Exhaling Life

Before rain boots became a fashion statement, they were a matter of preservation. In the nineteenth century, women navigating muddy streets had to contend with delicate shoes that were hardly equipped for the elements. Pattens, wooden-soled overshoes that elevated footwear above the muck, offered one solution; rubber galoshes offered another. The invention of vulcanized rubber in 1839 changed the equation, making waterproof footwear considerably more durable and commercially viable. What followed was the evolution of the Wellington boot, a design with decidedly aristocratic and military beginnings that would eventually find its way from the countryside into women's wardrobes. Mexico City, Mexico For much of their existence, rubber boots were valued for what they could withstand rather than how they looked. They belonged to farms, gardens, military trenches, and rainy country estates. But fashion has a peculiar talent for rehabilitating the practical. By the mid-twentieth century, t...

Jensen Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and now former CEO, mastered the art of commanding attention. The signature leather jackets, the hands-on management style, the charismatic stage presence, and an intelligence delivered with uncommon approachability made him one of the most recognizable figures in technology. He cultivated a persona as distinctive as Nvidia's rise itself, becoming the face of an artificial intelligence revolution that has moved from the realm of technological promise into the fabric of our everyday lives. at LACMA I doubt many of us were shocked when news of his affair with Alice Huang made headlines. Men have affairs. Men worth billions of dollars have affairs. And when one affair became affairs, plural, I don't think many of us were particularly surprised. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, and Silvio Berlusconi are just a handful of billionaires whose romantic indiscretions became public scandals. Jensen Huang, however, managed to take the familiar bil...

Eight actors have portrayed James Bond on television and on the big screen since 1954: Barry Nelson, Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig. While I haven't seen all eight in action as 007, Pierce Brosnan has always been my favorite. If you've ever seen him in person, he might become yours, too. It has been nearly three decades since I saw him, but I remember it as though it were yesterday: impossibly handsome, perfectly put together, and every bit as gorgeous in person as one might imagine. Some impressions, apparently, are not subject to expiration. William Andrew Clark Memorial Library After a five-year hiatus, the James Bond franchise has once again given the gossip mill something to work with. Reports of screen tests for the coveted role surfaced last month, with an announcement of the next 007 anticipated by the end of this year. The names circulating include Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, Josh O'Connor, R...

Somewhere in my closet is a black cashmere sweater I picked up at a sample sale well over a decade ago. It is asymmetric, beautifully understated, and now held together in a few places by my own handiwork: a needle, black thread, and the firm conviction that some things are simply worth saving. I have mended it rather than replaced it, not because black cashmere sweaters are particularly difficult to find, but because this particular one is impossible to replace. at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA At this point, it has become something of a comfort sweater. The sort I reach for when I want to feel entirely like myself, without the fuss of getting dressed and with all the pleasure of looking effortlessly put together. Fashion has a remarkable talent for convincing us that last season's treasures are this season's embarrassments. My old cashmere sweater has spent more than a decade making a rather persuasive argument to the contrary. It has survived changing trends, wardrobe purg...

Whoever coined the phrase “bigger is better” clearly never consulted a five-foot-three-inch woman. I have long maintained that fabulousity often comes in small packages. There are exceptions, of course, and Haemul Pajeon, the Korean Seafood Green Onion Pancake, makes a rather delicious case for abandoning my principles. When it comes to this Korean favorite, thickness is everything. Packed with shrimp, squid, green onions, zucchini, and yellow onions, these savory pancakes are a glorious celebration of excess, at least where ingredients are concerned. While many recipes favor thinner pancakes or arrange the ingredients neatly on top, there is a reason the thicker, generously stuffed versions served at Korean restaurants have gone viral. With their crisp, deeply browned exteriors giving way to tender, seafood-packed interiors, they deliver a combination of flavor and texture that thinner versions simply cannot match. Sometimes, bigger really is better. Or, in this case, thicker. INGREDI...

Long before leather became synonymous with rebellion and sex appeal, it was a marker of wealth and social standing. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, finely crafted leather gloves were indispensable accessories for women of privilege, signaling refinement and the luxury of hands unaccustomed to manual labor. How amusing that a material once associated with proper etiquette would eventually become one of fashion's most provocative expressions of independence. Leather, it seems, has always understood the importance of making an impression, even as its definition of good manners has changed rather dramatically. Paris, France By the twentieth century, leather had shed much of its polite disposition. Yves Saint Laurent brought motorcycle-inspired rebellion into the hallowed world of Christian Dior in 1960, while Vivienne Westwood later embraced leather's more subversive possibilities through punk and fetish-inspired fashion. Azzedine Alaïa sculpted it around the femal...