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The Beauty Expert Jamie Rosen’s Regimen
I’m always rotating my products depending on what my skin needs. In the morning, I use the Nuori Vital Foaming Cleanser, and at the end of the day I wash more thoroughly with something like Haoma’s Nourishing Cleansing Balm. I alternate between the Royal Fern Phytoactive Skin Perfecting Essence or Biologique Recherche Lotion P50. I’ve been using that since I became a beauty editor — P50 was like my indoctrination. Then I use Our Self’s Daily Renewal Cream, which is full of peptides, or a moisturizer from the Georgian brand Senself called Rich But Light — it has a perfect texture — and the Epara Eye Serum. I use my Ziip tool to do multiple treatments once or twice a week, and before events. My face feels off balance when I don’t. I always use SPF; I just finished Zitsticka’s Megashade SPF, or if I’m on the go I will spray on Habit’s No. 41 Mister. In the shower, I like Bastide Rose Olivier Natural Body Wash, and Soft Services’ Buffing Bar. It’s very satisfying. I just cut my hair short, so I’ve been trying styling products in a way I never had before. I like Philip B’s Weightless Volumizing Shampoo and Conditioner and Charlotte Mensah’s Manketti Oil Pomade. I use Kevyn Aucoin Volume Mascara and RMS Lip2Cheek in Illusive. It is such a cool shade — it makes you look flushed in the winter and more tan in the summer. To finish, I love Hermès lipstick in Rouge Orange. There are a few scents I go back to: Aedes de Venustas’s salty, incense-like Copal Azur, and Maison d’Etto’s Macanudo, which is more grassy, and Costa Brazil just came out with a fragrance, Aroma, that is really nice.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
In the two decades since Esha Soni Seetha began creating accessories for American houses, including Proenza Schouler, for which she still works, the Mumbai, India-born designer has adopted a slow-fashion mind-set. For one thing, she believes that luxury goods should be rare investment pieces that last forever (and are never marked down). Now, she’s bringing that ethos to her new namesake line, Esha Soni. Seetha spent three years working with artisans in Italy and New York to develop her debut collection, which was inspired by Jules Olitski’s color field paintings and the biomorphic shapes sculpted by Jean Arp, and includes three handbags made with French calf, suede and spelt pony, as well as a sterling silver and gold vermeil necklace that looks like a strand of river stones and was a collaboration with the jeweler Christine McPartland. The Arc tote slants to one side in a way that makes you look twice, while the Slope seems to call for a cocktail party. “I was calling it the bangle bag,” Seetha says of its removable bracelet handle. Artful bags will always be at the core of her brand, but she envisions the Esha Soni customer as someone who appreciates all kinds of beauty, and she’s currently finalizing a selection of vessels created with the ceramist Devin Fina that will be made to order. “In a perfect world,” says Seetha, “every collection is born and exists and never dies.” Handbags from $1,950, eshasoni.com.
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Kaleidoscopic Cabinets
The resurgence of Scandinavian interior design trends in recent years has meant a ubiquity of warm woods, clean lines and spare, inoffensive furniture. The polychromatic cabinets made by the Amsterdam-based artists Gijs Frieling and Job Wouters, six of which comprise the duo’s first U.S. solo show at the Future Perfect’s West Village outpost, blow this stereotype wide open. Working under the Anglicized moniker FreelingWaters, the pair sourced 18th- and 19th-century pinewood cabinets from antiques dealers and adorned them with striking geometric forms in a vibrant, hallucinatory palette. Frieling, a painter of traditional Dutch folk murals, and Wouters, who is known for his psychedelic calligraphy, have collaborated on art exhibitions, books and men’s wear since 2008 but turned their attention to furniture in 2020. “There’s a tradition of what I call ‘poor man’s rococo’ in Northern European decorated furniture,” says Frieling, referring to how their cabinets expand on a rural Dutch tradition of embellished objects. Each of the works is painted all over, including inside — the interiors present more bursts of pattern, color and, in one instance, ghostly silhouettes of vases and ornate glassware. With their gradients, swerves and moiré, the antiques are recast as curios of contemporary times. Says Wouters, “We’re adding a very thin layer that gives new life to these old pieces that might otherwise be discarded.” “FreelingWaters: Collection III” is on view through June 17, thefutureperfect.com.
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Cleaning Products From Diptyque
What does clean smell like? According to Diptyque, the French perfumery known for its candles and fragrances, it might just be a stroll through a Mediterranean garden. At least that’s the evocation — via notes of lavender, cedar and fig tree — bestowed by the multisurface cleanser in their new six-piece line of cleaning products, called La Droguerie, or “the drugstore.” Created with the perfumer Olivier Pescheux, the nose behind scents for Dior and Sisley, as well as several for Diptyque, the collection also includes dish soap, leather and wood conditioner and ceramic ovals to nestle into sweater or lingerie drawers — as well as refills, to cut down on waste. The soap is citrusy, with notes of mandarin and orange blossom, and the lotion polishes those household materials while leaving a woodsy patchouli fragrance behind. As this is Diptyque, there is, of course, a candle in the mix; the company’s partner the fragrance manufacturer Givaudan has developed a technology that allows candles not just to mask stale or unpleasant odors but to absorb and replace them: in this case, it’s with the scent of mint, basil and crushed tomato leaves. From $15, diptyqueparis.com.
The Londoners Tobias Vernon, the curator of the art and design studio and gallery 8 Holland Street, and Christine Van Der Hurd, the founder of the textile atelier Vanderhurd, are also close collaborators who, for over a decade now, have designed interiors for various clients and traveled the world with a shared eye for antiques. But only relatively recently did they embark on their first joint product release, which came about after they spent a free afternoon on a 2020 work trip in New York seeing a Donald Judd retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Checkerboard is a collection of six dhurrie rugs that, with their repeating patterns of squares, were inspired by Judd’s manner of transforming space with cubic forms. As Van Der Hurd says, “Squares are very classical and architectural” and call to mind far-reaching eras and styles, from ancient Rome to midcentury modernism. Made by artisans in Northern India using hand-spun natural hemp in warm contrasting color combinations (rust and sky, noir and ocher), the rugs are fittingly named after different chess pieces, and feature differently sized squares — “the larger the squares, the larger the personality,” Van Der Hurd says. While the duo are fond of bespoke design, Vernon notes that this collection is intended to be versatile and not so precious. “It’s both urban and rustic, historic and contemporary,” he says. “And, like chess, it’s a bit serious but meant to be playful, as well.” From $1,450, 8hollandstreet.com.
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A Utilitarian Clothing Collaboration
Faye Toogood has worn the same pair of brown men’s wear Carhartt dungarees through studio work in her 20s, two pregnancies in her 30s and gardening in her 40s. “Despite spanning nearly 20 years of my life and washing them hundreds of times, they look and feel exactly how they did on the first day I bought them,” says the British artist and designer, whose namesake London-based studio with her sister Erica debuts a collaboration with Carhartt’s streetwear brand, Work in Progress, this month. For the six-piece, unisex collection, the sisters took Carhartt WIP’s archetypal pieces and re-cut them to add the sculptural volume that’s a hallmark of Toogood clothing. Offered in three neutral shades, the items maintain an appreciation for the longevity and utility that the brands share. A standout is the button-up coat with a corduroy collar, the result of splicing together Toogood’s Photographer jacket with Carhartt WIP’s Michigan chore coat. Its deep pockets and oversize shape allow one to move with ease, whether schlepping around the city or on cool summer evenings. Available from June 7 at t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com and carhartt-wip.com, and at select Carhartt WIP stores including 286 Lafayette Street.
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