house dropped right here,’” Mr. Serrano recalled. “I wanted more fruit trees and more things I can eat, but I wanted a house dropped in a place like this. And so we set about just surrounding our house with an arboretum, slowly.”

At first, it was a process that he acknowledged was “sort of reckless.” But pretty quickly it became systematic, with proper record-keeping.

By 2009, the couple had added an eight-acre parcel across the road from their original three-acre yard. By 2012, they had applied for accreditation to the Morton Arboretum’s ArbNet, a registry of woody plant-focused collections and public gardens. Their arboretum, a nonprofit organization since 2019, is now open on weekends and by appointment through mid-November.

Collections Within the Collection

Early on, themes began emerging: They amassed a diversity of Chinese plants, and of hardy cactus. They went deep into beloved genera, collecting various Stewartia trees (a dozen in all); magnolias (about 20); and viburnum (more than 30). They also had lots of plants that were good to eat.

Many of those edibles became the focus of the couple’s 2022 book, “Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts: 50 Easy-to-Grow Plants for the Organic Home Garden or Landscape,” which profiles their successful selections from around the world.

That includes native fruits like pawpaw (Asimina triloba), American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), chokeberries (Aronia) and juneberries (Amelanchier).

But many are from much farther away and are much less familiar, including real oddities like Himalayan chocolate berry (Leycesteria formosa), a showy shrub related to honeysuckle, with a small fruit they describe as tasting like “dark chocolate, espresso, burned caramel and blackberry — all at the same time.”

Its self-fertile flowers, produced from spring through fall, are surrounded by burgundy bracts that are particularly flashy when set off against the gold leaves of the cultivar Golden Lanterns.

Another honeysuckle relative, honeyberry or haskap (Lonicera caerulea), is an exceptionally hardy shrub with a circumpolar native range in Asia, Europe and North America. Its fruits, among the earliest ripening, are distinguished by their blue color. Because honeyberry is not self-fertile, two varieties with overlapping bloom times are required for cross-pollination.

In the book, the couple describe their arboretum as “an aesthetically arranged experiment station to test interesting and useful plants.” They don’t hesitate to push zones (the chocolate berry, for instance, is rated as Zone 7, but they do fine with it in Zone 6 by using winter mulch). They take a special interest in endangered plants, including natives like Stern’s medlar (x Crataemespilus canescens), a naturally occurring hawthorn-medlar hybrid from Arkansas, and the Virginia round-leaf birch (Betula uber).

What there aren’t a lot of are the usual fruiting suspects: the peaches, apples and plums that, although familiar, are not so easy to grow by the organic practices they follow, at least not in the Northeast.

“If you plant a peach tree in our environment,” Mr. Serrano said, “it’s like going to war. You sit back, and you wait to be attacked over and over and over and over.”

The common European pear tree (Pyrus communis) can also be susceptible to disease in the Northeast and can take a decade to reach fruiting age. Instead, they suggest trying an Asian pear (mostly hybrids of Pyrus pyrifolia), many of which are more disease resistant and bear fruit younger.

But if you’re planting an Asian pear, you’ll have to plant two, as Asian pears are generally not self-fruitful; cross-pollination by another variety that blooms concurrently is needed. For smaller gardens, there’s a workaround: Specialty nurseries sell combination or multi-grafted trees, with several varieties on a single plant, satisfying both the pollination requirements and the gardener’s appetite. The arboretum has a multi-grafted specimen of the flavorful varieties Chojuro, Yongi and Kosui.

Medlar and Goji Berry, Magnolia Vine and Che

If you’re planting medlar (Mespilus germanica), you’ll need to make room for just one to get a harvest.

Ms. Levy describes the self-fruitful rose family member, a relative of quince and apple, as “a beautiful, gnarly looking medieval tree” of rounded, shrubby stature, reaching maybe 15 by 15 feet. Its large, camellia-like white spring flowers are followed by one- to two-inch russet-colored fruits.

Figuring out when the fruit is ripe enough to eat, however, is a bit of a puzzle. It isn’t until well after the thick, shiny foliage goes butter-yellow in the fall and drops. What is required is a period of bletting: achieving an overripe state just short of rotting, manifesting an applesauce-like consistency and flavor inside. Frost exposure can help, as can a storage period.

One species in the Hortus collection more commonly found in health-food products than gardens is goji berry (Lycium barbarum), which has a long history in traditional Chinese medicine. Thankfully, it fruits on new wood, because pruning is required to keep it from being too messy.

“It’s a vine kind of disguised as a shrub, or a shrub that’s disguised as a vine,” Ms. Levy said. “It doesn’t quite know what it wants to be.”

Their solution has been to plant the small, fountain-shaped shrub where it can drape over a bit of stone wall. Goji flowers will self-pollinate, but a heavier crop of the fruit — which tastes like a combination of cranberry and licorice, and is sweetest when eaten dried — results when you plant more than one shrub.

The berries of Schisandra (S. chinensis), the magnolia vine, appear in records of Chinese medicine from more than 4,000 years ago, the couple write, but the plant is almost never seen in American gardens or catalogs. The vine, which needs a trellis or other support and a spot in partial shade, produces grapelike fruit clusters tasting of “lemon peel with a little bit of berry,” Mr. Serrano said. When sweetened, he noted, they taste something like strawberry lemonade.

Schisandra is naturally dioecious — the plants are either male or female — so at least one of each is required to produce fruit. But the cultivated variety Eastern Prince is reliably self-fertile (and can be found at Logee’s Greenhouses, among other specialist nurseries).

Another little-grown fruiting tree that Mr. Serrano and Ms. Levy hope more people will try: che, or Chinese melon berry (Maclura tricuspidata). Take the flavor of mulberry and fig (both che relatives), and add watermelon and lychee, they said, and you approximate the taste of these fruits, which ripen in October and resemble those of the kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa).

To get around the pollination issues of the male and female plants — and to avoid a mouthful of seeds — seek out a seedless, self-fruitful female variety.

The arboretum’s edibles list goes on — it also includes lingonberries, gooseberries, quince and more — and is not limited to woody plants. Despite warnings that they are too tender for Zone 6, the couple have succeeded in getting myoga ginger (Zingiber mioga) and wasabi (Eutrema japonicum) to grow as perennials at the arboretum.

Not everything works, of course, and sometimes they must let go. Various of those needy, disease-prone Prunus — plums, cherries, sour cherries, peaches — have been felled since last October to make way for a meadow, another extension of Mr. Serrano and Ms. Levy’s botanical education.

Visitors will often point to some specimen and lament, “I tried to plant that, but …”

The couple’s answer is invariably the same: “How many times?”

“Most of our learning is really by doing and failing, sometimes failing several times,” Ms. Levy said.

Eventually, they figure out a plant’s needs, she added: “You’ve done your homework; you’ve seen how it grows in a certain spot.”

Perhaps one of their plants would flourish in a corner of the expanding collection in your own backyard?

Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden, and a book of the same name.

If you have a gardening question, email it to Margaret Roach at [email protected], and she may address it in a future column.

On Tuesday afternoon in Sag Harbor, Janice Yu of WABC-TV was sitting in the passenger seat of a Nissan news van, eating from a bag of Smart Food popcorn. It was as close as she would come to getting to a kernel of news.

“We don’t even know who he was with,” she said, referring to the singer and actor Justin Timberlake, who had been arrested by a Sag Harbor police officer shortly after midnight on Tuesday and charged with driving while intoxicated.

Ms. Yu, a reporter for ABC7 Eyewitness News in New York, was one of many journalists parked along Main Street near the American Hotel, a 19th-century inn where waiters serve Gardiner’s Bay littleneck clams and Long Island duckling confit to boomer stock sultans. It was also where Mr. Timberlake had been partying with friends the night before.

Now it was a muggy and sunny day on the leafy street of this quaint-by-Hamptons-standards onetime whaling village, lined by shops that sell everything from $30 Havaianas flip-flops to $4,600 swivel chairs by Charlotte Perriand. People in Lululemon activewear strolled by, clutching açaí bowls and iced drinks.

Ms. Yu, who joined the local news team in 2022 after a stint at Fox5 in Atlanta, had on a turquoise and green J. Crew dress. John Sprei, her field producer, was seated behind her in the van, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

They had scored a copy of the arrest report that was filed in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court earlier that day — but so had the journalists in other vehicles lining the block, a convoy that included news trucks and vans from CBS, NBC, PIX11, Entertainment Tonight, The Associated Press and CNN.

The police report stated that Mr. Timberlake was driving a gray 2025 BMW after spending some time at the American Hotel. It also said that he hadn’t made it more than a few blocks before he drove through a stop sign on the corner of Madison Street and Jermain, a tree-lined block where the houses do not look like mansions.

He refused to take a breath test three times. “I had one martini and followed my friends home,” he told the arresting officer, according to the report. Mr. Timberlake “performed poorly” in various field sobriety tests, the report said.

He was arrested and taken to the police station, right behind the American Hotel, on Division Street. There, he handed over his wedding ring, his phone, his baseball cap, his watch, his wallet, a vape pen, and green and blue papers, the sort used for rolling marijuana, according to the police report. (In 2011, the singer told Playboy that he liked cannabis because it helps him to “stop thinking.”)

A number of news crews soon descended on Sag Harbor. At roughly 9:30 a.m., nearly nine hours after he was taken into police custody, Mr. Timberlake left the station in handcuffs. Tabloid photographers captured him looking glum after his overnight stay. He headed toward the Sag Harbor Village Justice Court on Main Street, less than 500 feet from the American Hotel, for his arraignment.

He had enlisted Edward D. Burke Jr., a former Suffolk County prosecutor who has set up shop in a small office across from the American Hotel and made himself into the Hamptons’ go-to criminal defense lawyer. Mr. Timberlake, who is scheduled to play two shows at Madison Square Garden next week, pleaded not guilty to driving while intoxicated. A court date has been set for July 26.

As Ms. Yu filmed her last segment for the day, a CNN reporter stood outside the police station, which had closed at 4 p.m.

“I need the mug shot,” he yelled out to an officer in a nearby patrol car.

“You got to call media relations,” the officer yelled back.

Although the camera crews gave the American Hotel the appearance of a crime scene, all of its outdoor tables were occupied.

“It’s not bothersome,” said Theresa D’Andria, a Southampton resident who was there slurping up oysters with her husband. “The weather’s great.”

A few tables away, Stuart Levine, the former chief executive of Dale Carnegie & Associates, split $45 crab cakes with his wife, Harriet Levine.

“You won’t be getting your Pulitzer Prize for this,” he said to a reporter.

He added that he did not want to sound self-righteous (in fact, he didn’t) but he felt that the level of news coverage seemed a little over the top, given that Mr. Timberlake had not gotten into an accident.

“It’s like a happening,” he said.

Walking down the street, Vanessa Gordon, a Sag Harbor resident, approached the WABC-TV news van with her 6-year-old son, Ben Gordon. He was dressed in the fight-wear he had worn for his jujitsu class at Epic Martial Arts on Main Street.

Ms. Gordon asked Mr. Sprei and Ms. Yu if her son could hold the microphone and pretend to deliver a news dispatch. Mr. Sprei told him to come on up, so he did.

Andrew and Lauren Finkelstein, parents to one of Ben’s jujitsu buddies, approached soon after and asked if their son Max could join in the fun.

“We should charge admission,” Mr. Sprei said.

As Max Finkelstein, 6, clutched the mic, his father asked him what he wanted to report on. He didn’t seem to have an answer, so his father gave him a headline, inspired by one of Mr. Timberlake’s hits.

“Cry me a river!” Mr. Finkelstein called out.

For decades, visitors flocking to New York for Pride every June found plenty of packed bars and jubilant parties but no easy way to engage with the city’s rich L.G.B.T.Q. history.

Even the area around Sheridan Square, the center of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising that catalyzed the gay liberation movement, had little to see for anyone interested in the queer past.

“The guest experience when they got there was a bar, a bench and a park,” said Ross Levi, the executive director of the New York State Division of Tourism. “That isn’t terribly helpful for somebody who comes during the day when the bar is closed. It’s not terribly helpful if you have kids that you want to bring and learn about the history of the area.”

The building that houses the new center sits next door to the current Stonewall Inn bar (which opened in the early 1990s). But back in the late 1960s, an earlier bar of the same name occupied both spaces, which were connected by an interior doorway. Not long after the riots, the original Stonewall Inn went out of business, and the connecting doorway was bricked up.

The storefront next to the current Stonewall Inn stood empty in 2022, when Diana Rodriguez, the chief executive of Pride Live, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, took over the space. Nail salon chairs from the previous tenant still lined the walls.

Ms. Rodriguez raised more than $3 million, much of it from corporate donors, to build the visitors’ center, which her organization will manage. The center will offer National Park Service rangers working at the monument a much-needed roof over their heads (they currently have to use local businesses’ restrooms) and give visitors of all ages a place to share in the monument’s history through a number of exhibits (free admission).

“My hope is that people come in, learn more about Stonewall,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “And then, at the end of their time here, that they feel compelled to take action.”

The new visitors’ center in Manhattan is just one site that offers a glimpse into New York City’s queer history. Here are four more, one in each other borough.

Staten Island

In 1994, the activist group Lesbian Avengers marched to a charming white cottage on Staten Island’s eastern waterfront chanting, “Alice was a lesbian, and a lesbian she’ll always be.” That house, originally built in 1690, once belonged to Alice Austen, a groundbreaking documentary photographer who captured a quickly changing New York City at the turn of the 20th century. It became a museum after her death in 1952.

What the Avengers were protesting was the institution’s unwillingness to acknowledge that Austen lived there for 30 years with her partner, Gertrude Tate, and used the property as a studio for the many pictures she took of the couple’s nontraditional friend group.

“I felt like it was incredibly important for the house to have a lesbian leading the interpretation,” said Victoria Munro, who took over the museum’s direction in 2017 and has been spearheading the effort to bring to light Austen’s contributions to L.G.B.T.Q. history.

Now, visitors ($5 suggested admission) can admire more than 7,000 of Austen’s works, including photos challenging norms of gender and sexuality, as well as rotating photo exhibitions, often by queer artists, and a garden celebrating the gender fluidity of plants. Lesbian Avengers are back, too: The photographer Saskia Scheffer’s images of the 1994 protest are being exhibited on the house’s lawn for at least the rest of the summer.

Queens

For decades, the People’s Beach, a slice of Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula, has been the spot where queer New Yorkers can shed layers and inhibitions without unwelcome stares, piling up so close to one another that it’s sometimes hard to see sand between the colorful towels and sunshades (free admission; $20 daily parking fee).

“It’s very warm, and it’s a real community,” said Timothy Leonard, the Northeast program manager for the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association, who learned to ride his bike on the boardwalk at Riis and, later, as a teenager grappling with his gay identity, found a sense of belonging on the beach. “It’s just a place of celebration.”

In recent years, the beach, part of Gateway National Recreation Area, has been undergoing some major transformations.

The 1932 Jacob Riis Bathhouse, which was shuttered for decades, is scheduled to reopen next summer, after the completion of an ambitious $50 million development project. The exterior of the Art Deco building and interior tile work are being restored, and new amenities will include hotel rooms, a bar, a courtyard pool and lounge area, and a rooftop restaurant.

Severe erosion has closed some areas of the beach this summer, but that’s unlikely to dampen the queer-friendly spirit, even if the party has to shift down the sand.

Brooklyn

Marsha P. Johnson, an activist and transgender icon who died in 1992, is not known to have spent time on the Williamsburg waterfront. Yet she made history there, when in 2020 the seven-acre East River State Park was renamed for her — the first New York state park to honor an openly L.G.B.T.Q. person.

“The renaming opened the door to reimagine the park,” said Leslie Wright, the state parks regional director for New York City. The park was remodeled not only to be more resilient against climate change, but also to honor Johnson’s legacy, with input from the local and L.G.B.T.Q. communities, Johnson’s family, and public art consultants.

The park’s entrance is now marked by a colorful ornamental gateway reminiscent of the flower crowns Johnson wore, along with the phrase “Pay it no mind” — her favorite retort, including to a judge who asked her what her middle initial stood for. Signs dedicated to transgender history and awareness line the pathways.

Aside from offering a stunning view of the Manhattan skyline Marsha P. Johnson State Park hosts the popular Brooklyn open-air food festival Smorgasburg (Saturdays) as well as a range of L.G.B.T.Q.-centric events for Pride Month.

The Bronx

Among the many prominent New Yorkers buried in the 400 acres of rolling hills at Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, are those who contributed to L.G.B.T.Q. history, such as the poet Countee Cullen, a teacher of the openly gay writer James Baldwin; Herman Melville, whose works like “Moby Dick” and “Billy Budd” are suffused with homoeroticism; and the suffragists Carrie Chapman Catt and Mary Garrett Hay, life partners for decades, who are buried side by side.

“It’s moving to know that there were people who lived these lives very bravely, heroically in the past,” said Ken Lustbader, a co-founder of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. “Without the support systems that exist today, but paving the way for the visibility and allies that we have today through their actions.”

Each year for Pride, his organization offers a trolley tour of the cemetery, highlighting the stories behind some of the burial sites and making them more visible by placing rainbow flags next to them.

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Wanting what we do not need (and what, in a biblical sense, is not ours) is at the core of luxury-goods consumption. And want, more than anything more evolved or cerebral, was the emotion stimulated by the men’s wear shows in Milan this season. Does the world require a linen field jacket with Breton stripes or a navy blazer made from terry cloth piped in white or a safari jacket styled as evening wear and worn with Gurkha trousers and a slightly ludicrous shawl collar waistcoat? It does not.

Yet viewing this stuff at a Ralph Lauren Purple Label presentation at the designer’s elegant palazzo here spurred an irresistible fantasy in this viewer to inhabit a sphere in which Chris Pine is seen wandering through a drawing room in high Gatsby drag, and Colman Domingo is observed resting an elbow, clad in a double-breasted navy suit jacket, on a marble mantelpiece, and Usher saunters by wearing many shades of taupe, a loose-weave sweater casually knotted across his shoulders.

This did, in fact, happen. But though it was in no sense the real world, it was an indication of what fashion is intended for. That is — as nobody has ever understood better than Mr. Lauren — to transport us from our real circumstances.

“Dressing for me has always been an adventure,” Mr. Lauren said in preshow press notes.

Name the person who, while trying on clothes at a store (remember those?), does not temporarily depart from sanity and venture into some unlikely scenario. In one dream scene you are that colleague sauntering into work nonchalantly laying waste to the office competition by wearing, say, one of Silvia Venturini Fendi’s gloriously nothing balmacaan coats in muted madras-cloth patterns.

Or are you that guy in a wonderfully engineered trapeze jacket the color of port wine by Sabato De Sarno at Gucci who nonchalantly strolls into Balthazar? (Is this the place to mention that, despite rumors of Mr. De Sarno’s imminent departure from the label, he more than held his dignified own? This against the provocative backdrop of his predecessor at Gucci, Alessandro Michele, having unexpectedly dropped a first collection as creative director of Valentino titled “Avant le Debut,” of well over 100 resort looks so frilly and granny and echt-Gucci that some wags termed the collection “Vucci.”)

Or are you that person styling your hair in shoe-blacked spikes and putting on a khaki JordanLuca flasher coat to show the cookie-cutter Dimes Square stereotypes — in their Etsy-adjacent Bode or earnest Evan Kinori workwear — how it’s really done?

Or, finally, are you that plus one at a Julia Fox dinner at Jean’s wearing an oversize JW Anderson quilted bomber with a floating hem, barelegged but for a pair of lace-up boots? Slay the house down, as the ballroom children say.

Unseemly emotions are the underbelly of fashion desire. The critic Anne Hollander pointed out long ago that we must, of course, dress to cover our nakedness. Beyond that, there are agendas. RuPaul said it another way: You’re born naked, and the rest is drag. On my imaginary shopping trip through the Milan collections, with an agenda of being imaginarily more stylish than I in truth am, I was assisted by David Farber, the men’s fashion director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

It was Mr. Farber who guided me through Matteo Tamburini’s confident men’s wear debut as the creative director of Tod’s, choosing for me an elegant all-purpose trench coat to be worn over an untucked pocketed work shirt and a pair of white denim jeans in Goldilocks-perfect proportions: not too wide and not too lean. Have them wrapped and sent.

“I’m a pragmatist,” Mr. Tamburini said. “I look for solutions.”

Brunello Cucinelli does, too. It so happens that the people for whom he is providing solutions could buy and sell most of us 1,000 times over. Objectively speaking, it does not matter. In the same way that fashion insiders go bananas for Phoebe Philo’s more nothing-looking designs or that hedge-fund types will pay a fortune for the anonymous and yet perfectly judged, Zoran-inspired garments from the Row, Brunello Cucinelli sets standards of not only taste but consumption.

We have established that “quiet luxury” is about as subtle as a bullhorn. Still, Mr. Cucinelli’s collection, as much as anything on view in Milan, made it plain that if you have “Succession” money, you would do well to follow where he leads.

“I was remembering ‘Miami Vice,’” Mr. Cucinelli said at his preview, held in the gilded salon of Napoleon’s onetime bolt-hole, the Palazzo Serbelloni. What he meant was, essentially, that moment when linen suits in so-called tropical colors signified to American consumers the epitome of Medellín kingpin-era cool. Mr. Cucinelli provides his version of Giorgio Armani pastels apparently beloved of Miami drug lords. That in itself went a long way toward keeping his presentation, and his label, oddly relevant for his owner-class clientele.

Mr. Cucinelli’s color palette happened to be toned down 1,000 decibels from the brash hues of Don Johnson’s heyday. That is to say, he showed linen suits with wide lapels in double- and one-and-a-half-breasted styles, unlined and slouchy yet so delectably louche one would go willingly into credit card debt to possess them. And isn’t that, in the end, the luxury-goods sucker punch?

On a sunny Sunday afternoon at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, just days before Juneteenth, large crowds of people were lounging on brightly colored picnic blankets and under tents atop the hill, making them hard to miss.

With R&B and hip-hop filling the breezy air, this was just the early vibes of the Lay Out, a series of summer park gatherings that its creator says exists “to center Black joy.” By 5 p.m., the park would be swelling with mostly Black attendees dancing and drinking together, playing games and enjoying one another’s company for a day of rest.

“It’s my favorite event of the summer: I’m a picnic girlie, and I just like all the Black people,” said Toni Leotaud, 31, who lives in Brooklyn. “I know I’m going to see mad people that I know.”

Now in its fifth year, the Lay Out has become one of the main attractions in Brooklyn each summer, especially its celebration of Juneteenth. (One of the events is always scheduled to take place around June 19, the national holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.)

Emily Anadu, the event’s chief executive and one of its founders, said the idea for the Lay Out came about in 2020, inspired by coronavirus pandemic restrictions and the protests that broke out that summer after the murder of George Floyd. One demonstration near her home in the Fort Greene neighborhood left a police van engulfed in flames. She woke up the next morning to help with cleanup around the park but was surprised by what she saw.

“I remember going out there, and it was like nothing had happened — it was like Pleasantville,” she said. “Everything was cleaned up, but someone swept the ashes into the words ‘Black Lives Matter.’”

Having lived in New York City for nearly 20 years and in Fort Greene for most of them, Ms. Anadu recalled how it was once normal to see an abundance of Black people. During the early months of the pandemic, as she spent hours walking through park, it became viscerally clear to her just how much the demographics had changed.

“It just felt uncomfortable to have this huge dichotomy between the extreme pain that people were feeling, like I am not safe in my body in this country,” Ms. Anadu said, “and then for a lot of people experiencing time off from work and beautiful days in the park.”

Days after the protest, Ms. Anadu set out to organize a park gathering where Black people could comfortably “take up space” in what had once been a mostly Black neighborhood. Over about three days of planning, she consulted with a few friends in a group chat about her idea, and through word of mouth and online promotion, the first Lay Out took place on Sunday, June 7, about a week after the protests.

She said more than 500 people had been at that first event, adding that it was a bit nerve-racking to have so many attendees, given the social-distancing guidelines. But the event was outside, Ms. Anadu reasoned, and the size of the crowd was a testament to just how much “we needed each other.”

On Sunday, the Lay Out returned with different sponsored activities, including tennis workshops, mini basketball games, Black-owned businesses and a nearby after-party. We spoke with attendees about what had brought them to the park.

Toni Leotaud, 31, and Leigh Brant, 34

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Hillside, N.J.

What is your favorite memorable moment at the Lay Out?

Leigh Brant: Last year, in the middle of a set, they started playing Keyshia Cole, and a circle formed around a man who was proposing. And everyone stood in a circle around them and was singing “Love.” It was beautiful.

Daniel Jones, 34

Bushwick, Brooklyn

Is this how you usually spend your Juneteenth weekend?

Since they started doing it, yeah, every Juneteenth I’m here.

What keeps bringing you back?

Do you not see this? The culture, the music, the vibes — they got food down there. It’s just the energy is always on 10.

Fatou Ndiaye, 35

Lisbon

How long are you visiting for?

For a month. I knew June is a great month in New York — there’s so many stuff. And Juneteenth is during this month, too, so I really wanted to live it.

What brought you here today?

I’m actually here selling food. We’re called Wadadli Jerk, and this is the fourth year we’re doing this. We actually started when the Lay Out started during the pandemic.

What do you love most about it?

The beautiful people. It’s just nice to see beautiful Black people enjoying themselves and just being who we are.

Iris Stevens, 32, and Sadé Council, 37

Harrison, N.J., and Flatbush, Brooklyn

What keeps bringing you back to this event?

Iris Stevens: I actually used to live in Brooklyn, and even though I’m back living in Jersey, there’s just a certain vibe with everyone coming here together in the name of fun and joy. It’s something that always draws me back.

What do you think is different about this event versus previous ones?

Sadé Council: It seems a little bit more organized in terms of space, and, like, we have a little bit of a gated area, which is lovely. But it’s just the same good vibes as always. It feels like a family reunion. And it’s just beautiful to come and celebrate my borough with my friends and seeing friends that I haven’t seen in a long time.

What are you most looking forward to today?

Honestly? There’s a joint that I got an eye on who I know is going to be here, so I’m going to shoot my shot.

What do you love about Juneteenth?

It’s a holiday for Black people to get together and just be cool. July Fourth isn’t really our day — we weren’t necessarily free, and I feel like this is Black people’s July Fourth.

Quiana Parks

What has been your most memorable experience spinning here?

The first year I D.J.ed here. It was right after the protest — I had just returned back to New York from Virginia, and I asked Emily if I could bring music to the Lay Out, and it was my favorite moment when I played “Ease on Down” from “The Wiz” and I’m on top of the hill, and I saw all these beautiful Black people running up the hill. I was in tears because it was so liberating. I was anxious because I had just got back to Brooklyn and I hadn’t yet settled spiritually yet. And that moment just opened me back up.

West Foster, 24; Devine Bauman, 23; and Jetta Strayhorn, 21

Central Harlem

What does community mean to you?

Jetta Strayhorn: I’m from Atlanta, so community specifically for Black people has always meant a lot to me. Community specifically is a group of people that will be there for each other no matter what and can make you feel like every part of you is accepted, and thankfully, I found my people.

What are you post looking forward to for this Lay Out?

West Foster: I’m looking forward to community, connection and diasporic reconnection.

Fareed Abdullah, 41

Harlem

Is this your first time at the Lay Out?

It is my first time at the Lay Out. One of my good friends kept on saying how much of an amazing experience it would be. And I figured while I’m here in the U.S., got to come and enjoy it. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be moving to the Emirates.

What are you most enjoying so far?

Honestly, the spirit of community. Everybody’s nice. It’s good for my goddaughter to be here to see beautiful people doing amazing things. The vibe is very friendly. The park is giving life. Ellie’s here showing out. I’m just loving the environment.

Alexyz Kemp, 42

Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

What makes the Lay Out so special for you?

It’s the blackest my neighborhood looks, but also I run into old friends and I get to see future generations and how they’re hanging out, seeing how they’re trying to make their voice heard and impact the community.

What does Juneteenth mean to you?

Juneteenth to me means freedom and respecting and acknowledging the ancestors that came before us. And it means communication. It means tap your neighbor and say, “Hey neighbor, we’re free.” Just the fact that we still uphold each other, uplift each other and we’re still out here fighting for those freedoms today.

Broadway’s biggest stars descended on Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Sunday for the Tony Awards, an annual celebration of all the people — casts, crews and creatives — who make live theater the spectacle that it is. Since many attendees spend most of the week in costumes, the Tonys was also a chance to get dressed up and showcase personal style.

The red carpet — technically a shade of blue — was packed with A-listers, a reflection of the star-studded productions that have recently overtaken Broadway. Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Sarah Paulson, Billy Porter and Nicole Scherzinger were among the celebrities who graced the awards show this year.

Purple might have been the color of the evening, with several attendees incorporating shades of it into their ensembles. Men and women alike embraced bows, which appeared around some people’s necks and at the shoulders or waists of others. Of all the outfits, the following 17 stood out the most — for better or worse.

Instead of a shirt, the actress, a star of the play “Appropriate,” wore a silver necklace beneath her sleek Saint Laurent tuxedo jacket.

Brooke Shields: Most Sunny and Sensible!

The actress, who recently had foot surgery, wore a pair of jaunty yellow Crocs that matched her Monique Lhuillier gown.

Ariana DeBose: Most Mosaic!

Some might say the Oscar de la Renta dress worn by the actress and Tonys host — which had stained-glass motif like that of the gown Lauren Sanchez wore to the Met Gala — “did the thing.”

The actor, a star of “An Enemy of the People,” went with a softer take on formal wear by paring a Western-inspired ribbon tie with a velvety Loro Piana jacket in a dark shade of brown, a color he is known to favor.

Lance McAdams, Rachel McAdams and Sandra McAdams: Most McAdams Family!

The “Mary Jane” actress arrived to the Tonys on the arms of her parents, whose outfits complimented the palette of Ms. McAdams’s silver-and-black Givenchy gown.

Cynthia Erivo: Most Glinda!

Though Ms. Erivo will be starring as the witch Elphaba in the forthcoming film adaptation of “Wicked,” her glittering gold Louis Vuitton gown conjured the sparkly style of Glinda, Elphaba’s rival turned friend.

The daughter and mother, both of whom were on the production team of “The Outsiders,” were in stylish harmony on the carpet. Ms. Jolie chose a velvet Atelier Versace gown in a teal shade that contrasted well with her daughter’s darker, men’s-wear-inspired ensemble.

Eddie Redmayne: Most Marlene Dietrich!

As a star of the “Cabaret” revival, the actor has helped bring a dose of 1930s Berlin to Broadway. At the Tonys, his Simone Rocha suit with a cape-like jacket conjured the attire of another German export: the actress Marlene Dietrich.

Ashley Park: Most Dramatic!

Amping up the show-stealing nature of the actress’s cinched Harris Reed gown was a pair of opera-length gloves that seemed fitting for the theatric occasion.

Traces of the McDonald’s mascot — whose purple visage has recently inspired milkshakes and footwear — could be detected in the aubergine Todd Snyder tuxedo worn by Mr. Radcliffe, a star of “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Lena Waithe: Most Sublime!

The effortless cool with which the actress wore her subtly patterned, double-breasted Louis Vuitton suit made the outfit even more eye-catching.

Bebe Neuwirth: Most Rockstar!

The actress, a star of “Cabaret,” was far from the only person to walk the carpet wearing sunglasses. But her nonchalant pairing of oversize shades with slinky gown and red platform heels gave her a certain rock-star quality.

Ms. Mathis, the hair and wig designer for the play “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” wore an hourglass-shaped mini dress by the designer Angel Ayala that had several intricate details, including a flowing cape with floral-like embellishments that was lined on the inside with red and green printed textiles.

Will Butler: Most Mick Fleetwood!

In a dark Tanner Fletcher suit with a ruffled bow tie, Mr. Butler, the songwriter for the play “Stereophonic,” channeled Fleetwood Mac co-founder Mick Fleetwood, whose band inspired the show.

Anthony Rotunno and Madison Malone Kircher contributed reporting.

Sarah Paulson, Daniel Radcliffe, Eddie Redmayne and Rachel McAdams are a few of the celebrities nominated this year fueling the excitement for the 2024 Tony Awards.

For the third time, Ariana DeBose, who herself has appeared in six Broadway shows, hosts the Tonys, which are being held for the first time at New York’s Lincoln Center. The broadcast promises to be a busy one, with performances from all five contenders for best new musical, as well as the anticipated performances from “Cabaret” (which stars Mr. Redmayne) and “Merrily We Roll Along” (starring Mr. Radcliffe).

But before the curtains were raised, here’s what Broadway’s biggest stars (and Anna Wintour) wore to celebrate.

After the birth this spring of her third child, a baby girl named Whimsy Lou, the lifestyle influencer Nara Smith posted a TikTok listing some of the names she and her husband liked but did not ultimately use. Among them were Tank, Clementine, Flick, Halo and Dew.

Francesca Farago, a reality television star, posted a similar video recently, including names like Heart, Ethereal, Prosper and Afternoon. Her husband also liked the name Orca, she said. (Ms. Farago vetoed naming her child after the killer whale.)

Baby names have come a long way since Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin made headlines for naming their daughter Apple two decades ago. In 2024, almost anything can be a name. A recent TikTok trend seems to offer a satirical critique of just how out there some parents are willing to go in search of unique names for their progeny.

The joke setup goes like this: “Normalize naming your kid after something you love.” Users respond with something hyper-specific that they would probably never actually name a child, like Diet Coke, Velveeta or “cheeky bit of work gossip.”

Emily Kim, a full-time baby name consultant, said the trend seems like a direct response to “how extreme” baby naming has become.

Ms. Kim, who is 33 and lives in Minneapolis, made a name for herself on TikTok thanks to her uncanny knack for predicting what celebrities and influencers will name their children based on their internet aesthetics. Last year, she correctly guessed what the football player Jason Kelce and his wife, Kylie, would name their third daughter, Bennett. (Ms. Kim said she knew it would be a traditionally male name, given the Kelces’ two other daughters were named similarly.)

Naming a child, Ms. Kim explained, has become for many people an extension of personal branding.

“A baby name is just one facet of your personal style, in the same way home décor and clothing is part of your style,” Ms. Kim said. “In our parents’ day, the elements of your personal style were known by your close friends and maybe your neighbors, your family, but your style wasn’t showcased on a larger scale to acquaintances and strangers in the way that is the norm now.”

Ms. Kim’s consultations start at $295 for a five-minute session in which she shares her personalized suggestions. During the sessions, the most common request she hears is for names that are “unique but not too out there.” The clients don’t want their children to arrive on the first day of school only to find they are one of five in the class with the same name, she explained. (Looking at you here, Emilys of the world.)

That access to a wider pool of people via social media has made many of her clients feel as if certain names are off limits “because they’ve already been ‘used,’ even though it’s by someone you don’t really know,” Ms. Kim said.

Morgan Kline, another baby name consultant, got her start on TikTok sourcing vintage-sounding names from old yearbooks. She specializes in finding “uncommon names,” said Ms. Kline, who is 29 and lives in Rock Island, Ill. “A lot of people hire me to find a name that was only used, like, less than 25 times last year.”

Recently Ms. Kline helped a client land on the name Woods.

Like Ms. Kim, Ms. Kline said personal branding often played a role for clients when selecting a baby name. “I think especially that’s true for people in the public eye,” she said. “Certain influencers really want to make sure their kid has a one-of-a-kind name in case they also want to follow in the entertainment industry in some way.”

As for the recent joke trend, Ms. Kline said she could even see some of the joke names being selected for by real people — like “Mocha,” one creative TikToker’s idea.

“I could definitely see the right person actually using that as a name,” Ms. Kline said.

On Saturday morning Catherine, Princess of Wales, tiptoed back onto the public stage for the first time since announcing her cancer diagnosis last year in her signature color-coordinated way, joining the rest of the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the traditional finale flyover of King Charles’ birthday parade. She wore a white knee-length Jenny Packham dress with a black-and-white striped belt and a jaunty bow at the neck, topped off with a Phillip Treacy hat, angled just so.

The nautical theme was reflected in the navy dress with a sailor collar and white trim worn by Princess Charlotte (who also wore white shoes to go with her mother), along with the matching double-breasted navy suits with their gold buttons, white shirts and bright blue ties of Princes George and Louis, all of which made a neat Union Jack trio with William’s bright red military uniform — which in turn matched that of Charles and Prince Edward.

As a family unit, on the balcony, it created the image of a tightly controlled, unmistakably harmonic, unified front for a photo op set to go ’round the country. Nothing anxiety-provoking to look at here, the picture seemed to say. It’s business as usual. Everything’s going to be fine.

It was a trademark bit of image-making on the part of the princess, who is still in the process of recovery. Catherine has always been finely attuned to the attention paid to what she wears as part of a family whose job it is to symbolize, rather than speak, and the communications opportunities embedded therein. Since the beginning of her marriage, she has used her clothes to signify a neat compromise between tradition and modernization. Her wardrobe seems often geared to telegraph a respectful sensitivity to what’s next, rather than, say, a royal in a gilded bubble, whether it’s mixing high street brands with high fashion, upcycling her gown multiple times, renting an evening dress or supporting British designers.

Instead Catherine chose white, itself a color rife with meaning — of new starts, rebirth, purification.

She chose Jenny Packham and Phillip Treacy, both brands she has often worn before, both tent poles of the British fashion establishment.

And she chose a dress that appeared to have been upcycled: worn first in 2023 at a Buckingham Palace before King Charles’ coronation, and now given a bit of a lift. After all, she has other things to think about right now than shopping. But dressing for purpose is also part of the job.

It seems like she is getting ready to do it again.

A new frontier has opened in fashion’s fur wars, as protesters targeted the homes of more than a dozen employees of Marc Jacobs in recent months, using signs, noisemakers and fake blood in an effort to force the designer to officially renounce the use of fur in his collections.

Over the weekend, Mr. Jacobs accused the protesters of “bullying” in a statement on Instagram, but averred: His brand “does not work in, use or sell fur, nor will we in the future.” He also emphasized that he had not used fur in any of his own brand’s collections since 2018.

“This organization has made it clear that they will not stop their violence toward Marc Jacobs unless they get the statement they want,” Mr. Jacobs wrote. “While I don’t condone the behavior of this organization, I will always do what I can to protect, honor and respect the lives and well-being of the people I work with.”

The organization referenced by Mr. Jacobs is the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, or CAFT, a group that selects targets and disseminates information and resources to anti-fur activists on the ground.

“We were ecstatic,” Matthew Klein, the executive director of CAFT USA, said of Mr. Jacobs’s statement, though he disputed the description of the protests as violent: “Home protest is protected by the First Amendment, and has a long and proud history of use by the labor and civil rights movements.”

According to Mr. Klein, CAFT has been protesting Marc Jacobs since June 2023 — a few months after the company collaborated on a runway show with the Italian brand Fendi.

That collection included large fox fur hats described by Mr. Jacobs as “upcycled.” Kim Jones, the creative director of Fendi women’s wear, confirmed the fur came from a vintage piece. The hats were used as a runway accessory and never produced for public sale.

“It was the cultural relevance that Marc Jacobs had in fashion that made him a priority for our campaign,” Mr. Klein said, calling the designer “extremely influential” to emerging brands.

The protests began outside stores and offices. But until this weekend, the brand’s only public response seemed to be an Instagram post from Mr. Jacobs’s husband, which personally criticized one particular activist. “It didn’t have the result that we wanted — a fur-free policy — but rather ridicule,” Mr. Klein said.

The campaign escalated in February, with protesters gathering outside the homes of Marc Jacobs employees. At least 18 employees were targeted, some multiple times, in New York City, Las Vegas and Austin, Mr. Klein said. (Since February, more than 100 protests have been held, he added, including Mr. Jacobs being confronted in a car on his way to the Met Gala.)

Michael Ariano, the global head of public relations for Marc Jacobs, said he was followed down the street by a shouting group of protesters, his neighbors were harassed, and slogans such as “Michael Ariano is a Murderer” were written in chalk on the ground in front of his apartment.

In the last week, there have been six arrests related to the protests, Mr. Klein said, including an incident involving a broken window at the company’s headquarters in SoHo. During another incident, the husband of a Marc Jacobs executive was also arrested after taking a cellphone belonging to a protester outside of their Brooklyn home, Mr. Ariano confirmed.

“It’s very frustrating, because the same principles and laws that we revere can be taken advantage of and turn into radical harassment,” Mr. Ariano said, referring to the first amendment.

The protests have affected not only Marc Jacobs employees, but their neighbors as well. Laura Neilson, a writer who lives in the same East Village building as a senior director at Marc Jacobs, said she spent Memorial Day helping to clean up fake blood splattered onto the facade and chalk etched on the sidewalk spanning the length of her 60-unit building.

About two dozen protesters demonstrated for about 30 minutes. They buzzed apartment doors, attempting to get inside the building, Ms. Neilson said. The target of the protest was not home at the time, but an elderly neighbor and several pets were distressed by the commotion.

“It got really scary,” said Ms. Neilson, who has contributed freelance articles to The New York Times. “It looked like a zombie apocalypse, the way they were all standing out in front, peering through the windows.”

LVMH, the French luxury group that owns Marc Jacobs, declined to comment.

These protests represent an escalation of the tactics of anti-fur groups such as PETA, which have previously focused on disrupting runway shows and store operations.

The anti-fur movement has been largely successful in its efforts to force fashion houses to stop using skins, with almost every runway brand adopting fake fur as a fabric and eschewing the use of former luxury staples such as mink and sable. Glossy magazines including Elle have likewise stopped photographing real fur, and department stores such as Neiman Marcus, Saks and Nordstrom no longer sell real fur.

As a result, the fur-free cause has turned to leather as well as exotic skins such as python and ostrich. In a statement, Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of PETA, applauded Mr. Jacobs’s official renunciation of fur and said, “we look to Jacobs to save more animals’ skins by banning leather, too.”

Mr. Klein said CAFT will soon be announcing plans to target the fashion brand Max Mara over the use of fur.

“It’s easy to ignore us when we’re outside of one of their stores,” said Mr. Klein, indicating up to 40 Marc Jacobs employees were on the list for future home protests. “It’s impossible to ignore us when we’re outside their homes.”

When Emily Peterson purchased her seaside cottage in Cape Neddick, Maine, she knew its coastal hues had to go. “The second we walked through this house, I had this vision that I wanted it to be dark,” said Ms. Peterson, who bought the 1770s home nearly two years ago. “It’s been here for so many years and I just wanted to bring life back into it.”

And in this case, that meant going back to its historical roots with moodier colors.

So Ms. Peterson, who shares the cottage with her husband and two young children, painted over the butter yellow and powder-blue walls with dark greens and deep blues.

Bright, vibrant spaces have enjoyed their time in the sun — after all, last summer’s Barbiecore moment even extended to homes — but there’s growing interest in a dark interior aesthetic. On TikTok, videos highlighting this style often rack up thousands of likes. And on the home-decorating website Houzz, there’s been surge in searches related to dark and moody décor — for example, “moody bedroom” searches are up 142 percent.

“The popularity of dark and moody décor is likely a reaction to the bright whites and light grays that have dominated interiors in recent years,” said Mitchell Parker, Houzz’s senior editor. “Many homeowners are looking for something different.”

That was the case for Ms. Peterson, a 33-year-old artist whose previous home had light gray walls. Now, each room in her cottage has its own deep shade: Blackish-green walls — painted using Andiron by Sherwin-Williams — in the living room set a backdrop for a green velvet couch and a gallery wall of vintage oil paintings.

Against a dark wall, the colors of the furniture and art pop and can command more attention than they might in a bright room. “I want my house to feel kind of like a museum,” Ms. Peterson said. Her son’s bedroom is color-drenched — meaning the walls, ceiling and even trim arepainted using the same — in Smokehouse, a warm brown with gray notes, by Sherwin-Williams, drawing attention to its nautical theme.

The new color scheme has had a calming effect on Ms. Peterson. “I feel cozy,” she said. “It’s a warm hug every time that you sit in these rooms.”

Dark interiors are deeply rooted in history. In the Victorian era, forest green, dark blue and other rich tones reigned supreme. This was, in large part, a result of technological advancements at the time. Rail transportation and the invention of the resealable paint can in the late 1800s made paint more accessible, said Kate Reggev, a historical architect and project manager at Zubatkin Owner Representation, a project management firm in New York.

“Paint also became much stabler with new color options, thanks to the development of synthetic pigments,” she added.

Before the mid-1800s, paint was made with natural pigments that were muted and faded, so limewash — a mixture of burned lime and water — was preferred over paint.

It doesn’t surprise Ms. Reggev that dark interiors continue to find their way into people’s homes. “I think the staying power of moody, dark interiors is the comforting, enveloping environment they create,” she said.

In warm and humid Bluffton, S.C., Jessica Hawks, a business coach, felt that her builder-grade home lacked personality. A D.I.Y.-er, Ms. Hawks painted her bedroom with London Clay by Farrow & Ball, a brown so deep it almost has a burgundy tint. She also added wainscoting and furnished the room with a four-poster bed and eclectic vintage items.

“Even though I live near the beach, I wanted to pull the feeling of places in Europe, like the Louvre or cathedrals, into my own home,” Ms. Hawks, 27, said.

While bedrooms are popular contenders for deep colors, some opt to paint secondary, less- visited rooms in saturated shades — and, in turn, those rooms become destinations. Jean Stoffer, an interior designer and TV personality, took this approach to the butler pantry within her Greek Revival home in Grand Rapids, Mich. The walls and ceilings are painted a custom gray-blue. “When we have parties, people are in there talking all the time,” Ms. Stoffer said. “They just love being in that room.”

Some may hesitate to go dark in a room out of fear that it’ll make the space feel small, but it usually has the opposite effect. “If you color drench and do the ceilings and everything, your eye has nowhere to stop,” Ms. Peterson said. “It just actually feels bigger.”

When deciding how dark to paint a room, Laura Jenkins, an interior designer, works with its lighting. “If you have a beautiful room with natural light that streams in, I love making those rooms bright and lighter, playing into the light,” said Ms. Jenkins, who lives in Atlanta. “If you already have a dark room, lean into the dark and let it be what it wants to be.”

Do you believe neons are to be avoided? I love bright colors, but I’m worried about trending into “wacky” territory as I get older. How do you know when enough is too much? — Susie, San Francisco

Neon, those blindingly bright colors otherwise associated with traffic cones, sports stars and Las Vegas lights, has been making something of a comeback of late. That’s thanks, in part, to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” complete with Margot Robbie’s neon rollerblading turn, as well as the endless specter of the 1980s and ’90s, when aerobics gave way to acid rock. Type “neon” into Tagwalk, the fashion search engine, and you’ll get 132 looks from the spring men’s and women’s wear shows alone.

Among the designers who embraced the ultrabrights for spring were Gucci, where the new designer, Sabato De Sarno, offered fluoro tailored coats with a bit of beaded fringe; the Attico, with its bright-pink ostrich feather chubby; and Tod’s, which showed an assortment of neon-yellow shirt dressing. All of which would suggest that neon is not simply a thing for the young, the ironic or the triathletes trying to up their visibility.

And yet, wearing neon, which includes that family of colors also known as “hot,” “electric” and “acid,” can seem as if you’re turning into the human equivalent of a highlighter pen.

After all, there is no neon color that appears in nature. Neon itself is not even an official part of the color wheel, since it is chemically created. It is, in fact, a relatively recent invention. The first neon light did not appear until 1910; the first neon paint was created by the Switzer brothers, Robert and Joseph, in the 1930s; and the first Day-Glo fabrics began to appear around 1950. Ever since, neon has often gotten a bad rap, associated with artificiality, vulgarity and Vegas-level kitsch.

Yet its patently synthetic, techno edge is also the reason that Andy Warhol called neon “one of the great modern things,” and that so many artists, including Bruce Nauman, Tracey Emin and Glenn Ligon, have embraced it. The American Chemical Society even declared the discovery of Day-Glo fluorescent pigment a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2012.

Which means there’s a lot to neon besides simply shade — or a lot of shade that can be thrown at the shade — and making it part of your wardrobe takes care and consideration. If you wear it, it’s not like anyone can miss it. You have to be ready for what comes back.

Vanessa Barboni Hallik, the founder of Another Tomorrow, the environmentally conscious fashion brand, confessed to a love of neon when I asked her about it. She suggested a “barbell approach” when considering how to incorporate the brights into a wardrobe.

The easiest strategy, she said, is simply to add some electric accessories — fluoro shoes, for example, or a bright-pink shell — to a neutral base, like a dark suit or a camel dress, for a lift without serious commitment. Think of it as using highlighter shades for wardrobe highlights, rather than becoming the highlighter yourself.

However, Ms. Hallik said, if you’re going to go there, perhaps you should really go there: Opt for a full-on electric pantsuit or dress. There’s a reason that, in 2020, a movement arose called #ambitionsuitsyou, which urged women to wear hot pink suits. The brainchild of a fashion brand called Argent, created to promote equality in the workplace, the movement represented the new power suit: feminine, practical and — because it was neon — impossible to ignore.

Your Style Questions, Answered

Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.

Nothing says summer more than a waterfront getaway. And at these five properties you can make the most of the season, whether you want to splash in the ocean off the Maine coast, paddle board across a reservoir in upstate New York, kayak in a Rhode Island bay, or laze by a river on a South Carolina island. You can even skirt the crowds in Europe’s capitals by escaping to the mountains of Austria where a castle on a lake awaits.

The Catskills, N.Y.

At this luxury escape in White Lake, N.Y., about a two-hour drive from Manhattan, immerse yourself in more than 100 acres along the Toronto Reservoir. Or better yet, get into the reservoir and go paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking and swimming. And because the Chatwal Lodge is set within the approximately 2,500-acre Chapin Estate, you can also fly-fish on private trout streams there.

On dry land, pretend you’re back in summer camp and try archery, birdhouse decorating, baking classes and yoga. Or visit the recreation center where you can play shuffleboard, duckpin bowling, ping pong, billiards and board games. At night, gather for stargazing and s’mores around a fire pit.

This year, the property added what it calls Treehouses, three accommodations perched about 15 feet above the ground amid oaks and maples, to its 11 existing suites and stand-alone stone cottage. Each treehouse, which can accommodate up to four guests, has a king-size bed on the first level, a loft with a Murphy bed, a living room with a wet bar, a covered balcony, and a deck with a fire pit.

Wandering the Chatwal Lodge, part of the Unbound Collection by Hyatt brand, calls to mind the 19th-century Great Camps of the Adirondacks, and a number of rooms there have water views. All of the accommodations have private outdoor space. Seasonal farm-to-table meals can be enjoyed from your private terrace or patio, inside your room, or in the Lodge’s Rustic Grill. Prices for the Lodge, which include all meals (not alcohol) and certain activities, start at $900 a night; prices for the Treehouses start at $2,300 a night during the summer.

Johns Island, S.C.

Beginning Aug. 1, check into this new 72 room-and-suite luxury property along the Kiawah River and you’ll have 20 miles of waterfront and nature trails to hike and bike. Water activities abound, including kayaking, paddle boarding, fishing classes, clam-harvesting workshops and a “water safari” that takes you on the river’s estuary where you might spot roseate spoonbills, great blue herons and sea turtles. When you’re not exploring the river, check out the spa, which uses honey, including aster honey from local apiaries, for treatments such as nectar-infused facials.

Even though you’re surrounded by nature, you’re just a 40-minute car ride to the buzzy bars and restaurants of downtown Charleston. But there are plenty of places to tuck into a meal just beyond your room, too. For lunch and cocktails make your way to the Cove, a 1950s beach-club-inspired restaurant at the riverfront pool. Order bites like wood-fire-grilled oysters, cocktails and whiskeys at the Willet Room bar, and savor Southern coastal cooking with seafood and river views at Linnette’s restaurant.

The Dunlin, named for a shorebird, has charming, cottage-inspired rooms that play off their sunny Lowcountry surroundings with wicker, linen, and white and mint-green hues by the interior designer Amanda Lindroth. Porches provide places to sip iced tea and gaze at the river. Opt for a suite and you’ll have more space, including a living room and a soaking tub from which you can enjoy views of the water. Prices from $749 a night.

Hof bei Salzburg, Austria

On July 1, this 15th-century castle on Lake Fuschl in the Austrian Alps will reopen its doors after closing in 2022 and undergoing a gut renovation. What was once a hunting lodge and a summer residence of the Archbishop of Salzburg is now part of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, and it will have 98 rooms, including suites and stand-alone, lakefront chalets, as well as places to try regional cuisine, which emphasizes fish from local lakes, cheeses and wood-fired bread. A spa will include a heated infinity outdoor pool, an indoor pool and a fitness center. The big draw, of course, is the vast blue-green lake, and staying there means you can participate in activities like a fishing excursion that might wind up with you beside the water savoring a freshly smoked catch served on newspaper.

And while the tranquillity of the lake and the property’s walking trails may make you feel far from city life, Salzburg and its historic center, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, is only a half-hour car ride away. If you’re willing to explore a little farther, the picturesque lakeside village of Hallstatt — part of the breathtaking Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut Alpine region, which is also on the UNESCO list — is about an hour’s drive from the resort.

Wherever you choose to spend the days, they’ll conclude in your elegant room where soothing hues are in keeping with the natural surroundings. Most of the rooms have full or partial views of the lake, and some have private outdoor space as well, including the lakefront chalets. Summer prices from €800 a night, or about $870.

Ogunquit, Maine

On the southern coast of Maine, amid flowers and picket fences, the cottages at the Dunes are scattered across 12 acres of lawns near the Atlantic Ocean. Following a renovation, the property just opened with 21 whitewashed cottages with green shutters, ranging from one-to-three bedrooms, all with a private porch or patio, and a fireplace.

In the morning you can have coffee, baked goods and a newspaper delivered to your door. Later, take a five-minute walk to get fresh seafood at the Ogunquit Lobster Pound. The charming restaurants, bars, shops and sandy beaches of Ogunquit are also a stroll away, or you can hop on one of the hotel’s complementary bikes and ride into town. The hotel also has row boats for you to cross the river to the popular Ogunquit Beach.

Back at the Dunes, owned by Atlantic Hospitality, whose properties in Maine include the Claremont Hotel and the Lincoln Hotel, go fishing off the new dock, paddle boarding, kayaking, or join a waterfront yoga class. Take a dip in the heated swimming pool with views of the ocean, or while away an afternoon playing lawn games. Prices from $950 a night for a one-bedroom cottage.

Newport, R.I.

Fresh off a $50 million renovation, this resort on the site of a former torpedo factory has 257 rooms and suites, and a 22-slip marina where you can take to the water on inflatable paddle boards and in kayaks. A new seasonal water taxi will whisk you from the marina to the shops and restaurants of downtown Newport.

Or stay put and feast on seafood at the resort. The restaurant 1639 has New England classics like clam chowder and lobster, which you can enjoy on its outdoor deck or indoors with views of the harbor. Head to the Pineapple Club for its pool, cabanas and restaurant, where a new menu includes lobster rolls, salads and flatbreads, and grown-ups can slip into a new adults-only seating area. For more sea-inspired dishes like blue crab toast and tarragon lobster, visit the Torpedo Bar & Lounge. And satisfy your sweet tooth at the Bakery, a new spot to grab coffee and baked goods on the go.

Previously known as Gurney’s Newport Resort and Marina, the resort is now owned by Pebblebrook Hotel Trust. The rooms, most with views of the water and many with balconies or patios, have new furniture and are decorated in calming earth tones. Go for a swim in the outdoor saltwater pool or, if the weather doesn’t cooperate, in the heated indoor pool. Stop into the spa for a massage or body treatment, work out in the fitness center, or feel the sea breeze in your hair as you take a ride on one of the complementary bicycles. Prices from $459 a night, varying by season.

Waiters in blue jackets wended through a crowded dining room balancing trays of martinis. A woman ran her fingers along a wall covered with markings of the heights of children. Longtime regulars handed servers farewell tips through firm handshakes.

