Lifestyle
The Head-Turning Hats of the 2026 Kentucky Derby
Hats? The Kentucky Derby had a few.
In the hours leading up to America’s most famous horse race, spectators in Louisville engaged in the event’s other time-honored tradition (apart from day drinking): parading around Churchill Downs in attention-grabbing outfits.
But it wasn’t just hats — fascinators, fedoras, bowlers, boaters, flowers and feathers (so many feathers) — that caught the eye. There were equine-inflected accessories too: purses, patterns, jackets, brooches and at least one vest.
A wild ride, as always.
It wasn’t love at first anything for Anna Sonenshein when she met Niki Vahle while working at Son of a Gun in 2018. Rather, it started with a feud.
Sonenshein worked as a host, Vahle as a sous chef. She mostly ignored him.
“I was fed up with the kitchen thinking they were better than front-of-house,” she told me, on speakerphone, from the home they now share. “It’s such a common thing in restaurants, and I hate it.”
But, like all good star-crossed stories, the pair fell in love.
“And I beat all that out of Niki,” Sonenshein said.
“She did,” he called from a distance, as he wrangled one of their two dogs, Chicken. “We don’t tolerate any of that now in our restaurant.”
The restaurant in question is the Michelin Guide-inducted Little Fish, which the couple started as a pop-up out of their kitchen window in 2020 and has expanded to two locations: Echo Park and Melrose Hill.
With Little Fish, Sonenshein and Vahle unapologetically mix business, pleasure, family, friendship and food.
Friend of the couple, Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets, made multiple cakes, including a “chef-y” combination of rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and mascarpone custard infused with orange peel, and her classic olive oil chiffon with fresh passionfruit and bay leaf-infused custard. The dog figurine, right, is modeled after the couple’s pets, Chicken and Hank.
(Madelyn Deutch)
It makes sense, then, that their biggest partnership to date — an April 18 wedding — would be a food-first, ceremony-second affair. About 120 guests sardined into the modest backyard of Sonenshein’s Santa Monica childhood home, with a veritable who’s who of the L.A. restaurant scene doing double duty as attendees and vendors.
As the teams behind Mariscos Jaliscos and El Ruso set up trucks out front, Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin of Quarter Sheets conversation-hopped, and Kae Whalen, the L.A. darling wine Substacker (who also runs Little Fish’s wine program), snaked through the crowd with her pint-sized pomeranian under one arm.
In this dark era for L.A. restaurants, where economic fears, fires and ICE have led to countless closures, Sonenshein and Vahle have made a point of building community among restaurant workers and collaborators.
Niki Vahle and Anna Sonenshein, owners of Little Fish, embrace during their backyard wedding.
(Madelyn Deutch)
“When we were starting our businesses, none of us had any knowledge of the back-end stuff,” Ziskin told me. “We figured it out together.”
She and Lindell turned their Quarter Sheets pop-up into a brick-and-mortar in 2022. Little Fish followed the same trajectory a few months later.
“Niki and Anna will answer any question I have,” Ziskin said. “We talk business, money. It’s so rare to have that: friends in the same position who deeply understand what you do.”
Vahle and Sonenshein refer to their friends who also started food businesses during the pandemic as “our class.”
“We’re peers, not competition,” Vahle said. “We share notes; we share everything.”
In January 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through the city, these friends were the ones Sonenshein and Vahle called first as they created a network of almost 200 restaurants to source, cook and deliver meals to displaced families and first responders.
Wedding guests enjoy the grazing table and cake. (Madelyn Deutch)
Catalina Flores, of Panhead LA, curated the abundant grazing table.
(Madelyn Deutch)
As the party waited for Sonenshein and Vahle to appear, guests sipped his and hers wine selections by Whalen: a Domaine Derain “Landre” 2023 for Vahle (“A Niki wine reminds us that beauty, precision and transcendence are possible”), and a Le Mazel “Couvée Paulou” 2024 for Sonenshein (“An Anna wine is often fruity, vibrant, easy to adore and adores easily”).
