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A Tranquil Hotel at the Edge of Joshua Tree National Park
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| The rooms at Hotel Wren, in Twentynine Palms, Calif., feature custom millwork and vintage décor that make each space distinct. Ethan Jones |
Just 15 minutes from Joshua Tree National Park, an arrow-shaped sign beckons drivers off historic Route 62 and down brush-lined roads to the Mojave Desert's newest accommodations, Hotel Wren. Initially built in the 1940s as a motor lodge, the 12-room hotel in Twentynine Palms, Calif., that opened in March offers kitchenettes and private patios that open onto the desert, along with access to a saltwater pool, hot tub and native plant garden. A two-and-a-half hour drive from Los Angeles and three-and-a-half hours from Las Vegas, the adults-only property was remodeled with an emphasis on tranquillity. The rooms, which feature pitched ceilings, vintage décor and furniture made in Joshua Tree, are absent of TVs. Though the original midcentury carport remains, the bones of the buildings were softened with hand-troweled plaster, corners were rounded and the floors were replaced with flagstones and tiles embedded with fossilized plant material and animal tracks. The on-site bodega, Windsong, is stocked with wine and provisions, including organic Italian pasta and tinned fish. There is also a community pantry with free herbs and seasonings, and the complimentary breakfast includes eggs and locally made bagels. The less-visited north entrance to Joshua Tree National Park is close by, but guests can just as easily take in the area's rugged beauty from their rooms. Rates from about $330 a night, hotelwren29.com.
SMELL THIS
Marin Montagut's First Fragrance Channels Summer in Sicily
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| Marin Montagut's new perfume, L'Eau Douce, comes in marbled-paper packaging. ©Romain Ricard |
The Parisian illustrator and designer Marin Montagut is known for his fanciful objects and romantic aesthetic. His work, whether it's a porcelain jug or a hand-drawn postcard, prioritizes craftsmanship and often references the past. Now he's releasing his first eau de parfum, L'Eau Douce. Four years ago, he began attempting to encapsulate his fond memories of Sicilian summers in a fragrance. Collaborating with the nose Maïa Lernout, who has worked with Dior, Kenzo and Burberry, among other fashion brands, Montagut began with the scent of orange blossoms. He then added white musk to evoke the smell of freshly washed linen strung out to dry in the sun. Notes of mint, lemon, fig and bergamot round out the perfume. For its packaging, Montagut used marbled paper, a signature of his brand, to create an illustrated box. Each bottle is decorated with a gold medallion featuring two hands that can be removed and worn as a necklace. "I wanted to give a gift in a gift," he says. Montagut's name, Marin, has Latin roots pertaining to the sea, and L'Eau Douce, fittingly, translates to "freshwater." From about $190, marinmontagut.com.
IN SEASON
The New York Chefs Making Magnolia Blossoms Last
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| Left: the New York chef Hannah Musante's magnolia blossoms stuffed with sourdough toast ice cream. Right: magnolia branches in New York's Union Square Park. Left: courtesy of Hannah Musante. Right: James Andrews/istock/Getty Images |
On a drizzly April afternoon in Brooklyn, the New Jersey-based forager Tama Matsuoka Wong pulled up to the Prospect Heights restaurant Cafe Mado with a bounty in the back of her van. One of her produce bins was filled with plastic clamshells that held dozens of pointy pink saucer magnolia buds. Her chef clients "are always wanting flowers," she says. And in the northeast, saucer magnolia is "one of the earliest blooming," a herald of spring that typically emerges in March and lasts about a month. The petals have a gingery taste and a texture similar to a squash blossom. Wong foraged the buds in Pennsylvania and Maryland at the start of the season, before making her way north to New Jersey. Cafe Mado's chef, Nico Russell, is preserving the flowers in sour honey. He plans to serve them in a dessert with buttermilk and local strawberries when the latter is in season around June. The restaurant's bar team is working on a nonalcoholic cocktail that combines amazake, a Japanese fermented rice drink, with magnolia tea. Wong also provides the buds to Flynn McGarry, the chef at Gem Home in NoLIta and the forthcoming Hudson Square restaurant Cove (scheduled to open this fall). He's been soaking the petals in vinegar and plans to serve them "like pickled ginger," he says, with crudo at Cove. The Brooklyn-based chef Hannah Musante collected her own flowers from a friend's backyard, then stuffed them with sourdough toast ice cream. She covered other buds in sugar to create a syrup, and used the leftover macerated flowers to fill a tart shell that she topped with crème fraîche and dried thyme flowers. "The first products of spring are always so exciting," she says.