It was the last night for Pietro’s, an old guard Italian steakhouse, at its decades-long address in Midtown Manhattan. Among the devout who had come to pay their respects on Thursday was the fashion designer Michael Kors, who sat at a corner table with his husband, Lance Le Pere.

“There is no Carbone without Pietro’s,” Mr. Kors said as he waited for a house specialty, Shells a la Nat, a pasta in bone-marrow sauce.

“The Michael Kors offices are in Midtown, so that’s why I come here,” he continued, “and I’ve always liked that you can still feel some of the ‘Mad Men’ era here. Pietro’s is the last of the Mohicans.”

Alan Appel, a tax law professor at New York Law School, ordered a veal parmigiana for his goodbye meal. “I’m 73 now, and when I heard Pietro’s was closing, I told myself, ‘I’ve lived too long already,’” he said. “I feel like I’m at a funeral right now.”

Pietro’s is considered the last survivor of Steak Row, a boulevard of restaurants that defined a time when business in New York was conducted over meat, martinis and cigarettes. Thirty years ago, Ruth Reichl, a former New York Times restaurant critic, wrote that it served “the single best steak I have had in New York.” The end of its time at 232 East 43rd Street came because its lease expired.

Though its owners said they hoped to reopen Pietro’s nearby with a sleek redesign, regulars gathered to savor one last meal in the restaurant’s time-capsule atmosphere, which included pennants for New York sports teams over the bar and a pay phone by the entrance.

“I’ve heard they will reopen,” Mr. Kors said, “and I’ll be the first one there if they do. But I just hope they don’t try to gloss it up too much. I want to see a carpeted floor. I want to see the blue-jacketed waiters again.”

Paul Nix, a retired lawyer who flew in from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for the occasion, was sipping a martini at the bar.

“I’ve had hundreds of martinis at this barstool over the years,” Mr. Nix said. “When I got word tonight was the last night, I dropped everything to fly in and be here. I know they hope to relocate, and I’m optimistic, but I hope they still have worn out and uncomfortable bar stools at the new place.”

Taking his leave from dinner was Joseph Califano, 93, a onetime political aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“My last Pietro’s supper was a veal parm, a chopped salad and Scotch on ice,” he said. “The food is as good now as it was when my father took me here. I never did take Johnson to Pietro’s while I worked for him, but I think he would have loved it.”

Pietro’s was founded in 1932 by Pietro and Natale Donini, brothers from Parma, Italy. Today David Bruckman runs the restaurant with his father, Bill, who started working at Pietro’s as a busboy in the 1980s. (Another son, Billy, manages a Long Island outpost).

In their cluttered office, the father and son said the closing was connected to the recent sale of the Pfizer building, which houses Pietro’s. They also addressed the anxieties of regulars who were worried about the next iteration.

“It’s bittersweet, but it’s time to bring Pietro’s into the 21st century,” the elder Mr. Bruckman said. “Even if our lease was renewed and the building wasn’t being sold, this is a very old space. I’m not going to miss having to repeatedly kick our air-conditioner to get it to work.”

On his desktop computer, David Bruckman pulled up a rendering for a new Pietro’s. One schematic portrayed a retro-chic concept with bistro tables, tiled floors, green leather banquettes and a chandelier. The summary read: “A new take on an old school, ‘Mad Men’ era, New York City Institution. Reimagined as a glowing, time-honored space.”

“Our vision is to have an old-school red sauce establishment, but to kick it up,” Mr. Bruckman said. “We have people here tonight who want the next Pietro’s to resemble every square inch of how it is now, but it’s time for this place to go out with dignity.”

His father reminisced about the wet-lunch days.

“You couldn’t even see the person in front of you because there was so much cigarette smoke,” he said. “Young people today have never even seen an ashtray. And they drank so many martinis then that they were bouncing off the walls. If I didn’t see it all with my own two eyes, I wouldn’t even believe it happened.

“The fax machine ended the three-martini lunch,” he added. “After that, people didn’t need to do business one-on-one anymore. That was the beginning of the end.”

As midnight neared, a few diners lingered at their tables, conversing over sambuca and tiramisu. A last-call gang hung out by the bar as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan songs played from a speaker. Among them was Jason Weyeneth, a financier, who polished off a bottle of Blanton’s bourbon with a straw.

“I’m scared they won’t reopen, or that, if they do, they can’t recreate what’s here,” he said. “Cities are living creatures. They evolve. Not everything lasts.”

The elder Mr. Bruckman, 67, had been busy hugging his regulars goodbye, but he finally sat down with a beer to take in the closing-time scene. Considering that he started working at Pietro’s in his 20s, he had been noticeably stoic throughout the evening. But as a blue-jacketed waiter cleared off the tables beside him, he allowed himself a moment of introspection.

“They’ve all been leaving in tears tonight, but I want them to know we plan to come back,” Mr. Bruckman said. “Maybe tonight still didn’t sink in for me, though, and maybe it will be a while before it does.

“I’ve been tough on the outside all day,” he continued. “Because I can’t be seen breaking down in front of so many people. But I’ve had to step out of the restaurant a few times today, just to be alone by myself.”

West Wilson never thought he’d be spending the summer in a house in the Hamptons, let alone as part of a reality television show. The unemployed former football player from Missouri was about to run out of money following a three-week boys’ trip when he got a call that would change his life.

“My severance ended that weekend,” Mr. Wilson, 27, recalled. “I came home and it was like the most depressing Monday of all time.”

Mr. Wilson decided to check his voice mail to see if there was something — anything — in there to cheer him up. To his shock, a Bravo producer had left a message. She was interested in possibly casting him on Season 8 of “Summer House,” an unscripted show that follows the lives of a group of New York media workers, influencers and entrepreneurs who share a house in the Hamptons — the last few seasons have been filmed at a mansion in Water Mill — each summer.

Though he had never seen “Summer House” and wasn’t a fan of reality TV (except for the occasional “Bachelor” binge), Mr. Wilson had an intuition that it might be right for him. “I just had something in me that was like, just see what this is and call back,” he said. He had recently met a “Summer House” cast member named Lindsay Hubbard at the bar of Lamia’s Fish Market in the East Village. Mr. Wilson was so unprepared to be cast that he didn’t initially make the connection between having met Ms. Hubbard and receiving the call from Bravo.

“I was like, ‘Oh I actually know someone on that show’ and they were like, ‘That’s how we found you, you idiot,’” Mr. Wilson said.

The Reluctant Star

Over the last few years, producers had experimented with adding new male cast members to “Summer House,” but nobody seemed to fit with the main cast enough to stick around for more than a season or two. Affable and self-aware, Mr. Wilson was not an obvious choice for a show that thrives on drama. Yet over the course of this season, the finale of which will air on Bravo on May 30, Mr. Wilson has become a social media darling, almost universally beloved by both his housemates and the audience.

As the comedian, actor and Bravo fan Joel Kim Booster put it: “Haven’t liked a straight white guy this much since friggin Bernie Sanders.”

For Mr. Booster, who has been watching “Summer House” since the beginning, Mr. Wilson has pulled off a kind of magic trick. “Obviously, we know he likes attention, because he has signed up to do this show — but somehow his performance on the show has convinced me that he actually doesn’t,” Mr. Booster said in an interview. “Unlike all of the other narcissists that he is surrounded by, he is the exception to the rule, he is the one being sort of genuine and real.”

In March, Courtney Frain and Mary Mahoney, the co-hosts of the popular reality TV podcast “Two Judgey Girls,” ran an online contest in which listeners could vote for the hottest man on Bravo, which they cheekily called “March Manness.” Despite the fact that he hadn’t even appeared on a full season of a Bravo show yet, Mr. Wilson won second place. (The winner, Craig Conover, is the longtime star of “Southern Charm” and the boyfriend of another “Summer House” cast member, Paige DeSorbo.)

“There’s something about him that’s infectious,” said Ms. Frain, a fan who has also hung out with Mr. Wilson in person. “You feel like you’ve known him forever.”

Ms. Mahoney said what’s refreshing about Mr. Wilson is that, unlike other men cast on Bravo, he doesn’t seem to be hiding anything. “He’s truly his authentic self,” she said.

Mr. Wilson’s castmates also took to him almost immediately. “He’s a smart, funny, driven guy who enjoys providing comedic relief, but is also self-aware, owns his flaws and doesn’t take himself too seriously,” Kyle Cooke, 41, who’s been on “Summer House” since it premiered in 2017, wrote in an email.

“West is a one-of-a-kind special human,” said Jesse Solomon, 30, another newcomer this season who quickly became close with Mr. Wilson. “He is one of the funniest and quick-witted guys I’ve ever met.”

But Bravo stars and their fans are mercurial, as quick to put a new cast member on a pedestal as they are to tear them down. For now, Mr. Wilson is enjoying all of the adulation. But can he keep the good vibes going?

A Solid Foundation

Westling Conrad Wilson grew up in Columbia, Mo., with his younger brother, Henry, and parents, Elizabeth, an OB-GYN, and Bruce, a former world history teacher turned cattle rancher. (“But he votes Democratic,” Mr. Wilson added.)

After graduating from high school in 2013, Mr. Wilson attended Montana State University, where he played football and studied marketing. “From the first time I met him, you could tell he was very, very comfortable in just about any setting, almost like a chameleon,” said his former football coach Jeff Choate, who now works as the head football coach at the University of Nevada, Reno. “He thrives on other people’s energy and really kind of draws people into him.”

At Montana State, Mr. Wilson worked as a promoter at one of Bozeman’s most popular local hangouts, the Rockin R Bar. “He’d have free drink coupons, and he’d just go around and put together promotions,” Mr. Choate said. “And so, you know, on a Friday or Saturday night, when it wasn’t in season and they were having a good time at Rockin R, West was always kind of the ringleader.”

After graduation, Mr. Wilson took a job as a social and video producer at Bleacher Report, a sports news website. He moved to Las Vegas to help launch the brand’s sports betting operation, and worked from an office in Caesar’s Palace. “I’m an optimist with locations, but living there was odd,” Mr. Wilson said. “I would drive in, park in the garage and then take the elevator with someone who was 60 years old dressed like a Spartan.”

Bleacher Report agreed to transfer him to the New York office just as the pandemic hit. He spent a few months working remotely from his parents’ house in Columbia before eventually moving to the city full-time in July 2020. Right before Christmas of 2022, Mr. Wilson was laid off from Bleacher Report. He received six months’ severance, but was having a difficult time landing a new job in the shrinking journalism industry. He spent some time traveling (he’s been to all 50 states), but cash reserves and time were running out. The Bravo role came at just the right time.

After the initial calls with Bravo, Mr. Wilson had a series of interviews and conversations with production, where he said he asked as many questions of the network as they did of him.

Mr. Wilson was very clear that he would not agree to be typecast as “another white guy who gets pigeonholed into being some douchey, fratty, dumb, racist Missouri guy,” he said. “Because I know that I’m not.”

The producers agreed that he should just be himself, and with no other professional prospects on the horizon, he agreed to join the cast.

“My daughter was like, ‘West is on ‘Summer House’! And I’m like, what the hell is ‘Summer House’?’” Mr. Choate said. “But then I saw it and I’m like, oh yeah, this makes total sense.”

Mr. Wilson is charismatic. His goofy personality — and stylish but casual wardrobe — make him seem like the leading man in an indie rom-com written by a woman (see: Clairo T-shirt, backward baseball hat, gold signet pinkie ring). He’s handsome in an approachable way, which is perhaps why Bravo fans have connected with him: He seems like a regular guy they too could date.

As fans keep reminding him, he’s also not the typical tall, lean, dark and handsome guy you usually see on TV. Mr. Wilson is 5-foot-11, but somehow appears shorter onscreen. (Mr. Solomon said that when the two first met, he thought, “this guy is way taller than he looks on Instagram.”) He also has a broad football player’s build, which has made him into an unwitting body positivity icon online.

“I’ve had a couple of guys DM me who claim to not be good looking or in shape and they’re like, you know, ‘I feel so seen by you,’” Mr. Wilson said, laughing.

He said he also has received messages from women saying that his popularity on the show proves that personality matters more than looks, a puzzling statement to make to a cornfed all-American jock with impeccable street style. Mr. Wilson always assumed he was at least “sort of handsome,” but now he’s wondering if it was always his sense of humor and easy confidence that landed him dates. He’s trying to not let all of the social media comments go to his head — or hurt his feelings.

“If the overweight man felt seen by me, like if that’s my role, then let’s do it I guess,” he said. “I’m here for it.”

Perhaps Mr. Wilson’s most impressive feat on the show was almost immediately winning over the charmingly standoffish longtime female cast members, including Paige DeSorbo, Amanda Batula and Ciara Miller, a nurse and model whose budding romance with Mr. Wilson is one of this season’s primary story lines. In the parasocial world of the Bravo universe, perhaps no other couple is being rooted for more enthusiastically than Mr. Wilson and Ms. Miller. (Mr. Wilson refused to comment on the current status of his relationship with Ms. Miller, as the show hadn’t finished airing before the interview.)

In August 2023, toward the end of filming Season 8, Mr. Wilson, who now lives in Hell’s Kitchen, was hired as a sports video producer at Complex. He’s brought his rising star status to that network’s social media, recently interviewing Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and posting videos of his outfits in front of the Complex logo. Unlike most reality stars, he’s not interested in giving up his day job to become a full-time influencer.

“I’m proud to lead with an actual career,” Mr. Wilson said. “I don’t want to ever have to say, like, I’m an influencer. That’s my worst nightmare. I do care about actually contributing to something that’s not just my own Instagram or TV,” he added.

With so much positive buzz around his first season, Bravo watchers are curious to see how Mr. Wilson handles all the attention.

“I feel like the real question is: What will this summer be like for him?” said Ms. Mahoney of “Two Judgey Girls.” “Everyone is rooting for him. And usually if you have a good first season, it goes to your head and you get an ego. But I’m hopeful that it won’t change him.”

When Denise Carroll jumps into her pond from its ledge, she swims alongside kois named Cutie, Baby and Jason (names chosen by her two young children). She’s not crazy about sharing the water with the scaled swimmers — “I’m afraid that I’m going to jump in and land on the fish” — but Ms. Carroll, who is 44 and works in biotech sales, feels that the benefits of swimming in a chlorine-free body of water surrounded by natural plants outweigh any potential ick.

After all, this pond is the swimming pool Ms. Carroll wanted, and she worked with Sarita Landscapes and California Waterscapes to build it in her San Diego backyard. She is one of an increasing number of Americans who, thanks, in part, to videos shared by sustainable living influencers on TikTok and an increasing number of companies that offer installation services, are beginning to build in their backyard the very thing that can be found naturally on many parts of the planet: a pond, or a natural pool, as it’s sometimes called.

Unlike traditional swimming pools, which contain chlorine, natural pools rely on plants and rocks for filtration instead. An underwater retaining wall separates the swimming area (where humans — and sometimes fish — swim) from the regenerative zone, which closely resembles wetlands filled with aquatic plants like water lilies or water lotus. Pumps, and sometimes waterfalls, keep the water moving, and the rocks and skimmers filter sediment and large debris.

This alternative might appeal to the environmentally minded. “Backyard ponds that don’t have chemicals in them can foster biodiversity and be important habitats for a variety of wildlife,” said Meredith Holgerson, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University who studies natural and human-made ponds.

The idea of a natural pool intrigued Morgan Castellow, 34, who now shares one in Moultrie, Ga., with his wife, Amanda Castellow, and their four children. “I think probably the most fun I’ve had with the pond, short of it just being beautiful to look at, is with the children,” Mr. Castellow said.

As a founder of Avery Outdoor Design, he also uses his pond as a testing ground. Working with a group of friends, and consulting with the British company Organic Pools, he built his natural pool two years ago using limestone for the retaining wall. A dock spans the wetlands, allowing swimmers to jump in. Since then, he has built another pond for a client in Thomasville, Ga.

And, of course, where there are pools, there are often parties. The Castellows recently hosted a concert for about 80 people, in which John B. Clark, a musician from Jefferson, Ga., used the deck above the pond as a stage while the audience sat around the pond.

The cost of building a natural pool is fairly comparable to that of a chlorine pool — in Southern California, Sara Bendrick, the founder of Sarita Landscapes, who worked on Ms. Carroll’s, said, it can range $50,000 to $200,000 depending on the size — but natural pools are quicker to compose. “The materials are a lot simpler,” Ms. Bendrick said.

Natural pools are considered lower maintenance, too, because owners don’t need to add chlorine once a week to the water. Other issues may arise, such as too much algae, but generally, it comes down to the plants, which can be thinned out.

There’s also the beauty. When Dr. Holgerson surveyed landowners in upstate New York about their ponds, whether they were for swimming or not, many reported feeling relaxed just looking at them. “I don’t know to what extent that’s true for a rectangle concrete pool in your backyard,” she said.

When winter comes, no closure is necessary. With the water movement, ponds tend to not fully freeze over. And it still brings joy. Ms. Carroll said that she might not swim in winter (even San Diego gets nippy), but it was still “enjoyable to look out and just feel like you’re in a little bit of nature.”

Then there are the critters the ponds attract — which can be a selling point for some. The plants surrounding a pond, and the pond itself, play host to all manner of fauna. “You can’t build one of these and not see dragonflies and minnows and tadpoles from the toads or frogs,” Mr. Castellow said. He has found snakes, and even a freshwater eel, in his pool, but the water is clear enough that he can spot animals before there’s trouble.

Mr. Castellow considers these creatures a perk, particularly with children. “I think the ability to experience nature in a very real, tangible way and see some cool ecology in your backyard is just incredibly rewarding.”

“Make me look like a disco ball.” For most designers this isn’t a common request, but for Madison Chamberlain, so-called disco brides, and anyone looking to splash extra color, sparkle or glam into their wedding day, are a mainstay of her business.

Ms. Chamberlain, 29, started her bridal brand in 2022. “I’ve always been what you would call an occasion-wear designer,” she said. In college, at what was then known as Philadelphia University, she studied fashion design and made “jacquard coats decked out in embellishments and trimmed with orange fur,” she said. “Things that were just extreme.”

In 2019, Ms. Chamberlain left a design assistant job at Free People, where she had worked on party dresses. She was feeling burned out from corporate fashion and dreamed of someday starting her own fashion line, one of “joyful things,” made in a size-inclusive, low-waste way.

For about two years she worked for a wedding-invitation studio, painted pet portraits, did freelance design work and taught children’s art and sewing classes. Then, in 2021, a friend of a friend asked Ms. Chamberlain to make a dress for her wedding in New Orleans. She created a custom gown embellished with shimmering paillettes, and wound up being invited to the wedding. The experience inspired her to shift her focus to nontraditional bridal design.

In August 2022, Ms. Chamberlain posted a TikTok video of her first veil, a rainbow sequin piece. It got more than two million views and sparked a flurry of inquiries. After that, she was able to make the brand her full-time job, running her business out of a studio in Philadelphia.

Her vibrant veils, gloves, dresses and capes have captivated thousands. The Sweetheart Veil, which drapes into a heart shape and costs $695, is one of her most popular designs. Last year, she designed a custom dress for the comedian Catherine Cohen.

On a recent video call, Ms. Chamberlain spoke about her design process, inspirations, the role of social media in bridal trends and what “nontraditional” means to her.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What is your process when designing a custom outfit?

People inquire, we have a consultation, we meet virtually, and they tell me what they’re looking for. Everyone has different pain points of why they’re showing up. They’re showing up because they have a size-G-cup top and their waist is supertiny, and they’re like, “I’m just never going to find the right fit in this vintage Art Deco vibe that I want.” Or people come and they’re like, “Make me look like a disco ball — I’ve seen you do it before.”

From there, we take all your measurements. Then we move into muslin fitting, which they have to come in person for, and then we move into a final fit.

A core tenet of the brand has been: Fit is so important. Visual appeal and impact are so important. It should visually look fussy, but it shouldn’t feel fussy. I want you to be able to eat, dance, drink and not have to be like, “Oh my gosh, I cannot wait to take this off.”

Where do you draw inspiration from?

So many things. I’m a consumer, I am an internet user. People are like, “How did you blow up on social media?” It’s because I used it so much. I should look at it less, but I’m inspired by what I see online.

I’m really obsessed with art history, fashion history. Movies — I love time period pieces. I love dramatic main characters. I keep thinking right now of Lady Jessica in “Dune,” or Natalie Portman when she played Anne Boleyn, or Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge.” Female characters like that, with really amazing outfits.

There’s also a lot of humor in what I make, and kitsch. I really like to push the bounds. It’s so funny to me when people comment on my stuff and they’re like, “This is not meant for weddings.” I’m like, it’s literally pink with a heart on it. What is not more meant for a wedding? A day of love?

Do you think social media fuels the movement toward colorful or over-the-top bridal designs?

It’s like, yes and no. I can only base it on whom I have worked with. They have private accounts, they do not post for a living. They are literally doing this for themselves, their friends, their family. It doesn’t have to do with social media for them. I have worked with influencer-type people before, and that is something they care about.

I do think there’s maybe truth in that, but I think there’s less truth to that for the average person actually wearing color and doing something different. I don’t really think it has anything to do with their posting, because they’re not really posting.

So, of course, there’s some truth in that, but I feel like that narrative negates all the people that just want to do it because that’s what feels good to them.

‘Nontraditional’ in bridal can mean different things to different people. As a designer, what does it mean to you?

At the core of it, “nontraditional” for bridal, for me, represents wearing what you want to wear on your wedding day, without any preconceived ideas being present. If you want to wear white, if you’re like, “I’m so pumped, I love the color white,” that is you.

It’s showing up as you and not necessarily as how society wants brides to be perceived, which is superfeminine, virginal and dainty, simple, the “blushing bride.” But again, if that feels like your jam, awesome. But if you feel not lit up by that, that’s what it means to me.

Then there’s a whole other meaning of the word to me. As a designer, I feel like I’m working in a way that is so traditional, from back in the day. I’m doing this art form, which is creating clothing from start to finish in a way that comes from the early times of creating clothing. And to do that now is, honestly, a nontraditional way.

For a moment, the annual Gordon Parks Foundation gala felt like a church service.

The celestial voices of a choir echoed throughout, resonating from the marble floor to the vaulted ceiling of Cipriani on 42nd Street. They sang and stomped powerfully while patrons took their seats.

The service had begun.

The night included a reverent performance from Patti Smith, an auction that felt a little like tithing and something of a sermon from the artist Carrie Mae Weems celebrating the artist Mickalene Thomas — who was also in the crowd. It was capped off with a call to action from Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

Every year, the Gordon Parks Foundation, named for Gordon Parks, the famed photographer, director and musician, honors a community of artists and athletes at a gala to raise funds for fellowships and scholarships. Those who admire Mr. Parks, who died in 2006, get together to eat, dance, push one another forward in their activism and worship expression that spurs social change.

This year’s honorees, who were celebrated for their work in their respective fields, included Ms. Thomas; Ms. Evers-Williams; Alicia Keys and her husband, Swizz Beatz, whose name is Kasseem Dean; and Colin Kaepernick, the former N.F.L. quarterback turned activist. Richard Roundtree, who played the main character in Mr. Parks’s 1971 film “Shaft” and died in October, received a posthumous award.

The gala, now in its 14th year, also held an auction of photographs by Mr. Parks, which raised about $640,000.

A single photo from 1956 of a Black family at an ice cream stand set off a gritty bidding war between Usher, the R&B singer, and Gail Yabuki, the director of the Yabuki Family Foundation, who won with a bid of $200,000.

“I have a competitive nature, so it’s hard for me to stop,” Ms. Yabuki said. “I was just going to keep going.”

The fund-raiser raised about $2.3 million, but the event, much like a church service, was not all about money or how much the foundation collected to keep itself running.

Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., the executive director of the foundation, said one of its goals is to make sure Mr. Parks’s legacy “is cemented in time.”

“There’s young artists today who weren’t alive when Gordon Parks was alive that are now understanding the breadth and depth of his career,” he said.

An admiration of Mr. Parks’s influence was passed down to Chelsea Clinton, who said she appreciates his photography.

“I grew up knowing Gordon Parks, his work, through my parents,” Ms. Clinton said, speaking to reporters on a red carpet. “Now, I am the proud owner of a few Gordon Parks photographs.”

A few recognizable faces slid into the event a bit late.

Spike Lee took his seat between Mr. Kaepernick and Usher about 30 minutes after the program had started. “I’m filming my fifth movie with Denzel Washington,” said Mr. Lee, who was wearing a vest and track pants. “That’s why I’m not dressed up.”

Clive Davis, the record industry mogul, who was wearing a lime green tie, skipped the red carpet altogether. “I so admire the history, the background — it is all very unique, very special and moving,” Mr. Davis said of the event, which he has attended many times.

Gayle King, the broadcast journalist, began the award portion of the evening by introducing Ms. Evers-Williams, 91. She did not attend the event in person, but appeared via recorded video. Her otherworldly voice, rich with wisdom, boomed through the speakers.

“This award is a testament to the progress we have made and a reminder of the work that still lies ahead,” she said from her home in Mississippi, where she was sitting in front of a painting of her husband.

Ms. Smith, who said she was moved to tears at a recent exhibit of Mr. Parks’s work, took the stage with her longtime bandmate Tony Shanahan. Her white hair and shirt shone under the lights, giving her an angelic aura. She performed her song “Peaceable Kingdom.”

Honoring activism was a big part of the night, but underscoring that message was a conversation about how to protect the legacies of people like Mr. Parks, who dedicate their lives to bringing about change.

Wearing a pinstripe Dolce & Gabbana suit, Mr. Dean, who along with Ms. Keys has one of the largest privately owned collections of work by Mr. Parks, said collecting the photographer’s pieces was central to preserving his legacy.

“Instead of telling people what they’re not, we wanted to inspire them to be,” Mr. Dean said.

After the honors had been handed out, photos had been taken, tears had been shed and Mr. Lee had delivered a couple of somber anecdotes about his beloved New York Knicks, who had just been defeated in the playoffs, the congregation began to lose steam.

Usher left the building and D.J. D-Nice, a born-again celebrity, played the R&B gospels: Stevie Wonder and Frankie Beverly.

It was time for fellowship or an Uber ride home.

When Vanity Fair asked Jeremy Allen White to share a statement about Ayo Edebiri, his co-star on the series “The Bear,” for its profile on the actress, it was reported that the actor made time “within a day” of being asked, a rare occurrence for a busy celebrity.

“We really enjoy each other in life, on camera and off camera. I have a tremendous amount of respect for her as a person, but also as an artist. And so I hope that sort of that kind of thing shines through on camera between Carm and Syd,” he said, referring to their characters, in the story that was published on Tuesday.

His statement, along with Ms. Edebiri’s own mention of Mr. White’s “beautiful blue eyes” in the article, only added to fan excitement and rumors that the two are dating after a video of the pair at a White Sox game at Wrigley Field was shared widely online over the weekend.

In the clip, the pair were captured from above, wearing baseball caps and joined by fellow cast members. Mr. White placed his hand between Ms. Edebiri’s shoulder blades and rubbed the upper crevice of her back.

Viewers have long rooted for their characters on “The Bear” to become a thing, but many have speculated that the two might have sparks flying in real life.

Representatives for Ms. Edebiri and Mr. White did not respond to requests for comment.

The two have long maintained that they are just good friends, and while that is most likely true (maybe these moments are all clever marketing for the show?), these recent comments and spottings have positioned them squarely under a microscope, with many watching to see if there’s something more.

The “will they, won’t they” trope — which is commonly used to describe a relationship between two characters who are drawn to each other but are hesitant to act on it — is irresistible, perhaps because it typically involves strong romantic tension and chemistry that’s difficult to pursue because of external factors or internal conflicts. As the viewer, you end up yearning for a union and rooting for romance.

On the show, Carmy and Sydney’s friendship is nurturing; we often see the two leaning on each other in stressful moments, seeking comfort and even using American Sign Language to say “I’m sorry” to the other by making a fist and rubbing their chest. This onscreen chemistry has led some fans to root for their characters to get together, while others want them to maintain their close friendship as colleagues. Now the bond the actors portray on-screen has seemingly bled into real life, extending a fantasy for the former group.

Both Ms. Edebiri and Mr. White’s success and rise to fame on what started as a scrappy series have currently made each popular in their own right. What’s better than two lovable stars becoming a couple? The internet simply can’t get enough.

Mr. White has been reportedly dating Rosalía, the Spanish singer, but the current status of their relationship is unclear. In January, Ms. Edebiri maintained that she and Mr. White are just friends after she was asked to comment on a Calvin Klein ad campaign featuring Mr. White in a pair of boxer briefs.

“I’m happy for him. That’s my boy,” Ms. Edebiri said. “I do feel like I want people to understand that he’s my co-worker!”

This might all just be a classic work wife-husband relationship. But it is undeniable that, at a time when celebrity couple breakups seem to be all the rage, Mr. White and Ms. Edebiri are satisfying the needs of hopeless romantics.

Send your thoughts, stories and tips to [email protected].

Finally Finding “The Magic”

Since childhood, I yearned for love. Once, I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. He said we were missing “the magic,” and, admittedly, he was right. A few men came and went. I’m now 59 with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don’t have a partner, but I’ve fallen desperately in love with life. Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere: my cat on my lap, a cashier extending an unexpected smile, sunlight skipping across a lake. I use each day to soak up the world’s splendor. “Not yet,” I whisper to the heavens. “I love it here.” — Clare Cory

After the Rollercoaster

I knew Pete loved me, but I wasn’t sure he’d fallen for my 5-year-old until he hoisted her onto his shoulders after a day riding roller coasters. Over too many beers on our first date, I’d told him everything: how I was still slogging through a divorce, living in a house that wouldn’t sell. How my daughter had medical issues I had yet to unravel. Everything felt so complicated, and I expected him to run. But as he beamed holding my daughter that day, Smurf-blue ice cream trickling down his forehead, I could see he was all in on messy. — Shelley Mann Hite

What the Silence Said

After I came out to my father at 18, little more was said about it. But 30 years later — loopy from hospice medications one afternoon — he told me that his closest friend had been a gay engineering colleague. He said the man was brilliant, funny and died of AIDS in the early ’90s. The way he beamed with joy remembering his friend helped me understand that his silence had never been disapproval; it was an acceptance of facts. That afternoon he was, as he had always been, a father who fully embraced his son with love. — John Garrison

My Father’s Un-Hinged Profile

My dad’s Hinge profile showed his pandemic scruff, cheeky smirk and favorite frayed T-shirt. He claimed his strength was listening but added the caveat that he “may not agree with you.” He called it “rugged charm”; I disagreed. After several matchless months, he let me give his dating profile a millennial makeover. We swapped out his old photo for one of him clean-shaven with a bright smile in the outdoors. We revamped his prompts to highlight his superhero dad qualities and love of movies. My dad’s Hinge profile no longer seemed unhinged. Two months later, he had a girlfriend. — Fiona Chin

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most attention-getting independent candidate for president since Ross Perot, may not have the poll numbers to end up on the debate stage next month. But he increasingly has something else: a reputation as the electoral “X factor.” Which means it is increasingly impossible to ignore what may be termed his “P factor.” Or even “K factor.”

“P” being prep and “K” being Kennedy. In an election fought partly through the images that inundate social media and pit archetype against archetype — Donald J. Trump, the 1980s red-tie-wearing sultan of reality TV, versus President Biden, the aviator-clad deal maker of D.C. — Mr. Kennedy offers a Rorschach test of a different kind. At least stylistically speaking.

His look — skinny rep ties, button-downs, shrugged-on suits, shock of gray hair and weather-beaten tan — not only sets him apart. It also speaks directly to associations with the early 1960s, a golden age of promise that represents “vigor, wit, charisma, change,” said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, and that are buried deep in the American hive mind.

And that comes from what Lisa Birnbach, a co-author of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” calls “the style semiology of the O.G. Kennedy men”: John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, and his father, the presidential candidate for whom he is named, along with all the Camelot-era mythology and hope they represent. Not to mention the classic New England style they assumed as their own kind of camouflage, the better to align their Irish Catholic clan with Boston Brahmin tradition.

And by association, Mr. Kennedy. Fine-tuning his image to evoke his father and uncle, has the effect of making people think they know him and what he stands for. That image in turn gives Mr. Kennedy’s more outré positions an aura of credibility, even when his words do not: He has claimed that chemicals in the water cause children to become transgender and believes that Wi-Fi can lead to chronic illness. There’s also his anti-vaccine stance.

As a result, even as members of Mr. Kennedy’s extended family have formally repudiated him as a candidate, throwing their support behind Mr. Biden, his image-making has worked as a counterargument without his having to say a word.

“He is cosplaying as a Kennedy,” said Avery Trufelman, the producer of the podcast Articles of Interest, which included a seven-part series on the history of preppy, or Ivy, style — doubling down on a manner of dress that is, she said, deeply associated with the Kennedy name, even though that association itself came from its own form of WASP cosplay. At this point, it has become, she said, “a very powerful tool.”

Mr. Kennedy has long been aware of the power of the classic Kennedy image as expressed through clothing, and how it can be used to his benefit. As far back as 2006, he was the face of Gant, the ur-preppy sportswear brand, posing with his family in a $8.5 million campaign in part to benefit Waterkeeper Alliance, then his nonprofit. It was “the first time in my memory that anyone in the political arena has allied himself with any brand in the fashion arena,” Marylou Luther, then editor of the International Fashion Syndicate, then told The New York Times.

Later, he and his family posed for a Gant catalog shoot entitled “Decorating the Kennedy Summer House,” in which he wore khaki shorts and a navy polo while boating, fishing and barbecuing, with red-white-and-blue towels stacked nearby.

At the time, Mr. Kennedy described his style as “jeans and khakis” and “thin ties.” His image-making is, Ms. Birnbach said, all about “nostalgia.”

But nostalgia “refracted through a fun-house mirror,” Mr. Wilentz said.

In large part, that’s because the complications of the Kennedy-prep origin story have faded into history, leaving only the legend behind: the Kennedys, in those clothes, representing generational change, dressing to be the breath of fresh air they promised to bring.

It’s a picture of “the young president rolling up his sleeves on a boat,” Ms. Trufelman said.

It’s football on the lawn. It’s Brooks Brothers button-down shirts, rolled up shirtsleeves, khakis and suits that may have been inherited from a father or a brother. It’s school crests and shirts with the top button left undone. It’s a derivative of New England prep-school uniforms redolent of wealth and legacy; of an effortless ease and birthright that is particularly attractive when times seem hard.

Such sartorial ingredients compose a “set of symbols that represents something friendly, competent, approachable,” Ms. Trufelman said. And it is a signature part of national style. Amid the rise of streetwear and the fall of the suit, preppy style still occupies its own territory in the fabric of the American closet, woven into the romantic history of the country and used as a reference point in movies, ad campaigns and fashion shows.

“That is the part of the legacy he is trying to replicate,” Mr. Wilentz, the historian, said.

If in doubt, consider the February Super Bowl ad that directly mimicked John F. Kennedy’s 1960 electoral ad and for which Mr. Kennedy later apologized after his family complained. He said it had been created independently by a super PAC and not by his campaign, though the fact that most viewers assumed it was his ad reflects the message intertwined with his mere image.

Consider the mimesis involved: his appearance on VladTV, the hip-hop news site, in a button-down yellow shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a skinny navy rep tie. Or the assorted videos of Mr. Kennedy shirtless and in jeans doing push-ups, as if he had just dropped to the ground for some exercise during a game of capture the flag, that he posted on his Instagram page last summer, a not-so-hidden effort to contrast his boyish vitality (even at age 70; everything is relative) with that of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.

(The Kennedy campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)

Or, for that matter, the fact that his campaign merch store features not only the standard T-shirts and caps bearing slogans like “Make Earth Great Again” and “The Remedy Is Kennedy,” but also the “Resolute Collection,” a line of gear featuring a sailboat logo. The collection, presumably, is a reference to the Resolute, the 19th-century Arctic exploration ship given to the United States by Queen Victoria. The Resolute’s timbers later became part of a famous Oval Office desk used by five presidents, including John F. Kennedy. (A replica is housed in the Kennedy Library.)

The boat illustration, however, looks less like the multimasted warship than a modern sailboat, which makes it hard to see without once again tumbling down the rabbit hole that leads to thoughts of famous pictures of Kennedys sailing in Hyannisport.

It’s a striking detail but also a telling one, suggesting a calculated, button-pushing approach to visual content. One that has been there since the beginning of Mr. Kennedy’s run.

To wit: When he declared his candidacy, he enlisted the help of Tom Soluri, a costume designer otherwise known for his work with “The Golden Bachelor” and on the films “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” and “West Side Story,” and who posted about the job on his Instagram page. Mr. Soluri dressed Mr. Kennedy in his trademark skinny tie, white button-down and dark suit.

“I had the privilege of working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his presidential announcement and run,” Mr. Soluri wrote, adding the hashtag #americanstyle to his post, underscoring the point of the look.

The only problem? According to the tags, Mr. Kennedy was wearing Zegna, the Italian brand. Suggesting, once again, that the allure of this kind of WASP-prep royalty is in the eye, and imagination, of the beholder.

On Saturday afternoon, the multi-hyphenate creatives of Los Angeles found a new reason to line up on Sunset Boulevard. Instead of sipping natural wine outside El Prado or waiting hours for a seat at Pijja Palace, they showed up for the designer Gustaf Westman’s pop-up shop.

“I love Gustaf in general,” said Billie Black, 27, a digital creator who snagged the first spot in line. “I have my eye on the chunky mug. I also want the spiral magazine rack.”

Mr. Westman, 30, started selling furniture and objects online in 2020 and quickly built a following on TikTok and Instagram. His curvy and chunky mirrors became coveted décor, and his dishware became the standard for internet “it” girls. His objects range from chunky cups ($68) and chunky plates ($58) to curvy mini tables ($750), mini flower mirrors ($2,200), pipe chairs ($1,150) and blob sofas ($3,360).

Nara Smith, a popular model and cooking influencer, often uses his plates to showcase her intricate homemade meals, and the Swedish influencer Matilda Djerf drinks her coffee out of Mr. Westman’s chunky cups. He has created a mirror for the Swedish rapper Yung Lean and a custom side table for the YouTube darling Emma Chamberlain.

So it came as no surprise that hundreds of shoppers showed up on the first day of his L.A. pop-up.

Kitty Rheault, an interior designer and prop stylist in Los Feliz, went to the pop-up to shop for herself and several clients.

“It’s whimsical and refined,” Ms. Rheault said. “I’m working with a client right now who has a really colorful, bright style, and I feel like the style can easily go south if it’s not done with some restraint, but this is hitting it right on the nose.”

Essie Park, 29, a fashion designer in Koreatown, bought the curvy pink mirror she’d been dreaming about for years.

“I like how maximalist it is, maximalist yet simple at the same time,” Ms. Park said. “It’s a lot, and it’s bold, but it’s not too much.”

The line outside was peppered with pastel-hued Adidas Sambas, purple- and orange-dyed hair and chunky sweaters with playful designs.

Mr. Westman, who is based in Stockholm, greeted people and handed out Nick’s keto chocolate bars. About a dozen people were able to enter the pop-up at a time to pick up his chunky tableware, take selfies in his flower-shaped mirrors and sit on his blob sofas.

“It feels pretty chill in here,” Mr. Westman said as he watched people check out a shelf of dishes, vases, mirrors, candleholders and magazine racks. “I love that you don’t necessarily feel like you have to come here and buy something.”

Shannon O’Halloran, 25, and Mikayla LoBasso, 25, drove from Culver City to find fun décor for their apartment.

“Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m getting yet, but I will be getting something,” Ms. O’Halloran said. “I have the chunky cup already in yellow.”

Ms. O’Halloran, who works in comedy, and Ms. LoBasso, who works in the music industry, agreed that Mr. Westman’s work stands out among the countless products pushed on social media.

“It’s such an innovative design, I feel like no one’s really doing anything like it,” Ms. LoBasso said. “Not a lot of things catch everyone’s eye. These stop you in your tracks.”

Samantha Klein, 38, an interior design influencer in Glendale, said that Mr. Westman’s furniture and objects fit her vintage aesthetic.

“I’m just super into whimsy, pastels, cozy comfort,” Ms. Klein said.

“It’s not like there are many small designers doing what he’s doing and at the price point that he’s doing,” she added. “If I bought something I was similarly excited about, in the same price range, it would probably be vintage.”

Dulce Annese, 37, and John Forbes, 35, traveled down from San Francisco, where they work in tech, to get one of Mr. Westman’s flower mirrors.

“We already have a chunky mirror in my house, and I’ve been eyeing the flower mirror for years,” Ms. Annese said.

As Cassidy Sonnemann, 27, contemplated buying a vase or candle holders for her home in North Hollywood, she looked like a kid in a candy store. She already owned sets of Mr. Westman’s dishes, but that only made the pop-up more enticing.

“These plates and cups are the most complimented thing in my home,” said Ms. Sonnemann, who works in product development. “It’s hand-wash only, but it’s actually quite satisfying to wash it because it’s so curved.”

Though she said she hates doing dishes, she admits, “I don’t mind these.”

The fashion world loves a little black dress. But what if you look like a corpse in dark colors? What suggestions do you have for an alternative that can go on trips, on dates and to parties and can be accessorized in such a way that people see it as a different outfit each time you wear it? Is there such a thing? — Robin, Dammeron Valley, Utah

The little black dress has been regarded as a holy grail of fashion ever since Coco Chanel championed the concept back in 1926, proffering it as an alternative to the fussier, more colorful frocks popular at the time. Heralded by American Vogue, which called the little black dress the haute version of “the Ford” and declared that it would be “a sort of uniform for all women of taste,” as well as Christian Dior, who called it “essential,” it combined utilitarianism and sophistication.

Anyone in doubt simply had to look to Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; Jackie Kennedy, who wore one for Richard Avedon’s 1961 portrait of the first couple; and Princess Diana, whose famous “revenge dress” was the ultimate little black dress. At this point, the garment has become so ubiquitous it has its own acronym: the LBD.

The problem is, as you note, not everyone loves, or looks good in, black. Not everyone even loves a dress. So what to do?

Embrace poetic license.

Instead of thinking of the LBD as a “little black dress,” think of it as a “little basic dress.” Or even “little basic duds.” The point is to keep the ethos of the LBD — the idea that a simple, easy garment with a fabulous line can take you pretty much anywhere — but free yourself from the restriction of color and garment.

That means thinking of what, for you, would be the equivalent. Perhaps it is a little navy dress. Or a little ivory one. Maybe even a little beige one. Perhaps it is a great trouser suit (maybe even a tuxedo) in a jewel tone like emerald or sapphire.

Whatever you come up with, it has to fulfill certain criteria: It should be a neutral but plush enough material to evade categorization, in a color that doesn’t immediately inspire a host of associations, and be cut exactingly enough to carry a look on its own — and free of distracting frippery.

Stay away from linen, which screams summer and wrinkles; denim, which is more casual; and synthetics. Avoid hot pinks and chartreuse. (Avoid neon in general.) Look for medium-weight wools, silks or a ponte knit. And remember: Simplicity leaves nowhere to hide, so details like necklines, placement of the seams and finishing matter.

Then consider stretching your budget. If you are going to have one go-to item, it’s worth an investment. You can amortize the cost across the anticipated number of times you’ll wear it.

Finally, consider context. A great dress or trouser suit worn with sneakers, shades and a straw hat can go for a stroll in the city or to a farmers’ market. Add sandals and jewelry, and it can go to cocktails. Swap in spike heels, a fancy clutch and more gems, and it’s black tie. Take a cue from the OG LBD model, Chanel herself, draped in her pearls and camellias.

In the end, the genius of the LBD, however you define it, is that it is, in essence, simply a basic sartorial canvas on which you can impose your personality as the occasion demands. Paint away.

Your Style Questions, Answered

Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.

Growing up in Mexico, Marco Flores fantasized about the lowrider cars he saw in magazines, studying their colorful bodies and gleaming engine compartments. He adored his father’s Chevrolet Chevelle, too. In a tribute, Mr. Flores eventually restored a Chevelle in electric blue — the same muscle car his father had owned — with the help of his children.

Now his custom-made creations, which he designs and fabricates after work in his garage in Port Chester, N.Y., are featured in those same lowrider magazines.

His blue Chevelle “represents my entire childhood and the passion I have for cars,” said Mr. Flores, 55, who works six days a week at a Mamaroneck auto body shop. “When I turn the ignition, I am overcome with the emotion of feeling my father knows I did this for him.”

Family is a pillar of lowrider culture, which flourished in car-crazy postwar Los Angeles among Mexican Americans who took used cars they could afford and transformed them into bouncing, rolling works of art. Just as Mr. Flores shared his skills with his children, many fans embrace the scene as a family-friendly way to honor traditions and celebrate accomplishments, adding hydraulics in the trunk, bright paint across the body and iconography like Our Lady of Guadalupe on the hood.

California recently repealed prohibitions on lowrider cruising and vehicle modifications that had been in place for decades. Those issues have not caused the same concern in New York City, so as the city’s Mexican population has grown, so, too, has the visibility of lowriders on roads and in car shows. Once dismissed as gang-related, lowriders now win prizes, too, and support local charity events.

Alfonso Gonzales Toribio, a Chicano professor in the ethnic studies department at the University of California, Riverside, who himself owns a lowrider, traced the trend to a midcentury boom in unionized industrial jobs. It spread to hobbyists who recalled custom cars back in Mexico.

“It was done with a Mexican twist, giving cultural expression to the cars, lowering them and using loud colors,” he said, adding, “We change everything we do.”

On a gravelly parking lot in Astoria, Queens, several dozen lowriders — from full-sized contraptions to radio-controlled scale models — were on display last August, facing the East River and Manhattan. Children walked with parents, marveling at the details, much of the work done by owners themselves to save money. Young men with silver- and gold-plated lowrider bicycles lounged in chinos and T-shirts, while other men traded stories about cars past. At one point, the crowd watched a Mexican folkloric dance troupe perform in animal costumes.

Nobody knew much about lowriders in the New York City area when Mr. Flores left hardship in Mexico to join his mother and sister in Port Chester in 1998. He scoffed at the cheap paint jobs he saw, knowing he could do better, and persuaded someone to let him paint a truck with bold colors. Soon, word of his custom paint jobs and glistening hydraulics got around, and he has not stopped since. Now his cars compete — and win — in regional car shows that once looked down on lowriders.

The skills he uses to craft lowriders have also gotten him noticed at his day job: Mr. Flores has gotten so good at fabricating pieces that he now makes his own replacement body panels for luxury imported cars.

“We gained respect bit by bit,” he said.

Bikes and fashion, part of the lowrider scene as well, drew in Fidencio Cortez, a musician who lives in Coney Island. He commissioned Mr. Flores to paint his lowrider bike, a squat, metal-plated BMX-style machine he rides with friends.

“You really didn’t see these bikes at first,” said Mr. Cortez, 33, referring to New York. “But we saw them in videos of parades and on YouTube.”

Thanks to online popularity, the culture has gone global, Mr. Gonzales Toribio said, pointing to lowrider clubs as far away as Japan. Rather than do the work themselves, like Mr. Flores, fans can order online all the parts one would need to soup up a car — if money is not an issue. Still, traditionalists have mixed feelings.

“The problem with commodification of the culture is we lose control over it,” Mr. Gonzales Toribio said, adding, “Will the market take over low riding?”

That’s why Mr. Flores raised his three children to care about the cars, holding flashlights and passing wrenches to their father. It reminded him of the days when he helped his father, a bus driver, clean his Chevelle before going on rides.

His passion has rubbed off. One son, Marco Jr., customizes Japanese compact cars, and his work has been showcased at the New York International Auto Show alongside million-dollar vehicles. Mr. Flores’s daughter, Sherry, will inherit his other car, a candy-apple-red Chevy Impala with filigreed gold trim and spotless hydraulic pumps in the trunk that make the car dance and bounce.

“She calls it her baby,” said Mr. Flores. “But when I die, I want my ashes put in the hydraulic tanks. That way, when she drives it, I’ll still be with her.”

On a recent trip to Sephora, 11-year-old Lincoln Rivera asked his mom for a $125 atomizer of Yves Saint Laurent eau de parfum.

He also covets scents from Jean Paul Gaultier, which he learned about from the animated movie “Megamind,” and Paco Rabanne (some of its cologne bottles are shaped like robots).

“I feel fine about how I smell,” said Lincoln, a fifth grader in Westchester County, N.Y., whose olfactory experimentation has so far been limited to deodorant. “But I could smell even better.”

Abby Rivera, Lincoln’s mother, first thought the designer scents sounded like overkill for her son to wear to elementary school. She was surprised by his sudden interest until she heard that some of his hockey teammates had also been asking their parents for high-end cologne, too.

“It’s like a status thing right now — they all want it,” she said. “Just like the girls want this high-end skin care and body care, this is like the boys’ version.”

Teenage boys have long turned to mists and sprays to drown out the first whiffs of puberty, but some even younger adolescents — whose parents have the cash, that is — are now becoming infatuated by designer colognes with price tags in the hundreds of dollars.

Teen boys’ annual spending on fragrance rose 26 percent in the year ending in March, according to a semiannual survey of youth spending patterns by the investment bank Piper Sandler. Axe, Old Spice and Bath & Body Works fell in its rankings of teens boys’ favorite fragrance brands, while luxury brands including Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier climbed.

It’s not just about showing off a cologne’s high price tag: Young enthusiasts say that cultivating an air of sophistication is what separates the boys from the slightly older boys. Using terminology they absorb online, middle schoolers at sleepovers are discussing high-end fragrances the way that sommeliers might analyze wine.

The scent Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier has “a really good honey note,” said Luke Benson, a 14-year-old who lives in Orlando, Fla. Tom Ford Noir Extreme, on the other hand, is “a lot spicier and a little bit darker.”

Other young scent aficionados throw around vocabulary like “sillage,” a French term for how heavily a fragrance lingers, and dissect the merits and shortcomings of different formulations.

“Too much alcohol smells super strong and burns your nose,” said Easton, a 12-year-old in Oklahoma. He and his 10-year-old brother, Bentley, use their father’s collection of more than 70 colognes to create “scent of the day” videos for a parent-run account on TikTok.

In one video, Bentley, who is in fourth grade, grips a $100 bottle of Invictus Victory Elixir. “This has notes of vanilla, caramel and tonka,” he says, referring to a South American legume.

Dollars and Scents

Tween hygiene has become much more elaborate than swiping on deodorant before gym class. Preteen girls have recently made headlines for seeking out high-end skin creams and serums, sometimes with anti-aging ingredients that are intended for adults.

Hannah Glover, a middle-school physical fitness teacher in Bluffton, S.C., has been shocked by how early the cosmetic products of adulthood have been gaining a foothold with her 11-to-15-year-old students. Boys in her class bring bottles of Gucci, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent cologne to school and show them off to their classmates, she said, while girls are obsessed with lip products and Sol De Janeiro moisturizers.

“To give an 11-year-old a $160 bottle of cologne or a $40 lip gloss, it just blows my mind,” Ms. Glover, 27, said. “When I was in middle school, we had Sweet Pea and Cucumber from Bath & Body Works.”

Young cologne customers are trying free samples in stores like Macy’s, Ulta and Sephora, or siphoning spritzes from parents. Those who can afford it are spending their allowances on cologne or asking for bottles as birthday gifts from relatives.

Logan, a 14-year-old in Chicago, started putting his bar mitzvah money toward a cologne collection about six months ago. The fragrances boost his self-esteem, he said, especially a nearly $300 bottle of Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille, which he considers his signature scent. He does not mind “dupes” of designer scents, but he is not exactly drawn to the mass-market brands that have captivated previous generations.

“I don’t think I’ve ever smelled Axe,” said Logan, who has a swoop of brown hair and braces.

Logan’s mother, Jamie, is impressed by her son’s depth of knowledge. “But we also talk about how things can get out of hand, and that we have limited funds and we can’t every week get a new one,” she said.

The fragrance category, which pulled in about $70 billion in sales in 2022, according to a McKinsey report, is full of designer as well as “niche” brands competing for the nostrils of ever-younger customers. While men once stuck to a preferred fragrance for years or even decades, Gen Z customers are more likely to shop around, said Korinne Wolfmeyer, a senior research analyst for Piper Sandler and an author of its teen spending report.

That may make brands even more eager to get on the radar of potential customers as soon as possible. “If that brand can get in early, even develop a little bit of loyalty, it’s easier for them than if they were trying to capture that consumer when they are maybe 20 years old,” Ms. Wolfmeyer said.

Men’s fragrance was a relatively unshowy hygienic product until the 1970s, when Paco Rabanne’s Pour Homme helped reframe cologne as a fashion statement, said Paul Austin, the founder of a fragrance and branding agency, Austin Advisory Group. The trendy colognes that followed — Davidoff Cool Water and Drakkar Noir in the 1980s, Acqua di Gio and CK One in the 1990s — were still mostly targeted toward customers in their 20s and 30s, Mr. Austin said.

The introduction of Axe body spray in 2002 brought even younger customers into the category, and soon teenagers were spritzing themselves with products from Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret, and a particularly potent scent from Abercrombie & Fitch.

“What were seeing now is, I’m sure, in part formed by what Axe did to open up the door,” Mr. Austin said.

Now, teenage shoppers seem to be developing more expensive taste. At Sephora and Ulta, high-end fragrances are swelling in popularity among young shoppers, according to executives for both companies. Quincy Dickerson, the fragrance department manager at Nordstrom in Manhattan, said she had never seen so many prepubescent boys swarm the designer fragrance display before this year.

Ms. Dickerson said she has had to replace the tester bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Elixir ($152) several times because groups of tweens keep stealing it.

“Even though it smells like grandpa, they’re coming in to get it because of TikTok,” Ms. Dickerson said.

‘Smellmaxxing’

Asked why middle schoolers have suddenly developed a nose for Dior, almost every teenager, researcher and merchandising expert offered the same answer: TikTok. On the platform, influencers offer tips for “smellmaxxing,” or improving one’s musk, and recommend scents for working out, date night and middle school.

“Social media and TikTok make people want to be more grown-up,” said Luke, the 14-year-old.

Young shoppers are taking cues from influencers like Jeremy Fragrance, a buff German man with 8.8 million followers on the platform. Usually wearing an all-white outfit and a Rolex, he shows off his Ferrari and sniffs his fans to guess which scents they are wearing. “Bleu de Chanel, obviously,” he tells one.

Other fragrance influencers are teenagers themselves. Tristan Rodriguez, a 15-year-old in Litchfield Park, Ariz., recommends citrus scents when his followers have math tests, and peppery scents when they have dates. He was inspired to get into cologne by Jeremy Fragrance, he said in an interview, and is now known for posting over-the-top, sometimes emotional responses to certain scents.

“It’s lavender, fresh, comforter, bedsheets,” he says in one video, taking a drag of Nuits de Noho by Bond No. 9 ($420 for just over three ounces). “Wow, this going to be good for the ladies, for sure.”

Jatin Arora, a high school senior in Winnipeg, Canada, shares daily reviews with more than a million followers on his TikTok account, TheCologneBoy. In an interview, Mr. Arora, 18, said he had been interested in colognes since childhood because he saw adults wearing them. He shoots the videos in his bedroom, in front of a wall of nearly 400 bottles of cologne, many of which have been provided to him by brands at no cost.

He sometimes feels conflicted about how many young people make purchases (or ask their parents to) based on his recommendations. “I mean, I’m a kid, I’m still learning,” he said. “But whatever knowledge I have, I try my best to help them.”

Some parents and teachers wonder about the appropriateness of these products for a young audience. Teenagers are especially fond of the packaging of Angels’ Share by Kilian, which resembles a glass of cognac, and Le Male, a strapping torso with wide shoulders and a bulging crotch. “They make it so sexy,” said Ms. Glover, the middle school teacher, “and an 11-year-old is like, I want to wear that to school.”

Those concerns do not seem to be shared by teenagers, who see the colognes as a way to exude maturity, status or anything other than B.O.