Meanwhile, like any good father of the bride, Raphe Sonenshein held court at the grazing table, encouraging anyone in earshot to pile plates with charcuterie, taralli and gildas curated by Catalina Flores (Panhead LA) and Ryan Vesper (Gourmet Imports).
The mother of the bride, Phyllis Amaral, shepherded family members to a handful of front-row folding chairs. Everyone else would spend the night standing, balancing plates and, inevitably, spilling some wine.
“Very creative wedding,” said one friend of the family.
The low-key backyard wedding took place at the bride’s childhood home. Her sister, Julia Sonenshein, left, and mother, Phyllis Amaral, wore red.
(Madelyn Deutch)
The couple made their entrance — arm in arm — with Sonenshein in a tea-length, corseted gown and Vahle in a bespoke suit the shade of a Liguria olive.
During their vows, Sonenshein joked that marriage isn’t so scary when you already share six LLCs.
Then, they sealed their newest contract with a kiss.
The applause had barely subsided before a collective hunger took over.
Mariscos Jalisco served shrimp tacos, a nod to the couple’s own restaurant, Little Fish.
(Madelyn Deutch)
Mariscos Jalisco sent out trays of shrimp tacos — a nod to the couple’s seafood origin story — but guests still beelined for the truck, forming a line down the block.
Next door at El Ruso, owner Walter Soto chopped carne asada while his wife, Julia, took orders: two chile colorado; three birria; no onions, please. Their preteen daughter, Suri, played in the front seat of the truck.
“For us, it was something very special to know that we were going to serve food on such a special day to someone so special to us,” Soto said. “I remember seeing Niki several times eating at our food truck during the difficult times of ICE raids. [Then] we had to close our truck for three or four months. Anna and Niki came to my house with a check to help us endure that really bad time. That’s how we met them.”
El Ruso tacos rounded out the menu. Owner Walter Soto said he was honored to serve food at the wedding after the bride and groom supported his business during the ICE raids that dampened his sales.
(Madelyn Deutch)
As for the cake, try two. Both by Ziskin.
“I would have been offended if they hadn’t asked me,” she said.
The first was a Quarter Sheets menu classic: olive oil chiffon with fresh passionfruit and bay leaf-infused custard. Ziskin also created what she calls a “chef-y” combination: rhubarb with pistachio chiffon and mascarpone custard infused with orange peel.
Bride Anna Sonenshein mingles with guests near the El Ruso taco truck.
(Madelyn Deutch)
Before moving the afterparty to Santa Monica’s Not No Bar (co-owner Conner Mitchell is also one of Little Fish’s fishermen), the music cut briefly for speeches.
Julia Sonenshein, the bride’s sister and a sometimes food writer, admitted that she couldn’t separate their love story from a shared love of cooking.
“For these two, the idea that anyone would go without food, whether it’s friends who’ve stopped by for a coffee table meal or families who lost their kitchens in wildfires, is an unconscionable possibility they won’t accept,” she said. “And so they find a way to make sure all of us are fed.”
And what about Sonenshein and Vahle — did someone remind them to eat?
Vahle didn’t hesitate. “How could we forget?”
When Molly Rogers got the call to work on the costumes for “The Devil Wears Prada,” she could sense right away that she was involved in something special.
“I knew people were going to go nuts for it — I’d never turned the pages of a script like that before,” said Rogers, who worked on the 2006 film as the associate costume designer under the tutelage of her longtime mentor, the “Sex and the City” costume designer Patricia Field.
But even Rogers couldn’t have predicted just how big the film would become. In the 20 years since its release, the comedy, about the imperious fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) and her ill-suited assistant, Andy (Anne Hathaway), has become part of the cultural lexicon, thanks to memes and memorable lines like Miranda’s contemptuous catchphrase, “That’s all.”
So when Field, who was busy styling the rom-com series “Emily in Paris,” asked Rogers to handle the costumes for the film sequel — this time as lead designer — she jumped at the opportunity.