SEE THIS
Christian Marclay's Latest Video Work Hinges on Doors
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| A still from Christian Marclay's "Doors" (2022), which uses that pivot point to flit between film scenes, creating a dreamlike progression. © Christian Marclay, courtesy of White Cube |
The London-based artist Christian Marclay has long been preoccupied with the interplay of sight and sound. For his 1985 LP, "Record Without a Cover," he featured musical samples alongside the soundscape of accumulated scratches. He went on to arrange vinyl sleeves into uncanny collages, such as Michael Jackson's torso spliced with a woman's glistening legs. When Marclay began creating video montages from movie clips — first with "Telephones" (1995) and later "The Clock" (2010), the 24-hour work currently on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art — there were built-in soundtracks of rotary dials and ticktocks. "Doors," his 2022 video installation now making its U.S. premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, stitches together comings and goings in a single propulsive loop, drawing on hundreds of films dating back to the silent era. "I think of it as very sculptural, in a way," Marclay says. "If you followed [the protagonists], what kind of labyrinth of rooms can you imagine?" A decade in the making, "Doors" required particular finesse in the editing, with Marclay assessing the direction and speed of each door swing for seamless transitions. The result feels like a lateral trip down the rabbit hole, breakneck chase scenes giving way to the foreboding twist of a knob. The pull of forward motion comes with incertitude, Marclay says: "There's always that mystery behind a door." "Christian Marclay: Doors," at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, runs from Apr. 17 through Sept. 1; icaboston.org.
DRINK THIS
Japanese Wines Are on the Rise — Here's Where to Try Them in the U.S.
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| Left: Tsukimi, a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan's East Village, offers a wine pairing that features Japanese producers whose bottles have only recently begun being imported to the States. Right: Domaine Tetta, a producer in Okayama, is part of a new generation of low-intervention winemakers in Japan. Left: Read McKendree. Right: Courtesy of 10 Green Street |
Japan has refined the art of many beverages (matcha, sake, whiskey, beer). But until recently, wine did not rank among them, mostly relegated, instead, to suspiciously inexpensive cartons that lined the shelves of convenience stores. But young Japanese winemakers have been popping up across the country since the late aughts, making enticing low-intervention wines like cold-climate reds that lean almost into the umami. U.S. distributors took notice, and the trickle that's been arriving since 2021 has grown exponentially in the past year. Tsukimi, a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan's East Village, offers six different Japanese wines that pair with their tasting menu, including a merlot by Mie Ikeno, a journalist who trained as a winemaker in France and has been growing European varieties in Yamanashi, the traditional center of Japanese winemaking just west of Tokyo, since 2007. Tomo, in Seattle, recently poured the 2021 Arancione from Yamagata's Grape Republic by the glass: an apricot-hued blend of Delaware and Steuben grapes. Wine bars and seafood restaurants with thoughtful bottle lists like Manhattan's Penny have also caught on. (Its sesame brioche slathered with butter and anchovies pairs well with Coco Farms's flinty Kumo no Jikan, a sauvignon blanc blend grown near the ocean in Hokkaido that smells, unexpectedly, like lychee.) 10 Green Street, a wine bar within a furniture showroom in Vergennes, Vt., serves Domaine Tetta's 2022 Aki Queen, a cloudy, candied cantaloupe rosé grown in the limestone soil of Okayama, a prefecture that's about a three-hour drive west of Kyoto. Domaine Tetta will be visiting Brooklyn alongside other Japanese winemakers on May 14 for a panel discussion and tasting at Bin Bin Sake — a bottle shop with one of the largest Japanese wine selections in the States.
TRY THIS
Lip Stains Designed to Withstand Warm Weather
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| Clockwise from top left: Saint Laurent the Inks Blurring matte liquid lip stain in Nude Lavalliere, $48, yslbeautyus.com; Sacheu Beauty Lip Liner Stay-N in Leftonred, $12, sacheu.com; Fenty Beauty Poutsicle hydrating lip stain in Mai Type, $28, fentybeauty.com; Stila Calligraphy lip stain in Elizabeth, $25, stilacosmetics.com; Clarins Water Lip Stain in Rose Water, $32, clarinsusa.com; Wonderskin's Wonder Blading Peel & Reveal lip stain kit in Glamorous, $29, wonderskin.com. Courtesy of the brands |
The origins of lip color date back to ancient Mesopotamia, when Queen Puabi is said to have crushed red rocks and mixed them with white lead to tint her lips ruby as a sign of her status. Today's beauty brands are continuing that long tradition — and extending its staying power — with lip stains. As warm weather approaches and a standard tube of lipstick becomes more likely to melt and smudge, lip stains offer a longer-lasting alternative. Stila's Calligraphy lip stain has a dual-sided tip: One side is pointed to line the lips with precision, and the other is marker-like to apply a full sweep of color. Fenty Beauty's Poutsicle hydrating lip stain, which comes in colors ranging from a silky coral to vibrant fuchsia, goes on glossy then settles into a soft, natural feel. For a matte finish, Saint Laurent's the Inks Blurring matte liquid lip stain tints the lips in neutral shades and includes the skin-smoothing ingredient dimethicone. Clarins's Water Lip Stain also delivers buildable matte coverage: Apply one to two coats for a sheer rose water tint or layer it for a bolder blush stain. Some lip stains incorporate a peel to lock in color: Sacheu Beauty's peel-off Lip Liner Stay-N is formulated with hyaluronic acid and vitamin E for nourishment, while Wonderskin's Wonder Blading Peel & Reveal lip stain kit infuses the top layer of the lips with an ultraconcentrated pigment.
FROM T'S INSTAGRAM
In Milan, an Artist's Surreal 'Playhouse' Filled With Weeping Statues
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| Matteo Lonardi |
The Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli's Milan apartment and studio are his "playhouse," as he puts it — populated by his own cast of artistic muses and celebrity idols, as well as vintage Memphis Group furniture and roughly 200 vases by the designer and sculptor Giovanni Gariboldi.
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