Matt Martocci, who lives in Parsippany, N.J., asked for a bottle of Dior Sauvage as a Christmas present when he was 12. Now 15, he shares spritzes of the niche cologne Xerjoff Erba Gold with his friends. (“The top note of that is very peachy.”)

“If you smell really good or if you smell really bad, it can make or break a situation,” Matt said. What kind of situation? “Like, talking to a girl, or something.”

Matt even picks out perfumes for his mother, Lora, who appreciates that the hobby helps her son feel put together. She is willing to contribute — within reason. “He’ll ask for things for Christmas, and I’ll be like, ‘Matt, that’s a little bit on the high end,’” she said. “Could we do a little bit more chores around the house?”

Jane Birkin pairing her beaded dress with a basket. Madonna in a Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra and a garter set. Kristen Stewart barefoot in Chanel chain mail. Spike Lee in a sunset-inspired suit.

The Cannes Film Festival, with its sheer preponderance of red carpets and boardwalk photo ops, its blockbusters and art house flicks, has given the world more indelible fashion moments than any other festival. In 2002, Sharon Stone made so many dramatic red carpet entrances as a member of the Cannes jury that she managed to revive her flagging career through the power of clothes alone.

The festival, held on the French Riviera, is taking place from May 14 to May 25 this year. It has been off to a glamorous start — and some attendees threw down the fashion gauntlet even before its official opening ceremony on Tuesday evening.

The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who came to Cannes to promote “Furiosa,” the latest “Mad Max” movie, made waves by stepping out on Monday in a Jacquemus straw hat so large it doubled as a portable sunshade. The filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose job as president of the festival’s competition jury means packing 10 days’ worth of outfits, stopped by a photo call on Tuesday morning wearing an hourglass-effect, blue-and-white-striped milkmaid dress straight from the latest Maison Margiela couture collection.

Indeed, what makes the Cannes Film Festival such irresistible eye candy is that it’s not only a parade of grand gowns and tuxedos, but also a panoply of accessible sunshine style.

The fashion show really kicked off with the opening ceremony, attended by stars like Léa Seydoux, Jane Fonda, Lily Gladstone and Meryl Streep, who was honored with a lifetime achievement Palme d’Or award. As the fashion editor Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Ms. Streep gave the world a description of the trickle-down fashion effect that has yet to be beaten. Today the Côte d’Azur, tomorrow your closet? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Friday, May 17

Molly Baz, the cookbook author, and her pregnant belly, rhinestone bikini and breasts will be back up in Times Square, uncensored.

A week after The New York Times reported that her billboard for lactation cookies had been “flagged for review” and swapped out for a more conservative image by the company that powered the billboard, Clear Channel, the ad has found a new home. The probiotics supplement and microbiome research brand Seed has donated their billboard to Swehl, the breastfeeding start-up that created the cookie campaign with Ms. Baz. Clear Channel still has not responded to requests for comment.

The original imagery, with the words “Just Add Milk,” will now run for the next three weeks alongside a Seed billboard with a clear message: “Dear Molly, Thankfully we’re not (lactose) intolerant.”

The partnership was the direct result of the anger and backlash on social media over what many called unjust censorship, said Ara Katz, a co-chief executive and a co-founder of Seed. The ad that featured Ms. Baz included no nudity — her breasts were covered by her cookies — yet was flagged despite the fact that Times Square billboards regularly run sensual lingerie ads.

Ms. Katz read the original Times story last week and was determined to help. She reached out to the company that powers her company’s billboards, Lightyear Media, which did not just agree to bring Ms. Baz back. “The women who work there gave us additional ad inventory for free,” Ms. Katz said. That would allow the ad to run more frequently.

“It feels so much bigger than this campaign and this ad,” said Elizabeth Myer, who founded Swehl with Betsy Riley. “It is actually this moment of time we’re in — women are really tired of the double standard around our bodies.”

After the original ad was removed from circulation, several brands reached out to Swehl to find ways to help get it back up. One advertising company put the ad up on a truck on Tuesday and drove it around Times Square for eight hours.

But given that Ms. Katz founded Seed because of her own personal struggles with breastfeeding, the company felt like the most organic partner for Swehl, Ms. Myer said, even though the founders had not known each other before this week.

“We’ve all become really fast friends,” Ms. Katz said.

Advertising has long had an ambivalent relationship with women’s health content. It was not until 2017 that an ad for period products was allowed to run using red liquid, as opposed to what had been deemed the more palatable blue. In 2020, an ad by the mother and baby care brand Frida that realistically depicted the pain of postpartum recovery was barred from airing during the Oscars. And online content related to women’s health or breastfeeding is often censored on social media, as was the case for the baby care company Tommee Tippee, which ran a campaign titled “Boob Life” for its breast pumps, depicting a montage of realistic breastfeeding vignettes and breasts.

The rejection of an ad, however, can prove to be great publicity, thanks to the reach of social media.

The controversy around Ms. Baz’s ad drove more than 200,000 new users to Swehl’s website, representing a 500 percent increase in traffic, and Ms. Myer said the company’s sales on Amazon had doubled, though Swehl did not share exact sales figures.

“It’s been a really, really wild roller coaster of a week,” she said.

Debates can get, well, ugly in Congress, but rarely do they descend to the level of physical taunts. Yet that is exactly what happened on Thursday during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee.

During a discussion about whether Attorney General Merrick B. Garland should be held in contempt of Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, told Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York whose own signature red lipstick has become something of an online lightning rod, then leaped to Ms. Crockett’s defense.

“How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person,” she said.

Further name-calling ensued, culminating in Ms. Crockett’s covertly returning the insult by asking the chair, James R. Comer, “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” (That description being a not-entirely-implicit reference to Ms. Greene.)

All in all, not a pretty moment.

As much as anything, however, the makeup vs. body image brouhaha reflects not just the way Capitol norms have changed over the last six years, but the way physical appearances have become weaponized against all genders since Donald J. Trump first took office, bringing with him his penchant for costumery, casting and playground insults.

Whether it’s calling Stormy Daniels “horseface,” saying Rosie O’Donnell had a “fat, ugly face,” anointing Marco Rubio “little,” comparing his former aide ​​Omarosa Manigault Newman to a “dog,” dismissing E. Jean Carroll as “not my type,” or criticizing Nikki Haley’s dress choice, the former president and current presidential candidate has made an art out of the playground insult. With these barbs, he attacks not policy positions but rather shared insecurities, rooted deep in old gender politics and stereotypes. It’s like a wormhole back to middle school, and everyone can relate.

Which also makes it particularly effective. After all, few forms of ridicule are as belittling as being reduced to a body part, or being called out for your beauty choices, especially in the context of a public career. It’s the essence of objectification.

This scrutiny is even more loaded when it comes to women, who have historically borne the burden of surface evaluation. Indeed, it’s hard (though not impossible) to imagine Ms. Greene’s fellow committee member Jim Jordan being jeered at for his receding hairline, or someone slagging on Chuck Schumer for his wrinkles.

The rare times appearance has been raised in the recent past, it most often has been used as a form of humor — by the person involved. Hillary Clinton, for example, joked about her own hair color when she was running for president. “I may not be the youngest candidate in the race, but I have one big advantage: I’ve been coloring my hair for years,” she said in 2015. “You’re not going to see me turning white in the White House.”

It’s a different story, however, when the jab comes from someone else. Not long ago, the comedian Michelle Wolf was castigated for a set at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner in which she mocked the eye shadow of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, saying, “She burns facts, then uses that ash to create the perfect smoky eye.”

At the time, her comments provoked criticism from both sides of the aisle. Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of “Morning Joe” and a woman Mr. Trump had once described as “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” said she could empathize. “Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” she said.

Apparently, that truce no longer holds. Now it appears Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress, such as Ms. Greene, are simply following his lead, in this way as in so many others. Their opponents, meanwhile, are lowering themselves to the occasion. In which case, who really wins?

Only one dog can win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, and this year the honor went to Sage, a spectacularly coifed miniature poodle whose main-character energy was hard to ignore. But what of the dogs she defeated?

Seven dogs entered the final round, each representing distinct canine groups: herding, working, hound, terrier, toy, sporting and non-sporting. (Don’t ask what “non-sporting” means; theoretically the group could just be labeled “other.”) The dogs were big and small, fast and slow, excited and phlegmatic — a dizzying range of canine pulchritude and behavior.

Each dog was judged on how well they adhered to the Platonic ideal of their breed. But even the losers were winners. Here’s a look at what made the seven finalists champions in their own right, and impossible to forget.

Sarah Lyall and Benjamin Hoffman contributed reporting.

Nearly every spring for over two decades now, a tender ritual has taken place in a leafy plaza in the Turtle Bay area of Midtown Manhattan.

It is the Katharine Hepburn Garden Party, a posthumous birthday celebration for the four-time Academy Award-winning actress, who was a beloved member of the neighborhood until she died in 2003. The gathering is held at the garden named after Hepburn that is nestled within Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and last weekend, dozens of loyal elderly local residents came out to toast her 117th year.

A sign bearing a portrait of Hepburn that welcomed guests to the party read: “Celebrate Kate’s Birthday. Cake, Coffee and Live Music!” The flier pinned to a community board noted: “Put on your dancing shoes. Wear your spring hat.”

Hepburn’s old neighbors sat in rows of folding chairs while they tapped their feet to a jazz band that played tunes like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Cheek to Cheek.” Volunteers from the Turtle Bay Association and Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza handed out Katharine Hepburn pins and slices of cake. Nearby, an informational sign included factoids about Hepburn’s life, black-and-white photographs of her running errands in the neighborhood and biographical chapter headings like “Tomboy at Heart” and “Tree Hugger.”

Relishing the sunny afternoon’s birthday festivities was Ethel Bendove, 89, a retired accountant.

“I still remember one cold winter day years ago when I saw a woman shoveling snow, and I noticed that she was wearing a lovely pair of boots,” Ms. Bendove said. “Then I realized it was Katharine Hepburn. She said hello to me and then went back to her shoveling. I guess it surprised me to see her doing that, and I never forgot it.”

To the congregants of this birthday gathering, Hepburn was not only a legend of American cinema, she was also an everyday New Yorker, one who took out her trash and shoveled her own snow, just like everyone else. (Well, except that she did so outside a four-story townhouse, anyway.)

For some 60 years, Hepburn’s Manhattan residence was her brownstone at 244 East 49th Street, and when she wasn’t making movies with Spencer Tracy or challenging traditional notions of femininity by wearing turtlenecks and trousers, she was an active member of the Turtle Bay Association.

With the same outspokenness that made her a roguish figure in Hollywood, Hepburn advocated stopping the destruction of trees on her street and the development of skyscrapers in the neighborhood. She also had a green thumb. Growing up, she enjoyed picking bloodroot and lily of the valley from hills along the Connecticut River, and she transplanted her love of nature to the city, planting wildflowers in her townhouse’s backyard.

When Hepburn was 90, the Parks Department dedicated the green space tucked inside Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to her. The small oasis, which was designed by the landscape architect George Vellonakis, is little known to even the savviest New Yorkers, and it has the feel of a secret garden.

Its footpath is lined with steppingstones inscribed with Hepburnisms like “Enemies are so stimulating” and “Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” A wall displays tablets engraved with scenes from Hepburn classics like “The Philadelphia Story” and “Little Women.” There’s also a bench that once belonged to Hepburn’s country home in Old Saybrook that her estate donated to the garden after her death.

“Once for lunch she invited me and Millie Margiotta of the Turtle Bay Association to her Connecticut home, and after I saw the bench, I told her lawyer we’d love to have it for the garden one day, and he said it was all ours if we wanted it,” Mr. Vellonakis recalled in a phone interview. “After she passed away, the bench accidentally went to auction, and we had to get Lauren Bacall to help us get it back for the garden.”

Last weekend as the birthday party began to bop, several speakers shared their remembrances of Hepburn’s legacy with the crowd.

“Her mother was a suffragette,” said Anne Hersh, a founder and director of Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. “And she would take Katharine Hepburn when she was just a little girl, and she would be expected to hand out posies to people to ask them to vote, to let women have the vote.”

Sabrina Seidner, a real estate broker who is an alum of Hepburn’s alma mater, Bryn Mawr College, recounted how Hepburn inspired campus traditions like skinny dipping in a fountain after finals, and that she wore pants to the college’s graduation ceremony in 1985.

“It was a special day,” Ms. Seidner said. “And one of the things she said to all of us was, ‘You go out there in the real world, you will get knocked down, but just don’t get knocked up.’”

Mark Levine, the Manhattan Borough president, took a moment to address a topic of concern for some: the green scaffolding currently cutting off a segment of the park, which had been installed in advance of facade work required on a building abutting the garden.

“I’m going to do everything I can to get this down and to get it down as soon as possible,” Mr. Levine said. “We have 4,000 scaffolds up throughout Manhattan. It’s an epidemic.”

The crowd cheered.

As the jazz band, Peter & the Master Keys, resumed swinging, guests continued to reminisce about Hepburn’s life in Turtle Bay.

Meryl Brodsky, an economics policy analyst, recalled Hepburn’s sometimes salty relationship with her neighbor Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021, and lived in an adjacent townhouse that recently sold for $7 million.

“There’s a story about how Sondheim would grouse about her threatening to call the police on him because he liked composing on his piano in the wee hours of the night,” Ms. Brodsky said. “She hated it.”

Then Ms. Brodsky turned to Ms. Hersh to ask about her favorite Hepburn movie.

“‘The African Queen’ is mine,” she said. “What’s your favorite, Anne?”

“Maybe ‘Adam’s Rib,’” Ms. Hersh replied.

“‘Adam’s Rib’ is so great.”

“Remember when we screened it out here?” Ms. Hersh said. “Everyone was here. That got a big turnout.”

Also enjoying the birthday festivities was Robert Rosenblatt, an entertainment lawyer. His two miniature schnauzers, Uggy and Princess, kept him company.

Mr. Rosenblatt said that he never had the luck of encountering Hepburn in the neighborhood, but that the garden’s existence always let him feel close to her.

“The closest I ever got to meeting Hepburn is sitting on her bench,” he said. “This neighborhood still has her glow and grace to this day, partly because she was so devoted to this community, and I still feel that grace whenever I sit on her bench in the garden.”

Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be fairly staid, predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of state, of office, of pomp and lineage.

Which is why the new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created such a controversy.

A larger-than-life (7.5 foot-by-5.5 foot) canvas, the portrait shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly hovering just over his right shoulder. His entire body is bathed in a sea of crimson, so his face appears to be floating.

Though the butterfly was apparently the key piece of semiology — meant, Mr. Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles’s metamorphosis from prince to sovereign and his longstanding love of the environment — it was the painting’s primary color that almost instantaneously gave new meaning to the idea of “seeing red.” It was practically begging for interpretation.

“To me it gives the message the monarchy is going up in flames or the king is burning in hell,” one commentator wrote under the royal family’s Instagram post when the portrait was unveiled.

“It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” another wrote. Someone else raised the idea of “colonial bloodshed.” There were comparisons to the devil. And so on. There was even a mention of the Tampax affair, a reference to an infamous comment by Charles revealed when his phone was hacked during the demise of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.

It turns out that red is a trigger color for almost everyone — especially given the somewhat meta endeavor that is royal portraiture: a representation of a representation, made for posterity.

In his interview with the BBC, Mr. Yeo noted that when the king first saw the painting, he was “initially mildly surprised by the strong color,” which may be an understatement. Mr. Yeo said his goal was to produce a more modern royal portrait, reflecting Charles’s desire to be a more modern monarch, reducing the number of working royals and scaling back the pageantry of the coronation (all things being relative).

Still, the choice of shade seems particularly fraught given the … well, firestorm the king has endured since his ascension to the throne.

Consider, for example, the continued falling out with his second son, Prince Harry, and the publication of Harry’s memoir, with its allegations of royal racism; the related calls for an end to the monarchy; Charles’s cancer diagnosis; and the furor over the mystery about Catherine, Princess of Wales, whose own cancer diagnosis was revealed only after increasingly unhinged speculation about her disappearance from public life.

Queen Camilla, who has been through her own ring of flames, reportedly told the artist, “You’ve got him.”

It’s hard to imagine Mr. Yeo didn’t anticipate some of the reaction to the portrait, especially in the context of his past work, including portraits of Prince Philip, the king’s father, and Queen Camilla, which are more traditional depictions. Indeed, the last time a royal portraitist attempted a more abstract, contemporary interpretation of their subject — a 1998 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Justin Mortimer, which depicted the queen against a neon yellow background with a splash of yellow bisecting her neck — it produced a similar public outcry. The Daily Mail accused the artist of cutting off the queen’s head.

The portrait of King Charles will remain on display at the Philip Mould Gallery until mid-June, when it will move to Drapers’ Hall in London. (It was commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild turned philanthropy, to reside among hundreds of other, more orthodox royal portraits.)

In that setting, Mr. Yeo’s work may be especially telling: reflective of not just a monarch, but also the evolution of the role itself, the conflicts around the job and a king captured forevermore in what very much looks like the hot seat.

The tennis balls had been stashed away safely by the time 2,500 dogs and their obedient human entourages overtook the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens this weekend for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

The event began on Saturday with agility, obedience and diving competitions before transitioning on Monday into the contests that are more familiar to the audience at home: best in breed, best in group and best in show.

The human-to-dog ratio at the tennis center might be 2 to 1, but the power balance favors the dogs. There were pugs being wheeled around in strollers, Dalmatians posing like statues on artificial turf, and basset hounds whose ears were strapped to their chins so they didn’t sweep the asphalt. In a tent reserved for grooming, a Lhasa apso was carefully flat-ironed while several miniature poodles were sculpted into sudsy topiaries.

The event, which was first held in 1877, called Madison Square Garden home for a century but relocated to the Lyndhurst, an estate just outside the city, during the early pandemic. This is the second year of the show’s being held in the Flushing section of Queens, with Arthur Ashe Stadium offering deluxe accommodations for the show’s main events.

Whether they win or lose, the dogs have remained exceedingly well behaved. The humans, who have a selection of beer and gin and tonics at several concession stands, have had more varied results.

This article is part of our Design special section about water as a source of creativity.

For Ancient Roman Baths, a Chance to Sparkle Again

After a 1,500-year dry spell, the Baths of Caracalla in Rome are being restored to their full aquatic splendor. Built in the early third century during the reigns of the emperor Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla, and inagurated in 216, they hosted as many as 8,000 visitors daily until the source of their water was destroyed by the Visigoths in the sixth century.

The renewal of the 25-acre site is a 10-year project overseen by Daniela Porro, the special superintendent of Rome, and Mirella Serlorenzi, the monument’s director. Last month, the first completed phase — the introduction of a 137-by-105-foot shallow reflecting pool known as the Water Mirror, designed by the architects Hannes Peer and Paolo Bornello — opened to the public.

In an email, Mr. Peer described being inspired by the Natatio, an Olympic-size pool in the ancient bath complex. The Water Mirror includes 20 submerged water jets fitted with reflectors that send up delicate, light-infused geysers. A stage that sits nearly flush with the pool’s surface is intended for theatrical performances, lectures and concerts.

Mr. Peer is also involved in redesigning the entrances to the monument, to bring back its connection to the urban fabric, and in adding a botanical garden, refreshment areas and other amenities. The buildings that surrounded the baths, whose walls, colonnades and large open spaces provided inspiration for the former Pennsylvania Station, among other architectural showstoppers, will be restored. “Caracalla,” he said, “is a very comprehensive and complex project.” rome.net/baths-caracalla. — ARLENE HIRST

For their room in this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, Ann Pyne, the president of the interior design firm McMillen, and Elizabeth Pyne Singer, a partner in the firm (and Ms. Pyne’s daughter), took their inspiration from Blair House, the presidential guest house across from the White House. They began with a reproduction of a storied chinoiserie wallpaper that was used in a 1964 restoration of the Lee Drawing Room.

But the women didn’t want to simply recreate the space, designed by Eleanor McMillen Brown, McMillen’s founder. They tweaked the 18th-century style by, for instance, commissioning a textured white-and-metallic mantle from the Brooklyn ceramic artist Peter Lane.

“It’s a matter of having challenging objects with the conservative idea of the wallpaper and Blair House,” Ms. Pyne said. The obvious mantle choice, she added, would have been from the Federal period.

Some of the colors used in the room, including the acid green in the 1950s Italian armchair, amp up the neutral palette favored by Jacqueline Kennedy, who supervised the restoration of Blair House in its early stages, when she was the first lady. According to John S. Botello, a designer who wrote his master’s thesis about Blair House, Mrs. Kennedy thought a suggestion by a decorator to use chartreuse, fuchsia and other zinging colors was inappropriate for a traditional house. Until May 28 at 125 East 65th Street; kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org. — STEPHEN TREFFINGER

No flower, no matter how brilliantly hued or outlandishly petaled, much interests the Polish artist Marcin Rusak until it desiccates. Then the staff at his Warsaw studio embeds it in plastic and metal to form vessels and furniture with drooping and bulging contours, as if the vegetation were still trying to grow.

Through May 24, Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Midtown Manhattan is displaying 10 of his new works in an exhibition, “Vas Florum: Resina Botanica.” On his milky resin vases (priced from $20,000 to $30,000 each), petrified blooms and fronds overlap, as if cast aside by jilted brides or adrift in streams. Amoeba-shaped tables made of resin and bronze (from $90,000 to $120,000 each), with flowers strewn against rust and dark green backgrounds, resemble rocks full of fossils.

Mr. Rusak said that he is particularly interested in how the flower industry has manipulated plants to maximize marketability, whether breeding stems to reduce thorns or dyeing petals in fluorescent colors. When an artificially colored blossom undergoes his embedding processes, pigment streaks can burst from the petals, as if the plant is eagerly shedding its artificial disguise. “It’s a very weird scenario,” Mr. Rusak said; carpentersworkshopgallery.com. — EVE M. KAHN

Nickey Kehoe Sets Up Shop in the West Village

Relocating to New York can mean an endless real estate slog. For Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe, the owners of the Los Angeles design studio and home boutique Nickey Kehoe, who were looking to set up their first Manhattan store, the process was remarkably frictionless.

“We were only beginning our search when we stumbled upon it,” said Ms. Kehoe about the mid-19th-century Italianate brownstone in the West Village where they are renting two floors. (The artist Jackson Pollock also resided there early in his career.)

The pair developed a large trade clientele over the years in the New York City area, so it made sense to have a presence there, they said. The shop offers the duo’s branded designs, vintage pieces, globally sourced items and works by other craftspeople — much as in Los Angeles. “We’ve always had an East Coast and a European sensibility,” Mr. Nickey said. Even their California emporium was inspired by 1990s hardware and design shops in New York, where they met.

The upper floor, called the Salon, is dedicated to furniture, lighting, textiles and bespoke objects. The Household section downstairs features more basic items for the pantry, laundry room and garden.

Nickey Kehoe is at 49 East 10th Street, between Broadway and University Place; nickeykehoe.com. — STEPHEN TREFFINGER

In 2012, not long after he decided to dedicate his professional life to 18th-century wares, Casey Samson spent a weekend at a colonial-era fair in Bardstown, Ky., selling leather mugs out of a tent.

On his first night there, Mr. Samson sat alone by a crackling campfire, smelled the wood smoke and felt as if he had been transported to a different time. He knew then, he said, that he had made the right choice.

Today, Mr. Samson and his wife, Abbie, own and operate Samson Historical, a three-story business that doubles as a pseudo-museum on the downtown square in Lebanon, Ind., about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

On a recent morning, Mr. Samson, 32, walked into a small warehouse tucked behind the retail space and waxed poetic about the shop’s “great wall of waistcoats.” But there was more: “These are original sugar dippers.” And: “One of Abbie’s passions is clay pipes.” And: “All right, so: gun flints.”

There were breeches and bonnets, frocks and cloaks, candles and lanterns, hip kidneys (for extra support) and bum rolls (for that perfect silhouette). And while Samson Historical has 10 full-time employees and manufactures its own merchandise, it also works with about 40 artisans from trades that are teetering on the edge of extinction: blacksmiths, woodworkers, glass blowers, horners. A fifth-generation pipe maker from Germany handcrafts the store’s pipes.

“A lot of what we do,” Mr. Samson said, “is trying to help keep these things alive.”

In addition to feeding the sartorial appetites of colonial-era re-enactors, Samson Historical finds itself at the nexus of growing interests in “history bounding,” a trend that incorporates period fashions into everyday wear, and “cottagecore,” which celebrates the supposed simplicity of pastoral life. The twin concepts blossomed during the tedium of the pandemic.

“There’s definitely an interest in homesteading and the old-fashioned ways,” said Justine Teresa Dorn, an early 19th-century re-enactor who, in October 2020, launched her own YouTube channel, Early American, which has more than 1.2 million subscribers.

Ms. Dorn, 30, who owns a number of garments from Samson Historical, including dresses and bodices, said: “It just makes you feel so much more put together than modern clothes do. I honestly think a lot of women are sick of wearing jeans, sweatpants and T-shirts all the time.”

The Samsons spend parts of the year on the road with their 30-foot, company-branded trailer, visiting festivals and re-enactments with their 8-year-old daughter, Payton, a home-schooled second grader with freckles and an exhaustive mind for trivia.

“Did you know that George Washington’s teeth weren’t wooden? They were hippo!” Payton said of the president’s dentures, which were made from, among other things, hippo tusks. “I’m a big George Washington fan, and I’m also a big Alexander Hamilton fan. If you ask me to sing the whole——”

“Please don’t,” her mother said.

For Payton’s 8th birthday, her parents told her that they were taking her to Chicago so that they could visit a museum. They surprised her instead with tickets to “Hamilton,” the award-winning musical, along with a bespoke birthday gown that the staff at Samson Historical had fashioned after Eliza Hamilton’s gown in the show. The entire family dressed in period clothing for the performance.

“My gown didn’t have buttons on it, though,” Payton said, “because that’s not historically correct.”

While the popularity of “Hamilton” and the presence of a seemingly unlimited number of period dramas in film and on television have helped expose the masses to colonial-era history and style, another event on the near horizon could boost interest even more: the United States’ semiquincentennial in 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence.

The Samsons sensed more excitement than usual about a year-and-a-half ago at the 245th anniversary of the Battle of Brandywine outside of Philadelphia.

“Everything,” Mr. Samson said, “is gearing up already.”

Finding Their Path

For Mr. Samson, a professional obsession with another era runs in the family. In the late 1970s, his father and grandfather produced leather mugs — a popular item in the 16th and 17th centuries — which they sold at events like the Feast of the Hunters’ Moon, a fall festival at Fort Ouiatenon, a former fur-trading outpost in Lafayette, Ind.

Growing up, Mr. Samson would tag along, and said the experiences filled him with a passion for history. He cited the release of “The Patriot,” the 2000 film that stars Mel Gibson as a former soldier drawn back into service in the Revolutionary War, as another formative moment. Mr. Samson recalled watching it at a drive-in movie theater.

“My dad actually preferred the French and Indian War,” he said.

Mrs. Samson, 31, recalled camping and visiting historic homes with her family when she was young, but it was not until she started dating Mr. Samson when they were in high school that she was exposed to re-enactment festivals. “I found I really enjoyed it,” she said.

In 2012, Mr. Samson, who was then a firefighter and emergency medical technician, decided that he wanted to turn his family’s part-time business into a full-time pursuit. A few years later, Mrs. Samson left her corporate job so that she could work with her husband.

Like many businesses, Samson Historical struggled in the early parts of the pandemic. Mr. Samson said he and his wife had big plans for 2020. By February of that year, they were preparing to mail 30,000 copies of their new catalog, which they had spent about $40,000 to produce. They also were loading their trailer full of merchandise for a trip to Michigan for the Kalamazoo Living History Show.

A few days before they were set to depart, however, the show was canceled because of the pandemic. Thousands of copies of the Samsons’ new catalog collected dust for two months before they were delivered.

And shoes. So many unsold pairs of shoes.

“That was the same year we launched all of our women’s shoes,” Mr. Samson said.

It got grim in a hurry for the Samsons. Sales were so poor, they reduced their staff to a rotation with people working every other day. They spent long hours working on jigsaw puzzles and fretting about their future.

“We were this close to losing everything,” Mr. Samson said.

Facing a dire situation, the Samsons “extremely reluctantly and somewhat reluctantly” started a GoFundMe campaign, Mr. Samson said. (“Our community really stepped up,” he said.) They also secured loans worth about $25,000 from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

But perhaps most important, at a time when many people were stuck at home in front of their computers, Samson Historical went online in a big way. The Samsons revamped their website to maximize search traffic, and new customers — many of whom discovered hobbies like history bounding during the pandemic — arrived, at least virtually, in big numbers.

Mr. Samson acknowledged the strange interplay at work. A business rooted in the 18th-century was now thriving because of modern technology. And after nearly destroying their business, the Covid shutdown wound up playing an unexpected role in ensuring its future.

Samson Historical leaned into the times. “We started writing blogs about survivalists and how to go out into the woods, because that’s what people were doing,” Mr. Samson said.

Since 2020, he said, sales have increased by about 30 percent annually. Last year, Samson Historical started a children’s clothing line. Payton helped with quality control.

“She tested a lot of the shoes,” Mr. Samson said.

Details Matter

On a recent afternoon, Kris Byers, 36, and two colleagues — Isabella Campins, 25, and Molly Scherrer, 21 — were stitching garments on the second floor of the shop. As Mrs. Byers glanced at her to-do list, which included a customized petticoat, she recalled wading into the world of historical clothing as a teenager, when she helped a friend who was working as a vendor at the Feast of the Hunters’ Moon.

It turned out to be Mrs. Byers’s gateway into a kaleidoscopic world of linen caps, silk stockings and half-boned stays. She joined Samson Historical as a seamstress in 2021 after seeing a job posting.

“My husband basically said, ‘If you don’t go over there and talk to Abbie, I’m going to go over there and talk to her for you,’” Mrs. Byers said. “So we came in to get our kids fitted for shoes, and I asked for an application. It just kind of went from there.”

Samson Historical might be rooted in the past, but it is always evolving, Mr. Samson said. You can always do more research, he said, “to find the next big thing we didn’t know existed — or improve it.”

Take the woolen frock coat, a longtime staple of the men’s collection with its buttonless cuffs and scalloped pocket flaps. Yet Mr. Samson was convinced that they could enhance the design to make it more accurate. They based an updated version on a pair of surviving garments, one from the 1780s that is a part of a private collection in Rhode Island and another from the 1770s that has been preserved by the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History.

“So, we said, ‘Let’s reconstruct it,’” he said. “Now, you look at it and go, ‘OK, that’s 18th century.”

Sometimes, their research leads them down novel paths. Not long ago, when Mrs. Samson was interested in learning more about 18th-century shoehorns, she reached out to Dr. Forest Tennant, a former mayor of West Covina, Calif., and the self-described “docent” of the Tennant Shoehorn Museum, which has a collection of more than 3,000 of the devices. After hearing from Mrs. Samson, Mr. Tennant sent her his book, “The Art and History of Shoehorns.”

“Making those kinds of connections is invaluable,” Mrs. Samson said. “If you ask questions, people want to talk about what they know. Especially when not many people want to know about your shoehorns.”

The details matter, Mrs. Samson said. One might assume, for example, that the walls in their retail space are merely gray and white. But there is more to the story, because there always is more to the story at Samson Historical. The paint colors are reproductions of those that were used in Colonial Williamsburg.

“Our whole house is about to be remodeled using these colors,” Mrs. Samson said.

The details also matter with their catalog, a 162-page smorgasbord of “18th-century clothing, accessories, accouterments and living history supplies.”

In their own small way, Mr. Samson said, they want the catalog — and, of course, the clothes they produce — to address popular misconceptions. Among them: that everyone, back in the day, dressed like the cast of “Gone With the Wind,” the Civil War-era film.

Much of this country’s history, of course, is fraught with atrocities committed against Black people and Native Americans, an issue that has occasionally ensnared the re-enactment community. (As Ms. Dorn, of Early American YouTube fame, put it: “Revolutionary War re-enactors don’t let friends do Civil War re-enactments.”) With that in mind, Mrs. Samson said it was important that the catalog reflect “a variety of social stations,” and that they highlight diversity among their models.

With some exceptions: The children they use are largely from re-enactor families because the kids from those families are more comfortable in the older style clothes.

In contrast, the Samsons seem more than at home with garments of the distant past. But asked if he ever felt as if he had been born in the wrong era, Mr. Samson was adamant.

“No,” he said. “I have a passion for the 18th century, and I could talk about it for days. But I also really like technology — and indoor plumbing. I also think that if you were born in that era, you would just yearn for something even earlier.”

A strange thing happened a few years ago when Christine Longnecker, who teaches horseback riding in and around Erie County, Pa., brought her new rescue dog, Miles, to a class. Instead of waiting quietly with the other non-horses in the barn, Miles suddenly sprinted into the ring and bounded over the fences himself.

“He looked so excited,” Ms. Longnecker said. “And then he turned and barked as if to say, ‘This is how you do it.’”

That was the beginning of Miles’s career as an agility dog — the sort of dog you might see sprinting over and through obstacles while its owner frantically rushes around, yelling commands. On Saturday, he is scheduled to compete for the second time in the agility competition at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which will be held in Flushing, Queens.

The agility competition might be the rhythmic gymnastics of Westminster, derided as less than by traditionalists, but it’s a growing sport with meritocratic principles and an air of antic fun in its favor. While Tuesday’s classic dog show finals, with best in show on the line, are open only to good-looking purebred dogs — never mind if they’re indolent, overbred or a couple of biscuits short of a box — the agility competition rewards speed, intelligence and enthusiasm. Any dog can compete, no matter who its parents are.

Miles is an All-American dog, the American Kennel Club’s name for mutts. He looks vaguely Doberman-y, with a partially black, shiny coat and a long snout, but he’s actually 40 percent cattle dog, 23 percent Labrador, 10 percent Border collie and 27 percent mélange of hound, according to an Embark dog DNA test commissioned by Ms. Longnecker.

He is also an unlikely success story: a once virtually unadoptable rescue dog who now competes against the top agility dogs in the country.

“Miles is proof that you can overcome anything with a little bit of belief and a lot of love,” Ms. Longnecker said. “You don’t need a ‘well-bred dog’ to have a best friend to play in dog sports with. You can find one right down the street at your local shelter.”

At the age of 7 or so, Miles is currently working toward his third MACH, or Master Agility Championship. He has competed twice in the agility nationals — an annual competition separate from Westminster — finishing as the top All-American dog in his category each time. Ms. Longnecker said that Miles had little expectation of beating all the entrants in his category, which is often won by Border collies and other dogs bred for speed, but that it was a thrill to have come this far.

At its heart, agility is a partnership between owner and dog, and Ms. Longnecker, 33, said that the minute Miles stops having fun, they will stop competing.

“If we weren’t here, the dogs wouldn’t band together among themselves and go to agility competitions,” she said. “They’re doing it for us, and we have to make sure they’re happy.”

‘Love at first sight’

Ms. Longnecker and Miles met six years ago at the Because You Care animal shelter in McKean, Pa.

Miles, who was known as Tank at the time, had a skull-and-crossbones collar and a tendency to snarl and growl from his bed in an uninviting manner. Once, he ripped a hole in the sleeve of the sturdy Carhartt jacket worn by the shelter’s volunteer coordinator, Becky Mancini.

“To say he wasn’t receptive to new people is an understatement,” Ms. Mancini said.

But when Ms. Longnecker arrived, Miles walked quietly to the front of his kennel and sat down. “And then he looked me straight in the eye and said, clear as day, ‘I just want to be a good boy,’” she recalled.

“All of a sudden this overwhelming sadness washed over me, the sense of his not being able to prove himself because he’d been told that he was a bad dog,” Ms. Longnecker continued. “My heart broke into a million pieces.”

The shelter workers were incredulous. “It was love at first sight,” Ms. Mancini said. “We all stood there open-mouthed as she loaded him into the car.”

At first, Miles was a mess — shaking, panting, his tail between his legs. Every time he got out of the car, he threw up, thinking he was returning to the shelter. “When we turned on the garbage disposal, he ran upstairs and hid for three hours,” Ms. Longnecker said.

But gradually Ms. Longnecker, who is known among her friends in the dog and horse worlds for her ability to communicate with animals, convinced Miles that he was safe, even away from the house. “At first he didn’t believe me,” she said. “The way I ended up having to express it was to say that you’re part of my pack and my pack travels in a car. He jumped right in the car, and since then he’s been fine.”

Ms. Longnecker enrolled Miles in a class at Countryside Agility, the center of Erie’s agility community, and the two began competing — first locally, then regionally and nationally. “It started as this incredibly fun thing to do, and then it turned out he was awesome at it,” Ms. Longnecker said. “He was racking up points.”

Miles’s growing enthusiasm for agility coincided with a newfound sense of purpose in other aspects of his life, especially when he appointed himself to an auxiliary role in Ms. Longnecker’s riding lessons.

His main job is to make sure the horses are jumping correctly.

“When the horses are jumping and knock over a rail, Miles gets really upset,” said Anna Buhl, 16, one of Ms. Longnecker’s students. First he registers his dismay by barking. “Then he’ll go jump the jump, to show the horses what to do,” Anna said.

Maddy McLaughlin, 20, another student, described Ms. Longnecker as “good cop” and Miles as “bad cop,” albeit one who is more critical of the horses than of the riders. “It’s always been a running joke that he coaches more than she does,” she said. (Recently some of Ms. Longnecker’s clients made him a little “Assistant Coach Miles” canine T-shirt.) “When she gives us pep talks, he comes and licks our faces.”

Once, Anna fell off her horse.

“Miles came running,” she said. “He was the first person there to make sure I was OK.”

The animal whisperer

Agility competitions are high-intensity undertakings. After Miles returned exhausted from nationals in Ocala, Fla., in 2022, Ms. Longnecker hired a personal trainer who decreed that he should focus more on his core. In the regimen: doggy burpees and a balancing exercise involving four uneven pillows and some mindful paw-lifting.

He’s now in peak physical condition and ready for Westminster. On Monday, he and Ms. Longnecker drove to their weekly class at Countryside Agility, a vast facility in a converted department store on a commercial strip, for a final pre-competition session. Among the other participants: a Portuguese water dog named Avery; a goldendoodle named Nittany and an Australian shepherd named Emmy.

Emmy’s owner, Jen Niebauer, is part of a four-human entourage planning to travel to New York for Saturday’s competition. “We’re going to support Miles,” she said. As always, Ms. Longnecker will be in the ring with Miles, but the group will take along a photo of Carol Maxwell, Miles’s coach, affixed to a piece of cardboard — so that Flat Carol, as they call her, can stand in for the real thing.

Ms. Maxwell, 79, was in the arena on Monday for a final coaching session. “Dogs need a job, and it’s really good exercise,” she said of agility. A former nurse anesthetist who started teaching agility when she was 65, Ms. Maxwell said that strictly speaking, she’s Ms. Longnecker’s coach, teaching her the correct hand movements, body language and verbal cues to help Miles master the course.

“She really understands animals, and she communicates with him so well,” Ms. Maxwell said.

Ms. Longnecker has a reputation here not just as Miles’s owner, but also as an expert in animal communication — meaning that she helps humans find out what is going on with their pets. Almost everyone she knows seems to have sought her help. Ms. Maxwell once enlisted her to find out why one of her dogs, a young Doberman pinscher, had become dispirited.

Ms. Longnecker said the dog wanted to spend more time in the water. “I said, ‘No, Dobermans hate water,’” Ms. Maxwell recalled. Then she found a video on her phone showing the dog happily playing in a creek in the background, and she realized Ms. Longnecker was right. “She didn’t want to get in the pool,” Ms. Maxwell said. “She just wanted to splash a bit.”

Ms. Longnecker says that animals send images to her, which she then translates into language. She likes to know as little as possible before a session so she comes to the problems fresh. “I always want the animal to talk first and say what is most important to them,” she said.

She charges $50 for a 35-minute session, more if there are multiple animals. Business is booming. Among her recent cases: an elderly Betta fish that said it was not afraid of dying, and that it had found joy in watching its 11-year-old owner dance around and do her homework when she returned from school each day; a bird that said it was pulling out its feathers in anxiety because it was too cold (the owner solved the problem by moving the cage away from the air-conditioner); and a snake that said it resented being cooped up while the cats in the house roamed free. (The snake seemed to have an ulterior motive, Ms. Longnecker said, and the owner decided not to let it out of its cage.)

Asked by her mother to interpret the motivations of a squirrel that looked intently at her when she doled out peanuts in the backyard, Ms. Longnecker said the squirrel wished it could have walnuts instead. When Ms. Longnecker’s mother offered it a choice of nuts, the squirrel chose the walnuts and ignored the peanuts.

“It feels like there’s a universal energy stream that I’ve been able to tune into,” Ms. Longnecker said. “It’s like calling someone on a cellphone, but it’s in my brain. And I know that sounds wonky. I’m very scientifically motivated and I like things to make sense, but the stuff I get is absolutely bananas. I hope that science catches up with this one day.”

‘Under Miles’s thumb’

Ms. Longnecker said that Miles was the first animal she truly communicated with. But no matter what is actually going on, one thing is clear: When he’s not working, Miles is a big, spoiled, cuddly baby. In a crowded house — he shares it not just with Ms. Longnecker and her housemate, Abby Sorensen, but also with two other dogs and two cats — he exudes main-character energy.

“Everybody lives under Miles’s thumb,” Ms. Longnecker said.

Allowed to select his own toys at the store, Miles always goes for the sparkliest plush unicorns. Reclining on the sofa, he covers himself in blankets, with only his snout visible. Riding in the car, he snuggles with the nearest available passenger. (It is admittedly difficult to maintain a professional journalistic distance from a subject who has jumped onto your lap and is licking your face.)

Ms. Longnecker’s bedroom is decorated with blown-up photos of Miles, and its walls are covered with his ribbons, alongside her equestrian prizes. Miles sleeps on her bed, using her legs as a pillow and courteously scooching over for her boyfriend of three years, a dentist.

“He and Miles are obsessed with each other,” Ms. Longnecker said of the boyfriend, who is part of the Team Miles entourage headed to Westminster. “He jokes that he’s dating me so he can be with Miles.”

“They say you save a rescue, but a rescue saves you,” she added. “Miles is the best thing to ever happen to me.”

When the reigning Miss USA, Noelia Voigt, announced this week she would be resigning from her position, she cited her mental health and wrote about her gratitude for the opportunity.

“As individuals, we grow through experiencing different things in life that lead us to learning more about ourselves,” she wrote on Instagram on Monday.

But an internal resignation letter by Ms. Voigt to Miss USA leadership and the Miss Universe Organization, obtained on Friday by The New York Times, presented a much darker picture.

In the eight-page letter, Ms. Voigt, who represented the state of Utah and was crowned in September, described “a toxic work environment within the Miss USA Organization that, at best, is poor management and, at worst, is bullying and harassment.” She also complained in her letter that the organization had delayed making good on her prize winnings.

The Miss USA Organization did not respond to request for comment.

Ms. Voigt’s departure has spurred at least two other resignations. UmaSofia Srivastava, Miss Teen USA, announced she was stepping down from her role on Wednesday. Arianna Lemus, who represented Colorado at Miss USA in 2023, said on Friday she was resigning in solidarity after seeing Ms. Voigt’s post.

“That was a call to help,” Ms. Lemus, 27, said in an interview.

The sudden departures have touched off wider speculation in the pageant world that crowned winners are legally barred from speaking freely about their experiences with the Miss USA Organization. Many of Ms. Voigt’s past competitors, including Ms. Lemus, shared a statement demanding that she be released from any nondisclosure agreements.

In her resignation letter, Ms. Voigt said she experienced an incident of sexual harassment when, during a Christmas parade last year in Sarasota, Fla., a driver made inappropriate comments toward her.

She said in her letter that the organization failed to support her when she reported the incident.

Ms. Voigt went on to write that serving as Miss USA took a toll on her health, adding that she now struggled with anxiety and took medication to manage her symptoms.

She said she had begun experiencing “heart palpitations, full body shakes, loss of appetite, unintentional weight loss, loss of sleep, loss of hair and more.”

Some people believed Ms. Voigt’s Instagram post announcing her resignation contained a secret message. The first letter of each of the first 11 sentences of the statement spell the phrase “I AM SILENCED,” which some have interpreted as a signal that Ms. Voigt is unable to speak openly about her experience.

Just a few days after Ms. Voigt’s announcement, Ms. Srivastava, who was crowned Miss Teen USA in 2023, also resigned from her post.

“After careful consideration, I have decided to resign as I find that my personal values no longer fully align with the direction of the organization,” Ms. Srivastava, who represented the state of New Jersey at the Miss Teen USA pageant in September, wrote on Instagram.

Her post included a quote from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”

“I know all of us who love the program want to rush out and do something,” Laylah Rose, the president and chief executive of the Miss USA Organization, wrote in an email to The Times earlier this week, regarding Ms. Voigt’s and Ms. Srivastava’s resignations. “My goal is to provide truly helpful steps we can take together.”

“Our all-encompassing goal at Miss USA is to celebrate and empower women,” Ms. Rose added, saying she was taking “these allegations seriously.”

Through a representative, both Ms. Srivastava and Ms. Voigt declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement. (A copy of the 2023 Miss USA contract obtained by The New York Times appears to bar signees from disclosing any information about Miss USA while employed by the organization.)

After Ms. Voigt’s announcement, several of her fellow Miss USA 2023 competitors posted a statement on Instagram demanding that the Miss USA Organization release Ms. Voigt from any such agreement.

Juliana Morehouse, who competed at Miss USA representing Maine and lives in South Carolina, said in an interview with The Times that the letter originated in a group chat of 2023 participants who were “shocked and saddened” to hear of Ms. Voigt’s resignation. On a Zoom call, they hashed out the message they wanted to share in support of Ms. Voigt.

(Ms. Morehouse did not provide an exact figure but said the number of women who wrote and shared the letter comprised a majority of the 51 competitors at Miss USA in 2023.)

Claudia Michelle Engelhardt, who stepped down from her role as social media director for Miss USA this month, said she felt the Miss USA participants were unfairly pressured into signing their contracts.

“It was pretty much, ‘You have to sign this or you’re not going to compete,’” Ms. Engelhardt, 24, said. “You just worked your butt off to get here. You won your state. What, are you not going to go because you don’t want to sign a contract? They are basically holding you hostage, for lack of a better term, to sign this contract.”

Ms. Morehouse said she was given “a little over 24 hours” to review the contract.

“I don’t think any of us sought legal representation to review it with us,” she said in an interview with The Times. “We had never heard of such an ironclad NDA being implemented in previous years, because this was the first year of the new leadership.” (Ms. Rose became president of the organization last year.)

She emphasized that while her personal experience with Miss USA was a positive one, she hoped speaking out would ensure that was the case for all participants in the future.

Ms. Lemus, the former Miss Colorado USA, said she saw some irony in how Miss USA appeared to be operating.

“This is an organization that preaches women’s empowerment,” she said.

Up the carpeted stairs, past the tuxedoed photographers, Anna Wintour stood at the top of the steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit.

“Your royal highnesses,” Baz Luhrmann, the Australian film director, said as he approached Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Chris Hemsworth, who were standing in a receiving line with Ms. Wintour. The space had been transformed by greenery, filled with string musicians and dancers, creating a “Midsummer Night’s” dreamscape just off Fifth Avenue.

“How is it out there?” Ms. Wintour said, adding, “You look incredible.”

One by one, the stratospherically famous faces that captivate imaginations worldwide walked carefully up the stairs and stopped to talk to the row of co-chairs. (Zendaya, the fifth co-chair, did not make it to the perch.)

Ms. Wintour, the global editorial director of Condé Nast and the editor in chief of Vogue, had once again convened her starry annual bash, turning a soaring temple of the arts into a looking glass on our times — one reflecting a heady swirl of celebrity, commerce, fashion, beauty, aspiration, power, intrigue and bankable influence.

Last year, the event raised about $22 million for the Costume Institute, which houses the museum’s costume collection — millions more than other major New York City galas. This year’s event was co-sponsored by Loewe and TikTok, which is currently facing a potential ban in the United States.

Welcoming a deep-pocketed tech company as a sponsor is not new for the Met Gala: Both Amazon and Instagram have bankrolled the Costume Institute exhibitions in years past. But the pairing of Vogue and TikTok, united in the race to capture our attention, suggests the video platform reshaping much of what we do and wear, also has a place in high fashion.

As Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, put it, “It was a kind of a natural progression to this year, from Instagram to TikTok.”

Guests were dressed in their best interpretation of the exhibition theme, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” and the dress code, “Garden of Time.”

Seth Meyers, accompanied by his wife, Alexi Ashe, said walking up the stairs this year actually felt very calming.

“We try to come in with not a lot of ego,” he said, adding that he often feels the photographers aren’t interested in him. “Even in the age of digital photos, you feel like they’re saving their film.”

Sarah Jessica Parker arrived with Andy Cohen, the Bravo host. Ms. Parker said she tried to pay close attention to the theme this year, and even read the 1962 short story that inspired it.

“I love the challenge of the theme,” she said. “I think sometimes it really eludes me, and sometimes it’s much more recognizable or I can make sense of it more quickly, but I liked the idea of paying attention.”

“Going with her is just a dream,” Mr. Cohen said. “It’s like being on a little puff of cotton candy all night. And she takes such care to do it right.”

As Ms. Parker and Mr. Cohen were making their way to the exhibition, Jeff Bezos stopped to compliment her dress, and the string of long pearls she was wearing. Standing with his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, they recalled having met once, on a boat in Spain.

Ms. Sánchez and Mr. Bezos perused the “Sleeping Beauties” exhibition, hand in hand, stopping to look at the different displays. As she walked, her Oscar de la Renta dress made a sound on the floor that sounded a bit like squeaking ducks.

“You’re so loud,” Mr. Bezos said with a laugh.

Attendees packed into elevators and headed to the Charles Engelhard Court, where servers in white jackets with little green bows offered trays of champagne, sparkling water and cucumber margaritas.

Around the room, Matt Damon talked to Barry Diller. Ayo Edebiri chatted with Donald Glover. Kris Jenner arrived with her partner, Corey Gamble. She took a seat in a corner near a bronze sculpture. Ms. Sánchez, with a glass in hand, walked up to Ms. Jenner and gave her two kisses.

“Jeff,” Mr. Bezos said, introducing himself. “Nice to see you.”

Waiters with silver trays offered little bites of little things like tuna tartare on a rice crisp and hearts of palm with avocado purée.

Nearby, dressed in a tuxedo and sensible shoes, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone investment group, sat alone on a bench, his phone’s speaker held up to his mouth.

On the other side of the room, members of the K-pop group Stray Kids picked off the appetizers as they stood together in a corner behind Lea Michele. Ms. Michele, who is pregnant, was seated at a table with Jonathan Groff.

“When I was pregnant with my son, it was 2020, and I was home wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt,” she said, “and now I’m in Rodarte at the Met. So it’s a very different pregnancy.”

Ms. Michele was particularly excited to see who was going to perform. “It’s my favorite part, obviously, as a singer,” she said. “It’s just so wonderful to get to have an incredible performer to do a private concert.”

Around 8 p.m., a door in the middle of the room opened and performers walked out to the sound of drumming, and danced throughout the space — a signal it was time for dinner.

“Let’s get going,” Mr. Luhrmann said to the crowd. “When Anna says get in, it’s time to get in.”

“I’m having the best night ever!” Ms. Sánchez said loudly. “I am having so much fun!”

Attendees were ushered off to a meal that included a medley of spring vegetables followed by a filet of beef.

Slowly, late arrivals made their way into dinner. Rachel Sennott walked in with Kylie Jenner. Kim Kardashian waved off more photos. Cardi B, surrounded by ushers carrying her dress, squeezed through two columns.

Inside, under candelabra entwined with floral arrangements, guests were seated around the Temple of Dendur, the Egyptian temple, where walls depict scenes of a king making offerings to the gods.

Condé Nast and the union representing employees of Vogue and other publications owned by the company reached a tentative agreement early Monday on a long-in-the-works contract. The deal happened about 12 hours before the first guests were set to arrive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Met Gala, and after unionized employees had threatened to disrupt the event over the pace of contract negotiations.

Representatives for Condé Nast declined to comment for this article beyond sharing a message release the company sent after bargaining negotiations ended around 3 a.m. “On behalf of the management bargaining committee and leaders throughout the business, we are pleased to come to tentatively agreed terms on a contract with the union,” it read.

Mark Alan Burger, a unit chair for the Condé Nast Union, said in a news release sent on Monday that reaching a tentative agreement was a result of members’ commitment to do whatever it took to get a contract, “including walking off the job ahead of the Met Gala.”

Leading up to the event, which is co-hosted by Ms. Wintour and costs $75,000 per person, the Condé Nast Union pledged to continue to take action as needed to bring the publisher to the bargaining table. In a post on X, the union warned on Saturday night that management could “meet us at the table or meet us at the Met on Monday.”

The tentative agreement came after over a year of bargaining for union members to create their first contract. In addition to establishing just cause as the basis for firing employees, the agreement includes wage increases, additional parental leave and hybrid work protections for the approximately 540 members of the Condé Nast Union, which represents employees from titles including Vanity Fair, GQ and Architectural Digest, in addition to Vogue staff members. (The New Yorker, Pitchfork and Ars Technica maintain their own unions and contracts.)

On Wednesday members of the Condé Nast Union, which held a one-day work stoppage in January, participated in a May Day rally at Condé Nast’s headquarters at One World Trade Center in Manhattan. Later that week, staff members also covered Ms. Wintour’s neighborhood in fliers reading “Anna Wears Prada, Workers Get Nada,” taping them to lampposts and slipping them under windshield wipers.

Mr. Burger, who works as a social media manager at Vanity Fair, on Thursday said such actions were organized with the hope that “we can get a contract together and that everyone can attend and watch and work in that gala as they normally would.”

“Everyone at Condé Nast really, really loves their job — it’s a workplace unlike any other,” Mr. Burger said. “It’s a huge achievement to be involved in conversations that are shaping and influencing culture.”

“Obviously, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is a huge cultural touchstone for us, especially,” he added. “The idea that 100 girls would kill for this job — those days are over.”

On Monday night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will play host to one of the biggest fund-raising events and starriest parties of the year: the annual Costume Institute Benefit or, as it’s been known for years, the Met Gala.

The event, which raises millions of dollars for the museum’s self-funding fashion wing, has become known for its audacious red carpet, with a highly exclusive guest list handpicked by Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor and Condé Nast executive.

But this year’s event has been unusually shadowed by drama. The union representing employees of Condé Nast publications including Bon Appétit, GQ, Vanity Fair and Vogue escalated the stakes in its long-running contract negotiations on Saturday, telling the company in a video posted on X that if management didn’t meet the union at the bargaining table, its members would “meet you at the Met,” setting up the possibility of a picket line during Vogue’s biggest night. A representative from the New York Police Department said that there were no street closures planned and that the police would have “an adequate security deployment.”

Under Ms. Wintour’s leadership, the Met Gala has increasingly opened its arms to tech leaders — and its palms to their sponsorship — including Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook in past galas. This year, Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, the primary sponsor of the Costume Institute’s exhibition this spring, was named an honorary chair of the gala. In the weeks since that announcement, Mr. Chew has been summoned to appear before a congressional committee, and the company’s Chinese owner has been told that TikTok will be banned in the United States if it is not sold within nine months.

But fashion is the main event here, with previous dress codes playing it straight or challenging guests to think outside the box. Ahead of the Costume Institute’s spring 2019 show, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” gala invitees were asked to dress with an air of “studied triviality.” The spring 2022 dress code, “gilded glamour,” had little to do with the corresponding exhibition, while the next year’s dress code — “in honor of Karl” (Lagerfeld, of course) — was a perfect match for the 2023 exhibition, dedicated to that designer’s 65-year career.

The dress code for the gala on Monday night is “Garden of Time,” an apparent reference to a 1962 short story by the British writer J.G. Ballard in which aristocrats living in a walled estate are menaced by the advance of a violent rabble. But the theme also nods to the subject of the spring exhibition, titled “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.”