Some designers might have been intimidated. Hathaway has called designing the costumes for a “Devil Wears Prada” film a “heroic act,” explaining in a recent Times article: “It’s not just one character arc, it’s so, so many. Fashion is a language in the film; it’s another character.”
For Rogers, though, the experience was more nostalgic than nerve-racking.
“It was like coming back to summer camp,” she said of the production.
On a recent morning at the Four Seasons Hotel in Lower Manhattan, Rogers went over sketches for six pivotal costumes from “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — and one that didn’t make the cut.
Vision in Red
At Rogers’s first meeting with Streep, Miranda’s gala look came up, and both had the same immediate thought: “It has to be red.”
“And she’s the one who said, ‘Let’s do a sleeve on one arm and bare on the other,’” Rogers said of Miranda’s asymmetrical gown, which is a custom-made Balenciaga in red silk super taffeta. “It’s so fabulous.”
The dress, which features a tilted collar and a thin matching belt, was built in Paris, with a team from Balenciaga flying to New York City twice to fit Streep for it.
At one point the actress suggested trying a hat to top off the look — possibly a nod to horns — but Rogers said she knew it was “gilding the lily.”
“It was her white hair alone that the red gown should frame,” she said.
Party in the Back
As Runway magazine’s new features editor, Andy is back in the same orbit as her frenemy and fellow ex-assistant, Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), who’s now an executive at Christian Dior. To solve a crisis at the magazine, Andy agrees to an expansive feature on the company, whose advertising dollars Runway needs.
For Andy’s interview look, Rogers opted for a black button-down Jean Paul Gaultier pinstriped vest, paired with matching slacks, a pearl necklace — and nothing underneath.
“I was constantly trying to balance found things with things that she could have afforded and that she would wear as a professional reporter,” Rogers said.
There’s also a surprise when Andy turns around: The vest has an all-white silk back.
“I loved that,” Rogers said.
Caped Betrayer
For a scene involving a backstabbing Emily, Rogers went with a sequined Dior houndstooth power suit — with a Zimmermann leather capelet.
“I tried to find Dior pieces that have a little edge to them,” Rogers said of the black-and-white wool number from the spring 2026 collection.
Emily’s style in the sequel, she said, was an extension of the first: The character still has a mix-and-match aesthetic, pairing, for instance, a white Dior button-down with a Wiederhoeft corset and Gaultier black-and-white pinstriped pants.
“We didn’t have enough outfits for her,” Rogers said. “I think she changed 16 times.”
Editor Chic
One lesson Rogers has learned in more than 40 years working with Field, she said, is that “you cannot force an actor to wear anything.”
“You can have your heart set on a gown that you want in a scene and think it’s the perfect color, but you’re not the one in it,” she said. “Pat’s fittings, and mine as well, are very collaborative: Do you like what I brought into the room? How does it feel on you?”
So when she came across this homey, tasseled Dries Van Noten jacket, she crossed her fingers that Streep would dig it.
Streep did.
“She thought it was a great piece for the right scene,” Rogers said. “I thought it had enough oomph to it to still be in the office, and it looked like ‘editor.’ It made me think of Diana Vreeland,” once the editor in chief of Vogue.
Andy’s gala look inverts the movie’s through-line of sleeveless pieces layered atop button-ups and blouses: Here the base layer, a blouse from the Armani Privé fall 2024 couture collection, is sheer, tucked beneath a black silk velvet jumpsuit with pinstripe Swarovski crystal suspenders.
“It came down the runway without a blouse, and I was like, David’s never going to let me do that,” Rogers said, referring to the director, David Frankel. “Anne Hathaway at the dinner table with no blouse on — how cool would that be? But they made us a beautiful sheer blouse.”
Another hat that appeared in Rogers’s initial sketch bit the dust: a velvet Armani beret with jet-black glass stones.
“I am a hat fighter,” Rogers said. “I’ve gone through big hat fights, with Sarah Jessica Parker and I fighting for hats on TV shows. They always don’t want to light them, or they cast shadows, blah blah blah, and it always unfinishes an outfit.”
