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Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

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Here’s your fashion horoscope for what to wear this Taurus season

pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket.

(Photo Illustration by Beth Hoeckel)

We find ourselves in that time of year dedicated to the most sensuous and worldly of the earth signs — that is, Taurus season. We are so grateful for our baby bulls, because they remind us that food, drink, sex and money exist to be experienced in all their glory. And what better way to indulge in all these things than by traveling? Liberate your carefully selected and impeccably preserved vintage designer purse strings (we’re talking Taurus, after all) and go somewhere.

The ritual of travel is as visceral as it is spiritual. It’s the sweat collecting under your collar while you speed-walk to your gate (just to make sure it’s there, right?) as much as it is a 4 a.m. kiss on a starry beach accessible only by motorcycle. And the ritual before the ritual — packing — becomes a delicate, fraught dance of selection, a personal curatorial Everest that requires the traveler to dream, first and foremost, of how rainy the breeze might be on the way up the Eiffel Tower, how they might dress for both a rooftop dinner and a volcanic hike just outside San Salvador, if they’ll long for a stiletto boot at the Beijing opera or be too entranced by the show to care that they brought the flats instead. The careful balance of environmental factors in wardrobe selection, however, comes secondary to the crown jewel of functionality: the all-purpose travel jacket.

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Trip jacket selection is an art and a science, best done elegantly, with attention paid to form, function, aesthetics and viability — as a pillow when folded into fourths or eighths on a long-haul flight. It should be able to take you to a museum and a visit to the botanical gardens with street food in hand on the same day. For this, may I suggest pet-tree-kor’s Green Helicteres Isora Jacket. The Shanghai-based imprint’s name is a nod to “petrichor,” a functionally and mystically perfect word that exists solely to describe the divine perfume that greets your nostrils after a rain (a smell that, allegedly, humans can detect more astutely than a shark’s nose can detect blood).

This garment, rendered in a tweed blend with a gorgeously mossy sheen, is both architectural in its structure and fluid in its silhouette. It looks at once inviting and familiar — almost like your most gallant grandfather’s jacket from the days he used to go out dancing with your grandma — and polished and elegant. It wouldn’t look out of place in a cozy diner on a rainy night in San Francisco’s Chinatown or on a dewy morning at the Rhode Island beach house of your friend with generational wealth. The shade of the jacket is an oft-underrated neutral, pairing nicely with virtually any other piece in your suitcase, maybe even amethyst or royal blue too. The Helicteres isora, the jacket’s namesake, is a vibrant plant from northern Oceania whose leaves dry in tawny-green curlicues, like nature’s fractals.

And nature’s most esoteric fractal you shall be in your pet-tree-kor travel jacket, cruising through the liminal space of LAX on the way to your next adventure. Does your manic pixie dream girl complex fantasize about an ethereal-looking stranger mesmerized in reverie as they gaze upon the dapples of fluorescent Tom Bradley terminal lights reflecting off this sumptuously swamp-hued fabric? Mine too. For all the grounding and presence that resets our nervous systems, our earthly vessels would be naught without the dream of a shimmery green.

Goth Shakira is a digital conjurer based in Los Angeles.

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They were world-class tennis rivals. Now friends, they’ve teamed up against cancer

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They were world-class tennis rivals. Now friends, they’ve teamed up against cancer

Once rivals on the tennis court, Martina Navratilova, left, and Chris Evert have become close friends in retirement. They are pictured above at the French Open in 1986.

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Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were the most successful women’s tennis champions of their generation. Both were 18-time Grand Slam tournament winners — and each other’s greatest rivals.

Evert, a Florida native, became a tennis star in her teens. Navratilova was born in communist Czechoslovakia, and emerged as a player after Evert was established. They first faced off during a match in Akron, Ohio, in 1973, when Evert was 18, and Navratilova was 16. Evert won, but Navratilova left an impression.

“I remember thinking to myself, holy cow, when this young girl gets into better shape, she is going to be a force to be reckoned with,” Evert says. “She had so much talent. Her hands were quick, she had a big first serve, she had a big forehand, and she just was so powerful.”