The show will feature some 250 objects on view from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection, including garments too fragile to be traditionally displayed.

Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator, wrote in an essay about the exhibition, “The extreme fragility of these garments precludes them from being dressed on a mannequin, so in the exhibition they are displayed flat in glass cases to prevent further deterioration.”

It was not exactly urgent to get the rug, but the larger question the rug had to answer was urgent enough. That’s why, on a bright afternoon at the end of March, Miranda July and I were driving toward Irvine, Calif., where she planned to meet a man about a listing on Facebook Marketplace.

She had recently moved out of the large home she shared with her husband and child in Silver Lake and into a small two-bedroom house behind her writing studio in Echo Park. It meant she needed new things for a new place. A toilet, for example. A coral one, ideally, to match the tub and sink. Flooring for the kitchen. A refrigerator. And an antique carpet for the walk-in closet she was fixing up in her studio space. In this new life, would it all fit together?

Ms. July, a writer, filmmaker and artist whose work plays with the boundaries of intimacy, was wearing round tortoiseshell sunglasses, and her hair was pulled back in a velvet bow. We were just getting acquainted as she carefully merged on and off a series of highways in her blue Toyota Prius. Irvine was more than an hour away. There was going to be traffic — of course there would be traffic — and it began to dawn on us that this was going to be a long drive.

In such close quarters, Ms. July suggested we might define the terms of our relationship more clearly.

“What if you just said what the premise was of each thing you were entering into, and both people said their take on it?” she said. “Like even today, in the car. It could be like: ‘What’s your sense of this? Do you think we’re going to get hungry? What are our bodily concerns? Is there something you need to get back to?’

“There are a lot of basic things we could’ve discussed that actually may have made everything easier and clearer, you know?” she added, laughing. “We have yet to see what anxieties are to come!”

I felt my stomach flip, but she had a point. I was unbearably thirsty, for one. Suddenly, it seemed absurd we had left these things unsaid, and a relief someone had brought them up. Now we could really talk.

The characters in Ms. July’s films and books are often hoping for some kind of breakthrough. They go about their daily routines, longing for someone to say that unspoken thing. Maybe they’re on the brink of being truly understood.

In her new novel, “All Fours,” the unnamed female narrator — a 45-year-old “semifamous” artist who shares some biographical details with Ms. July — considers that a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York could be a turning point in her life.

She doesn’t get very far. About 30 minutes in, she checks into a motel and spends the next two and a half weeks redecorating her room, taking up with a younger, married man and contemplating a totally different way of living. When she returns home to her family, she realizes she can’t quite reacclimate to the old domestic rhythms.

As she confronts what seems like the imminent death of pleasure, foretold by a graph about hormonal changes she finds online, she sees no choice but to strike out into new territory. Masturbation, fantasies of sex and plenty of actual sex help propel her onward.

The heroine of “All Fours” is not a woman in a midlife crisis, but — in the epic, Dante-esque sense — a woman in the “middle of her life,” Ms. July said. She found that little else had been written about this phase, particularly about perimenopause, the transitional time before full-fledged menopause.

The existential quandaries raised in the book — Can the world accommodate the idea of an ever-changing self? How do you reconcile your desires (sexual, creative and otherwise) with your circumstances? — are ones the author has been tangling with in her own life.

In an Instagram post a few summers ago, Ms. July announced that she and her husband, the filmmaker Mike Mills, were no longer in a romantic relationship, although they were still living together most of the time to parent their child, Hopper, who was 10 at the time.

“We feel good about this twisteroo in our long story and await further twists and turns over the course of our lives,” she wrote beneath a photo of her standing barefoot in front of three pairs of shoes. The next slide is a video of her dancing in her underwear to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money.”

The post, Ms. July said, had been “carefully worded.”

“Mike and I are public enough — just barely recognizable enough, to some very small sliver of the population — that one of us out with our girlfriends in New York could, to some people’s eyes, look like we’re cheating or something,” she said in the car.

Ms. July, who recently turned 50, is aware that readers may conflate the protagonist in “All Fours” with herself. The notion that her work is autobiographical has followed her since she wrote, directed and starred in “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” which won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2005, when she was 31. And she sometimes inflects her characters with her own habits or ailments — like the passing throat condition she embellished and gave to the protagonist of her last novel, “The First Bad Man.” But she says she never intended them to be her avatars.

In the new book, she has borrowed a bit more from life. “The only way I can put it really is ‘closer to the bone,’” she said. “But it is still fiction.”

“All Fours” grew out of a story Ms. July published in The New Yorker in 2017, “The Metal Bowl.” It continued to take shape when she spoke to other women about how they were dealing with this stage in their lives.

“I remember driving and talking to Miranda about marriage, talking to her about sex,” said the writer Sheila Heti, a close friend of Ms. July’s who read an early draft of “All Fours.” “I remember feeling that she was trying to map the world through her conversations with people; she was interested in hidden desires, in the desires we can’t quite articulate to ourselves or are afraid to.”

Ms. July had similar conversations early in the pandemic with the sculptor Isabelle Albuquerque — to whom the novel is dedicated — sometimes on long walks, sometimes while they sat 10 feet apart in Ms. July’s backyard, “yelling across the void,” as Ms. Albuquerque put it.

“Sometimes it felt like we were trying to create a new society,” she said. “We were talking about the ideas but also trying to live them. Trying to make adjustments to our lives that would allow us to have a kind of freedom we both really crave.”

They conducted various experiments together. Living by their infradian rhythms, including their menstrual cycles. Spending one night a week at their studios, away from their partners. Ms. July kept that up for years. She had Wednesdays.

The challenge wasn’t to blow up your life. It was to set off tiny bombs all the time. Maybe no one even noticed but you. It could be as small as clenching your fist.

The entire world should probably be reorganized in a more feminist way, Ms. July said, but “the micro, everyday version is like, What can we do right now?”

The Rug

Ms. July pulled into a parking lot of an affluent residential complex. In search of the rug merchant, we wandered past tennis courts and a pool.

Just as she called him on her phone, the man appeared. He introduced himself as Gino Gucciano and pointed down the street, toward a house around the corner.

He strode off, and we went back to the Prius.

“Are you ready for things to be maximum weird?” Ms. July said.

After the short drive from the parking lot to Mr. Gucciano’s house, we found that the garage door was open, revealing a vast collection of carpets. Standing beside a stack, Ms. July vetoed the one she had come to see, which was listed for $600. “Too brown.”

“If there are ones that had pinks. …” Ms. July said, taking a closer look.

Mr. Gucciano and a business partner, Sam Hossaini, unfurled several more on the floor of the garage. Some were too big, though Ms. July discovered she had not written down the measurements for the room in her studio where the rug would end up.

At last, they rolled out a deep rose Persian rug, laying it across the lawn in the sun. It was 150 years old, they said. The price was $2,600.

“So if I just Venmoed you $1,000 right now, that’s not going to cut it?” Ms. July asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” Mr. Gucciano said. “We paid more for it than that. It’s hard to get them that old.”

“At the thousand level for me, that’s — I have a whole home to figure out,” Ms. July said. “You know, I just got divorced. I have to quickly make a home.”

“Yeah, I went through that five years ago,” Mr. Gucciano said. “I lost a lot, and my home. But I have my kids, so I’m happy.”

“Oh, OK, yeah.”

“I want to make you happy, Miranda,” Mr. Gucciano said. “But we paid a little more than a thousand for it.”

Ms. July offered to tag them on Instagram, where she has been sporadically chronicling her sometimes comical efforts at home improvement in a highlight reel she calls “MJHGTV.”

Mr. Gucciano and Mr. Hossaini deliberated. They had just started an Instagram page for their business that very day. They knocked down the price to $1,300.

Ms. July began recording on her phone. She reviewed the pros and cons of the different rugs, until she turned to the pink one, the winner. The two men hauled it into the trunk of Prius.

“We have a lot to debrief,” Ms. July said, once she was behind the wheel again.

On the ride back to Echo Park, she admitted that she hadn’t meant to blurt out that she was divorced. It wasn’t quite true — she was in the middle of mediation.

“It’s a big piece of information, given how little information I’m giving about us,” she said. “And I actually think every divorce is different, and the reasons for doing it are very specific.”

In “All Fours,” the protagonist and her husband try out a new arrangement, which evolves throughout the novel. He is only one of the people she has sex with; and she never does consummate her emotional fling with the young man who sets off her quest.

Whether the marriage survives these evolutions is ambiguous. At the end of the book, the narrator is walking by herself, now awed rather than panicked by life’s curveballs.

“I really love where the book ends, because it’s fairly open-ended, and I actually still have that open-ended feeling,” Ms. July said. “And so I guess I hate to sort of take away from it.”

A Studio of Her Own

The next day, I visited Ms. July at her studio, which, together with her new home directly behind it, forms a sort of “compound,” she likes to say.

Her artist friend Nico B. Young was working in the garage, sawing a countertop and some shelving for Ms. July’s kitchen that he had designed himself. Almost every surface had been covered in a light yellow mixture of epoxy resin and pigment, making each cabinet resemble a perfect stick of butter.

A pair of 20-pound dumbbells lay just outside on the concrete, where Ms. July exercises with a trainer twice a week, beneath an orange tree in blossom.

She nimbly lifted the rug out of the car and into her studio, which is cluttered with hundreds of books, along with ephemera from her movies and other projects. In the main room is the long table where she writes, sitting on a hard wooden chair. Often when she works, she locks her phone in a box and unplugs the Wi-Fi. During breaks, she sometimes dances.

Down a hall is a bedroom where she now keeps much of her wardrobe of mainly vintage and thrifted clothes. She thought this might be the right place for the rug, giving the space a Parisian feel, maybe. But it was too big. It curled up against the wall, ever so slightly.

We tried sliding it around.

“Maybe if I got a rug pad, it would sort of rest on the edge,” Ms. July said.

We left the rug to settle and sat across from each other at her writing table.

Throughout “All Fours,” the protagonist is often grounded by her best friend, a sculptor named Jordi who, toward the end of the book, unveils a sculpture of a headless woman on her hands and knees. “Everyone thinks doggy style is so vulnerable,” Jordi says. But, she explains, the position is actually quite stable: “It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.”

Ms. July told me she was excited to have women over to her new place for a party after her book tour, when things calm down. She wanted to spool a string of lights connecting the home she shares with Hopper and her work studio. The guests would float between the two.

“I’m kind of just looking forward to having time to just enjoy the world that I’ve made for myself,” she said. “A lot of steps along the way were hard and scary, and so it’s not that everything to come is going to be easy.”

“But now I’m not the person who has to write that book,” she said. “I’m the person who wrote it.”

When Kendall Jenner attended the 2022 Met Gala in a Prada gown with an enormous flowing skirt, getting her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art required special transportation. A limousine would not do, nor would an SUV — walking in the dress was a challenge; sitting, impossible. The solution: Ms. Jenner would be driven, standing, in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van.

On the way to the event, as a way to relieve her anxiety about running late, Ms. Jenner relieved herself in an ice bucket while standing in the van. “Best decision I ever made,” she said of that moment in an episode of “The Kardashians” on Hulu.

The Sprinter van, a towering box on wheels with nearly six-and-a-half feet of head room, is a direct descendant of the earliest motorized caravans developed by Karl Benz in 1896. (Some 30 years later, he and Gottlieb Daimler founded the Mercedes-Benz company.) The Sprinter, first released in Europe in 1995, started being sold domestically in 2010. Last year, Mercedes-Benz unveiled an electric version.

The van — which can be used to transport up to 15 passengers (or cargo) — is appreciated by automotive enthusiasts for its build quality, reliability and versatility, as well as for the thrust and longevity of the diesel engine in most versions.

But other people have come to recognize the Sprinter for different reasons, among them its proximity to celebrities. The van has become a preferred mode of transportation for actors, singers, athletes and “Real Housewives,” and is now a staple in streets outside star-studded events like the Oscars and the Met Gala.

The vans have become so popular as transportation to the spring gala in New York that demand for them can outstrip the local supply. “Sprinters are being brought in from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami,” said Etienne Haro, the general manager of the Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where many Met Gala guests spend time both before and after the main event.

In recent years, between 50 and 70 guests have traveled to the gala from the Mark, with about 40to 50 of those people riding in Sprinters. Many of those vans are rented and driven by guests’ personal chauffeurs. On the day of the gala, the Mark has a team of about 30 people tracking vehicles’ locations to ensure their passengers arrive punctually, Mr. Haro said.

Sprinter riders often take advantage of the van’s roomy interior to ensure they also arrive looking flawless. “The entourage, glam team, stylist — everyone can hop in to put on the finishing touches,” Mr. Haro said.

But occasionally, he added, some Sprinter passengers have hit bumps in the road on their way to and from the gala.

“Getting out of a Sprinter with a voluminous gown and high heels can be challenging,” Mr. Haro said, noting one instance in which a Mark employee caught a Met Gala guest “in midair” as she was falling out of a van. He recalled another guest “whose dress was so intricate that she could not enter her vehicle.”

Though it bears Mercedes-Benz’s three-point-star logo, the Sprinter has an otherwise innocuous exterior that, for some famous fans, has as much appeal as its capacious interior.

“Our clients say, ‘The paparazzi are chasing us around; we don’t want to be in something that’s sticking out like a sore thumb, like a Rolls or a Bentley,” said Howard Becker, the founder of Becker Automotive Design in Southern California, which has customized Sprinter vans and other vehicles for people like the director Steven Spielberg, the actor Mark Wahlberg and the television host Steve Harvey.

“The Sprinter kind of fades in,” said Mr. Becker, 75.

The starting price for a diesel-engine van is about $50,000; electric Sprinters start at about $72,000. But models outfitted by Mr. Becker or by Gabi Mashal, whose Southern California company Bespoke Coach also customizes the vans, typically cost between $350,000 and $450,000.

Their distinctive features can include temperature-controlled, lie-flat seats with built-in massagers, secure internet routers, state-of-the-art stereo and video systems and onboard bathrooms for their owners.

“These people can’t use a public restroom,” said Mr. Mashal, 60, who has customized vans for the singer Mark Anthony and the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The Sprinter’s size and luxurious reputation are reasons it has replaced vehicles like limousines and SUVs as the rental transportation of choice on many versions of “The Real Housewives,” said Nate Green, an executive producer of “The Real Housewives of Miami.” He described the Sprinter as a friend of the “Housewives,” using a term given to supporting characters in the franchise who appear regularly in episodes.

Mr. Green said his show’s crew also favors Sprinters because the van’s cabin has enough room for camera operators to stand — and to film from several angles.

“This is really important,” Mr. Green said, “because ‘Housewives’ is sometimes more about the reaction than about the actual dialogue.”

Throughout the reality TV franchise’s 18 years on Bravo, Sprinter vans have been a place where housewives have drunkenly fallen down, signed divorce papers, passionately kissed co-stars, engaged in verbal spats and been approached by officers with the Department of Homeland Security.

“When people see a Sprinter van, they know that there’s going to be something that happens that’s going to be iconic,” said Lisa Shannon, an executive producer of the New York and Salt Lake City installments of “The Real Housewives,” as well as its “Ultimate Girls Trip” spinoff.

The Sprinter, while strongly associated with the “Housewives” franchise, has appeared in more than 4,000 movies and TV episodes. Like many tokens of pop culture, it has been imitated on “The Simpsons,” and it recently joined one of cinema’s most distinguishable automotive fleets: the vehicles in “Ghostbusters.”

In the series’s latest film, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” released in March, a new van called Ecto-Z — a black Sprinter outfitted with racks for proton packs — is featured alongside the tail-finned 1959 Cadillac ambulance known to many as the Ecto-1.

Eric Reich, an executive producer of “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” said a Sprinter was chosen for the Ecto-Z role after Mercedes-Benz and Sony, the film’s distributor, had meetings to discuss product placement. He added that a Sprinter, like a Cadillac, made sense for transporting the Ghostbusters and their gear because both vehicles blend “luxury and function.”

That amalgamation has also made Sprinters popular among so-called vanlifers — people known for cavorting, traveling and sleeping in customized vans. Many of them document their lifestyles online, including Peter Holcombe, 51, who has spent much of the last decade living with his wife, Kathy, 50, and daughter, Abby, 19, in four Sprinter vans outfitted by the motor-home company Winnebago. (The Holcombes are brand ambassadors for Mercedes-Benz and Winnebago; they bought three of their vans at a discount.)

In their vans, the family has visited all 50 states, several national parks and 19 European countries. (Last year, Abby moved out of the family vehicle and into one of her own.) The Holcombes are currently driving what’s known as the Pan-American Highway, a network of roads that runs from Alaska to the southern tip of South America.

“We’ve done over 400,000 miles in Sprinters,” Mr. Holcombe said.

Wes Siler, a backcountry camper and a columnist for Outside magazine in Bozeman, Mont., is less of a fan.

Mr. Siler, 43, who camps out of a converted pickup truck, said the cost of buying and customizing a Sprinter for outdoor exploring is excessive for what he described as little more than a “poseur backdrop.”

“They’re cool on Instagram,” he said. “That’s, like, the entire story.”

But even Mr. Siler, who grew up in Europe, recognizes that the van has a certain appeal. He recalled getting to prom at his high school in London in a Sprinter that had been outfitted as a party bus.

“You couldn’t want a better limo,” he said.

There are many associations that come to mind with the Kentucky Derby. Horses, naturally. Mint juleps too. But to be a true participant in the Derby spectacle, one needs a proper Derby hat.

The tradition for wearing eye-catching attire to America’s most famous horse race began in the 1870s. The founder of the Kentucky Derby, Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., was inspired by the fashionable dress codes at events like Ascot in Britain and Paris’s Grand Prix. Creating his own, he figured, would transform his racetrack from a place of ill-repute to one for well-heeled high society.

On a sunny spring Monday in 1875, more than 10,000 spectators attended the first Kentucky Derby and The New York Times reported on the fashion as well as the racing, noting that “the grandstand was thronged by a brilliant assemblage of ladies and gentlemen.” His plan worked, and this collective passion for horses, gambling and to party — even in smart seersucker suits or a spectacular feathered fascinator — has endured as a cornerstone of the Derby to this day.

This year marked the 150th running of the race at Churchill Downs, and as expected nobody held back both on and off the track, from wide-brimmed styles adorned with spring florals and soft feathers paired with tasteful pastel-colored dresses to jockey helmets adorned with plastic stallions and straight up horse heads. Hats off to this crowd.

It was still early on Thursday evening at Casa Cipriani in downtown Manhattan, but Lionel Richie thought he knew how his night would end: “Buckingham Palace is going to call us and ask, ‘How did it go?’”

Mr. Richie, who had just walked a red carpet and was getting bombarded with selfie requests, was co-hosting the King’s Trust Global Gala, a fund-raiser for the organization started in 1976 by then Prince Charles that helps millions of underserved youth globally.

The night drew more than 300 people including the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Drew Barrymore, the musician John Legend, the stylist Law Roach and the model Kate Moss. It raised more than $1.4 million.

The event, in its third year, was a collaboration between Mr. Richie, a longtime friend of King Charles, and Edward Enninful, the former editor in chief of British Vogue and co-chair of the event.

“I grew up with the Trust helping members of my family and friends,” said Mr. Enninful.

The night also coincided with King Charles’s official return to duties after he disclosed that he had cancer.

The monarch wasn’t in attendance, but Dominic West, the English actor who played him in the last two seasons of “The Crown,” was in the crowd.

“The poor guy, he has been a bit out of action,” Mr. West said. “He needs our help.”

Dinner opened with a pun-filled speech by King Charles, delivered via a representative, that referenced some of Mr. Richie’s biggest hits: “I’m glad Edward and Lionel are there to make sure you are, ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ and ‘All Night Long.’”

After a dinner of baby tricolor beets and salmon with leek sauce, the night closed with a performance by Mr. Legend of Mr. Richie’s song “Hello” and a standing ovation from the audience.

Laughing, apparently at the response, Mr. Legend said, “I just decided to do that 20 minutes ago.” — A.K.

On Wednesday, Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton men’s creative director, blocked off a sliver of Morton Street.

Around 300 people packed an open garage on a quiet West Village street to mark the opening of an online car auction from Mr. Williams’s auction house, Joopiter, which aims to make objects owned by high profile figures easier to buy.

Celebrities and artists ogled over the 12 rare, custom and eclectic vehicles that ranged from a Mitsubishi truck-turned-camper van to a Porsche from Daniel Arsham, the artist, located between Seventh Avenue South and Bleecker St.

Passers-by stopped to see what seemed like celebrities hanging out in someone’s renovated garage.

The crowd included Tobe Nwigwe, the rapper and singer, and Martica Nwigwe, his wife, who were tucked away in a corner as guests, like the fashion designer Kim Shui, carefully squeezed around the cars to take photos. Rosé, a member of the K-pop group Blackpink, snaked through the crowd.

Some guests trailed the servers holding trays of cocktails or small bites of mushroom canapés while others, like the actress Dianna Agron and LaQuan Smith, the fashion designer, made separate brief appearances. A stack of “Pharrell-isms,” Mr. Williams’s book of quotations, were at the entrance.

Mr. Arsham talked to other guests next to his Porsche, one of the many cars in his collection (he said that he does drive them all).

In the early evening, Mr. Williams arrived dressed in a cowboy hat and a lot of Louis Vuitton. He hoped the event would be a space for different people to connect, he said.

He reflected on how the auction house had expanded in the last year. “These opportunities are not afforded to people who look like me,” Mr. Williams said. “Man, it’s a crazy time.” — M.G.

One weekend in 2021, Gemma Warren was doing what she did every weekend: sitting over coffee in her home in Tulum, Mexico, combing through the real estate listings for cabins in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

She and her husband, Nick Warren, who are English, had discovered the Catskills several years earlier, while living in Brooklyn and working for public relations and marketing companies headquartered in London. They fell for the region’s scented forests, sunny meadows, icy streams and not terribly threatening bears (unless provoked). They wanted to buy a weekend house, but found nothing to fit their budget.

So six years ago, they picked up and moved to Tulum, on the Yucatán Peninsula, because they also had a sunny, oceanic side to their natures. There, they worked remotely. But the Catskills still beckoned.

In that fateful website-browsing session three years ago, Ms. Warren, now 37, saw a listing for a cabin in the western Catskills hamlet of Delancey, N.Y. The asking price: $65,000. The house was 192 square feet and lacked heating and a toilet.

“A shack” is how Mr. Warren, 38, described it: “There was running water. But that was pretty much it.”

And yet it sat on 6.8 acres with tall trees and grasses. Flowing next to it was a creek that audibly burbled in a video. A large picture window looked out to the water and forest.

Investigating further, the Warrens discovered that the tiny building with its projecting shed roof had an unusual provenance. It was one of the few extant examples of a Bolt-Together House, a bare-bones cutie that Family Circle magazine published in 1972 in a series on D.I.Y. dwellings.

A young architect named Jeffrey Milstein had designed the house on paper as something that could be taken apart and moved if one didn’t happen to own the land it occupied. The building was conceived as rough-sawed plywood panels bolted to a collapsible framework of timber posts and trusses attached to four concrete piers embedded in the earth.

Family Circle, riding the wave of eco-consciousness that washed through the 1970s, handed Mr. Milstein the money to construct the house, gave it a big spread and sold the plans.

“If you have a large garage, your husband can prefabricate the panels (none is larger than 4’x8’); cut, drill and paint the posts and trusses; then move the entire house to your site in a 16-foot rented truck,” the magazine suggested to the readers it took for granted were female and married.

The cost of construction was about $2,500 ($18,680 in today’s dollars), inclusive of lumber, wiring, plumbing, heating (with a wood-burning stove), kitchen appliances and some built-in furnishings, including a fold-down dining table. There was also a platform bed on a mezzanine level reached by a wall ladder.

The house was a hit; Family Circle sold a reported 25,000 plans, more than for any other project in its series. The Italian shelter magazine Abitare featured it in the May 1979 issue along with another of Mr. Milstein’s projects that combined a house with a camping tent. Both designs were published in Lester Walker’s seminal 1993 guide to small living, “The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses.”

Today, the Bolt-Together House is a rare species in the wild, a snow leopard for tiny-home enthusiasts. A YouTube video posted a dozen years ago of a shabby survivor in New Brunswick, Canada, has attracted more than 53,000 views.

All of which explains why the Warrens were besotted with the Delancey listing. “It was just a dreamy little place to us that was in our budget and so unique,” Ms. Warren said.

They were far from the only admirers, but were determined to have it. “We put an offer on it direct from Mexico, without even going to the town or seeing the cabin, which I think threw the Realtor for six,” Ms. Warren said, using a term derived from the game of cricket to describe the feeling of being whacked hard by a bat.

The sellers interpreted the couple’s pre-emptive bid of $85,000 as less a gesture of enthusiasm than of possible instability and accepted the second-best offer. As Mr. Warren interpreted the rejection, the sellers were afraid he and his wife weren’t serious and would “mess them around.” As fate would have it, he added, “a few weeks later, the second highest bidder actually messed them around.”

The Bolt-Together House was now the couple’s, a retreat where they could spend several months a year with their dogs, Taco, Margarita and Chili. But it still smacked of shack.

Had its builder followed Mr. Milstein’s plans to the letter, the walls would have been insulated and there would have been sanitation facilities. (The house would also have been 224 square feet.) Yet neither comfort in winter nor an indoor commode appeared to be a priority. Instead, there was an outhouse some distance away, in the meadow.

The Warrens installed insulation as well as baseboard electric heating. Their dream of a speedily acquired and affordable septic system, however, was dashed by the complexity of the site, with its creek, and by pandemic-related delays.

At that point, they discovered the Cinderella toilet, which incinerates waste with the push of a button. At $5,000, it was a comparative bargain. They put it into a new bathroom, along with a walk-in shower with glazed green wall tile.

Working with a local carpenter, they doubled the size of the kitchenette, from subatomic to minuscule. Its counters and cabinets are maple with brass hardware, and there is a two-burner electric cooktop and a dainty farmhouse sink.

The couple also expanded the size of the mezzanine’s sleeping platform to fit a queen-size bed. They put in Wi-Fi that they said works far better than their Wi-Fi in Tulum.

Outside, they laid down a driveway through the meadow and built a floating deck overlooking the creek.

The total cost of renovations, they estimated, was $60,000.

Recently, the Warrens welcomed Mr. Milstein, now 79, to check out the place. Despite the plaudits he received for his innovative shelter designs, he chucked the practice of architecture decades ago and now works as an aerial photographer with a studio in Kingston, N.Y.

“It was cute,” he said of the Warrens’ house. He understood why the couple had brightened the interior with white paint, although he described himself as more of a natural-wood man. He also understood the sacrifice of the ground-level sleeping area in his original design to make room for a bigger kitchen.

“It was surprising how comfortable it was, with four of us hanging out there,” he added, alluding to the Warrens and his girlfriend, Kim Cantine. Ms. Cantine “had the idea that she wants to find these around the country and photograph me standing in front of them.”

Living Small is a biweekly column exploring what it takes to lead a simpler, more sustainable or more compact life.

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A somber gathering of artists and illustrators took place at a gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on a recent Friday evening. They were there for a Wright auction preview of the drawings and personal belongings of Jason Polan, the celebrated New York street artist who died of cancer at 37 in 2020.

The auction, “I Want to Know All of You: The Art & Collection of Jason Polan,” is part of a new initiative to preserve his legacy, but as the night carried on, Mr. Polan’s friends seemed content just to be in the presence of objects that let them feel closer to him.

A few guests wiped away tears as they looked at his impressionist sketches of city life. They included scenes of a hot dog vendor on Broadway, a woman carrying balloons on Canal Street and the fashion influencer Derek Blasberg ambling down Greene Street.

Armed with a Uniball pen and a Strathmore sketchpad, Mr. Polan chronicled the life of the city with an observational hunger that earned him the status of a doodling New York folk hero.

After moving from the suburbs of Michigan to Manhattan at 22, Mr. Polan developed a style that fed off the metropolis’s chaos. He spent his days on street corners and in subway stations conjuring his vignettes. He became known for his quixotic project, “Every Person in New York,” in which he attempted to capture each and every city dweller, resulting in a 2015 book that included a foreword by Kristen Wiig (who was one of his subjects).

“I am trying to draw every person in New York,” Mr. Polan wrote in the project’s blog. “It is possible that I will draw you without you knowing it.” He ended the mission statement by noting: “When the project is completed we will all have a get together.”

Mr. Polan’s inclusive ethos was encapsulated in the Taco Bell Drawing Club, in which he invited anyone to join him at a Taco Bell near Union Square to illustrate with him on Wednesdays. He also enjoyed commercial success, collaborating with brands like Uniqlo, Warby Parker and the Criterion Collection, and he had a visual column, “Things I Saw,” for The New York Times’s Opinionator blog.

That night at the gallery, the writer Emma Straub studied a pencil once held by Mr. Polan. The creative director Jen Snow reminisced about working with him to design postcards for Russ & Daughters Cafe. And the artist Richard McGuire said that Mr. Polan had shared a “similar spirit” with Keith Haring.

“Like Keith, it wasn’t about creating some precious art object for Jason,” he said. “It was about getting his art out into the world.”

Rich Jacobs, a close friend, said that Mr. Polan had dreamed of seeing his drawings at the Museum of Modern Art.

“Jason always had an ambition to have something in the MoMA’s permanent collection,” Mr. Jacobs said. “The style of his drawings probably didn’t help him in the uptight art world, but his work deserves to be there.”

Jen Bekman, the founder of the online gallery 20×200, reflected on Mr. Polan’s legacy while she sat beside his sketches.

“These are not doodles,” Ms. Bekman said. “That word is diminishing. People remember him as an illustrator, but Jason was a great artist, and his practice was his life.”

“There’s an inherent tension now about preserving his legacy, because people love his work for its accessibility, but Jason also took himself very seriously as an artist,” she continued. “He was humble, so it would have been hard for him to make his wishes known, and his illness happened fast. The missing puzzle piece of what Jason might have wanted is hard for me, but if there’s no effort to support his legacy, he’ll fade away.”

In the coming weeks, the rest of the initiative to preserve Mr. Polan’s legacy will unfold. In addition to the Wright auction — which was scheduled to take place on Friday — the New York Public Library is in final discussions to acquire hundreds of Mr. Polan’s sketchbooks for its permanent collection. Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair will bestow its inaugural Jason Polan award. And the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich., is planning to acquire some of his belongings.

But handling the legacy of an artist who died young is a fraught endeavor. And while Mr. Polan received recognition during his lifetime, he died half a year after his colon cancer diagnosis.

Lauri London Freedman, a former head of product development of the Whitney Museum of American Art, is the acting director of the newly formed Jason Polan L.L.C. (She is now the director of creative partnerships for New York University).

“We have endless gratitude for the veneration Jason’s work received in his lifetime, but in the world of capital-A art, accessibility can be interpreted as simplicity, and Jason’s practice was anything but simple,” Ms. Freedman said. “It’s up to all of us who were left behind to give people the chance to take a second look.”

After Mr. Polan died in 2020, his father, Jesse, started the process of clearing out his son’s cluttered SoHo apartment, which was piled with heaps of his Strathmore sketchbooks. He drove his son’s belongings back to Franklin, Mich. There were about 1,800 boxes filled with the artist’s possessions.

His father died a year later, and Mr. Polan’s mother, Jane, began working with Ms. Freedman and a team of her son’s friends to sift through the boxes.

As the volunteer group — which included Stacey Baker, a former photo editor at The New York Times Magazine, and Fritz Swanson, a writing professor at the University of Michigan — made their way through the collection, they discovered piles of rejected New Yorker cartoons, childhood crayon drawings, rare comic books and dozens of paperback copies of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

The final tally of sketchbooks numbered 769. While archiving them, the team studied the evolution of Mr. Polan’s style, from straightforward drawings of New Yorkers to increasingly sophisticated abstractions.

They also discovered countless examples of his serendipitous celebrity sketches: Jerry Seinfeld eating a pizza, Diane Keaton hailing a taxi, Lindsay Lohan on Spring Street. (A grandfather of Mr. Polan, Saul Turell, was a president of Janus Films and won an Academy Award for making the 1979 documentary short “Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist.”)

Jane Polan, who keeps her son’s drawings taped around her home, reflected on the initiative in a phone interview.

“I think Jason would have loved to be as famous as Keith Haring one day,” she said. “But he cared most of all about wanting his work to recognize the importance of all people. Jason wanted people to know that everyone he drew was special and of value.”

Last week, as part of her preparations for the legacy initiative’s rollout, Ms. Freedman navigated the New York Art Book Fair to judge the works of honorees for the first Jason Polan Award.

“I don’t know how Jason would have felt about judging,” Ms. Freedman mused. “Because it means by definition there’s a winner and a loser, and he didn’t really think about things that way.”

And on a recent evening, she visited a Manhattan Mini Storage facility in Chelsea, where Mr. Polan’s sketchbooks are temporarily being kept. She seemed preoccupied, burdened by the weight of dealing with a friend’s life and legacy. But as she started flipping through Mr. Polan’s sketchbooks, she brightened.

“He loved drawing these plants,” Ms. Freedman said, holding up a page. “Those little ones that grow out of city sidewalks.”

Then she considered a sketch of a bald man napping on a C train. Despite the bustle all around him, he seemed peaceful in his slumber.

“Jason wasn’t just looking at people,” she said. “He was seeing them.”

They waltzed down the steps of Central Park’s Vanderbilt Gate on Fifth Avenue on Wednesday morning like Marilyn Monroe in her bejeweled performance of the song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

But here, there were many more women, each of them escorted by a waiter in a white coat, seemingly floating down the staircase and into the Conservatory Garden. And instead of diamonds, they wore hats or fascinators or headbands made of feathers, Legos and artificial flowers. One was even fashioned as a swan.

The procession that entered the 42nd annual Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon at the Conservatory Garden — or the hat luncheon, as it is colloquially known — donned frocks in shades of pink, orange, lavender, ice blue and Kelly green — enough colors to rival the eggs in an Easter basket.

The luncheon is an annual occasion that serves as a trumpet song of spring in the city and a fund-raiser for the Central Park Conservancy. This year, over 1,000 guests, including philanthropists, designers, members of the Central Park Conservancy and overall lovers of Central Park, raised over $4.6 million for the preservation and upkeep of Manhattan’s green jewel.

“It’s a big celebration for Central Park and the people who really love and care for the park,” said Betsy Smith, the president and chief executive of the Central Park Conservancy.

This year’s event, which honored Diane Schaub, the Central Park Conservancy’s curator of gardens, along with the Conservancy’s garden staff, took nine months to plan, according to Ms. Smith. It is the biggest fund-raiser for the park, and the money raised will go toward operating costs for the park, including landscaping and park maintenance.

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who arrived after the procession in a navy blue jacket and hunter green tie, is a longtime supporter of the park and a former board member.

“They’ve got to raise money all the time; Central Park doesn’t get enough money,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

“When she asks for money, you just write a check,” he said, looking toward Ms. Smith as she walked by him to take her seat beside his. “Just say yes. I learned that many years ago from her.”

While some attendees began to take their seats and enjoy their lunch of poached salmon with a kohlrabi and avocado salad, the gowned and the heeled made the rounds.

Abby Phillip, the CNN anchor, said this was her first time at the luncheon.

“I just moved to New York, so it’s quite the welcome to the city,” said Ms. Phillip, who was wearing a lavender dress from Amsale and a light gray fascinator.

“When I lived in New York years ago, I would just, like, ride from Harlem all the way down to Central Park South,” she said. “It’s like therapy, honestly, just to have this smack dab in the middle of the city. It is so beautiful.”

Ms. Phillip was invited by her friend Mireyah D’Angelo, who was wearing a large fascinator from Eve Bari with shiny black feathers.

For Ms. D’Angelo, a banker with JP Morgan Chase, supporting the park means protecting the memories of her daughter’s childhood.

“I have a 25-year-old-daughter who we basically raised her in New York using the park,” said Ms. D’Angelo, who was wearing a white linen dress. “This is the only way to ensure that this oasis that we have in the city stays beautiful for absolutely everyone in the city.”

While there were no children in attendance, Ylena Feuerman, a jeweler from Kyiv, found a way for her 12-year-old daughter, Mia, to contribute. Ms. Feuerman’s headpiece was made of Legos that clicked together to form flowers. The headpiece was a project she embarked on with her daughter and her nanny, Luda, a year ago.

“She painted it and put Legos everywhere,” said Ms. Feuerman, whose sky blue dress featured 3-D accents that were also made of Legos. “This is a message to Ukrainian kids to be safe and be happy.”

For others, like Katherine Gage Boulud, the restaurateur and wife of the chef Daniel Boulud, the park serves as an heirloom.

“So many of us are mothers and daughters of people who have supported the park for a long time, and we bring our children here,” she said. She was wearing a Julia Clancey headband with fuchsia orchids attached to it and a pink beaded miniskirt suit set by Carolina Herrera.

“This has taken on an even greater importance since Covid, when everybody realized just how much we depend on the park,” Ms. Gage Boulud said.

It is the democratization of the green space that is important to Kathleen Tait, a philanthropist who has attended the luncheon for 20 years.

“People have said for a long time that this was the backyard of New York City, but it was not true for my dad growing up here, it was not true for us,” said Ms. Tait, who wore a fascinator with gardenias in the front and a floating dragonfly in the back. “I want to help push this forward.”

It might not come as a surprise that Vanessa Williams, in the music video for her new single, “Legs (Keep Dancing),” can be seen showing off her legs.

Some may remember her showing off a lot more in a 1984 issue of Penthouse, that, after being published, led Ms. Williams to become the first Miss America forced to give up her crown, a decision that the pageant’s leaders have since apologized for.

Her legs in the “Legs” music video, unlike in the Penthouse photos, are for the most part clothed. Moschino shorts and fishnets, a spangly gold bodysuit and a pink feathered outfit are among the many items Ms. Williams, 61, wears while moving — mostly dancing — between locations that include a white-walled studio, a dimly lit limousine and a nightclub.

For certain viewers, Ms. Williams’s colorful wardrobe in the video might evoke other aspects of her career as an actress and singer, say, her past role as fashion editor Wilhelmina Slater in the TV show “Ugly Betty,” or her upcoming role as Miranda Priestly, the Anna-Wintour-inspired fashion editor, in the musical adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada,” arriving in London’s West End later this year.

Ms. Williams, speaking on a phone call on Tuesday after flying from Japan to New York, said that certain attire worn in the “Legs” video had connections to some of her past roles. For instance: A silky chartreuse corset and matching cargo pants by Adrienne Landau, a label she has worn since her days on “Ugly Betty.”

Another ensemble of sheer black top and zipper-covered red pants came from Trash and Vaudeville, the punk emporium in Manhattan’s East Village.

Ms. Williams, who developed her wardrobe for the video with the stylist Alison Hernon, said the clothes they chose were pieces she feels comfortable in and “that feel comfortable on my body.”

She added that her outfits in the video for “Legs,” her first non-holiday-related single in 15 years, were meant to not only highlight the song’s titular anatomy, but also what she described as its underlying message: That her decades-long career is ongoing and ever-expanding.

“I’m still here, still standing, still kicking,” Ms. Williams sings on the dance-pop single. “In fact, I’m the best I’ve ever been.”

“I’ve got a lot of stuff going on,” Ms. Williams said on the phone. Her to-do list includes plans to release a full-length album on a newly announced record label. She is also a producer of a new musical about the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, which is coming to Broadway around the same she starts performances of “The Devil Wears Prada” in London.

Ms. Williams has followed a career path blazed by Black performers like Diana Ross and Diahann Carroll, both of whom also served as inspiration for “Legs” and its music video, which opens with Ms. Williams dropping a cream-colored Michael Kors coat and a Worth & Worth hat — attire nodding to clothes Ms. Ross wore in the 1975 film “Mahogany,” Ms. Hernon said.

A line in the song’s chorus, “They say the legs are the last to go,” echoes the title of Ms. Carroll’s memoir, “The Legs Are the Last to Go,” released in 2008. Its cover featured a leggy portrait of Ms. Carroll, who died in 2019.

Ms. Williams, who starred in the film “The Courage to Love” alongside Ms. Carroll, said that the title and cover of her memoir reflect how, “with age, comes wisdom.”

“She’s realizing and accepting her body shape and all that comes with it,” Ms. Williams said. “And that’s what I think is reflected in what I wanted to say with this phase of my life and also in the music.”

Each spring a handful of attractive celebrities who do not seem as if they would hang out in any other situation are selected as co-chairs of the Met Gala, the black-tie blowout that is essentially the X Games of fashion (subtract motorcycles, add tulle).

This year, Anna Wintour, Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Hemsworth and Bad Bunny will head up the gala taking place on Monday. The co-chairs were revealed in February in an Instagram video created to look as if the five were yukking it up in a group text message. “I can free up that day,” Mr. Hemsworth wrote, with a winky face. Bad Bunny contributed three flame emojis.

Random as it may seem, co-chair selection is a delicate alchemy that seeks to telegraph the event’s appeal across age groups and creative industries, especially fashion, film, music and social media. The lineup of Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Naomi Osaka and Amanda Gorman in 2021 seemed to scream “We are relevant to Gen Z!”

The co-chairs also tend to be among the night’s earlier arrivals. Please, spare yourself the embarrassment of asking your Met Gala watch party whether that’s the Hemsworth who plays “Thor” or the Hemsworth who was in “The Hunger Games” — we’re here to help.

Try not to look too surprised. Ms. Wintour, 74, the global editorial director of Condé Nast and the editor in chief of Vogue, has been the driving force behind the gala since 1999 and has essentially become its perma-host. Since her first spin hosting the gala in 1995, she has been credited with transforming the event from a fusty dinner into one of the most coveted invites of the year, not to mention a blockbuster fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Ms. Wintour gets final say over every invitation sent and handpicks her co-chairs. She also hits the carpet each year in her signature helmet-like bob and a gown, often by Oscar de la Renta, Prada or Chanel. It’s one of the few times a year she leaves the sunglasses at home.

Zendaya

You know her from: the sands of Arrakis; the red carpets of Earth

Zendaya, 27, rose from Disney fame to leading roles in HBO’s Gen Z drama “Euphoria” and in the poly-curious tennis film “Challengers.” She has not attended the Met’s signature event since 2019 — but she has been turning pretty much every red carpet into her own personal Met Gala instead.

The actress promoted the film “Dune: Part Two” in a sandstorm of cyborg looks, including a gleaming, vintage robot suit by Mugler. Her “Challengers” press tour fashion has been explicitly athletic, like the varsity-style tennis dress she wore in Rome last month with tennis-ball stilettos to match.

Those looks were assembled by the “image architect” Law Roach, who showed up on the red carpet with Zendaya for her Met Gala appearance in 2019, as the fairy godmother to her Cinderella.

Jennifer Lopez

You know her from: the block

Ms. Lopez, 54, a singer and actress, has attended more than a dozen Met Galas since her first appearance in 1999. This is her first time serving as a co-chair, shortly after the release of her bewildering movie “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.”

Ms. Lopez has been a reliable source of fun on the Met’s carpet over the past two decades, wearing a giraffe-print Michael Kors gown with a punky bouffant in 2013 and an Indiana Jones hat with a faux-shearling stole in 2021. This year, she may accessorize with her husband, the actor Ben Affleck.

Bad Bunny, the 30-year-old megastar whose music draws from reggaeton, Latin trap and beyond, has reached the kind of success that expands the possibilities for Spanish-language pop worldwide, according to our critic Jon Caramanica. His 2022 album, “Un Verano Sin Ti,” was the most streamed of that year, and the first release performed in Spanish to receive a nomination for album of the year at the Grammy Awards.

He has also emerged as a gutsy, playful red-carpet presence. He showed up to last year’s Met Gala in a backless suit with a sweeping, floral train by Simon Porte Jacquemus. He has attended twice, and has been notably chill about the invitations. “I know that day is going to be an exciting thing,” he told The New York Times in 2022. “But I’m working a lot this week!”

Chris Hemsworth

You know him from: the Marvel and Hemsworth brother extended universes

Mr. Hemsworth, the 40-year-old Australian actor who swings around a hammer as “Thor” in the Marvel franchise, is probably nobody’s idea of a fashion innovator. But he is a dependable box-office hitmaker who has two major movies coming out in the next year: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “Transformers One.”

Mr. Hemsworth, who will be a first-time Met Gala attendee, is also a member of one of Hollywood’s famous families. It is not yet clear whether his brother Liam, known for his role in the “Hunger Games” franchise as well as his short-lived marriage to Miley Cyrus, will attend. Chris Hemsworth’s wife, the model and actress Elsa Pataky, seems a safer bet.

Will he go bananas on the red carpet? If his past attire is any indication, he may go for a tuxedo in black, navy or potentially even gray.

If you’re thinking of Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, you’re close! He is an “honorary chair,” as is Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of Loewe. (TikTok and Loewe, along with Condé Nast, are sponsors of the event.)

TikTok has been having a rocky time lately, thanks to a bill seeking to ban the app that was signed into law last week by President Biden. If Mr. Chew shows, who knows what outfit he might leverage to try and turn things around.

Vanessa Friedman contributed reporting.

Fortunes Told

My wife died in 1991. Her best friend and I grew close in mourning. That blossomed into love. But was it a good match? And so soon, just months later? After a Chinese dinner, we opened our fortune cookies. Hers: “He likes to flirt, but toward you his intentions are honorable.” Mine: “You or a close friend will be married within a year.” Married 32 years now, she struggles with cognition, and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. On a trip before that diagnosis, I stopped alone at a Thai diner. My fortune: “Embrace the change that is coming.” Love abides.— David B. Schock

Rebuilt Stronger

I dismissed the 1909 two-room schoolhouse when I first saw it. T-shirts were stuffed in the rafters. Rainwater pooled on linoleum floors. It smelled of cat urine and mice. But something brought me back there. Newly divorced, I too felt ragged and broken down. Maybe that’s why I decided to make an offer. Swearing off men, I dove into homeownership. It hasn’t always been easy but, 10 years later, we are both transformed: sturdy and proud. The schoolhouse taught me what marriage didn’t: to trust my instincts and take agency in my life. — Sarah Gundle

Keeping the Faith

It was surprising, given our opposing natures, that my dad’s unsolicited relationship advice was always spot on. He was the person to tell me to wait, that she’d come around. I kept the faith. Six months later, he was right. And now, two years into our relationship, she and I visit my parents. My mom takes joy in pointing out my dad’s and my girlfriend’s similarities — their frugality, loyalty and grit — to my chagrin. I guess faith is a good quality to have in abundance. — Julia Chin

Holding Tradition Close

The drip, drip, drip of a wet plastic bag takes me back to childhood chores. Mum would stand over me as I swished produce bags through bubbles in the kitchen sink. Her rough hands guided mine, teaching me like her mother, a child of Polish-Ukrainian immigrants, had taught her. We lost our language and last name, but this family tradition remained. I carried it with me to my homes in France, England, Australia. When cancer pinned mum to a chair, I poured my helplessness into washing her abandoned bags, pegging them on a string to dry, folding them into memories. — Kirsten Fogg

For a long time, Alicia and Craig Oberg disliked their house so much that they didn’t want to invite anyone over.

“We were actually embarrassed,” Ms. Oberg said of the house in Plymouth, Minn., which had a dated 1990s interior that “was just so far from what we felt our aesthetic was.”

But the 3,800-square-foot ranch house, built in 1981, had a few things going for it. For one, there was plenty of space: The couple, whose twins are now 14, bought it in August 2013 for $584,000, after outgrowing their previous home. And they loved the bucolic setting, between a horse farm and a small lake, but just 15 minutes from the center of Minneapolis.

“There was a necessity to find a place, and the lot was unbelievable,” said Ms. Oberg, 47, the founder of Destination Directive, a travel company.

“When we bought the house, we knew we’d have to remodel it,” said Mr. Oberg, 47, who works in investor relations and mergers and acquisitions at a public company.

But it took more than seven years to get around to renovating. “We were saving our pennies,” he said.

Finally, stuck at home during the pandemic, they decided they couldn’t wait any longer. In 2021, they contacted Anne McDonald, an interior designer in Minneapolis who had done work for a few friends.

“What I love about Anne is the depth of her work. There’s color, and there’s feeling and emotion behind everything she does,” Ms. Oberg said. “I didn’t want white-gloss anything.”

Better still, Ms. McDonald frequently collaborated with her father, Jim McDonald, a builder who ran McDonald Remodeling before recently retiring, so hiring her seemed like a turnkey solution.

Ms. McDonald, for her part, felt as if she had been given carte blanche. “Their disdain for this house, to me, was a green light to give it a whole new life,” she said.

With her father at her side to confirm what could and couldn’t be done, Ms. McDonald proceeded with an ambitious gut renovation. To create a more generous living room and maximize views toward the lake, they moved the staircase leading to the walkout basement and vaulted a previously flat ceiling. They added arched doors and doorways, installed more windows, and refreshed the exterior with new fiber-cement siding and a new roof.

To complete the transformation, the Obergs gave away their old furniture and worked with Ms. McDonald to find new vintage and contemporary pieces. The living room is now centered on a fireplace clad in Arabescato Corchia and a slender TV mounted in a custom wood frame that resembles a painting. For furniture, Ms. McDonald found vintage leather sling chairs, a tree-root coffee table and plum-colored swivel chairs. And Ms. Oberg picked out large photo-based artworks by Xan Padrón to add to the mix.

In the dining room, the McDonalds removed an unused fireplace, flattened the wall and added an antique cabinet that Ms. McDonald found at the Original Round Top Antiques Fair in Texas. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s dusty pink Dead Salmon, a color Mr. Oberg initially resisted because of its name.

“We put three swatches in front of him and told him to pick the one he liked best,” Ms. Oberg said. “He picked Dead Salmon.”

Ms. McDonald designed the kitchen around an oversized island with room for seating on three sides, confident that the Obergs would spend much of their time there. And sure enough: “We live at that island,” Ms. Oberg confirmed, “even though we didn’t have one before.”

They painted the kitchen cabinetry a deep green and created two pantry-like enclosures finished in black zellige tile: One serves as a breakfast area and garage for smaller appliances; the other contains a bar filled with special bottles the couple has collected while traveling.

“I just came back from South Africa and brought Craig some amber gin,” Ms. Oberg said. “It’s so fun to open that up when people come over now, because it tells our story, in a way, based on what we’re serving.”

Since completing the renovation in August 2022 at a cost of about $215 a square foot, they regularly invite people over. The interior is so appealing, in fact, that it has earned them a little extra income by serving as a photo-shoot location for Target, which is headquartered in Minneapolis.

“It just feels like it really reflects us now,” Ms. Oberg said. “And that makes all the difference.”

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Nick Joseph Viall is used to his dating life being on public display. From 2014 to 2017, he appeared in four seasons of the “Bachelor” franchise: two seasons of “The Bachelorette,” one season of “Bachelor in Paradise” and, finally, “The Bachelor.”

That’s all experience that has helped inform his relationship podcast, “The Viall Files,” and his 2022 book, “Don’t Text Your Ex Happy Birthday: And Other Advice on Love, Sex and Dating.”

But his relationship with Natalie Joy, whom he began dating in 2019, remained out of the public eye for several years. On April 27, the couple exchanged vows on an animal farm in Savannah, Ga.

They met in September 2019, when one of Mr. Viall’s Instagram photos popped up on Ms. Joy’s Explore page. She thought he was attractive, so she decided to send him a cheeky message: “You’re unreal.”

Though he doesn’t usually respond to DMs, Ms. Joy, 25, stood out, he said, adding that he thought she was “a very beautiful woman” and was “intrigued.” They started talking on the phone and texting, but they weren’t sure if they would ever actually cross paths in person. At the time, Mr. Viall, 43, was living in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Ms. Joy was living in Savannah, where she grew up.

In October 2019, Mr. Viall traveled to New York for a work engagement. (He had been an account executive at Salesforce before first appearing on “The Bachelorette” in 2014 and eventually transitioning to author, podcast host and media personality.)

Ms. Joy, who had lived in New York for two years after dropping out of high school at 15 to pursue a modeling career, flew to New York as well. The plan was to meet him in person while also catching up with old friends.

They met at the Williamsburg Hotel, had dinner and drinks and walked around Brooklyn. She had such a great time that she spent the whole weekend with him and ended up “ghosting” her friends, she said.

Neither expected much from their weekend together. “Here I was meeting a girl who lives in Savannah,” Mr. Viall said. “She’s meeting some guy who lives in L.A. That’s not necessarily a recipe for starting a relationship per se.”

But he was surprised by how much they connected, and he wanted her to meet two of his closest friends: Sharleen Joynt, a contestant on the 18th season of “The Bachelor,” and her husband, Andy Levine. Mr. Viall has known the couple since 2015, and they ultimately ended up leading the wedding ceremony on Saturday.

“I really value their opinion, and they’re pretty honest friends, so I was curious about what they thought of Natalie,” Mr. Viall said. “And they loved her instantly.”

Ms. Joynt and Mr. Levine remember meeting Ms. Joy over dinner at Ferns, a restaurant in the East Village. Mr. Viall had been their “go-to third wheel,” Ms. Joynt said. They had been an established group of three. But Ms. Joy “was such an effortless addition to our group,” Ms. Joynt said.

About a week later, Ms. Joy accepted an invitation to visit him in Los Angeles. They lounged on the beach in Venice, walked along the boardwalk, and enjoyed each other’s company. They indulged in the day-to-day activities. “It didn’t really matter what we did,” Ms. Joy said.

For the next 10 months, Mr. Viall and Ms. Joy met in Los Angeles, New York or Savannah about once a month.

At first, Ms. Joy leaned into the casual nature of their relationship and decided to just have fun with him. She was being realistic, she said, knowing that they lived far from each other. But as time progressed, she wanted something more serious.

About four months after they started seeing each other, she told him that. “Nick politely declined,” Ms. Joy said. He had been single for a while and was hesitant to enter a relationship. (As for their age difference, Mr. Viall has said that it initially “was something I was self-conscious about.”)

Binge more Vows columns here and read all our wedding, relationship and divorce coverage here.

Nevertheless, Mr. Viall still wanted to spend time with her. “Every time she left, I just always would miss her,” he said.

When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Ms. Joy flew to Los Angeles and stayed with Mr. Viall for a week. It was the most time they had spent together — that week they really got to know each other. “Up to that point, it was always like a weekend here and a weekend there,” Mr. Viall said.

After a week, she decided to return to Savannah, where her family was and where she was working as a surgical technologist for a reconstructive surgeon at Georgia Institute for Plastic Surgery. “I remember being bummed out,” Mr. Viall said.

Ms. Joy was standing her ground. She set boundaries and made sure she wasn’t investing too much time and energy into Mr. Viall, because she knew she wanted a relationship, and he was not offering that to her. But she had a feeling that he would eventually come around.

“I feel like the reason I stuck around for so long is because I genuinely always knew it was him, and I just knew he would come around at some point,” Ms. Joy said. “Every time I was with him, I felt at home. I felt super safe and protected.”

She didn’t wait around for him, though, and she continued to date other people.

One day that summer, he FaceTimed her as she was getting ready for a date, and he asked her what she was getting ready for. She told him the truth. “I didn’t have the right to get mad,” Mr. Viall said. “I was more frustrated with myself. And I respected her for sticking to her guns.”

Ms. Joy became less and less available — answering his calls less often and responding to his texts slower.

“I wasn’t fully giving her everything she deserved at the time,” Mr. Viall said. “She wasn’t going to stick around for something that was less conventional. Which I obviously always respected about her and, you know, made me really have to think long and hard about what was important to me.”

“I finally realized that even though I had my fears — you can always think of reasons not to do something that you’re worried about — that wasn’t worth losing her,” Mr. Viall added. “And so I kind of got over my insecurities or fears.”

While she was on a trip to Puerto Rico in July 2020 with her sister, he texted her and asked if they could talk. He wanted to work it out. And he told her that he loved her.

After her trip, Ms. Joy visited him in Los Angeles, and the two became exclusive. Around the same time, Mr. Viall was looking for houses in L.A.

“I remember him telling me, ‘I’m looking at these houses, and I’m picturing you in them with me,’” Ms. Joy said. She moved into his new home in Valley Village in November 2020.

“In Natalie’s presence, Nick is more relaxed,” Ms. Joynt said. The couple did their first joint interview in July 2021 on Ms. Joynt and Mr. Levine’s podcast “Dear Shandy.”

“It was really sacred to him,” Ms. Joynt said about their relationship. “Once you make something public, there’s a lot out of your control. And I think it speaks to how precious he saw this relationship, that he wanted to keep it as private as he did.”

Ms. Joynt added that she and Mr. Levine had met other women Mr. Viall had dated. And they had heard about many others. But, “most of them never got past the starting point.” (Mr. Viall had become engaged on his season of “The Bachelor,” but the engagement ended later that year.)

In January 2023, Mr. Viall proposed by organizing a fake movie screening for Tom Hanks’s film “A Man Called Otto.” He convinced her they would be attending by making a fake flier with details including the address and dress code, and booked a venue in Venice, Create Studios. Mr. Viall even hired extras who stood in line with her to enter the venue. When she entered, though, the floor was decorated with 200 candles, and a big screen in the back of the room began playing a prerecorded video of Mr. Viall speaking to the camera.

“Thank you for falling in love with me and making me feel safe enough to fall in love with you,” Mr. Viall said in the video, while crying. “I know when we first met, I was a tough nut to crack. It probably felt like it was tough to get me to open up. So thank you so much for being patient with me.”

“Look up by the stairs,” Mr. Viall said in the video. There he was in the flesh, walking down the staircase to propose.

In February, the couple welcomed their daughter, River Rose Viall. Mr. Viall, who grew up in Milwaukee, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and supply chain management. In addition to his podcast, which is under his media company, Envy Media, Mr. Viall is a host and relationship expert on the unscripted show, “Patti Stanger: The Matchmaker.”

Ms. Joy, who returned to high school and graduated, received a degree in surgical technology from Savannah Technical College. She currently works as a surgical technologist for Dr. Mehryar Ray Taban, an ocular facial surgeon based in Beverly Hills. She is also a regular on “The Viall Files.”

On April 27, the couple were wed before 164 guests at Magnolia Farm and Stables, an animal farm in Savannah owned by Ms. Joy’s sister. Mr. Levine, who was ordained through the American Marriage Ministries for the occasion, led the ceremony, with Ms. Joynt taking part.

The theme of the wedding was “Vogue on the farm,” Mr. Viall said. “Very posh, very elegant, but it’s on an animal farm,” Ms. Joy added.

JoJo Siwa, Josh Peck, the actor formerly of “Drake & Josh,” and Katie Maloney from “Vanderpump Rules” were among the guests. Ms. Joy wore a gown by Macye Wysner of Cinq, while Mr. Viall was gifted a tuxedo by Hugo Boss for the ceremony.

The couple had a “country chic” welcome party the Friday before the wedding, leaning into Ms. Joy’s Southern roots with a mechanical bull, a vat of boiled peanuts and lots of cowboy hats, suede, fringe and denim.

The theme was unrelated to the current cowboy hype: “I’ve rode horses for a while. That farm has been in my family for a while,” Ms, Joy said. “Natalie’s always been a bit of a country girl,” Mr. Viall added.

On This Day

When April 27, 2024

Where Magnolia Farm and Stables, Savannah, Ga.

‘Vogue on the Farm’ Guests took local trolleys to the farm for a sunset ceremony with handwritten vows. Rescue animals wandered around the 280-acre property farm: miniature cows, baby goats, horses and peacocks. A lake, willow trees and twinkling lanterns served as the backdrop.

A Do Over Ms. Joy walked down the aisle with their daughter in her arms before handing the baby to her mother. At the altar, after Mr. Levine began his speech, Ms. Joy realized that her train and veil were bunched up. She stopped the ceremony, readjusted her accessories, and they started from the top.

Late-night Waffle House Guests dined on traditional Southern fare and late at night, they indulged in Waffle House, which had been gifted and was served from a food truck.

Blade, the helicopter charter company, was founded 10 years ago as a way for commuters going between New York and the Hamptons to avoid vehicle traffic.

This May it is introducing a new service, the Hamptons Streamliner, that, starting at $195 a ticket, will take passengers to destinations on eastern Long Island aboard … a bus.

Like Blade’s helicopters, seats on which start at $1,025, its buses are marketed as a luxurious option for Hamptons-goers. Seats can recline up to 45 degrees and passengers will be offered free refreshments like espresso martinis, PopUp Bagels and Sweetgreen salads as they make their way from Manhattan to stops in Southampton, Bridgehampton and East Hampton via the Long Island Expressway.

Other amenities include a call button at each seat to get the attention of an attendant who can bring riders a snack, a drink, a hot towel or a cashmere blanket. Those who spring for one of seven premium seats, which cost $275, can also ride with a pet (for an additional fee).

The 19-passenger coaches, of course, will be subject to the same gridlock and hourslong traffic delays any vehicle can encounter on the expressway — making the onboard perks a main draw, said Roisin Branch, Blade’s chief marketing officer. “This level of service is commensurate to what you would see in private aviation,” she said.

Ms. Branch said that Blade leaders saw a space in the market between more affordable Hamptons bus services like the 54-seat Jitney or 30-seat Ambassador — tickets for which start at $41 and $64 — and pricier modes of transportation like helicopters, which have drawn mounting complaints from residents of New York City and the Hamptons about noise and other disruptions.

The Hamptons Streamliner is a partnership between Blade and the Jet, a high-end coach service between New York and Washington, D.C., which supplied the two buses being used for the new transit service. (Each bus cost about a million dollars to buy and outfit, said Chad Scarborough, the founder of the Jet.) Operations will start just before Memorial Day weekend and run into the fall.

Hamptons-bound buses will pick up passengers at only one location in Manhattan: Hudson Yards, the neighborhood of luxury apartment buildings, stores and office towers occupied by technology companies like Meta and financial firms like BlackRock and Point 72. Buses returning to Manhattan will stop at an East Side location before ending their route at Hudson Yards.

“We wanted to make it an express,” Ms. Branch said. “The less stops, the more premium it is for the community that we’re serving.”

She added that Hudson Yards was chosen as the Streamliner’s starting point with the hope that some Hamptons-bound people who work there will opt for a bus ride instead of driving or booking a chauffeured car.

Bianca D’Alessio, 31, a real estate broker in New York, has taken both Blade helicopters and Jitney buses to the Hamptons. Ms. D’Alessio, who appears in “Selling the Hamptons,” a real-estate-focused reality TV show on the streaming service Max, described the Jitney as “no frills” and said “a smaller bus experience” offering more luxury could appeal to certain riders.

But other commuters like Chloe Hechter, 23, who lives in New York and whose parents have a home in the Hamptons, saw less value in splurging on a more luxurious way to sit in traffic.

Ms. Hechter, a recent graduate of Syracuse University, has occasionally taken Ambassador buses, which offer passengers free wine and coffee, but said she preferred taking Jitney buses because they are less expensive.

“If I want to spend a summer weekend out there, I would just rather the cheapest, easiest way to get out,” she said.

It hasn’t been the “nerd prom” for a while. Once a popular target of jokes about bad fashion (and not just from the evening’s featured comedian host), the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner has morphed in recent years into a less campy, more staid prelude to the Met Gala, which takes place days later. It’s only fitting, really, given the subtext of journalists being jailed around the world.

Still, the bar for serious style has been raised by the mix of media, political and Hollywood figures that populate the guest list. Not that it’s just the celebs au fait with stylists and designer brands who are working the entrances. This year’s headliner, President Biden, has such a propensity for aviators that his accessories have practically become part of his political platform. He even turned them into material for his stand-up routine at last year’s dinner. (Hello, Dark Brandon.)

After all, what is a red carpet but a photo op in better clothing? And how many politicians have met a photo op they didn’t want to seize for a messaging moment? All anyone has to do is read their looks, if not their lips.

Case in point: Senator John Fetterman, who doubled down on his signature style by showing up in a black tie version of his usual hoodie ’n’ shorts (white tie hoodie, black basketball shorts).

While Mr. Fetterman may have been in the minority among his political peers, with most of whom following the president’s example and opting for a traditional tux, creative black tie proved a talking point. See Billy Porter in a black sequin caftan over a classic white shirt; Questlove, in an artistically paint-splattered jacket; and Fran Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA president, in a white brocade pantsuit.

Presenting the fashion equivalent of a united front were Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris, making their red carpet debut as a couple in matching Harbison looks, as well as Scarlett Johansson and her husband Colin Jost, in coordinating Giorgio Armani.

In the end, though (and not surprisingly), the majority vote went dark — at least judging by Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, in a one-sleeved body-hugging dress with a feathered, asymmetric neckline; Keri Russell of “The Diplomat,” in a sleeveless gown with matching scarf; the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, whose plunging look was covered in a scrim of tulle; and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose high-necked sequin column faded into transparency at the shoulders. As a rare bipartisan choice, it was something to dine out on.

The early arrivals at a party thrown by the Hollywood powerhouse Creative Artists Agency on Friday night seemed to be weighing the same question: Just how much could they expect to let loose during this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner weekend?

Their game of chicken did not go on long. By 8 p.m., guests at the talent agency’s event, held at La Grande Boucherie in Washington, were applying temporary tattoos to one another’s necks and trying to prevent their drinks from sloshing onto a baby grand piano.

The weekend’s main event, known as “nerd prom,” is a Saturday night banquet at the Washington Hilton Hotel. There, Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” plans to gently roast President Biden, who is expected to take the dais and attempt some zingers of his own.

In addition to the annual dinner, the intertwined media and political classes celebrate themselves at a succession of receptions and parties that have made April a bustling month for the D.C. social set.

Despite wars, campus unrest and the criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump, plenty of journalists and power brokers appeared determined to make the most of this year’s schmoozefest.

“It’s really exciting to be able to just put politics aside, for one beautiful weekend,” said Desi Lydic, a senior correspondent for “The Daily Show.” “As well as our ethics.”

The CAA party was held in honor of Mr. Jost, who made the rounds with his wife, Scarlett Johansson. Mr. Jost’s boss, the “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, marched straight to the food table upon his arrival. When he was asked what looked good, he replied, “The vegetables.”

Other guests included the second gentleman Doug Emhoff, the White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and the newscaster Andrea Mitchell. Hollywood was represented by the actors Rosario Dawson, Chris Pine and Kyle MacLachlan, whose political résumé includes his role as a fictional mayor in “Portlandia.” The CAA contingent was led by the company’s chief executive, Bryan Lourd, and the agents Rachel Adler and Joe Machota.

Located in a former bank on 14th Street, La Grand Boucherie is a stately two-story restaurant trimmed with stained glass and a gilded ceiling. Unlike those married couples who split up at parties to work the room separately, Mr. Jost and Ms. Johansson, both CAA clients, went around in tandem. At one point, as they maneuvered around a demiclad statue, Mr. Jost did his best to fend off questions about his role as the host of this year’s dinner.

“I’m too nervous right now,” he said.

Upstairs, Naomi Biden, the eldest of the president’s grandchildren, said that no celebrity sighting would excite her as much as her run-in with Ariana Madix of “Vanderpump Rules” during last April’s festivities. “I was like, ‘I feel like I’m the only one who appreciates that you’re here,’” Ms. Biden recalled.

But only so many cheese boards could stave off conversations about the media industry’s challenges: layoffs in newsrooms, the threat of artificial intelligence and the jailing of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia more than a year ago.

“The underlying tone of this weekend is, What do we do about Evan Gershkovich?” said Sara Fischer, the senior media reporter at Axios. “Behind every glass of champagne is an editor talking about him right now.”

The social agenda had begun on Thursday evening, when Politico hosted a kickoff reception at the British ambassador’s residence on Embassy Row.

The 17,000-square-foot manse, designed in the 1920s by the architect Sir Edward Lutyens, is an ever so slightly scaled down version of an English country estate. A sign bearing the royal coat of arms shooed certain guests away from a room full of chairs upholstered in white fabric: “No red wine in our drawing room please.”

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland held court in the garden, where fragrant peonies were in springtime bloom. Nearby, standing close to a tower of whoopie pies, Goli Sheikholeslami, the chief executive of Politico, was deep in conversation with David Risher, the chief executive of Lyft.

It is rare these days for a marquee fete to go without a sponsorship or some sort of brand presence, and the party at the embassy was no exception. An amiable server, cigar clipper in hand, offered an assortment of Diamond Crown Cigars. One guest was observed having a contemplative smoke on a bench in the garden.

“This weekend has become the highlight of the Washington social calendar,” Ms. Sheikholeslami told the crowd. “What started out as the ‘nerd prom’ has become somewhat of D.C.-palooza.”

But even amid the merriment and peacocking, outside events could not help but crash the party. Dame Karen Pierce, Britain’s ambassador to the United States, who hosted the event with Ms. Sheikholeslami, said she had attended a memorial that morning for seven aid workers killed in Gaza while delivering food for World Central Kitchen.

“A very difficult time in the world,” she said.

Some of the most coveted invitations came from the new class of digital news start-ups. John Boehner, the former speaker of the House, was among the guests who rode elevators to the top floor of Riggs Washington D.C., a luxury hotel in the Penn Quarter where Puck was hosting a party with the talent agency William Morris Endeavor.

The screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin sat for an interview with the Puck writers Matthew Belloni and Peter Hamby that was recorded for Mr. Belloni’s podcast, “The Town.” Mr. Sorkin offered his takes on TikTok and artificial intelligence before the presidential campaign came up.

“Can I get an Aaron Sorkin anxiety check on Joe Biden and his re-election chances?” Mr. Hamby asked.

“I’m as worried as can be,” Mr. Sorkin responded.

As Mr. Sorkin delivered a monologue about Meta’s handling of misinformation during the 2020 election, guests who were not in the mood for wonky conversation posed for selfies at kiosks provided by Snap, formerly Snapchat, in the other room.

Joanna Coles, the onetime Hearst Magazines executive who was recently named the content chief of The Daily Beast, navigated podcasters sipping espresso martinis. Areas of interest for The Beast under her leadership? “Money, ambition, power, revenge and betrayal,” she said. “And, of course, we’re captivated by Lauren Sanchez.”

Nearby, Jon Favreau, the Obama speechwriter turned “Pod Save America” host, observed that the weekend’s social scene seemed to have rallied since its Covid-era lull. “It’s a lot of people like, ‘We’re out, we’re back, we’re partying,’” he said. “It’s like a high school reunion with grown-ups.”

The next night the social whirl moved to the Kalorama neighborhood, where a party for the digital news outlet Semafor took place under the watch of Secret Service agents in a private home not far from the Obamas’ residence.

The house belonged to Justin Smith, the former chief executive of Bloomberg Media who, in 2022, joined forces with Ben Smith, the former top editor of BuzzFeed News, to start Semafor.

Standing in his kitchen, Justin Smith said that his teenage son was upstairs playing video games and his Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Teddy, was in the basement. He lamented that the dog did not have a more distinctive name; a mistake he did not repeat when naming Semafor.

Ben Smith, who put in a roughly two-year stint as the media columnist for The New York Times, was seen joking around with the White House communications director Ben LaBolt. Other guests included Jim Bankoff, the chief executive of Vox Media, and Kasie Hunt, the CNN This Morning host.

Although he seemed bullish about his own operation, Justin Smith said he was stressed about how the news media would handle the upcoming presidential election. “It’s sort of unprecedented, the amount of misinformation, the amount of polarization, the amount of bias,” he said.

He continued: “Can everyone appeal to their better angels and somehow rise above a lot of this stuff and really look at things objectively and factually and independently?”

In a backyard lit by magenta floodlights, a photo backdrop with Semafor branding was set up next to a basketball hoop. The D.J. Lance Reynolds played relaxed music from the patio, where guests sipped rum punch with their backs to the pool. Everyone appeared a little wary of dancing — it seemed all too easy to fall in.

“This line is crazy,” said the broadcast journalist Don Lemon, as he walked toward the red carpet crush shortly after 7 p.m. on Thursday night.

He was bound for the Time 100 Gala, the annual black tie schmoozefest in Manhattan where a 100-person smorgasbord of luminaries — tech titans, activists, Oscar winners, pop stars, athletes and artists — was celebrated by the magazine as the most important people of the year.

If you honor them, they will come. And the celebrities who were feted at the event included Colman Domingo, Taraji P. Henson, Dev Patel, Patrick Mahomes and Dua Lipa.

Mr. Lemon, who arrived with his husband, the real estate broker Tim Malone, was not among the honorees. Still, he took questions from the journalists at the barricades who wanted to know about his recent wedding and which brand of tuxedo he was wearing for the night’s occasion.

“Suit Supply,” Mr. Lemon said. Then corrected himself: “No, Ralph Lauren.”

Maya Rudolph ambled toward a packed elevator. She was being honored by the magazine for her role in “Loot,” the Apple TV+ comedy in which she plays the ex-wife of a tech billionaire who uses the windfall from her divorce to become a philanthropist (think: MacKenzie Scott).

As the elevator car headed toward cocktails and dinner, Ms. Rudolph was focused on a slight problem with her black blouse. “The thing about linen is that it attracts lint,” she said, as seemingly everyone around her watched her pick it off, speck by speck.

Moments later, the guests arrived on the 16th floor at One Columbus Circle — the building formerly known as the Time Warner Center, now called the Deutsche Bank Center — where floor-to-ceiling windows provided a view of Central Park.

At the front of the room was Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who in March won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role in “The Holdovers.”

Nearby, the comedian Alex Edelman said he had learned he was on the Time 100 list just a couple weeks ago, right before his one-man show, “Just For Us,” debuted on Max. “I want to meet Jenny Holzer really badly,” he said, speaking of the painter who was among the honorees. “I don’t even know what she looks like. I just love her work.”

At 8 p.m., the guests were ushered into an atrium with three levels. Mr. Edelman huddled with fellow Time 100-ers including Mr. Domingo, the actor, and Kelley Robinson, the first Black woman to lead the LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign.

At a table on an upper level was Lauren Blauvelt, who was honored for her work with the reproductive rights organization Planned Parenthood. At another table was Thelma Golden, who was honored for her promotion of the arts as the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

For the second year in a row, the gala was being filmed for an ABC television special. Which meant that, in addition to a salad with very little dressing and a grilled salmon with barley, there were lots of starts and stops during the course of the evening.

Ms. Henson, an Oscar-nominated actress who starred in the recent big-screen version of “The Color Purple,” was among the first to take to the stage. “Welcome to the 2024 Time 100 gala,” she said. “I’m Taraji P. Henson and we — we!— are the most influential people of the year. Can you believe that?”

She offered shout-outs to “the visionaries and thought leaders” who “together could save the world” or at least “crush a game of Jeopardy.” She then waved from the stage to her “sister from another mister,” the television host Kelly Ripa, another member of Time’s class of ’24.

In a Time 100 gala tradition, honorees raised their glasses to those who have inspired them. Ms. Rudolph, the first up, gave a toast to Beyoncé. Michael J. Fox, the winner of a special impact award for his work on behalf of Parkinson’s disease, paid tribute to his father, William Nelson Fox, who died in 1990.

The actor said his father did not have a high school degree but had demonstrated how one could persevere with a “master’s degree” in adversity. “It would be his 95th birthday this weekend,” Mr. Fox said. “He was 61 when he died. I’m now 62.”

As servers cleared the tables, the rapper 21 Savage introduced the 2024 inductee, Mr. Mahomes, the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. He raised his glass to the entire field of women in competitive sports, throwing in a plug for the Kansas City Current, the professional women’s soccer team in which he and his wife, Brittany Mahomes, have an ownership stake.

A little after 10 p.m., Ms. Robinson, the chief executive of the Human Rights Campaign, gave the evening’s final speech. She declared that she and her fellow honorees were “proof that the story of America is the story of progress, equality, and change.”

After which the singer Dua Lipa took to the stage to perform “Houdini” and two other songs.

“Thank you, Time 100,” she said, clutching the microphone. “It is such an honor to spend the evening with you.”

Divya Jakatdar imagined that she would spend her senior year of high school celebrating college acceptances with her friends, attending prom and walking across the stage at graduation to the cheers of her family members.

Instead, her senior spring arrived at the same time as the coronavirus pandemic. She said goodbye to high school classmates over Zoom; her graduation was a drive-through.

Ms. Jakatdar, 21, thought her senior year at the University of Southern California might be a kind of do-over. But it has erupted into unrest in recent weeks after the school initially canceled commencement speeches by its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, the director Jon M. Chu and the tennis star Billie Jean King, citing safety concerns related to the Israel-Hamas war, and then went a step further on Thursday, canceling the university’s “main stage” commencement ceremony entirely.

“It’s a very big hit to morale for the exact class that felt like they lost their high school graduation,” Ms. Jakatdar, the student body president of U.S.C., said a few minutes after getting news that the commencement was off. “We’ve missed out on enough.”

But as was the case during Covid, Ms. Jakatdar does not feel quite right about moping: “It seems sort of ridiculous for us to complain about graduation when people’s lives are on the line.”

It is a story that is playing out across the country. Millions of high schoolers had their senior years upended by Covid in 2020, being left to celebrate their momentous occasion in isolation. Four years later, many of those same students have had the traditions of their senior years foiled once again, this time in response to the Israel-Hamas war, and the attempts by universities to shut down or contain widespread protests.

At Columbia University in New York City, the university president called the police to clear an encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 protesters. Classes were moved online for the remainder of the spring semester. At U.S.C., students protested for days, calling the administration to reinstate Ms. Tabassum as speaker. The wave of student activism extends to pro-Palestinian protests at schools including Yale University, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Austin and M.I.T.

Members of the class of 2024 say they are once again juggling an altered personal milestone with feelings of anxiety and frustration about the state of the world that lies beyond college. Many of them say they are keeping their own inconveniences in perspective, but the fact remains: The class of pandemic graduates seems destined never to know a stereotypical senior year.

“A lot of our milestones have had some big, looming global atrocity over us,” said Sophia Pargas, a senior at Emerson College in Boston. “It’s almost like we’ve been conditioned for it at this point.”

Ms. Pargas, 21, has spent recent months covering protests on campus and arrests of her fellow students for her school paper, The Berkeley Beacon. Still, she said she is trying to find moments of celebration. She plans to attend a makeup prom that her class is hosting for seniors who never got to go the first time.

Maideh Orangi, 22, a senior at U.S.C. and an executive director of its Middle Eastern North African Student Assembly, has spent much of her year organizing demonstrations and vigils for the Palestinians killed in Gaza since Israel’s invasion.

“I expected it to be more typical senior year things,” Ms. Orangi said. “But I’m not upset that this has been a defining aspect of my senior year.”

Ms. Orangi said she and other students were shocked when the university-wide commencement ceremony was canceled. “The one glimmer of hope, the one bright side that I was looking forward to in all of this was that one commencement, and now it’s just all gone,” she said. “It feels like the whole end to my senior year is surrounded by a really sour feeling.”

For Rachel Burns, a senior at Columbia, a proper graduation has been a long time coming. When she graduated from high school four years ago, in Portland, Maine, she did so from her car in the school parking lot. This time around, her only plan is to make sure that she and her fellow protesters’ demands are met by the university.

“I think that what’s most important right now is that we stick together and put up a united front against the administration and if that means sacrificing my graduation, then I’m willing to do that,” Ms. Burns, 24, said while wearing a kaffiyeh around her head and dark sunglasses in front of Butler Library.

Not every student feels that way. Ruby Cayenne, 23, a senior at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, in Arcata, Calif., said she was heartbroken by the prospect that protests might disrupt her graduation. “I have put my blood, sweat and tears into getting this degree. The family on my father’s side are Cuban immigrants and they fought hard to get into this country and to provide a life where their future generations can get an education.”

Ms. Cayenne, who is Jewish and identifies as a Zionist, said that she had felt personally harassed by the individuals from the Humboldt for Palestine group. “They sought me out. They called me a genocide supporter, a baby killer, a fascist,” Ms. Cayenne said. “They don’t know me, they don’t know what I support. So to know that those people are potentially going to take away my opportunity to experience my hard-earned graduation is a horrible feeling.”

The emotions range widely among other affected students.

Neeve Levy, 24, who started at Columbia in 2020 after a couple gap years, was crushed when she realized classes would be remote because of the pandemic. Now a senior, she said she understands the protesters and struggles with not protesting herself but she sees how polarizing the topic has been.

“I have a lot of respect for the protesters and what the students are doing,” Ms. Levy said from Butler library. “I struggle with seeing how it’s affecting many of my Jewish friends.”

Ms. Levy’s grandparents live in Israel and have been excited to see their granddaughter graduate, but now that might not happen.

“At the beginning there were questions of whether or not they could make it because of airlines canceling after Iran bombed Israel,” she said. “It’s crazy to me, the fact that I’m actually graduating from here — or that I even got here — and the thing that’s stopping it is not me.”

Sofia Ongele, 24, was also not part of the 2020 pandemic class of high schoolers, but her own senior year wasn’t exactly what she expected. Her small charter school in Santa Clarita, Calif., closed around the time of her graduation, so the ceremony was small and disappointing, and a gap year was spent at home.

Now a senior at Columbia, her spring is being dominated by world events of a different kind. Speaking from inside the protest encampment on the south field of Columbia University’s Upper Manhattan campus, she said she couldn’t think of a better way to spend the last few weeks of her college years than taking part in a protest with her fellow classmates.

“Unfortunately, being Gen Z means dealing with repeated states of the world that are in absolute hostility and turmoil,” Ms. Ongele said, while standing in front of a community guidelines board in front of the encampment, wearing a black face mask. “We are the generation of school shootings, the generation that is tasked to deal with climate change. We’ve just been dealt the short end of the stick time and time again. I’m not going to say that it feels expected because I feel like at some point of our lives we should know normalcy but it’s been a lot.”

Having an actual commencement ceremony means a lot to Lindsay, 21, who requested to be identified by only her given name to protect her employment opportunities after college. Her graduation from a private high school in Manhattan, four years ago, was “anticlimactic,” she said, and she is now worried she may not get to celebrate her graduation from Columbia either.

“It’s a lot of emotions,” she said while standing in front of bleachers installed near Low Library in preparation for commencement. “Graduation from college is a pretty big deal.”

She said she was hopeful that commencement would go on at least in some capacity, even if she struggled to envision it.

“I am not sure how that would go on,” she said, glancing over at the encampment. “I would just hope that anybody who wants to protest gives space to people who are graduating and let it be about us seniors and not about anything else.”

With graduation less than a month away at Cal State Humboldt, a campus closure and student protests have triggered a wave of memories in some students.

Jacqueline V. Espinoza, 21, a senior at Humboldt, said it was around this time four years ago that she last experienced this kind of intersection of personal and global history.

“It was a surreal moment when I think of the class of 2020,” said Ms. Espinoza, an English major. “I remember like a bunch of the B.L.M. protests going on during that time, and now that I’m graduating in 2024, I can definitely see the parallels.”

Dezmond Remington, 20, also of Cal State Humboldt, said that while he was excited to finally graduate, he was hoping to finish in a more low-key fashion.

“I was really looking forward to an easy couple of last weeks where my whole family could be here and I could graduate and get on with my life,” he said

At U.S.C., Mustafa Ali Khan, 21, had been looking forward to his graduation, especially after transferring there following two years of community college. “One puts a lot of weight in these moments. It’s kind of like a culmination of a lot of work you put in.”

He said the decision to cancel U.S.C.’s main commencement would be especially painful for family members, many of whom had already made plans to come to campus.

“My mom’s saying she can’t wait for my grad school graduation now,” he said.

“Not tonight,” Cait Bailey told a photographer trying to take her picture inside an area cordoned off for special guests at a Louis Vuitton party at the Miami Beach Convention Center. “Not this time.”

Ms. Bailey, 34, suggested he instead aim his camera at Alix Earle, an influencer, and her boyfriend, Braxton Berrios, a professional football player with the Miami Dolphins.

“I’m not used to being the subject,” Ms. Bailey said as the photographer snapped Ms. Earle at the event, held during Art Basel Miami Beach in December.

Anonymity has become more elusive for Ms. Bailey, a publicist and brand strategist who runs the New York office of Align Public Relations, as her clients have grown to include people with large followings like Ms. Earle, the “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, the sibling influencers Charli and Dixie D’Amelio and the singer Zayn Malik. Last month, Ms. Bailey and several of her clients, including Ms. Cooper and Ms. Earle, attended the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals in Austin, Texas, where Ms. Cooper hosted an event promoting her podcast network.

Ms. Bailey’s relationship with Mario Carbone, 44, a chef and an owner of Carbone restaurant and other establishments, has also made it harder for her to avoid attention. (Mr. Carbone was at Ms. Cooper’s SXSW event, too; he prepared Carbone’s spicy rigatoni for guests.) He and Ms. Bailey, who live in Miami Beach and in New York, have been together for six years.

Ms. Bailey’s Instagram account has no photos but more than 72,000 followers — a disproportionate ratio that some who spend a lot of time online have noticed. “Anyone know what happened with Cait Bailey?,” a Reddit user posted in a forum called NYCInfluencerSnark. “She deleted all her photos.”

Ms. Bailey removed all of her photos last year because they “were just all really outdated,” she said. Posting new ones “was just starting to feel like a chore,” she added. “It was starting to feel like work.”

That’s not to say Ms. Bailey — who has long blond hair and whose appearance has been likened to Margot Robbie’s — doesn’t use social media.

Her Instagram Stories have often featured pictures of her clients at fashion shows (many of which she has attended with them), snapshots of designer items she has acquired or photos of her and Mr. Carbone with influential people like Michael Coste, an employee at Hermès who works with its notable customers.

A Networker ‘Like No Other’

Days after the Louis Vuitton event at Art Basel in December, Ms. Bailey glided through the crowd gathered outside manicured hedges along North Bay Road in Miami Beach. Behind the bushes, a party was being held at the waterfront home of Wayne Boich, a billionaire who runs a company that invests in real estate and energy businesses, and who started another company focused on the pickleball-like sport padel.

A song by the rapper Snoop Dogg was blasting through the shrubbery. He was performing live on the other side.

It was a Friday night around 11:30 p.m. and Ms. Bailey, after sliding past a bouncer, said hello to Sergey Brin, a founder of Google, who had a deck of cards in his hand.

“He’s a great magician,” she said loudly enough for Mr. Brin to hear, prompting him to perform a trick. Then, he asked Ms. Bailey if she could help get some people into the party. “Of course,” she said. Ms. Bailey typed a little on her phone and, like magic, those people were let inside.

As Ms. Bailey made her way through the party, she was greeted by Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who gave her a fist bump. Then she stopped to chat with a group that included Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber. At one point, Ms. Bailey congratulated a man and a woman with a big diamond on her ring finger. The couple had recently become engaged.

“When are you and Mario going to get engaged?” the woman asked Ms. Bailey.

“Oh, I can’t take on one more project right now,” Ms. Bailey replied with a laugh. “He’ll know when I’m ready.”

During Art Basel Miami Beach, Ms. Bailey went to some 20 events. Mr. Carbone, a self-described introvert, said Ms. Bailey’s “social ability” and “the way she controlled a room” were among the first things that had drawn him to her.

Ms. Earle, who started working with Ms. Bailey in February 2023, echoed Mr. Carbone’s sentiments. “When I first met Cait, no matter where we were or where we went, she knew someone important in the room and always took the time to introduce me,” Ms. Earle said. “She can network like no other.”

Ms. Bailey’s networking ability also appealed to Remi Bader, a plus-size influencer who started working with Ms. Bailey in 2021. Since then, Ms. Bailey has helped Ms. Bader develop relationships with brands like Valentino and Balmain.

“I feel like if I didn’t have Cait pushing for me and fighting for me, they wouldn’t have worked with me,” Ms. Bader said.

An Unexpected Plot Twist

Ms. Bailey, who grew up outside Baltimore, has built her network through several jobs, including positions at blue-chip and up-and-coming public relations agencies.

The path she has taken has deviated significantly from what she envisioned after graduating from Georgia Southern University in 2012, which she described as: Return to Baltimore’s suburbs, marry a lacrosse player and raise children who would go to the same private Catholic school that she attended.

“It was the dream,” Ms. Bailey said. “And I was excited for that future.”

Her mother, Patti Caudill, an assistant clinical professor of speech pathology, helped put her on a different trajectory. Not long after Ms. Bailey graduated from college, Ms. Caudill participated in a charity auction where she bid and won a prize for her daughter: an internship opportunity in New York at PMK BNC, a public relations firm.

“I came home one day and my mom was so excited,” Ms. Bailey recalled. “She said, ‘I just secured an internship for you.’”

Ms. Caudill said she never had any doubts that her daughter would be successful, but that she never envisioned Ms. Bailey having the career she has today. “She’s kind of blazed her own path,” she said.

Ms. Bailey’s internship led to a full-time job that involved keeping track of press about clients at PMK, which has since merged with Rogers & Cowan to form a new agency. Her desk was in a hidden-away area — “basically the supply closet,” as she put it. Its location made it a place where some employees “would come and cry,” she said, or vent.

Michael Cohen, an assistant at PMK when Ms. Bailey worked there, described her as his “work wife” back then. “It was clear she was a people person,” said Mr. Cohen, who is now the president of film and television at Lena Dunham’s Good Thing Going Productions. “She valued relationships.” He tipped Ms. Bailey off to what would be her next job: a position as an assistant to a publicist at PMK whose clients have included Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez.

After four years at the agency, Ms. Bailey left to work at a start-up digital concierge service. But it wasn’t long before she started to miss working in publicity, she said.

She quit and started working as a freelance publicist — a line of work she said she might still be in were it not for a phone call she received in 2019 from Nicole Perez-Krueger, a former publicist at PMK, who at the time was building a new company called Align Public Relations.

Good Instincts (and Timing)

Ms. Bailey, after being hired at Align, took a particular interest in influencers, or content creators, on TikTok. The app arrived in the United States in 2018, only a year or so before she started at Align.

Among the first potential clients she approached were Charli D’Amelio and her elder sister, Dixie, influencers who have parlayed their social media fame into a TV show.

Charli D’Amelio recalled that Ms. Bailey came to the sisters’ family home in Norwalk, Conn., for a meeting in March 2020, with a bag of bagels in tow. By the time Ms. Bailey left, the D’Amelios had made a verbal agreement to become Align clients.

“I had never heard of a publicist before and I didn’t know what that was or why I would want one,” Charli D’Amelio said. “Cait came over and explained what they do and how they would be able to help the family.”

By then, Ms. Bailey and Mr. Carbone had been dating for about two years. They met in 2018 at his namesake restaurant on Thompson Street in the Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

Mr. Carbone was there with a friend, he said, when he received a text message from Shay Mitchell, an actress with whom he is friendly, asking for a last-minute reservation. She was with Ms. Bailey; Ms. Mitchell, who is a client of Ms. Bailey’s, first met her when she was working at PMK.

“I told her we were full, but if you want to join us, you can,” Mr. Carbone recalled telling Ms. Mitchell. “She said, ‘Great, I’ll take it.’ And that’s how I met Cait.”

Introducing them, Ms. Mitchell said jokingly, “means reservations for life!”

Mr. Carbone said he grew up in a family in which “working hard was standard.” To be in a relationship with someone who has a similar work ethic “makes it easy,” he added, noting that Ms. Bailey’s achievements have had very little to do with his.

“There is no piggybacking on Major Food Group,” Mr. Carbone said, referring to his company, which has recently opened a string of restaurants in Florida.

A telling sign that he had fallen for Ms. Bailey, he said, was his decision to get rid of a beloved vintage U-shaped sofa in his New York apartment.

“It was beautiful, but it was impossible to sit on, to lay on,” Mr. Carbone said of the couch, a piece by the furniture designer Maurizio Tempestini. “In the beginning, she was nice about it because we were in the courting stage, and you don’t want to say anything. But eventually she was like, this is the worst couch ever.”

As Ms. Bailey has inspired Mr. Carbone to give up certain things, he has influenced her to take up new pursuits like backgammon. “She got better than me, and I admit that,” Mr. Carbone said, describing Ms. Bailey as a “bad loser and a worse winner.”

“If she wins, she gloats; if she loses, she finds an excuse at why I got lucky,” he said. “This goes for all games. It’s not a lot of fun to play with Cait.”

Not that Ms. Bailey has much time to play.

“She is really working away,” Mr. Carbone said.

Having a partner who is ambitious “and is just as passionate about what they do is a beautiful thing,” he added.

In the run-up to Meta’s first-quarter earnings report this week, a video image of Mark Zuckerberg suddenly started going viral.

Not because of the artificial intelligence assistant he was touting or because of the expected ad revenue growth, but because of the silver chain he was wearing around his neck.

“Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement about something Meta is doing with A.I., but I could not listen to or retain a second of it because when I look at the Reel of him talking, all I see is necklace,” Amy Odell wrote in her Substack, Back Row.

Later, a doctored version of the same picture with Mr. Zuckerberg sporting some scruffy facial hair got people even more excited. The 4,000-plus mostly drooling comments under an Instagram post from the celebrity news account The Shade Room included one from Gwyneth Paltrow, who compared Mr. Zuckerberg to her ex-husband, Chris Martin.

All of a sudden, it seems, people care a lot about how Mark Zuckerberg, 39, looks. At a time when the halcyon promise of technology has been cast in a darker, more suspicious light, the guy whose relentless allegiance to a gray T-shirt became synonymous with the nerd pledge to “move fast and break things” has somehow become the kinder, gentler face of technology.

“The history of Silicon Valley has always been about a carefully constructed image and narrative used to reinforce its myths,” said Venky Ganesan, a partner at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. But, he went on, “The playbook is changing.”

And Mr. Zuckerberg has emerged as the most visible sign yet that in the phenomenology of Silicon Valley, we are entering a post-Jobsian age.

Once upon a time, back in the days when Steve Jobs was the prophet of a better future through computing, the virtues of his approach to life seemed self-evident, including the adoption of an immutable daily uniform as the ideal form of dress. It freed the mind from the paltry concerns of such everyday choices as what color shirt goes with what socks. (So annoying!) Thus it was, too, with Mr. Zuckerberg, who went so far as to announce in a 2014 Facebook forum that he wore the same T-shirt every day because “I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible, other than how to best serve this community.”

(Admittedly, it was a luxury version of a gray T-shirt from Brunello Cucinelli, but it was still a T-shirt.)

But after multiple trips by chief executives to Washington, D.C., to testify about the controversies about anxiety and depression caused by social media pressures; after the convictions of Elizabeth Holmes (she of the Jobs-like black turtleneck) and Sam Bankman-Fried; after the cesspool of conspiracy theories and anger that has emerged on X; after all that, the story — and its heroes’ journeys and its heroes’ costumes — suddenly doesn’t look so convincing. Behold the new, looser Mr. Zuckerberg.

He has become, said Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant and stylist who works with executives in New York and California, “a more democratized figure.”

Arguably the seeds were planted back in 2021, when Facebook turned into Meta, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s first avatar — dressed, as he generally was IRL, in a T-shirt and jeans — turned out to have a closet of alternative outfits, including a skeleton unitard and an astronaut’s suit. The transformation picked up steam as Mr. Zuckerberg discovered the joys of mixed martial arts and started posting photographs of himself shirtless, sweaty and with various bumps and bruises. It then reached a tipping point with the introduction of the platform Threads.

Not long after Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled his “open and friendly public space for conversation,” he also unveiled his own new, friendlier look — one that focused less on an automated uniform and more on experimentation (everything being relative), as recorded via his own Instagram posts. Suddenly, it seemed as though he was having fun with fashion.

He cheerfully shared photographs of himself looking “Yellowstone”-ready in a chunky shearling coat by Overland. (It seems to be the Maverick Rancher coat, which is the sort of subconscious tell “Saturday Night Live” might embrace.) Next came snaps of himself and his wife, Priscilla Chan, at Anant Ambani’s three-day pre-wedding celebration in Gujarat, in various forms of Indian-inspired finery: a gold silk Sunderbans Tigress shirt from Rahul Mishra, a black Alexander McQueen suit embroidered with silver dragonflies and a pastel floral kurta.

And then Mr. Zuckerberg added a pic titled “jersey swap” in which he and Jensen Huang of Nvidia traded outerwear, with Mr. Zuckerberg donning one of Mr. Huang’s trademark leather jackets and Mr. Huang his shearling. By the time of his last jaunt to the capital, he had let his tightly controlled Julius Caesar haircut grow into looser curls.

He has even started sharing shopping tips. When Jen Wieczner of New York magazine wrote an article identifying a sweater Mr. Zuckerberg wore as from the stealth wealth brand Loro Piana, he popped into the comments under the magazine’s Instagram post to note that the garment was actually a crew neck from Buck Mason — a Los Angeles brand that focuses on American classics — not one from an Italian luxury house owned by LVMH.

Then, when one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s followers complimented a ribbed knit cardigan he wore in a date night pick on his feed, he jumped in with a tag: “It’s @johnelliottco — I’m loving their stuff recently.”

Other brands he favors now include Todd Snyder and Vuori.

“They are kind of trendy names,” said Derek Guy, who blogs about men’s wear at Die, Workwear! “Everything has a different silhouette, like the sweatshirt with overly long sleeves or the T-shirt with dropped shoulder seams.”

Mr. Guy and Mr. Ganesan, of Menlo Ventures, said they were convinced that Mr. Zuckerberg had enlisted professional help (which is to say, a stylist) to help him develop his look. But a spokeswoman for Meta said that was not the case — at least for his day-to-day life. “Mark mostly buys clothes he finds on Instagram,” she said. “Though he does get input from time to time for formal events and occasions.”

Either way, Mr. Zuckerberg’s pivot from the luxury labels made famous by the morally bankrupt billionaires of “Succession” to more contemporary brands means that “he now has a stable of clothing that makes him an accessible figure for the world and his audience,” Mr. Rosenfeld said.

His new wardrobe also distinguishes him from rivals like Jeff Bezos — who has transformed himself into a real life version of Iron Man, with his bulging muscles, leather jackets and yachts — and Elon Musk, who seems to be channeling a sort of “Top Gun”-meets- “Goldfinger” vibe.

By contrast, Mr. Ganesan said, Mr. Zuckerberg now looks like “the buddy you want to call if you’re doing backyard construction.” Think of him as the tech dude next door. All of which matters because, Mr. Ganesan went on, “mainstream America can relate to that, and he is offering a mainstream product.”

And that, he said, is just “very good for business.”

Two girls on the street pointed and laughed at me. My Uber driver stared at me suspiciously. My neighbor’s eyes popped out of his head, and when my husband saw me, he begged me to remove it before date night.

It was the fake chin that Emily Schubert, 32, a makeup and prosthetics artist, had placed on me earlier that day. It elongated my face and protruded far from my actual chin, making me look like a cartoon version of myself. It was lightweight, it matched my complexion perfectly and it moved fluidly with my expressions.

In her new book, “Beauty of the Beast: A Makeup Manual,” out this week with the art house studio A24, Ms. Schubert shares her tricks for creating this and other uncanny looks. There are instructions on how to age fingernails, how to apply and remove prosthetics, how to create the illusion of missing teeth and how to make someone look sick or dead. Ms. Schubert also shows readers how to make scars, neck bladders and bald caps.

“This book is for anybody who is a budding filmmaker who wants to know how to make these things,” Ms. Schubert said, wearing a charcoal gray shirt stained with paints and makeup that she has worn on all of her jobs. “They are all of these things that people have asked me over the past 15 years, 10 years about indie filmmaking, where they’re like: ‘OK, we have this character and they’re missing a tooth. Can you do that?’”

Over her nearly two decades in the field, Ms. Schubert has worked on films like “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time,” and has done makeup for dozens of actors, singers and celebrities, and even Bill Clinton. She said she began experimenting when she was 13 years old, and long before.

“I remember I used to wear those washable Crayola markers as lipstick to preschool,” Ms. Schubert said, standing in her Brooklyn studio. “But I liked the yellow. I liked to make it look like I was sick.”

Her passion for makeup was inspired by a book as well. As a teenager, she discovered “Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual” and became obsessed with the legendary makeup artist. After a back surgery at 13, Ms. Schubert said, she began to think about makeup and herself differently.

“After my surgery, I went to the bathroom and I realized that the tiles were gray behind me, but I was also gray because I lost so much blood,” Ms. Schubert said. “I started thinking about beauty then in a different way. To do beauty makeup is just to look alive.”

While she was bedridden for close to six months after her surgery, she started doing special effects on herself. It was her coping mechanism, she said. When she returned to Horace Mann School the following year, she began to do her friends’ makeup, too. Sometimes she used makeup to beautify them, but occasionally she made them look sick, so they could skip exams. Not long after, at 14, she was hired by her older brother’s friend, who was attending the New York Film Academy, to do makeup on the set of his project.

Her first task on set? To make a 9-year-old boy look as if he had survived a zombie apocalypse, she recalled.

“I had a little bag with black eyeliner and a light blush,” Ms. Schubert said. “I took the black eyeliner and smudged it in between his ribs. I knew what that looked like because of what I went through.”

Later, at Wesleyan University, Ms. Schubert studied architecture, but she stayed close to the film department, especially when it came time to help seniors working on their end-of-year theses. Many of those same people ended up enlisting her help for projects when she returned to New York after graduation.

One of them was Matthew Barney, an artist who hired Ms. Schubert for his five-part video installation, “Secondary.” Because the project was based on real people and true events, Mr. Barney said, Ms. Schubert decided that the costuming and makeup should oscillate between the past and the present.

“Emily is not, like, a literal thinker,” Mr. Barney said. “I think somebody who thinks more abstractly is a great collaborator in a situation like this, and Emily is definitely like that. She sort of thinks around things in a really compelling way.”

Dev Hynes, the musician and composer known as Blood Orange, is another frequent collaborator of Ms. Schubert’s who says he returns to her for her capacity to envision a fully fleshed-out character.

Mr. Hynes, who has collaborated with Mariah Carey, Solange Knowles and Kylie Minogue, has worked with Ms. Schubert on music videos like “Hope” and “Dark and Handsome.”

“She gets things very quickly,” Mr. Hynes said. “Once that’s understood, she then will go further than where you were thinking and go to places that then you’re like: ‘Oh yeah, that is amazing. I would never thought of that.’”

He added, “There won’t be another viewpoint similar to it, which I think is very important.”

Ms. Schubert said that spending time with her own reference guides and manuals helped her develop her own aesthetic taste. In addition to Bobbi Brown’s 2008 book, she credits “Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-up” by Richard Emerson Smith, who won an Oscar in 1985 for his work on “Amadeus” and worked on movies like “The Godfather” and “The Exorcist.” His hope that others might learn from his expertise was so sincere that he put his phone number in the back of the book.

Ms. Schubert said she wanted to channel Mr. Smith’s collaborative spirit with her own makeup manual.

“I loved his open heart heartedness,” she said, while using a cut paintbrush to add the blue and pink tones of muscle to my prosthetic chin. “I have had people say to me, ‘You are giving away all your secrets.’ But I don’t see it that way at all. I think it’s a really beautiful thing to do.”

Besides, she added, “It’s not only the recipe that makes the soup good, either.”

For his 73rd birthday in April, Felice Macchi had lunch at La Bettola Del Gusto, a restaurant in Pompeii, Italy, with a focus on seafood.

He ordered the house specialty: spaghettoni, a thicker spaghetti, in a fermented anchovy sauce with black truffles and butter made with milk from water buffalo native to the Mediterranean region. The meal came on a ceramic plate with a whimsical hand-painted design depicting the spaghettoni dish and a smoking volcano, a nod to nearby Mount Vesuvius.

Mr. Macchi finished his meal — he said it was “excellent” — but did not leave the restaurant empty-handed. Instead of leftovers, he took home the plate his pasta was served on.

It was a new addition to a collection he has amassed of that type of Italian tableware, known as Buon Ricordo plates. He has hundreds of them, many of which he eats on. Others decorate hallways, the kitchen and the dining room of his home in Varese, Italy.

Since 2022, Mr. Macchi has been the president of the Buon Ricordo Plate Collectors Association. The group, which has about 400 members in Europe and South America, is planning an exhibition of the plates at the Fondazione Sant Elia, a museum in Palermo.

When asked why he started collecting the plates, Mr. Macchi, an insurance agent, answered romantically.

“Why do we fall in love with a woman?” he said.

The tableware was introduced as a marketing tool for an association of regional Italian restaurants, called the Buon Ricordo Union, formed in 1964. It can still be found at the union’s restaurants — as well as at Italian flea markets and antique sellers, design trade shows like Maison et Objet in Paris and high-end décor stores like ABC Carpet & Home in New York.

At the time the plates were introduced, local Italian cuisines were mostly prepared at home and largely seen as not worthy of serving at restaurants across Italy, many of which had French-influenced menus instead.

The idea for Buon Ricordo, which translates to “good memory” in English, came from Dino Villani, an Italian advertising executive who, among other accomplishments, founded the beauty contest now known as Miss Italy. He proposed the restaurant union as a way to promote and preserve regional Italian cooking at establishments in the country.

Restaurant owners who wanted to join had to show that they were using regional recipes and ingredients; joining the union has also required an annual fee. (This year, it was 1,000 euros.) In the 1980s, the union started to accept restaurants outside of Italy that adhered to its membership criteria.

Once part of the union, establishments received unique tableware designed to highlight their signature dishes, with each restaurant’s plate featuring its name and a hand-painted motif that often included cartoonish renderings of swordfish, rabbits, snails, cows or squid.

When a patron ordered a restaurant’s signature dish, it was served on a Buon Ricordo plate, which could be taken home as a keepsake — a practice that has more or less continued to this day at the union’s 112 restaurants, 11 of which are outside of Italy, in cities including Paris, Tokyo and New York. (These days, patrons of the restaurants receive the plates only if they order the house specialty as part of a multicourse Buon Ricordo tasting menu.)

Suki LaBarre, the vice president of merchandising and e-commerce at ABC Carpet & Home, said the store started carrying the plates in 2022; at first, it offered a small selection of about 50 pieces that she and a colleague chose after considering various designs for more than an hour. Last year, she ordered some 600 more plates for the store from a supplier that specializes in midcentury European decorative items.

“We’ve gone with the fish stories and not so much the meat,” Ms. LaBarre said of the types of motifs on the plates sold at ABC, which cost $60 a plate. She attributed the interest in the style partly to its playful aesthetic and partly to its history.

Daniele Tassi, 36, bought a few plates at ABC in February to use as décor at his Italian restaurant Terre, in Brooklyn. “I was surprised to see them there — but I understand why they are,” said Mr. Tassi, the chef at Terre, which he owns with Monia Solighetto and Alessandro Trezza, a married couple with Milanese roots.

In January, Terre became the first and only member of the Buon Ricordo Union in the United States. Ms. Solighetto, 49, said she wanted to join the union because it stands for Italy’s tradition of “eating locally and using quality, seasonal ingredients” — a tradition, she added, that is now also “trendy.”

At Terre, the signature dish is pappardelle pasta with a wild boar ragù, a family recipe Mr. Tassi was served regularly when he was growing up in Italy’s Umbria region. Except for the boar meat, which comes from Texas, the dish at Terre is made using ingredients from Italy.

It is served on Buon Ricordo plates with a design depicting the Italian and American flags and a gray boar standing in a coil of yellow pasta. They were produced at a factory in Vietri sul Mare, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, which has been using local clay to make the tableware since it was introduced six decades ago.

On April 9, the Buon Ricordo Union had a dinner to celebrate its 60th anniversary in Vietri sul Mare. A special plate was issued for the occasion, and chefs from some 100 associated restaurants prepared a tasting menu. They included Mr. Tassi, who said he returned to Brooklyn after the event with dozens of Buon Ricordo plates; he picked up some from his grandparents, who had collected the tableware in the ’70s and ’80s, a time when interest in it was surging in Italy.

Mary Lies, 60, has been a fan of the plates ever since she noticed some at an antiques fair in Lucca, Italy, in the early 2000s. She has since been buying the tableware for herself and for her retail business, Mercato, in Kansas City, Kan., which sells it for $37 a plate.

Ms. Lies described the ceramics as a sort of instant mood lifter.

“Seeing them, you can’t help but smile,” she said.

The last five years for Shannon Collins, a wedding photographer who identifies as nonbinary, have been filled with survival and self-discoveries, all while Mx. Collins, captured celebrants’ most intimate and revealing moments.

In October 2019, Mx. Collins, now 39, had craniotomy surgery to remove a malignant lesion. In 2020, as the world shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mx. Collins realized they were queer. A year later they added nonbinary to their identity. Then in early 2022, they were diagnosed with autism.

Mx. Collins, who lives in Abington, Pa., with their spouse, Peter Schuster, a software engineer at the outdoor sporting company REI, and their two children, Adelaide, 9, and Cameron, 5, said that these monumental life changes “reframed my entire existence and made me feel less broken.”

“These major transitions were life-affirming and healing, and reminded me to celebrate myself and those around me,” said Mx. Collins, who identifies as disabled because of their autism diagnosis and the effects of their surgery. “The surgery restricted the mobility of my left hand, and I now get headaches and fogginess from cold and wet weather. I also experience pulsations and buzzing in my ear.”

As for their autism, “I know a lot of people don’t consider that a disability, but I do,” they said. “I’m sound sensitive and miss cues from my body, like hunger or thirst. Making eye contact is hard, and I’m constantly checking my body language because I have to restrict the impulse to sway, flap and or jump.”

Finding a place and a voice in the wedding industry can be difficult. For people with disabilities, doing so can be even harder. Fewer are as vocal and transparent as Mx. Collins, who has made their specific needs work in their favor while creating a place, and space, for themselves and others within the industry.

Mx. Collins has learned to slow down, listen to their body, be aware of their emotional sensitivities, self-regulate their environment and be specific about whom they choose to work with. “I’m seeking out clients that are also neurodivergent, disabled and autistic so I don’t need to mask or hide my disabilities,” they said. In doing so, they are also trying to change the way the wedding industry portrays and sees disabled people.

Mx. Collins, who photographs 15 to 20 weddings a year, believes that part of the lack of representation “stems from an expectation of perfection when it comes to wedding days.”

“If you show any sign of weakness, you’re cast aside as too much of a risk,” they said. “Especially on your wedding day, when there’s so much pressure on it being just right. Why would they hire me when they could just hire somebody who’s nondisabled?”

Mx. Collins opened up about what they’ve learned about themselves and how that knowledge influences and enhances their work. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

How did you start your career in the wedding industry?

After college I was the editor in chief for a local paper in Philadelphia that no longer exists, and then I was a content manager at Generocity, a local, social impact media outlet, also in Philadelphia. From 2007 to 2008, weddings became a special interest of mine when I was a blogger for a popular wedding website, Weddingbee. Photography has always been a passion. I started photographing weddings as a side job in 2009 by reaching out to local engaged couples on the blog. I built my portfolio, invested in gear, increased my rates and pursued wedding photography full-time in 2013.

Who is your typical client?

I’ve marketed myself as a queer, awkward, anxious photographer who hopefully makes others feel more comfortable in front of the lens, so I tend to organically attract those same people. Most find me on TikTok, Instagram or my website. I also work with nondisabled clients who approach me because they are excited to work alongside a vendor who aligns with their values. For me, that means advocating for safer, more inclusive, more diverse and more accessible industry standards.

How did you become so transparent?

It took time to see my disabilities and queerness as valid. Saying I’m autistic or disabled highlights a part of my identity, hopefully reducing the stigma. I want people to see me as a full person, including my disabilities. Having a space to process publicly allowed me to connect with a community of vendors and clients and feel less alone in our shared experiences. That tends to make for a more accessible wedding day.

Do you think there is reluctance around hiring a disabled person?

One in four people are disabled. Being disabled doesn’t make you bad at your job. Ableism within the wedding industry makes it so we don’t get a chance to prove that. The industry and people tend to view disabled people as not trendy or attractive. By not working with us, people are missing out on authenticity.