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Two years later, on the day she lost a semifinals match to Evert at the U.S. Open, Navratilova defected to the U.S. In the years that followed, her tennis game improved. Though she and Evert had initially been friendly, the friendship cooled as their rivalry heated up.

“Playing Chris was difficult because how can you not like Chris? What’s not to admire?” Navratilova says. “She was like the epitome of cool.”

The new Netflix documentary Chris & Martina: The Final Set tells the story of how Evert and Navratilova re-established their friendship and how they both faced cancer in retirement. Evert was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021; Navratilova was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer in 2022.

“I can’t get away from her,” Evert jokes. “We had a 15-year career, and then we got cancer at the same time. It really is freaky, but I always say: If I want someone to be in the trenches with me, it’s Martina because she has been so supportive and so understanding.”

Navratilova agrees: “We have such a level of trust that we know whatever we say to each other, it stays there. We give each other the best advice we know how to. And there is no ulterior motive, no playing games.”

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At the time that this interview was taped, Evert and Navratilova were both in remission from cancer. But late last week, Evert disclosed she’d recently been diagnosed with a recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova

“We know whatever we say to each other, it stays there,” Martina Navratilova says of her friendship with Chris Evert.

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Interview highlights

On supporting each other through cancer

Evert: There are a lot of phone calls between us. … I don’t cook, but Martina would bake bread for me, and her wife Julia would cook, make some chicken soup. … I got a lot of food from Martina. She got a necklace from me.

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Inside Hearts On Fire’s Plan For a New Era of Diamond Jewellery

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Inside Hearts On Fire’s Plan For a New Era of Diamond Jewellery
As Hearts On Fire celebrates its 30th anniversary, global president Rita Maltez unpacks the brand’s multi-year transformation from a diamond wholesaler into a fine jewellery specialist with a clear strategy to tap into the Asian market.
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3 World Cup rivals find ‘Common Ground’ in a cross-border beer

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3 World Cup rivals find ‘Common Ground’ in a cross-border beer

Headlands Brewing launched its World Cup-themed beer Common Ground ahead of the first World Cup game in June.

Justin Gellerson for NPR


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Justin Gellerson for NPR

The British betting company William Hill predicts that soccer fans will throw back more than 5 million pints of beer in stadiums and fan zones during this year’s World Cup. And that number doesn’t even account for the millions of pints being poured in bars as fans tune in to the global soccer event.

But while international soccer crowds are focusing on goals and penalties, a trio of craft breweries from the tournament’s three host nations are using the tournament to brew something increasingly rare: cross-border solidarity.

A shared recipe with local spin

The collaboration began months ago over a flurry of video chats and emails. The beermakers at Rey Árbol Brewing Co. in Mexico, Headlands Brewing in the United States, and Cabin Brewing Co. in Canada set out to design a single, unified recipe representing the brewing traditions of all three nations.

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“It’s a Mexican lager,” said Alejandro Gomez, founder of Rey Árbol.

“That’s like a West Coast IPA,” said Ryan Frank, chief operating officer and brewmaster for Headlands.

“And up in Canada, most of our beers are hop driven,” said Haydon Dewes, co-founder of Cabin. “So we thought, let’s go for a dry-hopped Mexican lager.”

While all three breweries share the exact same recipe, each is giving the final product a distinct local spin, including unique, regionally designed labels. A four-pack of the U.S version costs $15.99. Frank said Headlands has produced about 130 cases of the limited-run brew.

Headlands Brewing COO and Brewmaster Ryan Frank drinks a Common Ground beer in Berkeley, Calif. on June 11.

Headlands Brewing COO and brewmaster Ryan Frank drinks a Common Ground beer in Berkeley, Calif., on June 11.

Justin Gellerson for NPR

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For the brewers, however, the project is less about marketing and more about connection: They named the multinational beer “Common Ground.”

“When I go to California or Canada, they will treat me like family,” Gomez said.

“It makes the world feel so much smaller,” said Dewes.

“It’s about building bridges and knowing what’s important in life,” said Frank. “And for us, that’s soccer and beer.”

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