How do your disabilities influence the way you work?

I wear earplugs to reduce the noise level. I’ve learned to take breaks, to ask for what I need, to not take calls at night and communicate transparently upfront so I don’t have to work with people who are not going to be a good fit. I used to mask or camouflage my disabilities at weddings, but because I work with so many autistic and neurodiverse people, I feel free to be myself, and I feel understood by the people I’m photographing, who in turn feel understood by me. It creates a more authentic relationship and unmasks all of us so that I get photos other photographers wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.

What makes your photography style special?

Autistic people tend to be bottom-up thinkers, meaning we often see details before the big picture. I observe and try to find a way to creatively approach people. I also like to capture emotionally charged moments, along with smiles, as that’s a truer experience of the day.

My photos tend to be more intimate and joyful because I do most weddings solo, and because I build rapport beforehand so we are not strangers that day. I’m good at getting people to be themselves.

Despite there being a stigma around people with autism not being able to read social cues, one of my strengths is reading people and noticing things like when they need a break. I’m often considering the sensory experience of photography, being thoughtful about how much flash I’m using and how that might affect people. My attention to detail strengthens my work because helping marriers know what to expect, regarding things like timelines or group photos, can reduce a lot of stress.

How can the wedding industry be more inclusive?

The wedding industry often values trends, like stunning floral-filled staircases, over the accessibility of actually getting up the stairs. Many venues greet wheelchair users with stairs or gravel paths, telling them they can be carried in if they want to attend. The obstacle in the wedding industry isn’t our disabilities but the mind-set of the industry itself. The wedding industry needs to prioritize accessibility. We need to hold venues accountable to be physically accessible and A.D.A.-compliant (Americans With Disabilities Act) for everyone and to work with vendors whose values align with disability justice.

What can couples do to make their weddings more inclusive?

If a wedding is being hosted at a venue, is there information included on their website and social media regarding accessibility details? Is the venue you’re having your event in A.D.A. compliant? Consider hiring an accessibility specialist, someone who examines your wedding and determines where you have gaps that you might not realize. Create a space on your website or on your invitations for guests to answer the question, what they need — like hiring an A.S.L. interpreter if a guest is deaf — because that varies so greatly between individuals. And provide earplugs for guests who are sound sensitive.

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned since becoming a wedding photographer?

That I’m strong and even funny, to some. That clients actually want to work with me when I drop the mask, which is both shocking and healing. I’ve learned to make others feel cared for in an industry that so often prioritizes the wrong things.

Maybe it’s the superior experience of sipping a crisp, carbonated beverage through a straw. Maybe it’s the rise of Stanley Cups, or the supremacy of cold brew even in the winter months. Whatever it is, straws have evolved beyond the single-use plastic straw-man argument for environmental personal responsibility into so much more.

There are straws made of paper, glass straws, metal straws and durable, reusable plastic straws. Many come with their own silicone accessories, cleaning systems, and personalized carrying cases.

Our endless enthusiasm for sipping things through narrow tubes has birthed much innovation in the straw market. It has also created a new anxiety: lip wrinkles.

Traditional straws force sippers to purse their lips around the opening in an expression that many believe, over time, creates wrinkles around your lips, called perioral lines.

Enter the anti-wrinkle straw, shaped like the number 7, with a small hole at the top horizontal portion that allows users to drink without pursing their lips.

The straws work, “in theory,” said Jenny Liu, a Board-Certified dermatologist and Assistant Professor of Dermatology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. But she noted that there are “no studies to back it up.”

“The way the opening is designed, it allows for one to drink out of straw but not have to use the muscles around the lips as readily compared to traditional straws,” Dr. Liu said. Because there is less repetitive contraction of these muscles when using an “anti-wrinkle” straw, it’s less likely that perioral lines will form.

“But, again, all of this is theoretical,” Dr. Liu said. “Lip wrinkles are not just from repetitive movement. Genetics, sun damage, and other factors like occupation — like, for example musicians, that play with their mouth — can all affect the likelihood of developing lip wrinkles.”

Frequency of use also factors into the equation.

“For someone who doesn’t usually use a straw to drink but does have lip wrinkles, using an anti-wrinkle straw is not going to be very helpful,” she continued, “so it’s really a misnomer.”

The lack of peer-reviewed studies has not prevented the aesthetically minded TikToking straw-enthusiasts out there from making anti-wrinkle straws the new thing.

In a video that has received more than 1.6 million views on TikTok — and even more on X — the aesthetician and online influencer Michaela Scott raved about the product.

“This straw is an anti-wrinkle straw, so you’re not pursing your lips as much when you drink out of it sideways like this,” she said in the video, posted last week.

The wellness and beauty influencer Lauren Erro claimed that it “might be the best invention for anti-aging ever.”

“They always say that straws give you mouth wrinkles, but this straw literally is trying to prevent that,” she said in a recent TikTok.

Some commenters were less than impressed with the invention.

“This is such a tiring way of living,” one commenter declared.

“Just use a straw bro,” replied another.

Whether or not it’s a fleeting trend the straws are part of a budding market on e-commerce sites. The most popular anti-wrinkle straw — the Lipzi — has been purchased by tens of thousands of people, according to its inventor, Tim McManaman.

Mr. McManaman, 58, lives in Normal, Ill., and works in procurement for a large financial services company. In his spare time, he enjoys inventing and patenting original ideas. An avid Diet Coke drinker, he got the idea for the Lipzi when he caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview as he was drinking from a straw and noticed just how many wrinkles formed around his lips when he sipped.

When he presented the prototype to his wife and four young adult children, they were uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the invention. “I brought this straw to the kitchen table and my wife’s first reaction was: ‘OK, this idea might actually work,’” he said in an interview.

As it goes from side gig to profitable family business Lipzi has started doing wholesale supply to spas in the Midwest; and Mr. McManaman said he has recently received patent approval, which could help minimize knockoff sellers on Amazon.

His daughter Grace has been helping him build the brand on social media, and his son TJ, a senior in college, is hoping to join the business after graduation.

Mr. McManaman added that personally he doesn’t care much about lip wrinkles.

“But there’s a lot of people that do,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that take it pretty serious.”

Fans of Taylor Swift often study up for a new album, revisiting the singer’s older works to prepare to analyze lyrics and song titles for secret messages and meanings.

“The Tortured Poets Department” is getting much the same treatment, and perhaps no group of listeners was better prepared than the students at Harvard University currently studying Ms. Swift’s works in an English class devoted entirely to the artist. The undergraduate course, “Taylor Swift and Her World,” is taught by Stephanie Burt, who has her students comparing Ms. Swift’s songs to works by poets and writers including Willa Cather, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

On Thursday night, about 50 students from the class gathered in a lecture hall on campus to listen to Ms. Swift’s new album. Mary Pankowski, a 22-year-old senior studying history of art and architecture, wore a cream sweatshirt she bought at Ms. Swift’s Eras tour last year. The group made beaded friendship bracelets to celebrate the new album, she said.

When the clock struck midnight, the classroom erupted into applause, and the analysis began. First, the group listened through the album once without discussing, just taking it all in.

Certain lines, however, immediately caused a stir, said Samantha Wilhoit, a junior studying government — like a reference to the singer Charlie Puth and the scathing lyrics to the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” Ms. Wilhoit, 21, said.

A line from the song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” in which Ms. Swift sings, “I cry a lot but I am so productive,” also seemed to resonate, Ms. Wilhoit said, laughing.

A smaller group of students, including Ms. Pankowski, stuck it out until the early hours of the morning waiting to see if Ms. Swift would drop additional music. At 2 a.m., they were rewarded with an additional “volume” of 15 tracks called “The Anthology.” Ms. Pankowski said she didn’t go to sleep until hours later.

Speaking with The New York Times together on a video call Friday morning, several students from the class discussed their thoughts on the 31 new songs and brainstormed their final papers, which are due at the end of the month.

“The song ‘Clara Bow’ reminded me of ‘The Song of the Lark,’” Makenna Walko, 19, said, citing the Willa Cather novel that follows the career of an aspiring opera singer, Thea Kronborg. “She’s talking about a girl trying to make it out of her small town and trying to get to Manhattan, and what it’s like to have these big, musical dreams and try to pursue them,” she continued. “That’s a narrative that has shown up a lot in Taylor’s own life, over the course of her own career. In a lot of ways, it’s Taylor’s story, too.”

Lola DeAscentiis, a sophomore, zeroed in on the song “But Daddy I Love Him,” comparing it to the Sylvia Plath poem “Daddy.” She plans to explore the link in her final paper.

“I hesitate to say that the song was anywhere near the genius of Sylvia Plath — no offense to Taylor Swift — but I can definitely see some similarities in the themes, like sadness, depression and mental health,” Ms. DeAscentiis, 20, said. (Ms. DeAscentiis also drew a distinction between being a fan of Ms. Swift and being a devoted Swiftie. She said she identified as the former.)

“The way that Taylor overlays her relationship with the significant other that she’s talking about in the song with the relationship that she has with her father — I think that was very Plath,” she added.

Another student, Ana Paulina Serrano, echoed Ms. DeAscentiis, noting that the class had learned about the genre of confessional poetry. “Is Taylor considered a confessional poet?” Ms. Serrano, a 21-year-old junior majoring in neuroscience, asked the group on the call. In support of her own position, she offered as evidence Ms. Swift’s song “Mastermind,” a track off “Midnights,” in which Ms. Swift reveals herself to have calculated and plotted the outcome of a relationship.

“Sometimes she’s confessing things that we, like, already knew or assumed, but she often seems to feel this need to explicitly tell us,” Ms. Serrano added.

Isabel Levin, a 23-year-old senior studying integrative biology, said she thought Ms. Swift’s delivery on several tracks had a spoken-word quality. She wondered if maybe some of the lyrics had initially begun not as songs but as more traditional poems.

Ms. Swift has said she categorizes her songs by the type of pen she imagines using to write each. A “frivolous, carefree, bouncy” song is a glitter gel pen song, while a fountain pen song might be more “brutally honest,” according to Ms. Swift. Quill pen songs are “all old-fashioned, like you’re a 19th-century poet crafting your next sonnet by candlelight,” she explained during her acceptance speech as songwriter-artist of the decade at the Nashville Songwriter Awards in 2022.

And with what implement might Ms. Swift have written “Tortured Poets?”

Quill pen, for sure, Ms. Walko said.

Deborah Jennifer Yarchun was shocked when her friend swiped left on Benjamin Ernest Parr.

“Why would you do that?” she asked of her friend’s rejection of Mr. Parr on the League, a dating app for ambitious people.

She had been drawn to his photo. “He just looked so happy and kind,” Ms. Yarchun said.

A few weeks later, Ms. Yarchun came across Mr. Parr on the same app. She quickly swiped right.

On Feb. 3, 2018, Ms. Yarchun wore a red turtleneck sweater to their first date, at Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, a wine bar in SoHo. When she admitted she had been inspired by Mr. Parr’s 2015 book, “Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention” — a woman wearing red on a date is likely to prompt a man to sit closer, Mr. Parr had written — Mr. Parr’s eyes lit up.

The six-hour date flew by. So did their second date, when they walked into a Chelsea bar that happened to be hosting a burlesque show. On their third date — Valentine’s Day — Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr officially became a couple.

“I kept thinking, ‘What’s the catch?’” said Ms. Yarchun, 38. “It turned out there was no catch. He was the catch.”

They bonded over their shared love for writing. Ms. Yarchun’s 2019 play, “Drive,” won Dartmouth’s Neukom Institute Literary Award for Playwriting, and she has taught playwriting at the University of Iowa and Indiana University. Ms. Yarchun graduated from Drexel University with a bachelor’s degree in screenwriting and playwriting, and then earned her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Iowa. She grew up in New Jersey and Germany before her family settled down in Austin, Texas.

Mr. Parr, 39, is a founder of a pair of artificial intelligence companies, Octane AI and Theory Forge Ventures, and writes a regular column for The Information. A native of Princeton, Ill., Mr. Parr graduated from Northwestern University with a double major in political science and science in human culture.

In November 2019, Ms. Yarchun moved into Mr. Parr’s apartment in NoLIta. The next day, the apartment directly above theirs caught on fire, leaving their home with extensive water damage. They spent the next few months bouncing around New York, Los Angeles and Fort Worth, Texas, before planning to return to Manhattan in March 2020.

Two days before their scheduled move to a subleased apartment, however, they learned the space had bed bugs. Mr. Parr and Ms. Yarchun, who had been staying in a nearby hotel, canceled the sublease and fled to an Airbnb in Woodstock, N.Y. It proved to be prescient: By the end of the month, New York, like much of the world, was in pandemic lockdown.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

So Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr embraced their nomadic lifestyle, choosing a new location each month, booking an Airbnb and hitting the road.

“It was super clear how durable our relationship was, and how much we enjoyed spending time together,” Mr. Parr said.

They spent time on a farm in Vermont and in a cottage in the Poconos. They visited Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. They ate Thanksgiving dinner on a rock just over Arizona’s border with New Mexico, feasting on turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes from Cracker Barrel as the sun set.

“I was like, ‘How are we never having fights at all?’” Ms. Yarchun said. “If you can pack your life into a car together over and over and your relationship survives, you might as well get married.”

In May 2021, they moved into a permanent apartment in Culver City, Calif. Then, on March 4, 2023, Mr. Parr proposed to Ms. Yarchun. She said yes.

They were married on April 6 at the Cedar Bend in Austin in front of 91 guests. Christina Beleck, a Universal Life Church minister and the mother-in-law of Ms. Yarchun’s younger brother Daniel, officiated. They incorporated both Jewish and Thai traditions, a nod to Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr’s respective backgrounds. The ceremony was held under a huppah and they received two traditional Thai wedding blessings. During the cocktail hour, they served rugelach, a Jewish pastry, and Thai summer rolls.

Before guests dined on fajitas, all eyes turned to Ms. Yarchun and Mr. Parr for their first dance to “Good Day for Marrying You,” by Dave Barnes. The song had often come up randomly on Spotify as they traversed the country, their bond deepening with every mile.

“I’m not a natural dancer, but when it came on my body couldn’t help dancing to it,” Ms. Yarchun said. “I’d just be overcome with joy at the idea of marrying Ben.”

“Have an abortion with me,” a single mother from Brooklyn named Sunni says as she twirls around her kitchen to light jazzy piano, before walking TikTok viewers through the steps she took to end her pregnancy at home.

With states expanding restrictions on abortion and the issue likely to be at the forefront of the presidential election, women are creating videos on social media describing their own abortions and sharing practical information on how to obtain one.

Sunni explained to viewers that she was craving information when she was planning her abortion. “This is the video I was looking for,” she said.

The reaction to her video, which has been viewed more than 400,000 times and has drawn comments of both commiseration and condemnation, shows how deeply personal and divisive the issue remains in the run up to the November elections.

One viewer, a campaigner with the group Protect Life Michigan, remixed the video on the group’s own TikTok account, criticizing Sunni for her lighthearted tone and for making the video at all.

“I just don’t understand how we are making a video, and we are laughing and joking about going through the abortion process,” the campaigner said.

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 led to a cascade of abortion bans and restrictions across large parts of the United States. Twenty-one states now ban or restrict the procedure earlier than the standard set by Roe.

In response, there has been an explosion of social media content related to abortion — some of it overtly political, some informational and some testimonial as women seek answers, seek support, or simply seek to share.

The landscape for abortion access is changing rapidly. Last month, the justices heard arguments over whether to curtail access to a widely used abortion pill, with a decision expected this June or July. This month, Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.

Former President Donald Trump has taken credit for a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, but has since distanced himself from the idea of a national abortion ban. President Biden, meanwhile, sees advantage from pinning the narrowing landscape for abortion on Republicans.

With the laws in flux state by state, Sunni and others have made TikToks to explain how to obtain abortion pills and have the procedure at home. In other videos on the site, women have grappled with their own experiences, expressing everything from relief to regret. These personal videos have become fodder for political campaigns, which have used them to argue either for an expansion of abortion rights or for further restrictions.

Confused over where and what forms of abortion are allowed state to state, young people seeking to end their pregnancies are increasingly turning to social media for guidance, researchers have found.

“The chaos and the confusion and the stigma is the point with abortion bans and targeted regulations,” said Rebecca Nall, the founder of an online database that directs users to abortion resources.

“More and more people are going online with their most personal questions,” she added, “and more and more people are offering information.”

Before Roe v. Wade, desperate women called Jane, an underground abortion network, for advice on what to do about unwanted pregnancies. Later, campaigns encouraged women to talk about their abortion openly.

With women now turning to TikTok for information and as a vehicle for self-expression, the app has also become a forum for discussion. On some videos, viewers posed practical questions about procuring abortion drugs or finding a provider. They shared fears of physical pain and anxieties over the logistical complexities of arranging one. Other viewers expressed regret for having had abortions.

Some voices were critical, faulting women for having abortions and for speaking openly about it, without remorse.

The women sharing their stories — and the viewers who write to them asking for advice — are engaging in conversations that could be at risk. Some states’ attorneys general have expressed an appetite to prosecute those who “aid and abet” abortions, including those who provide information, and to subpoena online messages.

Sunni, 30, who asked that her full name not be used out of fear that she could be further targeted by abortion opponents, said in an interview that she became interested in reproductive health justice when she was pregnant with her daughter in 2021.

She had become active on TikTok and was alarmed to find videos of people recommending herbal remedies like parsley to induce an abortion. When she was pregnant last year, after experiencing a difficult childbirth the first time, she decided to have an abortion and to share the experience with her followers.

With TikTok awash in activism from anti-abortion campaigners and proponents of abortion rights, Sunni said she wanted to focus on the practicalities of a medication abortion, the most common form in the United States. That included the order that the mifepristone and misoprostol pills must be taken, and the creature comforts — like Totino’s frozen pizza — she relied on to help with pain management and recovery.

“It’s something that so many people go through,” she said in an interview. “There are people walking around you going through this thing and until they feel normal and accepted, they’re not going to be able to heal.”

The video she made received more than 1,000 comments. Sunni said she received hundreds of messages from girls and young women seeking direction on how to obtain the pills and manage pain.

“You do have to navigate it,” she said, “and nobody shows you how.”

Another testimonial came from Mikaela Attu, a Canadian who said in an interview that she was shocked by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, particularly because abortion care was not difficult to access in Canada.

In a TikTok video, she took viewers along to multiple hospital visits near her home in Vancouver, from an ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy to a shot of her feet in stirrups at the beginning of a procedure to terminate it.

In another video, viewed 7.5 million times, Ms. Attu talked about the heartbreak of getting pregnant with a man she loved, but not being able to go through with it.

Ms. Attu and her husband plan to have children, she said, but she was dealing with mental health issues when she got pregnant last year and did not feel prepared to start a family.

“I wanted to show that abortion is complicated,” she said.

Other women have made TikToks to express their grief over having an abortion.

One viewer of another woman’s abortion video commented that it reminded her of the pain she endured as a 16-year-old, going through her own abortion.

Desireé Dallagiacomo, 33, a writer and poet in California, recorded a video as she got ready for an abortion appointment.

“I’m fine and stable,” she told viewers, “and I just don’t want a child.”

Ms. Dallagiacomo, 33, said in an interview that she wanted to share her story, in part, to challenge the prevailing narratives about why people have abortions.

With abortion rights increasingly targeted, what women share about their abortions on social media has come into focus.

Attorneys general in Texas, Alabama and Louisiana have indicated an interest in prosecuting abortion providers and other groups that coordinate them, creating uncertainty over whether those who share information online could be held liable.

“There’s a movement afoot to criminalize information,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about abortion.

In July, a teenager in Nebraska was charged with concealing a death, her aborted fetus, and sentenced to 90 days in jail. In the case, prosecutors subpoenaed Facebook messages she had exchanged with her mother, in which the two discussed abortion pills.

The case in Nebraska suggests the conversations that people have about abortion can be used against them, Professor Ziegler said.

“In the post-Dobbs era, there’s an interesting and tricky trade-off,” she said, between sharing stories to destigmatize the experience “and the fact that speaking out could create unintended legal risks.”

The specter of punishment for sharing information about abortion was just one of the ways Ms. Dallagiacomo said she found her abortion experience “isolating.”

“There is just so much keeping us from honestly telling our story,” she said.

The American version of the reality game show “The Traitors,” after the release of its first season on Peacock last year, won an Emmy Award for its casting.

The debut season of the whodunit-style competition, in which contestants are eliminated by banishment or by being “murdered,” featured a cast of reality stars and less famous people like nurses and sales executives. For its second season, which ended in March, the cast was reconfigured to include mostly people from reality shows like “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” “The Bachelor,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “The Real Housewives,” “Below Deck,” “Shahs of Sunset,” “Bling Empire,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “The Challenge.”

In the days after Season 2 premiered in January, “The Traitors” became the most viewed unscripted series in the country on streaming platforms, according to Nielsen statistics. A third season was greenlit in February.

As interest in “The Traitors” has intensified, former reality stars — along with other people with some degree of celebrity — have been clamoring for a chance to appear on the show set at a Scottish castle, hosted by Alan Cumming and offering a prize of up to $250,000. (The American version, like its British, Canadian, Greek and Australian counterparts, is a spinoff of a show originally produced in the Netherlands.)

“I would assume that a lot of people who have managers and agents are sending out the emails to ‘Traitors’ casting and production trying to get their foot in the door,” said Jemmye Carroll, 35, who, after appearing on “The Real World: New Orleans” in 2010, went on to join the casts of several seasons of “The Challenge.”

“I’m using my one resource, which is Trishelle,” she continued, referring to Trishelle Cannatella, a winner of “The Traitors” Season 2 and another cast member of the “Real World” and “Challenge” franchises. Both women live in New Orleans and when they have run into each other around town, Ms. Carroll said, she has encouraged Ms. Cannatella to put in a good word for her with the production staff of “The Traitors.”

“I think she’s the best resource because she’s the reigning queen of the castle,” Ms. Carroll said.

Rob Cesternino, who was on two seasons of “Survivor” (“The Amazon” in 2003 and “All-Stars” in 2004), said the buzz surrounding “The Traitors” has made the possibility of appearing on it alluring to many reality stars — himself included — whom he described as “moths to a flame.”

“I would definitely go on ‘The Traitors’ if I was asked,” said Mr. Cesternino, who lives outside Raleigh, N.C., and hosts a podcast that focuses on reality television, called “Rob Has a Podcast.”

“The first rule of being a reality TV star is keep doing more reality TV shows,” Mr. Cesternino, 45, said. “‘Traitors’ opens up a whole avenue to reality stars,” he continued, describing the show as bringing together “the multiverse of reality TV.” Stars from that genre, he said, see it as a way to extend or revive their careers.

“That’s a really big selling point,” Mr. Cesternino said.

Danny Roberts, 46, who appeared on “The Real World: New Orleans” in 2000 and on its Paramount+ spinoff, “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans,” in 2022, has also recently been “having some strategic conversations” about how to get cast on “The Traitors,” he said.

Mr. Roberts, now a recruitment consultant in Grafton, Vt., compared getting a call from the show’s producers to buying a winning lottery ticket, adding that he was interested not just in being on TV, but also in playing the game.

“I think it would also be a cool piece of escapism,” Mr. Roberts said, “with a fascinating psychological component to it.”

His “Real World” and “Real World Homecoming” co-star Melissa Beck, 47, said she would love to receive an offer to join the cast, too — not least because contestants, in addition to being eligible to win a six-figure cash prize, are also paid to appear on the show.

“It would revive your ability to get a check, the time commitment is fantastic, the prize pot is pretty cute, I bet the appearance fee is cool,” Ms. Beck, who lives on Long Island, said. “And it doesn’t hurt that it has an Emmy.”

While many of the notable contestants on the American version of “The Traitors” have appeared on reality TV, its casts have also included members who became famous for other reasons. Ryan Lochte, the gold medalist Olympic swimmer, appeared on Season 1, and Deontay Wilder, a professional boxer, was on Season 2.

As the show’s profile has risen, some famous fans from outside the world of reality TV, like the comedian Matt Rogers, have also made no secret of their aspirations to be noticed by producers.

Mr. Rogers, on a 2023 episode of “Las Culturistas,” the pop-culture podcast he hosts with the “Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang, said he would jokingly talk about wanting to be on “Survivor,” but was genuinely interested in appearing on “The Traitors.” “I really want to be on,” he said on the podcast. (Mr. Rogers, through a representative, declined to comment for this article.)

Mike Cotton, an executive producer of the show’s American and British versions, said the American spinoff’s success largely hinged on the curation of its casts, a process he described as having the precision and seriousness of a jury selection.

Mr. Cotton declined to comment on specific details about casting the show’s third season, including whether offers had been made, a timeline for such offers or how much cast members will be paid.

But he said the general approach to casting was about finding a dynamic mix of people.

“You want people from all walks of life that are going to bring their own unique skills to it,” he said. “You want people who are big competitors, you want people who are cutthroat, you want people who are master manipulators, people who are deep thinkers, people who will sit back and watch and listen. And I think the idea is that they’ll all bring their unique skills, and I think that’s why we have such a mix of people.”

Joe Biden is a dapper guy. He always has been. When he turned up decades ago for a first date with the woman who would become his wife and the country’s first lady, her gut reaction was, “This is never going to work, not in a million years.”

Dressed in a sports coat and loafers, Joe Biden was too dapper for someone who had previously gone out with men in T-shirts and clogs.

They worked it out. And the future president stuck to his style. It was one that sometimes skewed Gatsby, for which in 1974 Washingtonian magazine noted his penchant for pinstripe suits and tasseled loafers when citing him as one of the best dressed men in the Senate. It was one that was sometimes too high-toned for its setting. In 1979, Mr. Biden, then a second-term senator, exuded confidence in a “tailored suit and expensive tie” for a campus speech at the University of Alabama, The New Yorker later reported.

It was one that, on occasion, even threatened to upstage the boss. Yes, it must have been flattering to be praised by The Chicago Tribune as the “best-dressed guy” at Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address. Politically, however, it was not the best look.

Still, dapper cred has stood President Biden in good stead. When Donald J. Trump, now 77, derides his 81-year-old opponent as doddering Uncle Joe, he is missing a point any tailor would be happy to clarify. There is getting old, and there is looking old. To avoid having your clothes add unnecessary years, make style your friend.

“Joe Biden’s style is timeless and doesn’t have any expiration date,” the designer Todd Snyder said recently. If you think that is accidental, you are not paying attention.

Setting aside the occasional solecism (wearing a necktie and not a bow tie with his dinner jacket at the state dinner for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan), President Biden is consistently the “sartorially elegant” politician Tom Ford once praised in a British GQ interview. More tellingly, he exemplifies how, in politics as in other pursuits, dressing effectively and well requires know-how and a willingness to take a good, hard look in the mirror.

“Bodies change as we age,” said Keith Dorsett, the district manager of Heimie’s Haberdashery, a venerable men’s clothier in St. Paul, Minn. All but the fittest of men are bound to experience a degree of muscle loss across chest and shoulders as they age, along with a loss of flesh across the back and postural shifts. The scale may insist that you weigh just what you did at 30. It cannot account for how some of those pounds turned into a muffin top.

“Think of how seldom we look in the mirror and take a real inventory,” Mr. Dorsett said. “At all times, but particularly with aging, fit is the No. 1 thing.”

That view is endorsed by experts like Giovanni Bianchi, the director of the men’s wear label L.B.M. 1911, maker of what Esquire once called the perfect blazer. “Age is not the defining element of an ability to dress effectively,” Mr. Bianchi said by email from his home in Mantua, Italy. “Age is only the determining factor if you make the wrong choices.”

Alas, strategizing for the dynamics of an aging body requires skills few of us innately possess. Since we are no longer in a world where haberdasheries exist in abundance, what we are left with is the sad tells of aging: a sport coat with scarecrow shoulders, a sleeve drooping past the wrist, trouser hems puddling around one’s shoes.

That is, unless we are President Joe Biden, who clearly retained the lessons picked up at clothiers like Brooks Brothers and Jos. A. Bank (and, presumably, far fancier establishments, though the White House, through a spokesman, demurred when asked which ones). Continuing to refine them even as he occupies the highest office, Mr. Biden gives offhand master classes on the wardrobe tricks that distract from the inevitable predations of time.

“With an older body, you can do what Biden does and put a little structure in the shoulder while keeping it soft, so it’s somewhere between a British and an Italian cut,” Mr. Dorsett said. You can create subtle shaping in the back lining of a jacket where inevitably there is “less meat on the bone as you age.”

You can stick to white shirts with a slightly heightened and moderately spread collar, its points nestled neatly under the lapel. The dual effect both minimizes wattles and creates a tidy frame for the face. You can elect to wear solid color ties and fasten them with four-in-hand or half-Windsor knots that never look like an angry fist at the throat.

You can handily avoid the worst pitfalls of “dressing old,” Mr. Dorsett said, by thinking of the body as defined by its hinges: hips, elbows, ankles, wrists and knees. Have sleeves hemmed at the break of the wrist, he suggested, to avoid the telltale grandpa droop. Trim the skirt of a jacket just a hairbreadth shorter, not in pursuit of Thom Browne styling but to avoid looking as though you bought back your ’70s blazer from a thrift shop bargain rack.

“The bottom line about dressing is that our clothes have a message to send,” Sid Mashburn, a onetime J. Crew and Ralph Lauren designer who now operates a chain of namesake stores, explained from his Atlanta headquarters. “They are a far bigger representation of that than anyone wants to acknowledge.”

Yet why admit to being a billboard? Isn’t saying more by doing less key to style evolution? Is subtlety not the least appreciated of superpowers? If there is anything that distinguishes the style of the man occupying the Oval Office, it is how all but imperceptibly he has learned to dress in a manner that seems simultaneously approachable and commanding, dignified yet not remote, venerable yet vigorous and remarkably fashion savvy.

The blue Mr. Biden favors in his suiting, for instance, is a hue considerably brighter than the funereal navy typically favored by heads of state — one not incidentally forgiving of aging skin. It is also a color very close to the blue on which the stars in the American flag are arrayed. Its Pantone name is Old Glory.

Was its selection a coincidence or else a shrewd bit of presidential semiotics? For that you’d have to ask the dude in chief.

There was no shortage of celebrities onstage last weekend at the first installment of this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California, where Doja Cat, Billie Eilish and even Will Smith performed.

Ms. Eilish surprised spectators by joining Lana del Rey for the folk-rock singer’s first Coachella set since 2014. Mr. Smith, who started his career as a rapper, also shocked many in the audience by performing a rendition of his song “Men in Black” with dancers dressed as aliens during the reggaeton singer J Balvin’s set.

But some of the highest-profile performers at the festival weren’t there to work: Rihanna and ASAP Rocky, along with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, came as spectators, even if neither couple could exactly blend in with the crowd.

At Coachella — an orgy of brand activations, parties and musical performances — celebrities are but one reliable component. Another is fashion, which typically tends toward the ostentatious. That was mostly the case last weekend, during which these 15 looks stood out — some for being opulent, others for being over-the-top and a couple for being surprisingly simple.

Of the many outfits worn by the singer and rapper during her set, this get-up involving few clothes and strategically arranged extensions might have stolen the show — if only by a hair.

Gwen Stefani: Most Hollaback Girl!

The singer, who reunited with No Doubt at Coachella, harked back to her punk style as the band’s lead singer in an ensemble that mixed plaids with mesh.

A jeweled choker and a silver bracelet added sparkle to the musician and band leader’s iridescent pink suit.

Ice Spice: Most Tied Up!

Instead of copper curls, the rapper had flowing orange-red locks, which she wore with a skintight, lacy I.AM.GIA bodysuit with ties at the legs, arms and chest.

Shakira: Most Unraveled!

The singer, who at Coachella announced a world tour promoting her new album, took the stage in a fiery shredded minidress that exposed plenty of skin and resembled a knitting project.

Lil Uzi Vert: Most ‘Seinfeld’!

A difference between this voluminous white top and “the puffy shirt” that inspired punchlines on “Seinfeld”? The rapper wore this version with bravado.

Paris Hilton: Most ‘Cowboy Carter’!

While Beyoncé was not present at Coachella, her presence was felt in Western-inspired outfits, like this pairing of flirty dress with cowboy hat and boots by the heiress who has moonlighted as a singer and D.J.

Simu Liu: Most Unassuming!

Yes, the sleeveless top flaunted the actor’s toned arms, but his festival attire was still relatively simple compared with what many others wore.

Lauryn Hill: Most Electric!

Among the visually stimulating elements of the rapper’s look were silver hair beads, heavy blue eye makeup and a vibrant yellow Balmain suit.

Barry Keoghan: Most Logos!

Somehow, the actor’s gratuitous combination of Burberry check scarf, Versace top, Burberry check shorts and Nike sneakers … worked.

Xin Liu: Most Tin Woman!

The Chinese singer’s metallic top and pants evoked space-age garments by Thierry Mugler and Paco Rabanne. They were made by Syban Velardi-laufer, a costume designer in London.

Brittany Howard: Most Stained Glass!

Glowing would correctly describe the way the singer looked onstage in this colorful patchwork-style sequined caftan.

Campbell Puckett: Most Pookie!

In a TikTok video, the influencer known as Pookie described her outfit of flouncy top, leather microshorts and knee-high boots as “girlie rocker.”

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: Most Coachella!

Mood boards for “festival style” the world over will likely now be populated with references to the singer’s and the professional football player’s outfits, which seemed effortlessly thrown together but were almost certainly constructed with care.

There are certain things the fashion industry will always love: The young and beautiful. Art and money. Nostalgia. A comeback. From time to time, it also loves to throw itself behind a cause.

By those metrics, Dan Colen is giving fashion a lot to love right now. A blue-chip artist represented by the mega-gallery Gagosian, he founded a farm called Sky High that donates 100 percent of its food to local pantries in upstate New York. But 20 years ago, Mr. Colen, now 44, was a main character in a cast of beautiful broken boys (nicknamed Warhol’s Children) who became the art world protagonists of New York City’s peak indie sleaze moment — an era for which fashion is currently throbbing with longing.

Among the infamous work from that time were the “hamster nests” Mr. Colen created with Dash Snow. (The two did copious amounts of drugs, then rolled around naked in shredded phone books.) Mr. Snow ejaculated on newspapers while Ryan McGinley photographed the whole scene, including Mr. Colen’s oft-mentioned genitals. But that was then.

Now, in addition to the farm, Mr. Colen is the chief creative officer of Sky High Farm Universe, which sells merch and can be found on many fashion hounds who may also be seen wearing luxury brands.

The Sky High Farm Universe logo features a girlish strawberry sitting on a boyish crescent moon, which serves as the common thread across a host of Sky High Farm Universe items spanning hoodies, T-shirts, knits, socks, hats and underwear. Some pieces are classic, like a denim chore jacket. Much of the collection is made from deadstock or upcycled materials. All of it is standard streetwear fare, ranging in price from $30 to $2,500 and sold at places like Ssense, Nordstrom and Dover Street Market.

“It’s cute,” Olivia Kim, the senior vice president for creative merchandising at Nordstrom, said of the collection. “It’s cool. But then there’s naturally the inquisitiveness of ‘Why is this called Sky High Farm Universe?’ There’s the automatic question of ‘What does this actually mean? Who’s behind this?’”

So What Is Sky High Farm?

Located on a 40-acre property in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, Sky High is an earnest operation fueled by a mission of “food sovereignty,” which basically boils down to people growing and eating fresh, locally produced food, but which, in its founders’ telling, is also a lofty vision tackling philanthropy, capitalism, climate change, social justice and education.

“It’s really a model,” said Mr. Colen, now sober and prone to sweeping philosophical answers and big ideas. “We’re trying to support the next generation of farmers who farm in the way that we do so that everybody can eat the kind of food that we grow.”

Mr. Colen bought the land on a quest to get out of New York City and, he said, “commune with nature.” He was also looking for more space to create art.

“I had no relationships in agriculture,” he said. “It became clear that if I was going to have an intimate relationship with this place, I was going to have to cultivate it.”

First the Sky, Then the Universe

Sky High Farm Universe is a separate LLC accounting for all the clothing, accessories, food, beverage and beauty projects and collaborations. It operates like a traditional for-profit company, except that a portion of profits are donated back to the farm. “Every customer is a donor” is its tagline.

Mr. Colen and his team come up with the designs, while Dover Street Market Paris handles production, sales and distribution as part of its brand agency.

Like the strawberry to the moon, the fashion and art worlds have curled up tight on Sky High’s lap. Since Sky High Farm Universe’s inception in 2022, it has done $5.5 million in sales and is now available at 60 retailers. It has attracted a roster of in-crowd collaborators, including Samira Nasr, the editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar; Alastair McKimm, the stylist and former editor in chief of i-D; Mel Ottenberg, the editor in chief of Interview; the photographers Quil Lemons and old pal Ryan McGinley; and Heidi Bivens, the costume designer for “Euphoria.”

Balenciaga, Bogs, Dickies and Denim Tears have partnered with SHFU. There’s also an ongoing collaboration with Converse that includes Sky High Chuck Taylors, as well as with Nike and the artist KAWS. Last year Sky High introduced its first beverage, a Honey Pop gluten-free, probiotic sparkling water produced by FedUp Foods that was sold at Erewhon. This month, Sky High ventures into beauty with a hand cream in collaboration with the clean beauty brand and fellow farm owner Tata Harper.

In May, the glamour flock will descend on Tivoli, N.Y., when Sky High hosts its Spring Picnic fund-raiser for equity in the food system. The Roots are performing, and the host and advisory committees read like a seating chart for the front row of a fashion show: Chioma Nnadi, the editor of British Vogue, Kate Young, the celebrity stylist, Derek Blasberg, Tommy Dorfman, Marc Jacobs, Kim Hastreiter, Chloë Sevigny, Laila Gohar and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. The corporate sponsors for the event include Chanel, Champion, Gagosian, JanSport, Levi’s and Nike.

‘I see this as a sculpture.’

On a tour of Sky High Farm’s grounds in late February, nothing was growing in the dead of winter. About one-and-a-half acres of the land are devoted to vegetable production with another 25 as pasture for cows, sheep and chickens.

Mr. Colen’s home, where he lives with his partner, the bread artist, writer and model Lexie Smith, and their young son, sits at the end of a driveway near a renovated barn that houses his art studio. Mr. Colen has never considered himself anything but an artist. He sees the farm as one of his sculptures.

If not a household name, Mr. Colen is one of the best-known and most successful contemporary artists of his generation.

“We were all functioning junkies,” said Javier Peres, the founder of Peres Projects, the gallery that represented Mr. Colen from 2003 to around 2011. “But Dan’s ideas were just flowing. They were grander than what he could do on his own, but he had it in him.”

When Mr. Snow died of a heroin overdose at age 27 in 2009, the party was effectively over. Mr. Colen got sober and embarked on life upstate. The market for his art was flourishing, and he funded the nascent stages of Sky High himself.

“The art world was like, money was falling out of the sky in 2010 and 2015,” he said.

The beginning of the farm was a blur. Mr. Colen called a graphic designer named Jordan Rosenblum who had done an internship at a farm. “Literally, he came up here, and we tried to make a farm, whatever that means,” Mr. Colen said. “We had some shovels.”

They didn’t get very far, but Mr. Rosenblum introduced Mr. Colen to the concept of food deserts, meaning places where there is no access to fresh, nutritious food, like certain parts of the Bronx. Mr. Colen grew up just across the Hudson River in Leonia, N.J.

“As somebody who loves to create things, the idea that I could create a tool to serve this issue seemed really fascinating to me,” Mr. Colen said.

Through his art studio he found a real farmer, Joey Piecuch, a fellow recovering heroin addict, who moved to Sky High and actually got to tilling the land and raising livestock. Together he and Mr. Colen came up with the farm’s name.

“It was a bit of a joke,” Mr. Colen said. “We were two junkies who were kind of doing this very kind, benevolent work.”

From the beginning, Mr. Colen did not want the farm to be a traditional business. Instead of selling its bounty, the farm would give it all away. He enlisted his childhood friend Joshua Bardfield, who worked extensively in public health. They started working with the Food Bank for New York City.

“There was no budget, there was no plan,” Mr. Colen said. Nothing was papered.”

Yet the inkling for branding was there. Mr. Colen commissioned the illustrator Joana Avillez to come up with a logo. She drew on the Disney icons that have been a recurring theme in Mr. Colen’s work.

“The farm is very Walt Disney, having all these animals,” she said. It’s idyllic.”

The strawberry moon was initially used for jams and vegetable salts that Mr. Colen bottled and gave as gifts. “People liked it,” he said. “It was all homemade. The jars were cute. It was like, What else can happen here?

“Dan always had bigger sights,” said Melissa Bent, his first gallerist at Rivington Arms, the small but influential gallery then on the Lower East Side. “He had a photo of Picasso nailed to the top of his work area at his grandfather’s junk shop in Brooklyn. He wanted it all.”

Oh, to Be Like Patagonia

Sky High Farm first got its 501c3 status, making it a nonprofit exempt from federal taxes, in 2016, but it was mostly dormant until 2019. Mr. Bardfield joined the farm full time and is now the co-executive director. Around that time, Mr. Colen approached James Gilchrist, an old friend from his Warhol’s Children era, who is now vice president of Dover Street Market USA and Comme des Garçons USA. They came up with Sky High’s first fund-raising project: an assortment of vintage T-shirts and hoodies bearing Ms. Avillez’s logo and a selection of jams and honey that were sold at Dover Street Market Los Angeles and New York. All of the proceeds went back to the farm.

It did so well, Mr. Gilchrist decided to develop Sky High as one of Dover Street’s brands. “It’s been a crazy success,” he said.

Where Mr. Colen goes, people follow. “He’s always been someone who has taken a little bit more initiative, a leader within the group,” Mr. McGinley said. “I remember when we were young, he said to me, ‘We need to be real artists, and we need to get a studio.’ I was just kind of content living in our little tiny apartment in the East Village.”

Indeed, a lot of taking initiative goes on up at Sky High Farm. Also, a lot of talking about initiatives. (They call it “dialoguing.”) Other buzzwords invoked repeatedly are “beneficence,” “equity,” “capitalism” and “philanthropy.” Their north stars are companies like Newman’s Own, which has donated more than $600 million to charitable causes, and Patagonia, whose founder Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership of the company to a specially designed trust and nonprofit to ensure that the company’s profits go to climate change and environmental causes. Mr. Colen deems Patagonia “the coolest brand in the world.”

Pulling It Off

Between all of Sky High Farm’s merchandise, collabs, big program plans and fancy friends, it’s easy to forget that its primary mission is providing food access for those who don’t have it. In 2023, Sky High Farm donated 19,306 pounds of vegetables and fresh herbs, including broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes and cilantro, 56,880 eggs, 6,408 pounds of chicken and 1,750 pounds of beef and lamb.

The majority goes to hyperlocal partners, including Sweet Freedom Farm, Dutchess Outreach, Long Table Harvest, Willow Roots and North East Community Center. “About 95 percent of the food we produce stays within 15 to 20 miles of the farm,” Mr. Bardfield said.

Lisa Zayas co-founded Willow Root, a food pantry in Pine Plains, N.Y., four years ago, serving about 20 families. During Covid, that number jumped to 70 families.

“Sky High was right there, giving us produce, chickens, eggs,” Ms. Zayas said. “Their chickens are beautiful, huge. They feed a family with leftovers, no problem.” She’s mostly unaware of Mr. Colen’s profile outside of Pine Plains. “I don’t know Dan as the artist,” she said. “I’ve heard things, but that doesn’t interest me.”

The pandemic brought the urgency of food scarcity into sharp relief. “With Covid, people saw their neighbors lining up at food banks to get food,” Mr. Bardfield said. “The issues that we’ve been addressing for the last many years were at the forefront.” It was the catalyst for Sky High’s expansion, activating the 501c3, staffing up, expanding the brand and raising money.

Sky High Farm is in the process of moving from the 40-acre plot in Pine Plains to a 560-acre spread a few miles away. There’s room for bigger pastures, more vegetable production, 40 acres for a farm business incubator and a lot of land. Plans for how it will be used are TBD, but its founders hope they will involve climate-related research, including habitat biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil health, water quality and air quality.

Sky High runs a grant program that distributes funds to small regenerative farms with a focus on marginalized groups.

Education is a big focus. This fall, Sky High Farm Universe is collaborating with Champion for a collection of merchandise destined for the bookstores of universities with robust farming and agricultural programs.

Over the years, people have often asked Mr. Colen how he has been able to pull this whole thing off.

“I made it using my art brain,” he said. “As an artist, really, it’s hard to actually pursue this, but in theory, what I want to make, nobody would ever know was art.”

To gather every last stem and ribbon, Mr. Patrikis is on the phone constantly, negotiating with 15 distributors to get the best deals.

“If you don’t know how to buy from the wholesalers, the wholesalers are going to buy you,” he said.

Depending on a stem’s length, the size of the bloom and the nation of origin, a dozen roses in New York City can cost a customer from $10 from a street vendor to more than $120 from a high-end florist. Mr. Patrikis prefers the Explorer variety of red roses, which he said tend to have larger blooms and stay fresh longer than some other varieties.

Sales in the flower industry, where same-day, local deliveries are common, shot up early during the pandemic. So did the price of doing business, with rising fuel costs, a flower shortage and supply chain problems.

The elevated prices put pressure on longtime florists like Mr. Patrikis, whose shop was one of five on his block around 2010. Ditmars Flower Shop is now the last one left.

“We were never busier in our lifetime,” Mr. Patrikis, 37, said about reopening in time for Mother’s Day in 2020 after the earliest closures in the pandemic. “We didn’t sleep for a week.”

Americans spent nearly $73 billion on flowers, seed and potted plants last year, up 48 percent from 2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But there are signs of instability in the industry.

Troy Conner, the president of Kendall Farms, a large flower farm in Fallbrook, Calif., that sells to supermarket chains and wholesalers, said that many of his costs had skyrocketed, too.

Beginning last year, he said, demand for flowers had started to level off. He said he might repurpose some land reserved for growing sunflowers, once a profitable crop, to raise goats instead.

At Ditmars Flower Shop, Mr. Patrikis said, the profit margin has shrunk since the start of the pandemic, from 20 to 30 percent, down to 10 to 20 percent. The shop might have sales of $150,000 and $300,000 a month.

He said higher sales volume had allowed him to make up the difference so far. This year, he expects to sell more than 100,000 red roses, his most popular item, up from 70,000 in 2019. On Valentine’s Day, the busiest holiday, he sells 15,000 roses.

The Society of American Florists, a trade group, predicts that the number of flower shops in the country will drop to 11,000 by 2026, partly because of retirements and consolidation. There were 11,600 in 2021.

In last year’s third quarter, there were 398 florists in New York City, down from 432 in the same period in 2019, according to James Parrott, a director with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

Mr. Patrikis’s father, John, a Greek immigrant from the island of Nisyros, sold flowers in the subway and eventually opened his first flower shop in Astoria in 1983 before moving to the current 1,500-square-foot shop in 2008.

Mr. Patrikis said he felt obliged to stay in the family business. Sales remain brisk, largely because he has a broad range of clients — weddings, funerals, Greek Orthodox churches. Still, he worries about consumer spending habits, now that most pandemic-era government benefits have dried up.

He’s optimistic about his own future, though, because his family bought their building in 2003.

“The only ones who are going to be left are the ones who own their buildings,” he said.

Ben Casselman contributed reporting.

Produced by Eden Weingart, Andrew Hinderaker and Dagny Salas. Development by Gabriel Gianordoli and Aliza Aufrichtig.

In front of rolling cameras and a crowd of nearly 300 guests, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, barreled toward one end of a polo field in South Florida on Friday.

“The Duke of Sussex may score a goal!” an announcer cried through a loudspeaker at the Royal Salute Polo Challenge to Benefit Sentebale, which was attended by spectators including Serena Williams and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and by film crews with Netflix. The streamer is producing a polo-related project with Harry and Meghan that was announced on Thursday and that will be filmed in Wellington, an affluent area near Palm Beach known for its equestrian scene.

The announcer and many in the crowd groaned audibly when Harry missed the shot. He was wearing a blue and white jersey with the No. 2 on it, along with a logo for Sentebale, a charitable organization he founded to support children in the African countries Lesotho and Botswana, and a logo for Royal Salute, a whisky brand and a sponsor of the invitation-only charity match involving three teams.

The event took place at the Grand Champions Polo Club and its organizers included Melissa and Marc Ganzi, members of Wellington’s polo community as well as the founders of the World Polo League and the owners of the Grand Champions club. The Ganzis also own the Santa Rita Polo Farm in Wellington and the Aspen Valley Polo Club in Colorado. Mr. Ganzi is the chief executive of Digital Bridge, an investment firm formerly known as Colony Capital, where he succeeded Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the chairman of former President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee.

Harry, 39, one of the highest-profile polo players in the world, competed in the match with other stars of the sport like the renowned Argentine player Adolfo Cambiaso; the English player Malcolm Borwick, an ambassador for Royal Salute; and Nacho Figueras, the Argentine athlete who has regularly faced off against Harry on polo fields and whose career has made him a face not only of the sport but also of Ralph Lauren, a brand that has intertwined its identity with polo.

Harry’s team ultimately won the match, and was presented with a trophy by Meghan, who received cheers from the crowd as she approached a podium on a stage to deliver the award in a cream-colored Heidi Merrick halter dress and towering nude Aquazzura pumps.

Meghan, after being assisted up a staircase to the stage, walked past the other players on the winning team and straight toward her husband. “Me?” Harry said jokingly to his wife, pointing toward his chest and feigning surprise before the couple leaned in for a rather cinematic kiss — the Netflix cameras were there, after all.

The Sussexes’ polo project is one of two newly announced initiatives involving them and the streamer; the other project, according to Deadline, will focus on Meghan and activities like cooking, gardening and entertaining. Last month Meghan, 42, announced on social media the start of another new venture, a lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard, about a week before Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer.

The Royal Salute Polo Challenge came at the end of the professional polo season in the United States, which takes place largely in Wellington from January through April. The U.S. Open Polo Championship finals are scheduled to take place next weekend at the National Polo Center in Wellington. The professional tour then moves to Europe for the summer and to South America in the fall.

As Mr. Borwick, the English player, put it: “Polo season follows the sun.” In an interview before the match on Friday, he said that “the sport has changed so much” as investments in polo have transformed it into “a fully professional sport.”

“It used to be perfectly acceptable to leave the bar at 3 o’clock in the morning and go play professional polo the next day,” Mr. Borwick said, describing the sport’s evolution as “an incredible journey.”

“For us, as professionals going on that journey, it has been a challenge to continually adapt and change,” Mr. Borwick said.

Sebastien Blanc-Tailleur, a Parisian pâtissier, has always had a passion for confections. “I’ve been obsessed by pastry since I was a little boy,” he said. Since opening his eponymous business in 2015, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur has discretely become one of the most prestigious creators of wedding and special-occasion cakes in France.

“Pastry making is my own sweet form of madness,” he said with a grin. “But it comes from my family. My parents are collectors who love rare antiques, fine paintings, art and drawings, so I perpetuate the family tradition through the medium of pastry.”

In addition to making cakes and pastries, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur, 32, has also become a serious collector of antique books about pastry, especially cherishing those by the 18th-century chef Antonin Carême on pastry molds. “With their shapes and intricate detailing, pastry molds are a unique expression of France’s gastronomic history and artistic heritage,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur said.

“This guy has gold in his hands,” said Yannick Alléno, a Michelin three-star chef for whom Mr. Blanc-Tailleur had worked as sous-chef pâtissier at Ledoyen, a restaurant in Paris, in 2014. “He has an amazing humanistic sensibility and might even be the reincarnation of Michelangelo,” Mr. Alleno said.

With a ferocious determination to master the world of sugar, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur left home at 15 to become an apprentice to Christophe Turgot, a pâtissier who owned a pastry shop in the seaside town of Villers-sur-Mer in Normandy. “My father resisted my plan at first, but he came around,” he said, adding, “It was very hard. I lived alone, and I worked nonstop. But Monsieur Turgot was kind and took me under his wing.”

Next, he moved to Toulouse, France, to take a job at Pillon, the city’s best known quality patisserie. “I worked all day, and then because I had the key, I’d spend hours and hours, days even, alone in the kitchen where the decorative elements of the pastries were made teaching myself and experimenting,” he said.

Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s tenacity led him to create cakes for weddings and special events. “Creating a great wedding cake is all about making someone’s dreams real so that there can be a sort of shared communion with your spouse, your family and your guests,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur said. “My work is to decipher the fantasies and desires of my clients and render them into a cake that will thrill them and make them proud.”

Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s clientele encompasses French and European aristocrats, tycoons, movie stars, and fashion designers — including Dior and the Saudi and Bahraini royal families. He has also worked with American customers, most recently creating a 10-tiered mauve cake with intricate sugar wisteria blooms for the wedding of Misha Kordestani, a founder and president of Guin Records, a Los Angeles-based music conglomerate, last May in Cannes, France. He also designed a lily of the valley-bedecked wedding cake for last November’s five-day wedding extravaganza of Jacob LaGrone and Madelaine Brockway, a wealthy couple from Texas.

“Designing a wedding cake involves elements of being an architect, an art historian and a jewelry designer,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur said. “My work is like edible haute couture because every detail matters.”

Whatever the couple’s desires, if their tastes don’t align with Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s restrained elegance, he may not take them on as a client. “Before I accept a commission, I meet a potential client to sound them out about what it is they’re looking for and also to try and understand their aesthetics,” he said. “There are times when I’ve had to refuse a client when it’s been clear to me that our tastes are incompatible.”

This doesn’t mean, however, that he’ll refuse every far-fetched request. He recently produced a wedding cake that recreated the Duomo di Milano, a cathedral in Milan, as an intricately detailed miniature.

Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s mediums are flour, butter, cream, and chocolate, among other ingredients, but most of all sugar. He uses pâte à sucre, an edible sugar dough made from confectioner’s sugar, egg whites and glucose, to sculpt the elegantly elaborate details of the cakes.This includes edible lace and gilded foliage, along with the fragile and astonishingly lifelike flowers that are his signature.

With a staff of seven at an atelier in suburban Paris, he assembles the flowers one petal at a time, which is why a single wedding cake can represent several months of work. Wedding cakes are usually ordered at least six months in advance, and given the huge amount of hand work in each creation, he rarely produces more than 12 cakes a year.

The starting price for a Blanc-Tailleur wedding cake is 7,500 euros, or around $8,100, while simpler celebration cakes are relatively more affordable, beginning at 3,400 euros, or roughly $3,700.

Blanc-Tailleur’s business has been awarded the label of Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivent, a prestigious French government label that designates a business that continues to perpetuate traditional French artistry.

Mr. Blanc-Tailleur said that while wedding cake trends often change, he is proud of keeping the classic art of French pastry-making alive. His greatest pleasure is when a couple discovers that their wedding cake is not only beautiful but tastes good, too.

“This is very important for me,” he said. “My cakes must taste as good as they look. “The ultimate goal of my work as a pâtissier is always to create gastronomic pleasure.”

30-Across: “___ and dry food (categories I will now be using to describe human food. Oh, so suddenly it’s weird?)”

31-Across: “TikTok videos of ‘Family Guy’ clips accompanied by Subway Surfers gameplay, e.g.”

26-Down: “Lili ___, one of the first trans women to receive gender-affirming surgery”

Who’s this “I” cracking jokes about WET food in the middle of a crossword clue? What is SLUDGE CONTENT doing inside a puzzle? How did we get to learn about Lili Elbe when the answer ELBE almost always refers to the German river?

Welcome to the crossword in the age of Gen Z. Clues require internet meme literacy. Solutions may reflect the identity of the person behind the puzzle. And the way they’re constructed can involve vibrant online forums in addition to scraps of paper.

Grids these days are often “diaristic,” said Paolo Pasco, 23, the winner of this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the Super Bowl of crosswords. They can reveal clusters of personal obsessions or glimpses of an idiosyncratic sense of humor. “That’s a big part of what got me into puzzles,” Mr. Pasco said. “This is an insight into the person’s brain who thought of that joke.”

It’s a noticeable shift from decades past, when crosswords were usually faceless, less a site for auteurism than a form of anonymous entertainment. But thanks to a variety of factors — rapidly improving technology to create puzzles, a much wider array of outlets eager to publish them and a push to celebrate new voices — constructors today are more inclined to express themselves in their work.

For Ada Nicolle, the constructor of those clues for WET, SLUDGE CONTENT and ELBE, which appear in a puzzle on her blog Luckystreak Xwords, discovering a love of crossword construction happened in tandem with coming out as a transgender woman. Ms. Nicolle, 22, who lives in Toronto, said she chose her first name in part because it appeared in crosswords so frequently — over 600 grids in The New York Times alone.

Now, she puts ADA in her own crossword puzzles.

Seeing a piece of information in a puzzle lends it a kind of authority, Ms. Nicolle said, which means she can use her puzzles to depict the way she wants the world to be.

“You see a bunch of news stories about these bills being passed about trying to take away your right to existence,” she added, “and if you’re solving a crossword puzzle and you see ‘gender euphoria’ in the grid as a matter-of-fact thing that people feel, it’s incredibly powerful.”

This isn’t the first time the crossword has undergone a youthquake. In the 1970s and 1980s, the crossword entered a period known as the Oreo Wars. The old guard insisted that pop-culture references and brand names should not appear in the venerable grid, and thus words like OREO had to be clued with their strict dictionary definitions. (“Oreography” is an alternate spelling for the study of mountains.)

But younger constructors and editors, like the New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, argued that banning brand names from the puzzle meant leaving out major parts of contemporary life. By opening the crossword’s gates to more types of words and styles of wordplay, these editors reasoned, the form itself would become more capacious, inventive and, well, more fun.

Many Gen Z crossword enthusiasts point to the pandemic as the start of their obsession: Bored in high school or college, they were suddenly isolated and on the internet for a lot more time than ever before.

In the summer of 2020, Mr. Pasco, then an undergraduate student at Harvard, constructed a puzzle with Adam Aaronson, who was at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at the time, over dozens of Twitter DMs. They had met online earlier that year, after Mr. Pasco complimented Mr. Aaronson on a clever clue.

When their puzzle together ran in The Times that August, it was the first time the paper had published a collaboration by constructors born in the 2000s. According to XWord Info, a database that aggregates information about every printed New York Times crossword, of the 68 constructors who have made their Times crossword debuts as teenagers, more than two dozen have been Gen Z.

Since then, more bespoke platforms have cropped up for constructors. In 2021, Mr. Aaronson, now a 22-year-old software engineer in New York, unveiled his own app, Wordlisted, which scrapes any given list of words to find specific letter patterns. It’s free, though users can leave Mr. Aaronson a tip for his troubles. (“Tipping out $10 for each puzzle Wordlisted helped me get published so far,” wrote one person who sent Mr. Aaronson $100.)

Many of the top Gen Z constructors have at least basic coding knowledge; several mentioned generating “baby Python scripts” to help them hunt for specific letter or theme combinations.

Such expertise, though, is hardly required for entry into this tight-knit group. In forums like Crosscord, a Discord server for crossword enthusiasts, people share advice for constructing puzzles and tips for solving them.

“Once people started talking to each other online and understanding how crosswords worked they realized, of course we can do those things,” said Ricky Cruz, 26, who started the forum in 2019 and watched it take off during the pandemic. Today, it has some 4,000 members, who can dip into channels like “spoilers” (to discuss the day’s puzzles), “crossword solving,” or “crossword construction,” where people test out themes and grids. In another channel, users can plug their work or link to Twitch streams of themselves solving a puzzle in real time.

Often, “crossword all-stars” will drop in, Mr. Aaronson added, so it is not a purely Gen Z space. But it’s these forums’ youngest members who drive the online conversation. They’re often the source of niche crossword-related memes, which then frequently find their way into puzzles on Et Tu Etui, a blog whose name is borrowed from an in-joke for the kind of obscure “crosswordese” that most editors today would never permit.

Like many trends, this one loops back around to its source. As many young people discover a love of crossword puzzles — sometimes with the help of these Gen Z-founded resources — they’re finding community within pages of newsprint.

Before the pandemic, most college newspapers either didn’t have a crossword puzzle, or they licensed ones from mainstream publications. But as crosswords have exploded across the internet, students have taken their own spin on the form. Dozens of student papers, like The Daily Princetonian and The Chicago Maroon, now feature regular full-fledged puzzle sections with games editors and staff constructors.

“It’s something I didn’t feel at all before, but now, online, at our school, through other schools — I have a crossword community,” said Pavan Kannan, 20, the crossword editor at The Michigan Daily.

As more members of Gen Z seize the means of crossword production, some are feeling emboldened.

“I feel like my generation is a lot smarter than people give us credit for,” said Ms. Nicolle, whose book “A-to-Gen Z Crosswords: 72 Puzzles That Hit Different,” is slated for release next month. “There should be hard crossword puzzles for people like me, that are funny and the references are current and they’re nostalgic toward the 2000s and early 2010s. You sometimes solve a puzzle and you think — I didn’t know this could be put in a puzzle.”

My wife and I attended my nephew’s wedding 18 months ago. He and his wife are now expecting a baby, and I was looking forward to meeting my newest relative. The problem: At their wedding, group pictures of our extended family were taken before my wife and I realized it. When we asked the photographer why we had been overlooked, he only reiterated that pictures had already been taken. My wife, a woman of color, believes that racism may be the reason for our exclusion. She wants nothing to do with my nephew or his family again. I understand her feelings, but I’d like to restart these relationships. My wife doesn’t want me to broach the subject. Thoughts?

HUSBAND

In the absence of meaningful context here, I would probably defer to your wife’s assessment. (In all likelihood, she has more experience with racist episodes than you do.) At the same time, I am thoroughly unpersuaded by your investigation. It sounds as if you spoke to the wrong person: a wedding photographer who had little incentive to assemble your entire family for group photographs.

In my experience, the photographer (or a member of the wedding party) makes an announcement about family photographs after the ceremony. Could you have missed it? Or does your wife’s experience with your family make it seem likely that they would engineer her exclusion because of race? You provide no back story, but your wife may be better equipped to answer these questions.

What seems unjust to me, though, is your willingness to rely on a single conversation with a busy service provider to determine the future of family relationships. I wish you had spoken to your nephew 17 months ago! Since you didn’t, the best you can do now is ask your wife to suspend judgment if this was a novel experience with your family. If it wasn’t, I respect her decision. And then the question becomes: Do you want an independent relationship with these relatives?

When Parental Largess Turns Dinner Into a Smorgasbord

My wife and I treat our children and their spouses when we go out to dinner. We are well off compared with other family members. But one of our children’s spouses always orders the most expensive item on the menu — and sometimes two items, just to try different things. (They don’t do that when they are paying for themselves!) Should we ignore this, or is there a nice way to speak up? The last thing we want is to be petty when it’s not a financial issue.

FATHER

Twice you say you can afford what your children and their spouses order. But to feel good about treating them — which you leave unsaid — you want them to behave within certain boundaries: They should order modestly, and without too many extras. Seems totally reasonable to me.

The problem: You haven’t communicated these boundaries to them, possibly because you think they’re obvious. Well, apparently they aren’t! So, choose your own adventure: If you like indulging your children, do it. You can afford to, right? But if these meals aggravate you, lay out some ground rules: “One meal to a customer, please. And let’s order conservatively, OK?”

All This Story’s Missing Is a Cosmo

I met an attractive guy at a friend’s party. He is interested in getting into my line of work, so I gave him my card. He called the next day, and we agreed to meet for drinks. Before we met, I asked my friend if he was single: He is not. At drinks, I answered his work questions, then he asked if he could speak to me in confidence. I said he could. He told me that his wife had asked him to consider an open relationship. He didn’t flat-out ask me to hook up, but it was clear that his interest in meeting wasn’t strictly professional. I am not interested in an open relationship. Would it be wrong to tell our mutual friend how this panned out?

P.

So, you want to know if it’s OK to dine out on a “Sex and the City”-type misadventure after promising a man (who didn’t proposition you) that he could speak in confidence. I am not being a goody-two-shoes when I tell you that keeping my word generally makes me feel better about myself than the fleeting thrill I get from gossiping. This episode has nothing to do with your mutual friend: Keep her out of it.

Not Every Wedding Needs a Dress

My gay son and his partner are getting married. They plan to wear themed outfits. I support their union and their choices. They identify as male and wear traditional male garb. But secretly, I’ve dreamed that one of them, preferably my son, would wear the traditional white wedding gown that I wore. Its elegance contrasts sharply with their planned outfits. Should I share my desire?

MOTHER

You may be trolling me here, but your question would strike me as homophobic even if you weren’t: Why mention your son’s sexuality at all? Do you think it makes him more likely to wear a dress than a straight son? I would let all your children dress in peace for their weddings. Donate your gown to a clothing charity if you want it to be worn again.

For help with your awkward situation, send a question to [email protected], Philip Galanes on Facebook or @SocialQPhilip on X.

Roberto Cavalli, the Italian fashion designer who celebrated glamour and excess, sending models down the runway and actresses onto red carpets wearing leopard-print dresses, bejeweled distressed jeans, satin corsets and other unapologetically flashy clothes, has died. He was 83.

His company announced the death on Instagram but provided no details.

Mr. Cavalli’s signature style — “molto sexy, molto animal print and molto, molto Italiano,” as the British newspaper The Independent once described it — remained essentially unchanged throughout his long career. But he skillfully reinvented his clothes for different eras, enjoying several renaissances and building a global lifestyle brand in the process.

In the 1970s, Mr. Cavalli designed jackets, jeans and minidresses made from patchwork denim, selling his upscale hippie frocks in a boutique in St. Tropez, on the French Riviera, to actresses like Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren.

For the next two decades, he remained largely unknown outside Europe. Then, in the 1990s, he reinvented luxury denim, first with the sandblasted look and then, in a stroke of invention, by putting Lycra in jeans to make them fit more snugly and look sexier. When the model Naomi Campbell wore a pair during a runway show in 1993, stretch jeans became a huge trend.

Before that breakthrough, Mr. Cavalli’s business was floundering, and he had considered closing his factory. But from the mid-’90s onward, he was one of the biggest names in fashion, with stores around the world, celebrity admirers like Lenny Kravitz and Cindy Crawford and licenses for everything from jewelry, perfume and sunglasses to children’s clothes, housewares and a Roberto Cavalli-branded vodka, which came packaged in a snakeskin-covered bottle.

Like (Gianni) Versace or Calvin (Klein), Cavalli achieved single-name status: He stood for an immediately recognizable aesthetic.

“Roberto loved excess, but he never lost his point of view,” Nina Garcia, the editor in chief of Elle magazine, said in an email in 2020. “Even when minimalism was the norm, he believed in maximalism. He dressed us thinking that life — and fashion — should be lived at full speed.”

A full obituary will follow.

There was no mention of O.J. Simpson on Kim Kardashian’s Instagram page on Thursday.

Early that morning, she posted a video promoting a hoodie and bike shorts from Skims, the clothing company she co-founded. Later in the day, after the Simpson family announced that Mr. Simpson had died of cancer at age 76, Ms. Kardashian was silent on social media.

Over the decades, her family had distanced itself from the man who played a significant role in propping up the Kardashian name.

Kim’s father, Robert Kardashian, met Mr. Simpson through their ties to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Mr. Kardashian earned a business degree there in 1966, and Mr. Simpson was a star running back for the school in 1967 and 1968.

The two became close in the 1970s, when Mr. Simpson was a standout in the National Football League and Mr. Kardashian was a rising lawyer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles. His businesses included entertainment properties and a frozen yogurt company.

When Mr. Kardashian married the former Kris Houghton (now Kris Jenner) in 1978, Mr. Simpson served as his best man. The couple had four children — Kim, Kourtney, Khloe and Robert Jr. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991. That same year, Ms. Jenner married the former Olympian who now goes by Caitlyn Jenner.

Mr. Simpson met Nicole Brown in 1977, when he was still married to his first wife. During a separation from his wife, he lived for a time with Mr. Kardashian at his home, Mr. Simpson wrote in his 2007 book, “If I Did It.”

Mr. Simpson and Ms. Brown married in 1985 and divorced in 1992. Mr. Kardashian remained friends with Mr. Simpson throughout those years, and his wife became close with Ms. Brown Simpson.

In 1994, Mr. Kardashian signed on as a member of the so-called dream team that defended Mr. Simpson when he was charged with murdering his former wife and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Mr. Kardashian’s continued support of Mr. Simpson was a source of strain in the family, Kim Kardashian said in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. She sided with her father, she said, while her mother believed that Mr. Simpson was guilty.

Mr. Kardashian was with Mr. Simpson when the police questioned him at his Los Angeles home on the day after Ms. Brown Simpson was found dead in front of her house after having been stabbed multiple times.

As the police moved toward charging Mr. Simpson in the double homicide, the lawyer Robert Shapiro was hired to lead his defense. The team also came to include the lawyer Johnnie Cochran.

Mr. Shapiro added Mr. Kardashian as counsel, though he would have nothing to do with legal strategy, according to Jeffrey Toobin, whose coverage of the trial for The New Yorker yielded a book, “The Run Of His Life, The People v. O.J. Simpson.”

“Kardashian had absolutely no legal function,” Mr. Toobin said in a phone interview on Thursday. “He was there only to coddle O.J.”

He continued: “Bob Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran had actual jobs to do. They didn’t have the time to take care of O.J.’s clothes and his phone privileges in jail. All that fell to Kardashian.”

Even before the charges were filed, Mr. Kardashian seemed to jump into the role with gusto. With camera crews outside Mr. Simpson’s house, a hide-out was needed. He got one at Mr. Kardashian’s home on Bundy Drive in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

After the charges were filed, Mr. Simpson fled Mr. Kardashian’s house in a Ford Bronco, with his friend and former teammate Al Cowlings. Mr. Simpson reportedly held a gun to his head and was threatening to kill himself as he led police on a surreal, nationally televised slow-speed car chase.

As it transpired, Mr. Kardashian gave a news conference in which he read from a letter Mr. Simpson had left behind. It sounded like a suicide note. According to Mr. Toobin, Mr. Kardashian “made it sound far more grammatical than it actually was.” During the lengthy trial, Mr. Kardashian was at the defense table daily, despite his limited role.

His ex-wife gave birth to a daughter, Kendall Jenner, on Nov. 3, 1995, a month Mr. Simpson’s acquittal. In tribute to her friend, Kris Jenner gave the baby the middle name Nicole.

Mr. Kardashian was a source for the 1996 book “American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense” by Lawrence Schiller and James Willwerth. Because of his cooperation with the authors, Mr. Kardashian and Mr. Simpson reportedly stopped speaking to each another.

In a 1996 interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News, Mr. Kardashian stated that he had come to question Mr. Simpson’s innocence. “I have doubts,” he said. “The blood evidence is the biggest thorn in my side; that causes me the greatest problems. So I struggle with the blood evidence.”

“I never admired that,” Mr. Toobin said. “Either you’re his lawyer or not. It’s not your job to speculate publicly about whether or not he is guilty. But I think Bob understood that in his West L.A. world, O.J. was considered by basically everyone to be guilty, and he didn’t want to be out of step with that consensus.”

Mr. Kardashian died at 59 in 2003 of cancer. His ties to Mr. Simpson were a focus of his Associated Press obituary.

Caitlyn Jenner, who was a regular on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” the E! series that made the Kardashians stars, was the only member of the clan who weighed in on social media concerning Mr. Simpson.

“Good Riddance #OJSimpson,” she wrote on the X platform.

There were cherry blossoms. There were silk and glass butterflies. There were toasts. There was an entree inspired by a California roll and a performance by Paul Simon. But before that, there was the photo op, and the fashion.

On Wednesday evening, as the Bidens hosted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and his wife, Yuko Kishida, at the fifth state dinner of the Biden administration, Jill Biden, wearing an evening dress from Oscar de la Renta, stood with her husband to greet their guests of honor at the North Portico.

Designed by Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the dress flowed in a watery fade from sapphire blue to light silver and was covered in hand-embroidered floral geometric beading.

Why did it matter? It wasn’t as symbolically obvious as the cherry blossom print gown worn by Naomi Biden or Hillary Clinton’s heavy silk caftan, but in opting for de la Renta, the first lady was not simply supporting an American company that represents the melting pot myth of the country. She was connecting to a longstanding relationship: Oscar de la Renta has dressed almost every first lady since Jackie Kennedy; Dr. Biden first wore the label for her inaugural state dinner in 2022.

On a night meant to underscore another powerful relationship — that of the United States and Japan — and reaffirm the strength of that mutual commitment through political stagecraft, the label was an apt choice.

And it suggested that Dr. Biden, who has not always seemed interested in the game of fashion diplomacy, is gearing up with every means at her disposal to help amplify her husband’s message, not just as president but as the Democratic presidential nominee as he faces off against an opponent who revels in the reality TV nature of politics — complete with costumes.

The election will be fought partly in pictures, and already the pictures are starting to tell a story, at least when it comes to the women involved.

Indeed, the state dinner portrait made for a striking image coming just four days after another photo had made its own news. In that photo Melania Trump was standing next to her husband outside the Palm Beach home of the billionaire John Paulson just before an April 6 Republican fund-raiser.

While Mr. Trump was in his signature billowy blue suit and tie, Mrs. Trump was in a pink Valentino jumpsuit covered in a print of exotic blooms — not quite royal purple, but effectively the Palm Beach equivalent. Though she had been largely absent from the campaign before that evening, as well as from Mr. Trump’s many court appearances, the dress was not that of a wallflower but of someone preparing for center stage.

“Dr. Biden and Mrs. Trump are two supporting actors in a TV show that will run from now through November,” said Michael LaRosa of Ballard Partners, a bipartisan lobbying firm that has worked with the Trumps, and a former press secretary to Dr. Biden. “They have starring roles, but they bring very different styles, approaches and brands to the audience.”

Together, the two pictures served as a sort of preview, or curtain raiser for what is to come as Dr. Biden and Mrs. Trump play increasingly public roles in their husbands’ campaigns and every detail, including what they wear, matters. The vibes may be workhorse versus show horse, but each is equally effective.

After all, as Katherine Jellison, a professor of American history at Ohio University, pointed out, clothes serve as an access point to character for the watching world, one that is familiar or exciting, relatable or aspirational.

It is not an accident, for example, that on the first day of the Japanese state visit, Dr. Biden greeted Mr. and Mrs. Kishida in a black Armani dress with a keyhole neckline that she had worn several times before. Re-wearing clothes has been one of Dr. Biden’s signatures, part of the conversation around sustainability, which nods to her husband’s climate policies (not to mention the economic realities of the country). She has done so consistently over the course of the administration. To do so again at such a moment of ritual display was to double down on the point.

Nor it is an accident that, in the last month, Mrs. Trump has been edging back into the spotlight, stepping out at strategic moments in the luxury brands that are shorthand for the financial success her husband has made part of his selling point, as if to shrug in the face of the civil penalties that have been levied against him. Because she is seen so rarely, every time she appears, it has an impact. And though that has been widely interpreted as a reluctance to engage, it is also possible that is a calculated tactic.

On March 9, for example, wearing a sharply tailored white pantsuit and a black pussy-bow shirt, she joined Mr. Trump at a dinner in honor of Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago. (“Pretty Woman” played as she entered.) On March 19, she went with Mr. Trump to cast her vote in the Florida primary in a white Alexander McQueen shirtdress silk-screened with orchids, high-heeled Christian Louboutin pumps and a Chanel bag. And on March 30, she appeared with her husband in a ruffled black sheath by the Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen to celebrate the 40th birthday of his lawyer, Alina Habba.

There’s little doubt that for Dr. Biden and Mrs. Trump, this is just the beginning. On April 20, Mrs. Trump will be a star guest at a Log Cabin Republican fund-raiser at (natch) Mar-a-Lago. A few weeks later, on May 1, the White House will, Dr. Biden told “CBS Mornings,” host another state dinner — this time for educators, as part of the “Teacher of the Year” celebrations.

Both events may take place behind closed doors, but the costume drama will be there for all to see.

LAGOS, Nigeria — For the past decade, Nigeria’s best-known ambassadors have, arguably, been its musicians: Burna Boy, WizKid, Davido, Tiwa Savage Asake and Tems, who have popularized Afrobeats beyond West Africa. At a moment when music, literature, visual art and food from across the African continent continue to gain global popularity, fashion designers, particularly those from Nigeria, are ready for their industry to take center stage.

“Designers have become better and more confident, said Reni Folawiyo, owner of Alara, a popular concept store in Lagos. “Some have come back from different parts of the world and are creating things that are interesting to people; some are making more contemporary pieces that people can wear every day. There’s more variety, and people feel proud to be wearing things made by Africans.” In 2023, Alara opened a pop-up shop as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s “Africa Fashion” exhibition.

“Currently the global fashion community is looking to the African continent for more than inspiration,” said Ernestine White-Mifetu, the Sills Foundation curator of African art at the Brooklyn Museum. “The fashion world at large is finally ready to pay attention.”

The Brooklyn Museum is one of many institutions that have tapped into Nigeria’s — and Africa’s — cultural offerings in recent years. Record labels, fintech start-ups and film companies have expanded into the country. Matt Stevens, vice president of international network planning for United Airlines, said the airline had added nonstop service to Lagos from Virginia’s Dulles International Airport in 2021 because it saw the city as “an important part” of United’s expansion in Africa (it also added routes to Cape Town, Johannesburg and Accra).

Nigeria’s fashion industry isn’t new — after all, designers such as Lisa Folawiyo and Andrea Iyamah have been successful in Nigeria and beyond for years — but it is booming thanks to international buyers and a rising desire from the continent’s growing middle class. A 2023 UNESCO report stated that the luxury goods market generated nearly $6 billion in revenue in Africa in 2022 and estimated that it would continue growing.

In Lagos, Nigerians’ love of style is everywhere, from the runways of the city’s annual fashion week and boutique stores scattered around the coastal city, to markets, festivals and weddings. Some wear traditional attire like boubous and agbadas, and many combine those looks with modern accessories.

Here are some designers making their mark on a rapidly expanding fashion scene.

Atafo

Mai Atafo’s decades-long career has been about making garments that don’t fit much of the world’s stereotypical ideas of what African clothes are. “There’s a mind-set that if something doesn’t have raffia on it, or if it’s not tie-dye print, if it’s not an explosion of colors, then it’s not African,” he said.

But that’s not Mr. Atafo’s style.

He loves suiting and tailoring. He makes men’s wear, women’s wear and bridal garments with the intention of selling them — something he says is sometimes overlooked in favor of making artful but unwearable clothes. His “trad,” or traditional, designs include embroidered caftans and caps for men; his Western styles include suits, wedding gowns and business casual attire; many items — like his “tradxedo” — combine elements from his home country with silhouettes and details from Western styles.

Banke Kuku

After returning to Lagos from London in 2019, Banke Kuku — who spent the prior decade making a name for herself as a respected textile designer — realized that people wanted her prints and patterns, and not just on their walls and furniture. “I wanted to do something that you could wear and feel incredible in these spaces that I would design, so that’s why I started with pajamas,” she said of the silky pajama sets her brand has become known for.

During the pandemic, when the world went into lockdown and it suddenly felt as though everyone wanted pajamas and comfortable caftans, Ms. Kuku leaned in. “We call it occasional loungewear, because it’s loungewear that you can wear at home and out and still look amazing wherever you are,” she said. The brand now also makes bodysuits, corsets, skirts and accessories.

Cute-Saint

In 2019, Femi Ajose quit his job as a fashion stylist. “I wanted something that was mine — something original, something African, so I decided to make it,” Mr. Ajose said.

Mr. Ajose created Cute-Saint, a unisex — or, as Mr. Ajose describes it, genderless — brand. He has sent male models down the runway in wide-fitting pants with cropped mesh tops, knit asymmetric tank tops and corsets made of aso oke, a hand-woven cloth created by the Yoruba people. The clothes are all made in Nigeria with dead stock fabric that comes from prior collections or has been found at the city’s famous Yaba market.

Like many Nigerian and African designers, Mr. Ajose said that for much of his life, he had felt as though people in Nigeria placed higher value on products made in other countries, especially European ones. But that’s changing, he said. “That was the old belief,” he said, “but now as soon as Nigerians try things, they say, ‘Oh, are you sure this is made in Nigeria?’”

Dye Lab

After closing down her ready-to-wear brand Grey Projects in 2020, Rukky Ladoja wanted to create a brand that wasn’t dependent on fabric imported from Asia and Europe or use Western sizing, which doesn’t always flatter African women’s bodies.

“It was, ‘What kind of outfit can we make where the entire supply chain is local, the entire value chain is local, and the product is one size fits all?’” said Ozzy Etomi, Dye Lab’s brand director. Having started in 2021, Dye Lab’s signature agbada — a type of flowing robe akin to a kimono — was born.

“It was an existing style — something that you’d see people wear all the time, that our moms put on when they needed to quickly rush somewhere,” Ms. Etomi said. “We just said, ‘How do we take this traditional garment and basically make it cool?’”

Éki Kéré

Abasiekeme Ukanireh, the founder of Éki Kéré, created dresses for weddings, parties and other celebrations, as many seamstresses do, when the pandemic arrived. With a halt on parties and weddings, she found herself with time to be creative, so she turned to her hometown, Ikot Ekpene, for inspiration. The town is known as the Raffia City, thanks to its people’s long history of using leaves from the raffia palm tree — which is native to tropical parts of the continent — to build, decorate and dress.

“Most people stopped buying raffia clothes — not because they couldn’t afford it or they had a cheaper option, but because they’re just tired of seeing the same thing over and over again,” she said. To shake things up, she uses raffia liberally, adorning the hems, pockets and sleeves of her eccentric garments.

Things have been tough in Britain lately. A cost of living crisis, soaring rents and economic recession. Illness at Buckingham Palace and the fracturing of the national service.

But the so-called disunited kingdom was brought together last week in collective horror and mild revulsion. The catalyst? Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who opted to wear a box fresh pair of white Adidas Sambas during a Downing Street interview to promote his tax policies.

Sambas, which trace their roots back to an Adi Dassler design from 1949, have more recently been hailed as the favorite shoe of Harry Styles, Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Rihanna — and were buoyed by a hip collaboration with the British designer Grace Wales Bonner. But their association with Mr. Sunak meant that the coolest sneaker of the year was instantly and irrevocably tainted.

Social media lit up in outrage over the prime minister’s attempts at relatability; soon most national newspapers were also on the case.

“Adidas Sambas were this year’s coolest shoes — until Rishi Sunak got a pair,” said The Observer. “How Rishi killed off the biggest trainer trend in one fell swoop,” blared the Telegraph. Saying that Mr. Sunak was trying to present himself as young and hip, British GQ wrote, “Sunak took an eternally cool sneaker, and ruined it for everyone.”

By Monday, pairs were vanishing from the streets of London. “Distinct lack of Sambas on the Peckham to Dalston overground this morning,” one person posted on the social media platform X (Peckham and Dalston being akin to some of the hipper neighborhoods of Brooklyn). “Sense of fear and uncertainty in the air.”

On Wednesday, the hullabaloo had reached such a din that Mr. Sunak offered a “fulsome apology to the Samba community” on the London radio station LBC. Though he wasn’t totally contrite.

“In my defense I would say I have been wearing Adidas trainers, including Sambas — and others, in fact — for many, many years,” said Mr. Sunak, 43, a Stanford M.B.A. graduate and former investment banker who is also partial to an Everlane hoodie and Palm Angels sliders. “The first pair my brother got for me many, many years ago — my first pair of fun Adidas trainers as a Christmas present. I haven’t looked back since.”

The Sambas may once have been the footwear of choice for the trendy creative industries, but lately they have spread in the wild to the feet of bankers, tech bros, accountants, dentists and, clearly, politicians. Was this choice of a mass-produced sneaker really that unexpected for a youngish prime minister? Sales exploded in 2022, according to the shopping platform Lyst, and searches for the trainers rose 350 percent that year after going viral on social media.

Oversaturation often plays an outsize role in a journey from immense hype to the dustbin of “ick” in pop culture. (See Burberry scarves, the Gucci double G belt, Cartier Love bracelets and Facebook for anyone under 21.) Nor is Mr. Sunak the first politician to roll up his sleeves and try to appear a more approachable leader through his choice of footwear. Look at President Biden with his Hokas, President Obama in Adidas Stan Smiths or, er, the $399 gold Never Surrender sneakers unveiled by President Trump. With a few exceptions, association with a world leader or first lady tends to make a fashion accessory more popular, not less.

Sadly for Mr. Sunak, however, this has not proven to be the case. It really is just him. Or, to be fair, it’s a reflection of the British public’s exasperation with the latest incarnation of the Conservative Party government, now in its 15th year in power but which is on course for a wipeout in the elections later this year.

Perhaps he can take solace in the fact that as prime minister he finally brought a divided nation together, if not at the ballot box, then online for having “ruined” Britain’s favorite sneaker. A win, as they say, is a win.

An Orderly Fresh Start

In the yellow house on San Marco Drive, my father did my taxes. “Do you have your receipts from the move?” he asked. That was a fake question. The real questions were stacked behind it: Are you your father’s daughter? Are your affairs — is your life — in order? “Yes,” I said proudly, producing an envelope of gasoline and fast-food receipts from my drive south, Pennsylvania to Florida. A financial diary of my fresh start. “Good girl,” he said. With him 20 years gone, I repeat those words to myself when I need his gentle hand on my back. — Maggie Galehouse

Embracing a New Name

I had requirements when picking my unborn daughter’s first and middle names. They had to have a pleasing cadence. Stand out in a classroom of Caitlins and Madisons. Be immune to cruel nicknames. Sound lyrical when called at graduation. Look elegant in swirling font on wedding invitations. The names I chose fit my criteria — just not those of my sweet child, who, at age 26, phoned with news that his birth certificate would soon show two new ones. After years of struggling, Ben has newfound joy in his voice that is more lyrical than anything I could have imagined. — Maria Mihalik

Sibling Rivalry, Interrupted

“I had a great first date on Sunday,” I said to my sister Reema. “What? I met a cute guy on Sunday, too!” she replied. We were in a getting-along phase of our relationship, which has been fraught since childhood. I’m the attention-seeking baby. She’s the independent, rebellious middle child. Later that summer, we took our new boyfriends to a cousin’s nuptials. Our uncle asked us pointedly, “Who will get married next?” Fast forward three years to 2006, and we’re celebrating our joint wedding, embracing our interdependence and happily sharing the spotlight. — Ummni Khan

Quietly Simmering

I was having a tough time. Big, capitalized, one-syllable problems: Work. Life. Stress. A rainy Tuesday night, my buddy texts: “Hey dude, u home?” An hour later he presses a Tupperware box into my hand. Homemade pasta Bolognese. He taught me the secret to a good ragù is time. Simmer that stuff for three hours if you can. The longer the better. Let the pot bubble away, quietly determined, always there in the background. We’ve been friends for 22 years and would never dream of saying “I love you, man.” We don’t need to. We just keep the pot bubbling. — Daniel Seifert

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was convicted of helping to kill her abusive mother in a widely covered case, filed for divorce Monday from Ryan Anderson after just under two years of marriage, according to Louisiana court records.

Mr. Anderson, a special-education teacher from Louisiana, has said that he sent Ms. Blanchard a letter at the Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri and that the two began corresponding. They married while Ms. Blanchard was still in prison in 2022.

After her release in late December, Ms. Blanchard became the subject of frenzied social media attention, much of which concerned her relationship. The pair discussed their introduction to married life on Entertainment Weekly and documented a trip to New York City for Ms. Blanchard’s millions of social media followers.

Ms. Blanchard filed for divorce in Lafourche Parish, La., just before 2 p.m. on Monday, according to the clerk of court, and the legal grounds for divorce are not yet public. TMZ was first to report the news of the couple’s divorce proceedings.

Ms. Blanchard and Mr. Anderson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The ongoing fascination with Ms. Blanchard has raised fresh questions about the ethics of public obsession with true crime figures and victims of abuse — and of remaking those figures as influencer-style celebrities.

Ms. Blanchard, now 32, pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, in 2016. Ms. Blanchard’s boyfriend at the time, Nicholas Godejohn, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

A plea agreement acknowledged that Dee Dee Blanchard had been abusive: “Gypsy’s mom was abusing her physically, medically, giving her medication she didn’t need, having her go through procedures that she didn’t need,” Ms. Blanchard’s trial lawyer, Mike Stanfield, said at a news conference in 2016.

An HBO documentary and a Hulu mini-series released during her sentence characterized her as a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy — a form of abuse in which a parent sickens a child for attention — and drew intense public attention to the case.

That attention morphed into a complex strain of social media celebrity after Ms. Blanchard’s release. She amassed more than eight million followers on Instagram and close to 10 million on TikTok, where she shared day-by-day updates with Mr. Anderson and promoted her Lifetime series, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.”

Comments on such posts were mixed, with some praising her frank discussion of her regrets — among them, she said, her role in murdering her mother — and others expressing discomfort that her story was being repackaged as entertainment.

“It feels like a disservice to let her become just another social-media curiosity, with her abuse and her crimes being meme-ified for an uncaring public,” Alice Bolin, the author of “Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession,” wrote in an article for The Cut.

Ms. Blanchard deactivated her TikTok and Instagram accounts last month, citing concerns about the effects of public scrutiny on her mental health.

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Only Watch, the charity watch auction that was canceled last fall after a social media storm over financial and research transparency, has been rescheduled for May 10.

“Independent auditors have now audited and certified all our accounts for the last three years,” said Luc Pettavino, founder of the event that supports research into a cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that primarily affects boys — the disease that killed his son, Paul, in 2016.

As of earlier this month, more than 45 of the 66 unique watches that had been pledged to the original Nov. 5 auction are to be sold by Christie’s at the Palexpo exhibition center in Geneva. Some of them will come from Patek Philippe, Louis Vuitton, F.P. Journe, MB&F/H. Moser & Cie, TAG Heuer, Hublot, Chanel, Bulgari and Piaget, according to Mr. Pettavino and his daughter, Tess. Ms. Pettavino is the executive director of the Association Monégasque Contre les Myopathies, the organization in Monaco that organizes the event.

Over the years, the association website had detailed the companies’ research progress and that it had raised 110 million euros (about $119 million) since its founding in 2001. But it had never done audits (Monaco, where the association was based, announced in August 2023 that it would require audits of such organizations).

In September 2023, Instagram posts by a writer using the name Santalaura had questioned the association’s transparency, sparking a torrent of online comments and articles in the watch media that also raised concerns about the ownership of Synthena and SQY Therapeutics, which were created and supported by the association.

The reports show that €28.3 million was disbursed from 2021 through 2023: 90.2 percent to the two companies; 6.4 percent to other projects; and 3.4 percent in organizational and administrative costs.

The review was done by Christian Boisson, a Monegasque auditor who is also the managing partner of the Monaco branch of the accounting and advisory business Grant Thornton.

A statement from the association, sent last week to its medical partners and watch brands that have been auction donors, said an endowment fund was being created to hold all shares of both companies and that the association had created a strategic committee as well as a scientific committee involving its partners.

“This is a way to include more people that have desire be more involved,” Ms. Pettavino said during an interview.

SQY Therapeutics announced in March that French medical authorities had approved a second phase, six-month clinical trial of SQY51, a drug developed with association support.

“It is still too early to say if it works,” said Dr. Helge Amthor, who is leading the trial and is a professor of pediatric neurology at University Paris-Saclay. “With phase two, the aim is to see the long-term security in patients with higher doses.”

Several watch brands expressed their support for the auction’s re-emergence.

“It was good to take a step back to ask questions about transparency,” said Edouard Meylan, chief executive of H. Moser & Cie, which collaborated with MB&F on a minute repeater watch for the auction. “But a lot of the attacks were very biased and personal.”

“Now a good portion of the brands, especially the high-profile brands, are back — and we are happy to be part of the auction.”

Charity Lawson earned a reputation of being a sweetheart after starring in the 20th season of “The Bachelorette,” which ended in August with her engagement to Dotun Olubeko, an integrative medicine specialist.

Ms. Lawson, 28, seemingly always has a smile on her face. She knows what she likes and she does not put up with drama, a trait that was witnessed first hand this week amid the chaos that was New York Bridal Fashion Week — a chaos that this season was exacerbated by heavy rain and wind.

The three-day event, from April 2 to 4, was an opportunity for bridal designers to show their latest collections to journalists, buyers and, in Ms. Lawson’s case, a bride-to-be who is starting to look for dresses for her 2025 wedding.

She hopes to have a dress chosen by July for the wedding she is planning in California next fall, which will be followed by a traditional Nigerian celebration in Lagos, Nigeria, to honor her fiancé’s heritage.

Before becoming a “Bachelorette,” Ms. Lawson, 28, was a contestant on the 27th season of “The Bachelor,” which premiered in January 2023. Later that year, she appeared on season 32 of “Dancing With the Stars,” finishing in fourth place with her dance partner Artem Chigvintsev.

“It’s a lot,” Ms. Lawson, a former children’s therapist, said about appearing in back-to-back-to-back reality television shows broadcast last year. “I came into all of this quickly. I didn’t envision myself even being engaged.”

The New York Times followed her for two days during Bridal Fashion Week as she made her way to runway shows, presentations and private appointments around the city.

April 2

3:15 p.m.: Ines Di Santo Show and an Unplanned Interview

Ms. Lawson’s first Bridal Fashion Week stop was the Ines Di Santo runway show at Lavan, a venue in Midtown Manhattan. She was behind schedule, running on a few hours of sleep after a late-night flight from Los Angeles. The abysmal traffic she hit on the way to midtown from her brownstone near Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where she moved in January, did not help.

She frantically rushed into the modern event space bathed in blue lights, which dimmed just as she took her front-row seat.

After the label’s eponymous designer ended the show with a bow, some guests rushed to greet Ms. Lawson. One asked if she had chosen her wedding gown yet. Others asked for photos. An editor offered to feature her on the cover of a magazine. And a tabloid reporter ambushed her, asking Ms. Lawson a jumble of questions about topics like her wedding date and if she has any “travel hacks.” (“I don’t,” Ms. Lawson said.)

“Very random questions,” she later said. “Anything to get a little headline. People want me to disclose our wedding day so bad — that is between me, my family and fiancé.”

Ms. Lawson left the venue during a torrential downpour, scurrying around in the rain as she tried to locate her Uber ride. The moment had all the elements of a classic rom-com scene. As she made her way into the car, the driver shouted, “Hurry up!”

“Welcome to New York,” she said jokingly.

4:30 p.m.: Letting Her Collarbones Shine at Rime Arodaky

Rime Arodaky, a French bridal designer, makes wedding dresses that exude French-girl cool. For a preview of her namesake label’s 2025 collection, Ms. Arodaky had filled her airy showroom in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan with her dainty designs.

Ms. Lawson browsed the garments and, after selecting five of her favorite pieces, went behind a curtain with Ms. Arodaky, who pinned the dresses to fit her frame.

After trying on a strapless pleated gown with a detachable scarf-sleeve, Ms. Lawson walked over to a big mirror and stepped onto an elevated platform.

“I’m obsessed,” she said. “This is a moment. It’s so romantic and elegant.” She struggled to peel herself away from the mirror.

It was the first wedding dress she had ever tried on.

She’s a fan of the sweetheart neckline: “I have good collarbones,” she said. “I’ve got to show the collarbones.”

April 3

2 p.m.: Tears at Francesca Miranda

Ms. Lawson’s second day of Bridal Fashion Week began with an appointment with Francesca Miranda, a designer in Barranquilla, Colombia, who arrived in New York just days before she presented her collection.

Ms. Lawson selected six dresses from the racks full of items that the designer had arranged in a large, rustic studio in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

As she tried them on, she honed in on elements she preferred: strapless or off-the-shoulder sleeves; ivory shades instead of snow-white; and definitely no ball-gown silhouettes.

Ms. Lawson said that she thinks some people see her as a Disney princess.

“But that’s not who I am,” she said. “I don’t want my wedding day to be costume-y.”

She tried on a feathered pantsuit, which she thought was well-suited for her bachelorette or rehearsal dinner. “It’s bridal meets Cher,” said Daniella Jassir, Ms. Miranda’s daughter and the marketing director for her mother’s namesake brand.

Another piece — a long-sleeve illusion dress with a detachable tulle-organza overskirt — was completely out of Ms. Lawson’s comfort zone. When Ms. Miranda and Ms. Jassir fastened the matching veil in her hair, Ms. Lawson took a peek in a mirror and shed tears.

After gently wiping them away, she said, “Mark this as a favorite.”

3:30 p.m.: Matcha Break and a Tour at Nardos

Ms. Lawson wore a black trench coat, a printed mock neck dress and pointy vinyl boots for her second day of bridal fashion week. After getting caught in the rain in open-toe shoes the day before, she had learned her lesson, she said.

She took an afternoon break from her schedule of appointments and presentations at a coffee shop, where she ordered an iced matcha latte and a croissant. After taking a seat by the shop’s foggy windows, she reflected on her tearful moment while trying on the Francesca Miranda gown.

“It was hitting me, it’s happening,” Ms. Lawson said. “I look like a bride. I feel like a bride.”

She left the coffee shop and hopped into a cab. On the ride she played a string of twangy songs from “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé’s latest album, from her phone through the car’s stereo.

“I’m not really a country girl, but Southern by upbringing,” said Ms. Lawson, who was raised in Columbus, Ga. “This was the perfect combo,” she added of the album. “A little touch of the South, a touch of the country.”

About forty minutes later, she was greeted by the bridal designer Nardos Imam at Ms. Imam’s three-story salon on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The designer’s new collection for her brand, Nardos, was displayed on the ground floor, with a few models roaming around in some of her latest designs.

“Her stuff gives more couture,” Ms. Lawson said after a tour of the salon. “Very high end. I like the drama of couture.”

She took a few mirror selfies, looked at a few more dresses and posed for photos with a few more starry-eyed fans before making her way to her final event.

5 p.m.: A Collection of Favorites at Esé Azénabor

Ms. Lawson’s last Bridal Fashion Week event might have been the one she was most excited for: The designer Esé Azénabor’s presentation at her Madison Avenue flagship boutique. Ms. Azénabor, who is Nigerian, has a cult following, particularly among brides of color. Her namesake label is also a favorite of Ms. Lawson’s mother-in-law.

The boutique had been reconfigured for a runway show, with seats for about 60 guests. Models walked onto an elevated platform one by one, with Ms. Azénabor popping up a number of times to unpin detachable trains, veils, tops and skirts. One such element was a silk mikado ball skirt attached to an off-the-shoulder top that, when unpinned, transformed the garment from a gown to a jumpsuit finished with pearls and crystals.

Ms. Lawson, watching with wide eyes and an open mouth, let out an audible gasp.

The 20-minute show was full of embellishments and bling. “Don’t ask me which one’s my favorite,” Ms. Lawson said after the presentation. “All of them.”

She excitedly told Ms. Azénabor about her future husband and their shared Nigerian background. “His mother loves your work,” Ms. Lawson said.

“You all have to come to the store,” Ms. Azénabor said. “When it looks like a store.”

Ms. Lawson replied, “I’m in New York, so I will be back.”

Outside the Staten Island Ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday night, the wind was howling as broken umbrellas blew across South Street like urban tumbleweeds.

But, inside the former ferry building that houses Cipriani South Street, Tracee Ellis Ross looked right at home standing on a stage welcoming guests to the New Museum’s Spring Gala.

The “black-ish” actress twirled to reveal a sky-blue bodysuit — which looked a little like a swimsuit — under a black-and-blue sleeveless dress.

“I wanted to wear something worthy of the artistic celebration at hand,” she later explained of the outfit, a hand-painted creation by Francesco Risso for Marni.

As the annual spring ritual of courting New York’s patrons kicks into gear, Ms. Ross, the evening’s host, was one of more than 500 artists, philanthropists and other notables from the cultural world who stood and sipped at the event, which honored the artists Mickalene Thomas and George Condo. The night raised $2.1 million for the New Museum, which will be temporarily closed until 2025 for an expansion that will nearly double its exhibition space.

Guests included Leonardo DiCaprio, who slipped in quietly during cocktail hour with his art adviser, Ralph DeLuca, to congratulate Mr. Condo, a friend of his; the photographer Cindy Sherman; and the artist Jeff Koons.

They mingled with museum leaders, among them Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum; and Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Ms. Thomas, who is known for her large-scale acrylic paintings of Black women in states of leisure, said she was recently inspired by her fellow artists, among them Derrick Adams, Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Simone Leigh and Kehinde Wiley.

All of them are working to “create platforms and experiences that empower communities to make a positive impact on society,” she said.

After cocktails, attendees moved into the Great Hall for a live auction and dinner — burrata with grape tomatoes, and salmon with leek sauce — followed by a musical performance from the singer-songwriter Deon Jones.

After a couple of songs, some attendees began streaming for the exit, while others approached the purple-and-green stage and danced rather than face the rain.

On Thursday evening, as the rain passed and the sun emerged, art-world fixtures again gathered, this time at the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown for a Black Arts Council benefit.

The group, founded in 1993 by Agnes Gund, David Rockefeller Jr. and Akosua Barthwell Evans, helps to acquire pieces by Black artists for the museum. It also supports exhibitions of work by Black artists and facilitates opportunities for Black artists and professionals at MoMA.

“What’s impressed me about the group is the commitment to open up art so that everyone would feel comfortable coming to the museum,” said Dr. Barthwell Evans, adding, “the commitment to not having the museum be a barrier, but welcoming.”

This year’s benefit, which drew about 250 people and raised around $500,000, honored the artist Glenn Ligon and the scholar and lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, who is currently a scholar in residence at MoMA.

In the lobby of the museum, attendees chatted over cocktails. Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, greeted the artist Linda Goode Bryant. Ms. Golden stood with Mr. Ligon, near Gayle King, the broadcast journalist, and Scott Rothkopf, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Around 8 p.m., the crowd moved upstairs for a dinner featuring burrata with fennel and halibut with spring vegetables.

“Evenings like this are about celebration, about recognizing how everyone in this room contributes to such an amazing cultural ecosystem here in New York,” Mr. Lowry said during a speech onstage. “Black Arts Council is, of course, integral to the work we do.”

Dinner was followed with a performance by Cautious Clay & the Community — known for dreamy R&B songs — and a dessert buffet with mini doughnuts, banana pudding and confetti cake.

Sobhita Dhulipala considers herself an outsider — wherever she is.

She grew up in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, making her an outsider in the country’s financial and fashion capital, Mumbai. Her native tongue is Telugu, making her an outsider in predominantly Hindi-speaking Bollywood.

And now, with the release on Friday of the high-octane, Jordan Peele-produced “Monkey Man,” in which she stars alongside Dev Patel, she is again an outsider, thrust into Hollywood’s limelight. In fact, the premiere of the film at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, last month was the first time Ms. Dhulipala, 31, had ever set foot on American soil.

“In India, I’m South Indian,” Ms. Dhulipala, who lives in Mumbai, said in a video interview from her hotel room in Los Angeles. “When I come to America, I’m Indian.”

“It’s amazing that I get to come to this country with a film,” she added. “It’s like I come with an offering.”

That real-life feeling of being an outsider is the undercurrent for many of her onscreen roles. In the Amazon Prime series “Made in Heaven,” Ms. Dhulipala’s character is a low-income nobody who schemes her way into upper-class circles. In “Monkey Man,” she plays Sita, a call girl whose business is the pleasure of powerful but despicable men.

To her, being able to make a career out of playing characters on the margins who defy easy categorization is a point of pride. “Those are really beautifully complex humans,” she said. “To be considered someone who can be trusted with characters like that is really an honor.”

Acting was never Ms. Dhulipala’s career plan. Her family was full of academics, including her mother, who was a middle-school science teacher, so she figured she would do something similar. “I didn’t grow up thinking that I would be an artist or some such — it was such an irresponsible thought,” she said. “Being creative was, like, an indulgent hobby.”

She was studying for a master’s degree in corporate law in Mumbai when she first dipped her toe in entertainment by taking on a hodgepodge of modeling gigs and TV commercials. In 2013, she entered and won the Miss Earth India pageant. As she started landing more jobs, she dropped out of her master’s program and, in 2016, starred in her first Bollywood film, the psychological thriller “Raman Raghav 2.0.” She then starred in several Tollywood films (Telugu films made in southern India) before being cast in “Made in Heaven,” which was released in 2019.

But it was before she was seeing any success in India, even before the release of her first film there, that she auditioned for the role of Sita in “Monkey Man,” she said. It took the team several years to get back to her — she had assumed they had moved on and found someone else — and when the call finally came, in 2019, Mr. Patel told her that he had decided that she would be perfect for the role from the moment he saw her audition.

Ms. Dhulipala said she had been drawn to “Made in Heaven” in part because the show addressed issues — including gay rights, colorism and the caste system — that weren’t typically touched on in mainstream Bollywood hits.

“If something inspires me or there’s some value I can bring to the story, I want to belong with it,” she said.

“Monkey Man” has just the sort of array of lightning rods that attracts Ms. Dhulipala: an enclave of combative transgender women, an anti-establishment sex worker and an anti-police plot. Working with Mr. Patel on his directorial debut could have been a risky move for a Hollywood unknown, but Ms. Dhulipala said the dynamic had felt especially collaborative. “It’s a different kind of relationship altogether,” she said. “There’s trust, fear, vulnerability, and you move as one pack, one team.”

“There’s a certain purity and passion there — working with a first-time filmmaker,” she added. “So I came on board, I jumped on board.”

Granted, in this film, she barely has a few dozen lines of dialogue, and her character would not pass even a generous version of the Bechdel test. (There’s something poetic, she claimed, in portraying “the moments between the words.”)

Her willingness to buck trends spills over into her style choices, too. Early in her career, she recalled being styled by a bunch of people “who probably did not get my vibe so much,” she said. “Because I didn’t really have that much of a voice, I’d just give in.”

But now, she often follows her instincts, leaning into Indian designers and traditional styles. At the “Monkey Man” premiere last month, she wore a stereoscopic dress designed by Amit Aggarwal, and last year, she walked the runway at India Couture Week in a bejeweled silver lehenga.

“I figured that I don’t have to rely on one person’s vision for me or a stylist’s psyche of what I should look like,” she said. “I can just try things I’m gravitating toward.” A lot of times, her interest in an outfit or look is laced with nostalgia. “I love a sari because maybe that’s my memory of my mother, my teachers in school. There’s a certain grace and dignity, but also sex appeal.”

DietSabya, an influential fashion and celebrity-focused Instagram account that has over 400,000 followers, named Ms. Dhulipala as one of its top picks for best dressed of 2023. Her style is a hit with fans, too. A bodycon dress by Sabyasachi that she wore in the second season of “Made in Heaven” prompted the show’s audience to label it India’s equivalent of “the revenge dress.”

Similarly, in what she said feels like another small act of rebellion, Ms. Dhulipala’s been embracing her natural curly hair. “In India, you’re just constantly wanting to look more homogenous. So everyone’s constantly trying to blow-dry, straighten — I’ve been through that journey as well,” she said. Now, she added: “I’m just like, I like my hair, the texture. Hair is history, right? It’s part of your identity.”

In keeping with her unconventional choices, Ms. Dhulipala has her eye on either sci-fi or more action movies in the future. But in the next film, she wants to do more of the action herself, she said. And perhaps a little more talking, too.

Being raised during the Depression, we all learned to be creative with what we had on hand. At Christmas or on my birthday, I always got art supplies, and I was jealous that my siblings got bikes and stuff. I realize now that my parents were fostering my creativity.

An early influence on my becoming an artist was Simon Rodia. My grandmother lived in Watts, and we would walk by the Watts Towers when they were being built. I was fascinated by how he used bottle caps and corn cobs and broken plates — trash, essentially — to make art, to make something beautiful. Then, much later, in the 1960s, I saw the work of Joseph Cornell. He refined the use of found objects and materials and boxes, and I thought, “Wow, I’ve kind of been doing that, too.” I didn’t know it was called assemblage, but it made sense to me and set me in that direction as an artist.

The main challenge, I guess, to being an artist is how to make a living. But being a creative person means you have to find ways to do this. I studied design at U.C.L.A., and after I graduated, I made greeting cards, I made jewelry, I got into printmaking and then sold my prints. I taught art classes in colleges all over the states. My creativity kept evolving with my needs as I got married and bought a house, had my daughters and put them through college. Through it all, I loved making art. It kept me going.

I still want to make art. Sometimes in the morning when I wake up, it’s hard to get out of bed, hard to get back into my body and get it to move. But I do it. Not everyone has a reason to get out of bed, something they love to do and that gives their life meaning. I am so lucky that I have that as part of my life. I don’t really think about my age, unless someone mentions it, though I guess I feel middle-aged — which for me is, like, 50 to 70. It would be kind of neat to live to 100, to have 100 revolutions around the sun. I’m pretty close.

Current and upcoming projects: Completed “Drifting Toward Twilight,” an installation at the Huntington Library in the Bronx; “Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer” exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; “Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight” at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne, Switzerland; and completed a newly commissioned artwork for “Paraventi; Folding Screens from the 17th to the 21st Century” at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The last episode of “The New Look,” the Apple TV+ series about Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and the birth of post-World War II fashion, aired on April 4. A fictional take on the choices those designers had to make to survive, the show offered its own new look, not just at the origin story of a dress style, but at the actual characters behind the brands. Here, the Styles editor Stella Bugbee and the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman debate the possible repercussions for the two dominant red carpet names.

Vanessa Friedman So my big question, after watching the whole series, is, Will this change how people think about Dior and Chanel? Those brands, after all, bear the names of their founders, and this show is the first time I expect most viewers will have been confronted with the idea of them as real individuals, with many — in the case of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who is depicted as a Nazi collaborator, even if a somewhat unintentional one, very many — human frailties. What do you think?

Stella Bugbee It has the potential to personalize these megabrands — for better or worse, since the show is riddled with factual inaccuracies. While pointing to Mademoiselle Chanel’s Nazi past, the show paints her choices as something almost verging on feminism. It’s a tidy bit of propaganda in a way. And as for Monsieur Dior, it takes pains to paint him as a success almost despite himself.

But the best way it humanizes these characters is through the compelling performances of Ben Mendelsohn and Juliette Binoche. I was rooting for both of them. And I found that I wanted to know more about each brand, so that seems like a win.

VF Dior comes off as the hero of the series, while Chanel is the villain, even if, as you say, she has a feminist bent, especially when she is confronting the Wertheimers, her backers, about getting a more even split of the proceeds. They ask her how she could use their Jewishness against them, and she asks them if they have ever considered what it is to be a single woman running her own business (a complicated equivalency).

But I did find it notable that the current-day Dior brand supported the series by allowing the filmmakers into their archive so they could see the actual dresses, while Chanel-the-brand was not involved. That said, I was struck by how little actual fashion there was in the series. I wish there had been more of it.

SB Yes! That one brief scene in the Dior atelier dressing room as the models were getting ready for his first show — that energy and glamour and clamor of them applying their own makeup — I wanted more of it.

VF One of the issues the series raises is the perennial: Can you separate the artist from their art? Does it matter if Chanel was a terrible person or Dior was superstitious to an almost debilitating extreme, if what they made changed how we all dress? And yet, because we saw so little of the fashion, the justification for focusing on the people behind the brands seemed less convincing. The only real Chanel clothing we got to see was what Chanel herself was wearing: the pearls, the easy jackets and cocktail dresses. And yet, she was as important a figure when it comes to what we wear as Dior.

At the same time, when I spoke to the creator, Todd A. Kessler (also the director, and a writer and exec producer), he told me he conceived of this series the way he conceived of “The Sopranos,” which was also his brain child — as a human story that just happened to be set in a world we all love to imagine.

SB That’s interesting. To that end, one of my favorite elements of the show (and I have no idea if it is accurate) was the close relationships between Pierre Balmain, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Christian Dior. Their conversations, friendship and rivalry was a treat to see reenacted.

VF And Pierre Cardin! The young Cardin, who got a job at the Dior house, was one of the most engaging, exuberant characters to me. I did think it was funny to see the egotistic Balmain, the confident Balenciaga. Though I missed the other women who were working at the time, like Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Lanvin. I can imagine they might have had a lot of fun with Schiaparelli.

SB Yes! So much fun. Did you like Glenn Close as the Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow?

VF It was a good reminder of a time when magazine editors could actually make or break a designer. It is probably unimaginable to many today, but she had been sent to Paris to crown the Next Big Thing, and so she did.

SB I loved the scenes between Mrs. Snow and Mlle. Chanel, who looked so much more modern and at ease in her own clothes than Mrs. Snow looked. It made me reconsider Chanel as a casual brand. I know that the brand was born of Chanel’s wanting more ease and movement and pockets and whatnot, but seeing the elegant costumes on Juliette Binoche gave me a new appreciation for that idea. So I guess, to answer your first question: Yes, it humanized the brands for me.

VF She wanted women to be able to ride a bike — an admirable, thoroughly modern, goal.

SB A woman after my own heart, in that regard at least.

VF Dior’s clothes, of course, represented another, much more structured and formal take on fashion, as we see in that last scene. It’s either a perfect endpoint — or a teaser for what is coming next. Mr. Kessler and his producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, told me they had envisioned this as a five-part series that would take Dior and Chanel through the arc of their postwar lives. So Chanel, on to her great second coming, and Dior through his death and the ascension of Yves Saint Laurent. Apple hasn’t announced whether this is actually happening, but it’s a tantalizing idea. And it could jump-start a whole fashion film trend.

SB I, for one, hope they continue this series, not least because I want to see who they cast as Yves Saint Laurent!

Art of Craft is a series about craftspeople whose work rises to the level of art.

When Ayoung An was 8, her parents bought her a violin. She slept with the instrument on the pillow next to her every night.

Two years later, a shop selling musical instruments opened in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, her hometown, and An became a fixture there, pelting the owner with questions. “I think I bothered him a lot,” An, now 32, said.

As a teenager, she decided she would become a violin maker. Eventually, a journey with twists and turns took her to Cremona in northern Italy — a famed hub for violin makers, including masters like Antonio Stradivari, since the 16th century. There, An, a rising star in the violin-making world with international awards under her belt, runs her own workshop.

Set on a quiet cobblestone street, An’s studio is bathed in natural light and filled with books and piles of wood chunks that must air dry for five to 10 years before becoming instruments or risk warping. She shares the two-room studio with her husband, Wangsoo Han, who’s also a violin maker.

On a recent Monday, An was hunched over a thick 20-inch piece of wood held in place by two metal clamps. Pressing her body down for leverage, she scraped the wood with a gouge, removing layers, her hands steady and firm. She was forming a curving neck called a “scroll,” one of the later steps of making a violin or cello. On this day, the violin maker was immersed on a commission for a cello, which shares a similar crafting process.

Violins like An’s, made in the tradition of Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri, require about two months of work and sell for about 16,000 to 17,000 euros, or $17,500 to $18,500. “I can make a violin in three weeks, but I don’t want to,” An said. “This object is very precious to the person purchasing it.”

An was 17 when she hatched her plan to learn the craft: She would move in with an American family in a Chicago suburb so that she could attend a local high school, master English and eventually study at the Chicago School of Violin Making. There were no such schools in Korea at the time. Her parents, distraught about her moving so far away to pursue an uncertain career path, tried to stop her.

“I didn’t eat for days,” An said. Finally, they gave in. “When I said goodbye to my parents at the airport, they were crying,” she said. “I wasn’t. I was too excited.”

Two years after moving to Illinois, she discovered that one of the best known schools for violin makers, the International School of Violin Making, was actually in Cremona. So in 2011, at age 20, she moved to a new country again.

Cremona was home to some of history’s most famous luthiers, makers of stringed instruments: Stradivari; Andrea Amati, considered “the father of the violin”; and the Guarneri family. For the 160 to 200 violin makers in Cremona today, the sound quality of the masters remains the ultimate goal. “The traditional method is not about experimenting,” An said.

Around the studio, small pots of pigment, for varnishing, sat on shelves and tables alongside jars of powders — ground glass and minerals — for polishing. On a wall were dozens of knives, chisels and saws. Also present: dentist’s tools to scratch the instrument for a more antique look.

An is the youngest member of a consortium in Cremona dedicated to upholding violin-making traditions. She is so immersed in the Cremonese method of violin making that, at the suggestion of a mentor, she created an artist’s name, Anna Arietti, to better fit in with Italian culture.

An important moment is when luthiers place their label inside the instrument, called a “baptism.” To make her label, An stamps her ink signature onto a small piece of paper — a browned page from a secondhand book, giving the impression of age. Then, using a traditional homemade mixture of melted bovine skin and rabbit skin as a long-lasting adhesive, she glues the label inside one half of the instrument. She also burns her signature into the instrument with a tiny heated brand.

Afterward, the two halves are sealed together, completing the main body of the instrument. Her Italian artist’s name remains inside, intact as long as the violin is.

“That’s why I wanted to be a violin maker,” An said. “At least one person who plays my violin will remember me 100 or 200 years later.”

The expression “to give someone their flowers” means to praise a person and show them care.

Beyoncé has taken that literally.

The pop superstar recently sent elaborate all-white floral arrangements, along with personalized notes — some handwritten — to artists she admires, or who she says have inspired her work, including Jack White, SZA and K. Michelle.

As the artists have shared photos of the bouquets on social media, Beyoncé’s fans have shared their excitement and expressed their jealousy as they parsed the list of recipients for clues about what her next musical project might be.

Beyoncé has been known to send surprise, and often monochromatic, floral arrangements for years, but the recent activity has drawn outsize attention since the release last week of “Cowboy Carter,” Act II in an expected trilogy of genre-bending albums.

This week, Jack White, the singer-guitarist and former White Stripes frontman, shared a picture on Instagram of an arrangement that Beyoncé had sent him. Attached was a handwritten note: “Jack, I hope you are well. I just wanted you to know how much you inspired me on this record. Sending you my love, Beyoncé.”

He offered her praise in response. “Much love and respect to you Madam,” he wrote, adding, “Nobody sings like you.” (Fans were quick to speculate that Act III might be a rock album, and hoped Mr. White would be part of it.)

Mr. White’s bouquet, it will come as a surprise to no one, was not cheap.

LaParis Phillips, the owner and creative director of Brooklyn Blooms, identified some of the flowers in the bouquet. They included white ranunculus, white tulips, white agapanthus, white Ornithogalum, white lisianthus, white stock, white wax flowers and Dendrobium orchids.

“A guesstimation based on the type of flowers and with a New York price?” she said. “I would say this is, like, $200.”

She noted that Mr. White’s bouquet was delivered to him in Nashville, and that pricing may be different in that area.

All-white flowers are more typically sent for a wedding or in sympathy after a loss. But Beyoncé appears to favor them. Ms. Phillips speculated that she was going for “a fresh, sort of classic look.”

Last week, Beyoncé sent flowers to Black women in country music as she dived into the genre herself.

Mickey Guyton posted a picture of a bouquet on Instagram and a card from Beyoncé that read: “Mickey, thank you for opening doors for me, queen. Keep shining.”

Stephanie Hopkins, a floral designer at Eva’s Garden Florist in Manhattan, spotted anemones and hydrangeas in Ms. Guyton’s arrangement, and possibly Phalaenopsis orchids. “There might be white roses, but it’s hard to tell,” she said.

“They’re pricey,” she said of the flowers, estimating that the arrangement would cost $250 to $300.

Ms. Hopkins said that although she preferred pops of color, all-white arrangements had a “classic and clean” look. It could also be a smart strategy, she added, because it “doesn’t draw so much attention to each one being different; it’s hard to tell whose are more money.”

K. Michelle, an R&B artist who has been teasing a country album, posted a photo of her bouquet and a note from Beyoncé that read in part, “I know it’s not easy to enter a new space.”

In past years, Beyoncé has sent a host of others congratulatory arrangements and notes — Nicki Minaj, Katie Couric, Coi Leroy, Meghan Thee Stallion, Reneé Rapp, Katy Perry and Andra Day were among the recipients.

Yes, many people send flowers, but as with everything she does, there is a certain mystique and fastidiousness when Beyoncé does it.

She sends them so often that fans and observers online have started to joke about it. One said that her florist was “buying a third home this year.” Others have voiced jealousy or made mock versions of their own bouquets.

Regardless, it has become part of her lore.

Perhaps the arrangements offer a small glimpse into the life of a pop star who closely guards her privacy. Or maybe it’s just another sign of thoughtfulness and attention to detail by a meticulous Virgo.

It’s also impossible to know how involved Beyoncé herself is.

“I don’t think she thinks about it; I think she has her assistant call the flower shop,” Ms. Phillips said. “Usually when I get calls from a celebrity, that’s what it is. They give me a budget, they pick the colors, the vibe.”

But then again, it’s Beyoncé.

“I think she has more hours in a day than us,” Ms. Hopkins said.

‘Good Yezha’

Yezha, my dad’s old dog, was missing one leg and all her teeth. Weeks before my son and I visited them in Warsaw, she stopped eating. My dad never let my childhood dog in the house. Yet, for Yezha, he’d fry naleśniki crêpes in butter and feed her the cheese filling when it cooled. He’d buy cabbage rolls at the grocery store, and we’d cheer when bites of meat stuffing made it past her gums. “Good Yezha,” we’d coo. My dad, twice divorced, grew up poor under communism. Wasting food was unthinkable. But he’d do anything to keep her alive. — Milena Nigam

Passing the Mantle

It was an endearing detail when we bought our Los Angeles home: “Jack,” “Eva” and “1977” carved into the mantle above the fireplace. Years later, an email arrived: “My family owned your house. I had a few questions,” wrote Carl, who wanted to surprise his wife, Iris, with the mantle her grandfather carved. (Her grandparents, Jack and Eva, would host friends in the den, now our living room.) As a romance author, I was wooed by the grand gesture. We arranged an exchange. The mantle now hangs in their Florida home, ready for Iris and Carl to add their names. — Jennifer Chen

Disappearing Without Explanation

Did I want her, or did I want to be her? My evangelical upbringing demanded the latter. We met in college. She was brilliant, beautiful, a patient chemistry tutor and instant friend. When she graduated, I visited her at her new apartment. We shared a bed. She slept; I fidgeted as the truth sank into my bones. Terrified, I disappeared from her life without explanation. Years later, I apologized but withheld any reason. She forgave quickly, gently — knowingly? Now a proud queer woman, I wish I could tell her I’m grateful for the role she played in my self-discovery. — Abbey Driscoll

Diamonds in the Gravel

When she was 4, my daughter experienced the death of her grandfather, babysitter and dog. Life, she quickly learned, could be heartbreaking. Soon after, she began collecting rocks, hiding them in her shoes at daycare to show me later. She thought she’d found diamonds, but it was only gravel. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I bought a bag of tumbled stones to plant around the yard. She found every tiger’s eye, green agate and red jasper. With each, she’d rush inside, sweaty-palmed, offering it to me. And I’d confirm, repeatedly, what she had discovered: Life is also beautiful. — Charlotte Pence

It began as ideas, good and bad, often do: in a bar.

My soccer club — a group of mostly middle-aged dads in suburban New Jersey — was enjoying its weekly post-match pint when we began talking about how fun it would be to play against a similar team in Mexico City, where several of our players grew up. The idea gradually gained momentum until, suddenly, one day last December, we were buying airplane tickets.

But let me back up: A few years ago, I moved to Madison, N.J., after decades in New York City. I knew no one there outside of my family. Busy with work and getting my daughter settled, I didn’t have much time to think about socializing. As an introvert who works from home, that was never going to be easy. As a 50-something, I’d met my closest friends decades earlier. Did I even need new ones?

What I did want to do was bring my soccer habit with me from the city. Eventually, via my neighbor Andrea, who was born in Italy, I found a regular pickup game. The first match was enjoyable and the group seemed affable, so I kept showing up.

Mostly expats, my new teammates ranged in age and background, and I enjoyed being exposed to their perspectives. The youngest, Jorge, an elementary schoolteacher originally from Colombia, was not quite half my age, and we joked about my adopting him.

As we got to know one another better, we became more like a team — complete with jerseys with our custom “Madison Soccer and Beers” logo — and our activities started to expand. We’d gather for a cookout or go mountain biking; we even tried paintball. Soon, I was telling the guys how lucky I felt to have found them, and they were saying equally sappy stuff.

After a few months, I began to realize my hunger to play soccer wasn’t entirely about the game. I was looking for connection. But as the trip to Mexico loomed, I began to have a few doubts: I was the oldest guy by some 10 years — would I be able to keep up? Did I really want to share an Airbnb with 14 others? And would I get roasted for my extreme sleep routine: eye mask, mouth tape, wall of white noise?

What if it turned out I didn’t actually like the guys that much? What if they didn’t like me?

“All relationships require risk,” Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, told me when I went poking around for data on men and friendship. “You always risk being uncomfortable with someone, or getting too close to them. If we become so risk-averse in getting to know each other, we lose out on opportunities for greater intimacy.”

In a study that Dr. Hall conducted, it took subjects 40 to 60 hours spent together to describe themselves as casual friends, and more to become “good” or “close” friends. That sort of time is relatively easy to find for young adults. But for older guys like me, Dr. Hall noted, “it’s not developmentally typical to be spending a ton of time with your friends, without partners, without children.”

How, then, to cultivate friendships? One pathway, he told me, is to find a “group of people who share a common interest, who will show up week after week to share a hobby.” You may not click equally with everyone, but you’re stocking the pond of potentially deeper friendships.

In my research, I learned that men are feeling the effects of the “friendship recession” harder than women are. And there is some evidence from the travel industry that women travel more than men. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that a guys trip was juvenile or might devolve into a re-creation of “The Hangover.”

Taking a trip with the boys (or playing soccer at all, for that matter) suddenly struck me as trivial. But Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University who specializes in studying loneliness, told me that being more socially connected has clear health benefits, and not just on the soccer field.

“The more you feel supported by your social network,” Dr. Holt-Lunstad said, “the lower your blood pressure, the lower your resting heart rate.” And that includes casual friendships. “We get different kinds of needs and goals fulfilled from different kinds of relationships,” she said.

And so, Mexico.

As it happened, the trip, arranged with great care by Alberto (whose family still lives in Mexico City), was a success. We strolled through the city’s streets and museums, ate enormous lunches, sang with mariachis in the gondolas in the canals of Xochimilco, cheered for wrestlers at the lucha libre and roamed the ancient site of Teotihuacan.

We played our soccer game at the spiffy training site of Cruz Azul, a professional club, (thanks to our well-connected teammate Victor), and joined our opponents afterward in a lavish barbacoa feast. We gave each other nicknames (Shaun, one of two U.S.-born guys on the trip, was dubbed “Tío Sam” — Uncle Sam — for his light gray hair and goatee).

Were there times I longed to change the music, or retreat back to a quiet hotel room? For sure. But packing 15 of us into an Airbnb — or our rolling disco of a van, steadfastly driven by Alberto’s uncle Jesús — created a sort of forced intimacy, as well as a need to adapt. Even the moments of inconvenience, like a brief power outage at the Airbnb, added to the fun.

By some metrics — lack of sleep, overconsumption of food and alcohol — the trip was the unhealthiest thing I’ve done in ages. But few things have left me feeling better.

At one point, Iñaky, a native Spaniard who runs a construction company, said a friend had seen photos he was posting online and asked, “What, are you on a bachelor party or something?” No, we weren’t marking anyone’s transition to a new stage of life. We were simply celebrating our own deepening friendship.

We’re already planning next year’s trip.

New York City welcomed a hint of spring, with a bit of warm sun that turned this year’s Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival into a rousing success.

Fifth Avenue was filled with magnificent hat wearers, sauntering up and down 5th Avenue with charm and excitement that rivaled children who might be scouring parks for Easter egg hunts. A recurring cast of milliners and costumed spectators trading nods with the more casual participants — who found creative ways to create their own grand impressions — was a particular delight to see.

At a private fund-raising reception last year, the president of the United States introduced himself this way: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a friend of Esther Coopersmith’s.”

Mrs. Coopersmith’s name has been a calling card in Washington for seven decades. As one of the longest-reigning hostesses, best-connected diplomats and top fund-raisers in the nation’s capital, she greased the machinery that helped keep political, diplomatic and journalistic circles spinning; a place at her dinner tables, which sat 75, (with room for many more elsewhere and outside) provided access to networks of money, influence and power across cultural and political divides.

Among her many matches, she introduced Bill Clinton, who was then the governor of Arkansas, to Boris Yeltsin on a trip to Moscow. She introduced Jehan Sadat, the wife of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, to Aliza Begin, the wife of Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, before the Camp David peace accords. Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, had his first Thanksgiving at her table.

“People need a place out of the public spotlight to meet and talk,” she told The New York Times in 1987.

Mrs. Coopersmith, who had multiple affiliations with the United Nations but who also reveled in her role as a freelancing citizen diplomat, died on Tuesday at her home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington. She was 94.

The cause was cancer, said Janet Pitt, her longtime chief of staff. Rather than seek treatment that might have only postponed the inevitable and made her miserable, Ms. Pitt said, Mrs. Coopersmith “wanted to live her life.”

The last public event Mrs. Coopersmith attended was the Gridiron dinner in mid-March. That annual political roast was one of her favorite outings, Ms. Pitt said, because she could bring dignitaries from other countries and show them “how we could poke fun at our politicians and our government and live to tell about it the next day.”

President Biden said in a statement after Mrs. Coopersmith’s death that she was one of his “early boosters” when he was 29 and ran for the Senate in 1972. “Her belief in me,” he said, “meant the world.”

Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, said in a statement, “For all my years in politics, I have been in awe of her.” In an obituary published on Legacy.com, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called her “the indomitable doyenne of Washington.”

Mrs. Coopersmith grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and caught the politics bug while listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio. She moved to Washington in the early 1950s, landed a lobbying job and quickly parlayed her skills — personal warmth, self-confidence, smarts about people — into fund-raising.

Mrs. Coopersmith was fascinated by power and the alchemy that it produced. As she told The Times in 1987:

“I do it because I love the activity, the excitement, I love to mix people up, I love sharing my home. In New York if you have a lot of money you can buy your way into anything. Here it is power that counts — what your position is or could be. It is wonderful to watch power and how power affects people, how they run with it, how they adjust to it.”

While bipartisan in her pursuits, she was a Democrat at heart and over the years raised millions of dollars for the party’s candidates. By 1958, she was rubbing shoulders with the likes of former President Harry S. Truman, who scribbled on a photo of the two of them, “Kindest regards to an able and efficient Democrat from one who knows!”

Such mementos accumulated and in time occupied nearly every square inch of space in Mrs. Coopersmith’s four-story brick mansion. They included signed photos of decades of Washington players and international personages and a telegram from Mr. Carter thanking her for introducing Mrs. Sadat and Mrs. Begin and helping to get the peace accords off the ground. She later introduced Mrs. Sadat to Richard Berendzen, president of American University, who then hired Mrs. Sadat to teach.

Mrs. Coopersmith donated some of her treasure trove to the newly minted National Museum of American Diplomacy in Washington. To help promote the museum, she held a discussion at her home last year featuring Debora Cahn, the creator and showrunner of the popular Netflix series “The Diplomat,” starring Keri Russell, and Elizabeth Jones, a longtime foreign service officer and one of the figures on whom Ms. Russell’s character was based.

During the discussion, Ms. Cahn paid homage to the importance of personal relationships in geopolitics: “In a crisis, you can pick up the phone and call somebody who you sat next to at Esther Coopersmith’s and didn’t think it was a good seating choice in the beginning, but by dessert it seemed like you had a lot in common.”

Mrs. Coopersmith was proud of the sometimes unconventional pairings at her dinner table. In 1990, she seated an Israeli diplomat next to an emissary of Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq; shortly thereafter, Iraq invaded Kuwait and started the Persian Gulf war.

“It’s my home, and I can do whatever I want,” she told The Jerusalem Post in 1993. “They didn’t talk much, but as far as I was concerned, it was a start.”

She was born Esther Lipsen on Jan. 18, 1930, in Des Moines. Her family soon moved to the small town of Mazomanie, Wis., which is just northwest of Madison in the southern part of the state and at the time had a population of 891. Esther’s father, Morris, who came from Belarus, was a cattle rancher. Her mother, Pauline, who was born in Romania, managed the household of five children. They were the only Jewish family there.

By the age of 8, Esther was hooked on politics, thanks to F.D.R. By 12, she was raising money for the Red Cross.

She attended the University of Denver and later the University of Wisconsin. In 1952, she went to a rally for Senator Estes Kefauver, a Democrat from Tennessee who was running for president. Leaving college behind without graduating, she helped Mr. Kefauver win the Wisconsin primary; after he lost the nomination to Adlai Stevenson, she helped organize for Mr. Stevenson.

She decided that the real power was in Washington and moved there at Mr. Kefauver’s suggestion. She refused to learn to type, to avoid being stereotyped as a secretary, and she eventually got a job as a lobbyist for the Federation for Railway Progress.

She married Jack Coopersmith, a real estate developer, in 1954, and they settled in Potomac, Md., where she began hosting dinners, buffets and book signings and organizing events. A decade later, she was staging Texas-style fund-raising barbecues for President Lyndon B. Johnson all over the country.

She soon branched out to philanthropy, raising money for service organizations and helping to save Washington’s Union Station from the wrecking ball. She threw an intimate dinner for Barbra Streisand in 2015 the night before Ms. Streisand lobbied on Capitol Hill for the Women’s Heart Alliance.Mr. Coopersmith died at 80 in 1991. Soon thereafter, Mrs. Coopersmith moved to Washington, where she overhauled the Kalorama house, not far from Embassy Row, with the help of a White House decorator.

She is survived by three sons, Jonathan, Jeffrey and Ronald; a daughter, Connie Coopersmith; a sister, Rita Rabinowitz; and eight grandchildren.

Over the years, Mrs. Coopersmith was given several quasi-official roles, most of them involving the United Nations. She served as a public member of the United States delegation to the U.N. under President Carter from 1979 to 1980; the position, also once held by Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman, entails representing the United States on committees, attending debates in the General Assembly and showing up at receptions given by member nations.

President Ronald Reagan sent Mrs. Coopersmith to important U.N. conferences. She received the U.N. Peace Prize in 1984. President Clinton named her as a U.S. observer at UNESCO. In 2009, UNESCO named her a goodwill ambassador.

The posts gave her diplomatic cache, but she especially enjoyed practicing her own brand of soft diplomacy, defined by her own protocol, in the political kaleidoscope that is Washington.

“I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t play cards and don’t belong to a country club,” she told The Times in 1978. “Politics is my vice.”

Beyoncé fans had spent the day racing from store to store, searching for their first cowboy hat or pair of white cowboy boots. They brought out the denim jackets lined with silver fringe, the brown and white cow print skirts and the silver rhinestones to stud just above their eyelid.

Then on Friday night, they headed downtown to the famed strip of honky-tonks and bars on Lower Broadway in Nashville to listen to Beyoncé’s new album, “Cowboy Carter,” a tapestry of not only country music, but also contemporary pop music, funk and other genres.

“I’ve never seen so many people that look like me in cowboy hats in my life,” Nia Blair, 24, marveled, dancing in her own pair of new boots. She added, “one album did all this.”

There was no shortage of celebrations of the superstar’s new album this week: There were listening parties from Atlanta to Houston, a fan day at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and a seemingly endless stream of on-theme posts from brands and politicians.

But this is Nashville, where the iron gates of the country music business and its radio stations have fortified its brand as “Music City” with a history of minimizing the women and musicians of color who helped build its foundation or sought to expand its horizons.

It is also where some of its fandom and critics rebuffed Beyoncé’s performance at the Country Music Association Awards with the Chicks in 2016, a moment implied to be the catalyst for the creation of the album.

This party was different.

“Tonight is really just a message saying that we are here in Nashville,” said Dede Neahn West, who helped organize the listening party on the rooftop of Acme Feed & Seed, a refurbished farm store that now boasts four floors of music and events. “It’s just giving honor and celebrating, and celebrating our culture.”

Just over a week before the album was set to be released, Ms. West and Aaron Bell, a longtime Nashville producer and musician, began talking about putting together an event in the city to bring Black fans together to celebrate what many see as the triumph of the album’s artistry, the acknowledgment of the extra barriers musicians of color face and the promise of more to come.

“Being a Black person here — Broadway has nothing that reflects us,” said Mr. Bell, a D.J. who frequently performs as A.B. Eastwood and like others, said he has found a more inclusive space to perform at Acme Feed & Seed. “It was important to do it on Broadway.”

“Nashville, we love you,” he said, but, “we don’t have to wait on anybody to give us the OK.”

The release of the album has jolted the country music industry. But it has also created an exhausting and emotional whirlwind of attention for the legions of musicians, producers and artists who had already worked for years in Nashville to create a space for Black musicians in a genre they loved, some said in interviews.

“Beyoncé has brought us all together for this night alone, which we can be grateful for,” said Tanner Davenport, co-director of the Black Opry, which has given a platform to Black country and folk artists, including through a touring revue, since 2021. But he added, the reason he and others “stay in this area is because of the community that’s here.”

There is not yet an indication that the Nashville conglomerate of labels and executives has drastically changed its approach, particularly given its lasting dependence on terrestrial radio. That has left open questions about whether financial and institutional opportunities will come to other Black country artists, even as the initial songs from “Cowboy Carter” have broken country music records.

“The greatest opportunity that we have for change here is the fact that she’s exposed the idea of country music to a ton of people who now seemed more receptive to engaging with it — which the fact that they were not receptive is through no fault of their own,” said Holly G, the founder of the Black Opry.

She added, “I think what we have an opportunity for now is to build a fan base that can exist and thrive outside of these spaces that have not made us feel welcome.”

And the listening party on Friday, titled “Kinfolk,” was a signal that perhaps those fans could be drawn in.

On Friday night, past where bachelorette parties and tourists flocked to the rest of the famed strip of honky-tonks and bars owned by stars like Kid Rock, Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan, hundreds of people brought the rooftop at Acme Feed & Seed to its capacity.

A line of fans in fringe, denim and leather snaked through the floor below, as others crowded the rooftop, posed for photos with friends and listened to calls to buy more records and tickets for other artists. Attendees spoke about how this was the first country album they had listened to in its entirety, how it had prompted them to begin listening to other Black country artists or the joy they felt being surrounded by other Black country music fans.

“We’ve never felt comfortable even playing music — country music — on Broadway, but it’s nice to be here tonight with people that respect what we do and respect what we look like,” said Brandon Campbell, who performs with his twin brother, Derek, as the country duo The Kentucky Gentlemen.

To celebrate a Black woman’s country album on Broadway given a decade of challenging experiences in the city, he added, “is really big, mentally, physically, emotionally for us.”

Video of the 2016 performance at the Country Music Association Awards played on loop on televisions behind the bar, as bartenders served drink specials like The Bey-Hive, a discounted cocktail can, and Texas Hold’ Em, a whiskey sour made with whiskey from a Black-owned distillery in Nashville.

“It’s a lot of fun, and seeing the fact that people are actually willing to dress up and come out?” said MaKayla Stovall, 25. “It makes me feel a certain amount of pride, being Black and from the South.”

Brandon Robinson, 27, said, “I hate that she didn’t have a good time last time, so I’m glad that we can have a good time for her.”

When it was time to start playing the album, there was raucous applause, phones and studded cowboy hats held high into the night sky in time with the music.

And when two of the Black women featured on the album, Brittney Spencer and Reyna Roberts, appeared onstage together, the crowd roared. A woman in a cowboy hat and long white coat wiped away tears, as the two women sang along to their own harmonies on the album’s cover of the Beatles song “Blackbird.”

“This is incredible,” Ms. Spencer told the crowd before the next song began to play. “I love Black Nashville.”

Instead of a raucous weekend of late-night dancing and drinking at clubs or bars, Margaret Wilson chose a healthier setting for her bachelorette party last year.

Ms. Wilson, her sister and four close friends spent four days in February 2023 at a wellness spa in Sedona, Ariz., where they hiked through Boynton Canyon, meditated, enjoyed a healing sound bath and lounged around the pool.

“I had been through a lot of life changes the year leading up to my wedding, and I was looking for a low-stress, meaningful experience with my dearest friends,” said Ms. Wilson, 32, a dermatology physician assistant in Milwaukee. “This trip was meant to enrich my relationship with my loved ones and myself, and it did exactly that.”

Ms. Wilson decided on Sedona, she said, because it was “an interesting part of the country that offered nature and a unique experience that wasn’t solely dependent on partying.”

Wellness travel is now one of the biggest travel trends of 2024, and more and more brides-to-be are choosing locations that they say might help them better prepare both mind and body for their wedding day.

Christian Davies, the general manager at Mii Amo, the wellness spa where Ms. Wilson and her group had celebrated, says he has seen an increase in bachelorette parties. Other spa managers have also seen a rise in demand in recent years.

“This bachelorette trend may track a broader shift in how we celebrate milestones,” said Sara Margulis, the chief executive of the honeymoon registry site Honeyfund. “There is a strong desire to go beyond the boozy party and get out and connect with nature and enjoy each other.”

In a January survey, Greenback Expat Tax Services, which provides tax services for U.S. citizens living abroad, asked 1,000 men and women attending bachelor and bachelorette parties (including brides and grooms) about their location preferences for those parties. Three out of five respondents chose “a tranquil wellness retreat.”

Teeona Breon, 28, picked Rush Creek Lodge & Spa in Groveland, Calif., to celebrate her bachelorette party in July 2022 with her five bridesmaids. She was drawn to both the look of the lodge and the access to nearby Yosemite National Park.

“I’m not one to gravitate toward the bachelorette drinking and party scene because I like to prioritize my mental and physical well-being, so it was the perfect setting to allow me to indulge in that,” said Ms. Breon, a landscaping and design plant technician based in State College, Pa.

During the four-day trip, she and her bridesmaids spent time hiking and “taking in nature, while also finding moments for serenity and rejuvenation.”

Wellness-focused parties have become more than the typical prewedding spa day. Many brides are now looking to take longer trips to spa resorts, often near outdoor destinations.

Leticia Fernandez, the spa manager at Grand Velas Riviera Maya in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, noted that “brides-to-be are increasingly recognizing the need to prioritize their physical, mental and emotional well-being leading up to their wedding.”

Tammy Pahel, the vice president of spa and wellness operations at Carillon Miami Wellness Resort in Miami Beach, Fla., says popular spa requests for bachelorette parties include “experiences like meditation pods, infrared saunas and vitamin B IV therapy combined with traditional treatments like facials and massages.”

The treatments can be expensive. Forty-five minutes in the Himalayan Salt Chamber at Carillon costs $125, and facials there start at $239. At Rush Creek, an average spa package is around $250, said Gigi Richardson, spa and wellness manager at the resort, though a bridal package (which includes extra treatments) could cost more: about $550.

“We are seeing groups spend anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 per person for a bachelorette weekend on average,” said Allison Odhner, chief executive and founder of Bach to Basic, a bachelor and bachelorette party-planning company based in Philadelphia and Nashville.

For her upcoming bachelorette party in October, Samantha Lawrence, 38, is planning a three-day getaway with her five closest friends and family at Kananaskis Nordic Spa in Kananaskis Village, Alberta, Canada.

“Parties aren’t really my scene these days, and with all the wedding planning stress, some scheduled relaxation sounds like a dream,” said Ms. Lawrence, a health and safety administrator based in Calgary, Alberta, who will be getting married next year. “I picked this spa because they offer a unique hydrotherapy circuit,” she said, “not to mention they’re located in the breathtaking Rocky Mountains, so the location itself is simply serene.” Full-day access to the hydrotherapy circuit costs about $170 per person.

In addition to the location and activities, brides are extending the wellness focus to all aspects of the prewedding celebration, including their menus and gift bags.

In August 2022, about a month before her wedding, Iliriana Balaj, 30, hosted a five-day joint wellness party in Tulum, Mexico, with her now-husband, Matthew Balaj, and 16 of their friends and family members.

“I picked a location that naturally has healthier food options that are organic and local, as opposed to other common bachelorette spots,” said Ms. Balaj, the founder of Live Healthillie, an online store that offers health supplements, teas and low-toxin beauty products. “We wanted to appeal to everyone’s excitement level while considering many of my friends don’t consume alcohol for wellness reasons.”

Ms. Balaj and her group stayed at Tribe House Tulum and spent their days at the Nômade Tulum beach resort, while Mr. Balaj and his friends stayed in a separate rental and went on nature excursions.

Ms. Balaj also supplied her guests with goody bags packed with items like mineral and reef-safe sunscreen, natural skin care products and organic, herbal energy booster capsules.

A holistic health coach, Ms. Balaj gave up alcohol three years ago, so wild bachelorette parties aren’t something she can relate to anymore, she said.

“With the current trend of people becoming more wellness focused I think it is also inspiring more mindful bachelorette parties surrounded by just simple good vibes and memories,” she said.

Simultaneously historic and perhaps a big nothing, the shot was snapped on Thursday in New York City when President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered, before a Democratic fund-raiser, for the taping of “SmartLess,” a podcast hosted by the comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.

With his beard and rumpled corduroy pants, Mr. Bateman was clearly the odd man out in a group of radiantly healthy alphas dressed in crisp blazers or suits. As one social media quipster put it, Mr. Bateman, the “Arrested Development” star who is soon to appear in a limited series with Jude Law, looked as if he was celebrating his release from the hoosegow. The other dudes were on hand to help cut the cake.

It was not Mr. Bateman, though, who generated online buzz with his attire. It was those three presidents appearing without ties. (Messrs. Arnett and Hayes also skipped the neckwear, and as it happened, the three presidents remained without ties straight through the evening’s event.) Were we once again at the precipice, as some commentators seemed to suggest? Was civilization nearing its end? Or were we yet again being reminded of the inexorable march from casual Friday to casual everyday, and to a world in which chief executives dress like field hands and the only people who can be relied on to sport a suit and tie outside a courtroom are bodyguards and limo chauffeurs?

Pity the poor tie. Pundits are forever writing its obit. Back in 2022, the doomsayers piled on when, at a G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, world leaders including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson “declared the end of the necktie,” according to Women’s Wear Daily, by posing for a group photo in suits and open-neck shirts.

Women’s Wear Daily, citing the pandemic and the corresponding boom in athleisure and active wear, noted that the formal suit — with that sadly diminished phallic accessory, the necktie — “no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.”

Just as with Mark Twain, reports of the necktie’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is it debatable whether, as a New York Times newsletter asserted last year, “neckties have been out of fashion for so long that even articles about neckties being out of fashion have gone out of fashion,” but they have in truth enjoyed a robust resurgence.

For proof, check out the recent runways of New York, Milan or Paris and collections produced by industry leaders like Prada, Gucci and Armani. Scan the style blogs or the pages of GQ, Esquire or L’Uomo Vogue and you will quickly conclude that the issue is not whether the necktie is dead but how politicians’ stylists fell so badly behind the curve.

For presidents or anyone else with “some stature in the suit game, the tie is the thing that finishes it off,” said Jim Moore, the creative director at large of GQ, who once persuaded Mr. Obama to change the tie he was wearing for a magazine feature. “We love to dress the suit down but, in the end, respect the suit and wear the tie.”

Failing to do so is, he said, “a bit of a lame attempt.” — to have one’s cake and eat it, too.

For Colm Dillane, the founder of the New York cult label KidSuper, best known for its streetwear, functionality is not the point of a tie. “It’s not much more than a neck belt,” he said. Still, in terms of symbolic value, a tie “does a ton.”

The politicians who gathered tieless for the photo this week looked less casual and relaxed than “a little disheveled,” Mr. Dillane said. That’s something his coaches would never have condoned back when he played soccer at New York University.

“Whenever we traveled, we had to put on a coat and tie for the plane,” he said. “It wasn’t that comfortable, obviously, but it showed that we took whatever we were doing seriously — that this was a bigger deal than just practice.”

If accidental matchmakers got Yelp reviews, Pamela Grace and Arnim Ludwig Kaiser would give five stars to the waitress who served them on Oct. 11, 2022, at Le Plaza-La Paillotte, a restaurant in Arles, France. A half-star deduction for one too many tableside visits might be justified, though.

Ms. Grace and Mr. Kaiser were both out-of-towners having dinner alone when Ms. Grace, 80, got up to leave and felt unsteady. Mr. Kaiser, 79, seated nearby at his own table, invited her to sit for a moment. “It was the first time he’d ever asked a strange woman to his table and the first time I’d ever sat down with a man I didn’t know,” Ms. Grace said.

The waitress, she said, “was watching the whole interaction with a smile on her face.”

“I think this nice young woman got a kick out of seeing this old man and this old woman who had come in alone sitting together,” Ms. Grace said.

On a first sweep by their table, the waitress reinforced a sense of compatibility by noting they had ordered the same dinner — salmon followed by a crème brûlée made with local lavender. But on a subsequent check-in she interrupted Mr. Kaiser midsentence. “She ducked in to ask if we would like anything else, and Arnim had just said, ‘My wife.’” Because of the interruption, “he never got to finish his thought.”

Ms. Grace returned to her hotel that night assuming Mr. Kaiser was “a nice, honest European man” who was happily married, she said. It wasn’t until several days later, when she was back home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and he in Gernsbach, Germany, that she would learn that he was a widower.

Ms. Grace, a retired adjunct professor of film studies at Brooklyn College who earned a Ph.D. in cinema studies from N.Y.U. at age 60, is a longtime member of the New York committee of Human Rights Watch. Her 2022 trip to France was for a Human Rights Watch summit meeting. She grew up in Watertown, N.Y., and graduated from Manhattanville College with a bachelor’s degree in English; she earned a master’s degree in social work from Columbia.

Mr. Kaiser, who had traveled to Arles for a photography workshop, has a doctorate in social sciences from the University of Bonn in Germany and later worked as chair of the humanities faculty at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, from which he is now retired. He grew up in Saarbrücken, Germany, and has a bachelor’s degree in romance languages and literature from the University of Bonn.

Ms. Grace was divorced in 2002; she has two children and a 15-year-old grandson. Mr. Kaiser lost his wife to liver cancer in 2019 after a 53-year marriage. He has no children.

[Click here to binge read this week’s featured couples.]

When they first saw each other at Le Plaza-La Paillotte, Mr. Kaiser had greeted Ms. Grace as he took his seat at a table next to her with a cordial “bonsoir.” She was charmed. “How sweet, I thought,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t treat his fellow diners as furniture.” After he invited her to sit and learned she was American, he struck up a conversation in stilted English over a glass of rosé.

“It was the first time I felt feelings for someone” since he was widowed, he said. Before they said a final “bonsoir” that night, they exchanged email addresses. Ms. Grace wrote first.

“I hadn’t heard from him for a few days, and I was thinking, you know, I kind of like that guy,” she said. After a week’s worth of correspondence, though, she got flustered. “One day she said to me, ‘Arnim, I don’t know how to handle this situation. We write very personal emails. What is your wife saying about us having such a strong relationship?’”

By the end of the year, they were in love. “I was always looking at my email to see if he had written me, like a teenager,” Ms. Grace said. But “then came another obstacle,” Mr. Kaiser said. She invited him to visit her in New York in January 2023. He had never flown before, preferring to travel by train or car, and felt unready to start. “I was not anxious,” he said. “But I don’t love it when I can’t master a situation.”

She flew to Germany instead. Four weeks later, they flew back to New York together, a committed couple. By the end of the year, they had been back and forth between New York and Germany every three months, each spending four weeks with the other.

In December 2023, Mr. Kaiser proposed over a candlelit dinner at his apartment in Gersbach.

“I never thought I would want to marry again,” she said. “But I was so thrilled.”

On March 15, they gathered 26 guests for a wedding at her Fort Greene apartment. Jane Croft, a Universal Life Church minister Ms. Grace found through an internet search, officiated a short ceremony.

The couple plan to spend half the year in Brooklyn and half in Europe. Each feels familiar with the other’s hometown now. But their pleasure in finding each other still feels new.

“I didn’t know or believe such feelings would ever come back,” Mr. Kaiser said.

On the surface, Lizzo’s new shapewear-influenced swimwear line seems all about control.

“These suits have a power to hold,” Lizzo, the Grammy-Award-winning singer and fashion entrepreneur, said in a video interview. “Let me tell you something: I have broken into a sweat trying to get some of these on.”

That Lizzo, a trailblazer of fat acceptance, has had to squeeze into bathing suits she developed for her brand Yitty was a striking confession. But she has tailored the concept of body positivity — that popular movement that urges self-love no matter your shape or size — to fit the times.

“The idea of body positivity, it’s moved away from the antiquated mainstream conception,” she said. “It’s evolved into body neutrality.”

Yet to hear her tell it, she is anything but neutral. “I’m not going to lie and say I love my body every day,” Lizzo, 35, said. “The bottom line is, the way you feel about your body changes every single day.”

She continued, “There are some days I adore my body, and others when I don’t feel completely positive.”

A promotional campaign this year that teased Yitty swimwear, an extension of the line of bras, leggings and other shapewear Lizzo introduced two years ago, showed the singer flaunting her backside in a one-piece thong swimsuit. Models in the campaign similarly reveal generous amounts of flesh, wearing a series of one- and two-piece swimsuits.

“I’ve made my own wardrobe,” Lizzo said. “And now I get to be the C.E.O. and supermodel for my brand.”

Produced in partnership with Fabletics Inc., Yitty’s parent company, the swimwear is offered in sizes from 6X to XS. (The brand lists the largest sizes first.) It is aimed at the kinds of customers who may already own Yitty undergarments or similar items from Skims or Savage x Fenty — each of which, like Yitty, makes products using a stretchy combination of nylon and spandex.

What’s the difference between those products and Yitty swimwear? The bathing suits are made partly from recycled fabric, are meant to resist chlorine and are engineered, Lizzo stressed, “to create even more of a hold.”

The swim line includes a square-neck bikini top as well as bikini bottoms, shorts and one-pieces described in promotional copy as “cheeky,” “high-waist” and “waist-cinching.” Items are priced from about $50 to $100.

The range of available sizes, according to Lizzo, makes it easier to find something a little tighter (or looser). “If somebody wanted more or less compression, we give you the power to do that,” she said. “Just buy a different size. This line is about freedom.”

Lizzo, who is not touring at the moment, has lately had a bit more freedom herself to develop her line or to take up feel-good pursuits like exercise. “I’m taking the time every day to put some love into my body,” she said. “There is never a day when I regret taking a walk or doing some Pilates.”

She is dieting as well. “I’ve been methodical, losing weight very slowly,” Lizzo said. Others recognized for advocating candid self display have faced pushback after losing weight from people who see it at odds with self-love.

The singer, of course, is no stranger to controversy. She declined, through a publicist who was present for Lizzo’s video interview, to comment on ongoing lawsuits accusing her of harassment and of creating a hostile work environment, allegations she has repeatedly denied. Through her publicist, Lizzo also declined to comment on attacks on her appearance and character by Candace Owens, a conservative political commenter.

Speaking generally about some people’s obsession with her appearance, Lizzo said, “My body is nobody’s business.”

Rosh Mahtani, the founder of the jewelry brand Alighieri, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her company this year. Her handmade gold-plated pieces, inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” made her a winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design and a mainstay of luxury e-commerce vendors.

During Paris Fashion Week last month, buyers came to her showroom to select stock for the upcoming season, including MatchesFashion, a leading multibrand fashion retailer that is responsible for about half a million pounds, or $630,000, of Alighieri’s projected revenues. But there was a problem.

“They had owed me 70,000 pounds [about $88,000] in unpaid invoices since October and had been asking for discounts on those bills,” Ms. Mahtani said last week. It made her uneasy, even if such bargaining was increasingly commonplace for independent brands like hers. Still, she said, she wasn’t quaking in her boots.

“The team made a selection, and we talked about a capsule collection for the summer,” she said. “I don’t think any of us had a sense of what would come next.”

Days later, MatchesFashion was put into administration (the British term for bankruptcy). Its owner, Frasers Group, which bought the company in December for about 52 million pounds, or $66 million, now said the operation was not commercially viable. Overnight, almost half of the staff was fired from a company that had been valued at $1 billion when it was sold to Apax Partners in 2017. Today, 200 brands are owed money and cannot access unsold inventory, and a furious customer base rages online about accessing orders or making returns.

The implosion of MatchesFashion was the latest messy reckoning for companies that sell luxury goods online. Once the darlings of investors, many are in financial free fall. In December, Farfetch, a onetime e-commerce powerhouse for independent boutiques and beloved by the luxury heavyweights whose websites it powered, staved off bankruptcy thanks to an 11th hour acquisition by the South Korean e-commerce group Coupang and a $500 million bridge loan. (In 2021, Farfetch had a valuation of $40 billion.)

José Neves, the Farfetch founder, stepped down as chief executive in February amid a slew of lawsuits brought by shareholders. The future of Yoox Net-a-Porter also hangs in the balance after a failed deal between Richemont, its parent group, and Farfetch last year. Richemont, which listed Net-a-Porter under “discontinued operations” in its most recent earnings report and has taken almost billions of euros in write-downs on the company, has said it is looking for a buyer and will not invest further cash. Richemont, Farfetch and MatchesFashion all declined to comment for this article.

For much of the last decade, luxury e-commerce was heralded as the smart way to shop, offering hyped brands, exclusive products, free returns and 90-minute delivery services at the swipe of a button. Brick-and-mortar stores would surely crumble. The future lay in clicking Add to Basket, be it for fashion with a price tag of $50 or $50,000.

During the first years of the pandemic, consumers splurged through such websites. More recently, questionable management choices, a volatile global economy and soaring luxury prices — and with big brands heavily investing in their own digital operations — constricted retailers’ ability to stand out in a competitive market, let alone make a profit.

“In the end, what cannot stand will fall, and online players need to have lower and more practical ambitions,” said Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Bernstein. “Matches is bankrupt, Farfetch spent money like there was no tomorrow on debatable acquisitions, and Net-a-Porter is obsolete. Any dreams of becoming an Uber for luxury distribution has turned into a nightmare and has proved impossible to realize.”

A Fashion Doom Scroll

Multibrand e-commerce emerged at a time when the global luxury market was being upended by a move away from exclusivity toward ubiquity. The novelty and excitement of being able to browse and buy beautiful things that will soon arrive at your door held allure for a consumer accustomed to the immediate gratification of the internet age.

But a curious thing about online luxury e-commerce was how many players adopted a model that was broken, something reflected in the much publicized woes of department stores in the United States. After the pandemic boom, many overstocked and were left with mountains of unsold inventory. They subsequently resorted to aggressive promotions and discounting. This pushed heavyweight brands to seek more control over their e-commerce and distribution. As competition grew fiercer, the multibrand vendors sought to find a point of difference by spending more on … well, more.

More brands and more products in more geographical regions. More sales. Beyond the eye-watering spending required to build the infrastructure to ship all those orders — and process all those free returns — it was a model that undercut much of what had appealed to consumers in the first place.

“Lots of consumers came to these sites because they wanted a quick and clever edit of pieces and instant access,” said Fiona Harkin, the director of foresight at the Future Laboratory consultancy. “In the end, and especially with the advent of mobile commerce, dozens upon dozens of pages of product that could probably be found elsewhere would turn into an unfulfilling fashion doom scroll.”

These challenges coincided with a general softening of the luxury market and dovetailed with many e-tailers’ exposure to aspirational middle-class consumers who had seen their discretionary spending curtailed by inflation and the skyward trajectory of luxury pricing. Mr. Solca estimated in 2023 that the top 5 percent of luxury clients accounted for more than 40 percent of sales, including at luxury e-tailers. In other words, an even more fickle and demanding customer to court.

Some players tried to broaden their business strategies with pricey acquisitions. Farfetch owns the British luxury store Browns; the Italian incubator New Guards Group, which licenses Off-White and the beauty retailer Violet Grey, is currently in talks to sell those assets. The emergence of resale led customers to buy products secondhand not long after they had been available for full price.

“The cost of successful digital marketing and customer acquisition spiraled higher and higher, and investors were less and less willing to front the costs,” said the luxury consultant Robert Burke. He noted that some companies, like MyTheresa, had fared better than others. He cautioned, however, that the last three months had brought a painful reset that had been a long time coming.

“We are about to see a major evolution in luxury e-commerce — or perhaps a better word would be correction,” Mr. Burke said. “Overall, online sales for luxury fashion went up last year. This isn’t a shrinking market. What is changing is who is getting slices of the pie.”

The Brink of Going Bust

For J.J. Martin, the founder of lifestyle label La Double J, the reason she had a ready-to-wear business at all was because of the MatchesFashion founder, Ruth Chapman, who started stocking La Double J in 2016.

“At the time, everyone looked at Matches to figure out what to buy because Ruth had the best eye, nose and ear on the ground,” Ms. Martin said last week. “When she picked me up, that was my big break. They didn’t have every brand, only the coolest brands. That was these sites’ biggest asset before they started stocking seven variations of the same thing.”

Ms. Martin is owed money for a resort collection she shipped last fall, though she declined to disclose how much. Dozens of brands contacted by The New York Times for this article, many of whom had already shipped spring collections for 2024, were similarly mum. Anissa Kermiche, beloved by fashion savants for her ceramic Love Handles vases shaped like a female hips and bottom, as well as her jewelry and home wares, was more upfront. She was out by 50,000 pounds, or $63,000, for stock delivered after Christmas.

“I don’t have any hope that I’ll get this money back,” Ms. Kermiche said. “It’s a lot, but others are owed so much more and are on the brink of going bust themselves.”

Poppy Sexton-Wainwright of the beach and loungewear line Asceno, stressed that she was less concerned about the “not insignificant” funds she was owed than the loss of earnings she had expected to make this year with MatchesFashion. Several brands said that they had shifted as much money as possible to their own direct-to-consumer websites. Which is fortunate, given reports that buyers from some online stores, including Ssense, the Canadian player still known for its focus on emerging and independent brands, has cut the number of brands it was buying from.

Others, including Net-a-Porter, have been asking some brands to change their payment terms to 90 days from 60, sending further jitters through an already jumpy industry. As Farfetch seeks a buyer for Browns, Richemont looks for one for Net-a-Porter, and administrators seek a white knight for MatchesFashion, the future of once starry names is uncertain. (It has been noted that Frasers Group structured its takeover of Matches in such a way that it may still buy it out of bankruptcy without its debts.)

“Designers once wanted to be stocked by a multibrand because the prestige factor meant something,” Ms. Mahtani of Alighieri said. Now they are a less important piece of the puzzle. Ms. Mahtani stopped working with Farfetch 18 months ago, but Matches had been a cornerstone of her market. This week, she made her way to its warehouse in greater London in a bid to reclaim some of her stock. (The Sunday Times of London estimates that the company, which is still trading under the guidance of administrators, is sitting on about 100 million pounds in unsold wares.) Ms. Mahtani wasn’t successful, though she did get direct contact details for the administrators, which felt like a step in the right direction.

“I had to do something,” she said, “It was beyond outrageous to see stock that I know they haven’t paid me for still being sold on their website. I am going to be OK, but no company loses money like I have without feeling it.”

When famous people split, fans aren’t always privy to the reason. Most are left to social media sleuthing and questionably sourced rumors to piece the story together. But sometimes, there are couples who choose to come clean.

Transparency may hold greater appeal for influencers, who, unlike certifiable A-listers, have an incentive to live as much of their lives on the feed as possible. But even by the oversharing standards of most content creators, admitting that you cheated is going above and beyond the call of duty.

Anjali Chakra and Sufi Malik, a popular influencer couple, have announced their breakup after more than five years of dating (and a few weeks before getting married) by having one of them admit in an Instagram post on Sunday that she was unfaithful.

In two separate statements that sent shock waves throughout their following, the pair said they were calling off their wedding and moving forward separately.

Who are these people?

Ms. Chakra, who splits her time between New York and San Francisco, is an event planner and content creator. Ms. Malik, who lives in New York, is a content creator as well. They met online after following each other’s Tumblr profiles, the pair said in a 2019 “How We Met” YouTube video. They began dating in 2018 and announced their engagement online in 2022.

Their online celebrity was kicked off when images of the couple nuzzling adorably under a rain-spattered umbrella made the rounds on social media in 2019, with many rushing to proclaim them relationship goals. Another set of photos celebrated their first anniversary that same year.

Along with posting fashion, lifestyle and travel videos, the couple used their platform to raise awareness for people in marginalized and L.G.B.T.Q. communities.

What happened?

On Sunday, the couple announced in synchronized black-and-white statements on Instagram that the wedding was off.

Ms. Chakra declined to be interviewed for this article, and Ms. Malik did not respond to requests for comment, but both women’s statements allude to Ms. Malik’s having cheated just weeks before they were set to be married. It’s unclear how Ms. Chakra became aware of the infidelity, but apparently it was enough to dissolve the entire relationship.

“I made an unrecognizable mistake of betrayal by cheating on her a few weeks before our wedding,” Ms. Malik wrote on Instagram, referring to Ms. Chakra. “I’ve hurt her tremendously, beyond my own understanding. I’m owning up to my mistake and will continue to do so.”

In her own Instagram statement, Ms. Chakra wrote that they had “decided to call off our wedding and end our relationship due to infidelity committed by Sufi.” She captioned the post with a brokenhearted emoji.

While Ms. Malik asked for forgiveness and privacy in her post, Ms. Chakra wished for “no negativity to be shown” toward her ex.

Why should I care?

While the names of these two influencers might not ring a bell, in an industry in which representation of queer South Asian, Hindu and Muslim people can be slight at best, Ms. Chakra and Ms. Malik have been widely considered positive representations for those who haven’t always had role models they could directly relate to.

They created an online form through which their supporters could submit questions and request advice on topics including relationships, coming out to immigrant families and navigating queerness online.

On their TikTok, YouTube and Instagram profiles, they regularly post lifestyle content, including videos about Ms. Malik’s growing up Muslim and queer and planning their wedding. Their chemistry and romance seemed palpable through the screen.

So it’s no surprise that the news of the breakup was a real blow to fans who have grown attached to the pair and their relationship.

Some expressed their sadness over the news, begging the pair to try to reconcile and wishing them the best going forward. Others were shocked at the news of Ms. Malik’s infidelity. A few even took the opportunity to hit on Ms. Chakra.

“I hope you have support around you in this difficult time,” one user wrote in Ms. Chakra’s replies. “You’ve helped so many queer South Asians feel seen and at home through your journey. Wish you nothing but the best.”

What makes this breakup so unusual?

Celebrities and other public figures are expected to be elusive when it comes to the private matters of their relationships and breakups. In this case, Ms. Malik and Ms. Chakra are actually giving us the why, which those following along at home typically don’t get in these situations.

Also, their separate but highly coordinated statements — down to the matching graphic design of the posts, the inverted text colors, the corresponding black and white heart emojis and the similarly corporate language — is a disconcertingly polished way to announce that you’ve been betrayed. Perhaps no matter how sad the news, the content still has to look good.

Wow, having a public relationship sounds stressful.

While being labeled #couplesgoals can be flattering, it’s not always easy to have your relationship — the good, the bad and the ugly — online for all to see. Their decision to reveal the reason behind the end of their engagement takes guts. But coming clean to get ahead of speculation and unconfirmed gossip isn’t a new strategy. (See: Try Guys, 2022.)

But is it our right to know all the details?

Fair question. In the case of Ms. Malik and Ms. Chakra, it’s unclear how they came to the decision to have Ms. Malik take such public accountability and admit exactly what she did. Maybe this is how Ms. Chakra gets her lick back: by eliminating her ex’s privacy? Or maybe they just felt, especially after sharing so much about their relationship online, that it was important to be honest with any of their followers who might have put their relationship on a pedestal.

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