Though the beret for Andy was fabricated, she said, “sure enough, they killed it.”
Human Disco Ball
When Miranda saunters through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan’s stunning historic shopping arcade, the lights shimmer off the colored crystals and black sequins on her Armani overcoat, turning her into a human disco ball.
“When I read the script, I was like, ‘That needs to dazzle,’” Rogers said of the statement piece from Giorgio Armani’s Privé spring 2025 couture collection, which she layered over a tie-neck Lurex Oud blouse and black trousers.
It was a choice she initially had some trepidation about.
“I was afraid of the pussy-bow blouse on Miranda Priestly,” she said. “Because that feels soft to me. But it was such a cacophony of colors and textures, and I felt like it was strong enough.”
Miranda’s black cat-eye Prada glasses are striking, of course, but Rogers said the boldest accessory was her side-swept white hair.
“I think that there was great resistance to that,” Rogers said. “People didn’t understand that.”
The look was drawn from that of the fashion editor Polly Mellen and the model Carmen Dell’Orefice.
“Meryl and Pat insisted on it,” Rogers said.
Power Gloves
Emily’s gala dress — a strapless Dior gown with a nude tulle and black lace corset top, matching opera gloves and a slinky black satin skirt with a double side bow — was Rogers’s favorite look from the film. Alas, it ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Still, she said, she loved getting the chance to bring an edge to a very un-Emily-like shape.
“When I think of Dior and bows, I think of Charlotte,” Rogers said of the preppy “Sex and the City” character. “So to take a Dior bow and make it look — there’s a bit of a goth idea there. And I thought that was really appropriate for her character.”
Lifestyle
The exclusive fashion drops, art openings and collaborations injecting your May with motion
“Spectacular Brooding” by Harmony Holiday at REDCAT
Harmony Holiday, Excerpt from “Cry Variations,” 2026. Sprung dance-floor, Ballet barre, 2-camera documentation with camcorder and self-wear camera, Audio and Projection playback system, bench, mirrors with ephemera and written material, lightbox.
(From the artist and REDCAT)
Contemporary artist, poet and Image contributing writer Harmony Holiday explores Black grief through an idea she calls the “Black Backstage” in her new show. With a gallery space split between a dance studio and a film editing room, the exhibition weaves elements of choreography, documentary, oral history and ritual. Open through July 5. 631 W. 2nd Street, Los Angeles. redcat.org
F1 X Louis Vuitton
Kicking off the start of the Formula 1 season in 2026, Louis Vuitton is displaying trophy trunks at every Grand Prix ceremony this year. For the winners, the champion trophy will emerge out of the monogrammed case. louisvuitton.com
“Several Eternities in a Day” and “Space Is the Place” at Hammer Museum
Guadalupe Maravilla, “Disease Thrower #16,” 2021. Gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist’s original migration route.
(From the artist and P·P·O·W, New York. Photo JSP Art Photography.)
Two shows open at the Hammer this spring, exploring cultural heritage across the Americas and the idea of “‘space’ as a conceptual framework,” respectively, through living material sculptures, paintings, installations and mixed media works. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. hammer.ucla.edu
Gucci’s the Art of Silk Rodeo Drive exclusives
Gucci’s new collection of silk scarves features two designs created exclusively for the Rodeo Drive store and LACMA, in time for the opening of the David Geffen Galleries. Available now. 347 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. gucci.com
Clare Vivier X Wallshoppe
La-Garland, Blue-Olive
(Thierry Vivier)
Walls need refreshing too. Give your home a French lakeside feel with whimsical patterns from the Clare Vivier X Wallshoppe collab. wallshoppe.com
“Tokala” by Marcus Correa, Carlos Jaramillo and Thomas Lopez
(Carlos Jaramillo, Marcus Correa, Thomas Lopez)
“Tokala” is a new photography book illustrating climate and social justice through the lens of 13 activists from 11 regions, cultures and spaces across the country. Photographed by Carlos Jaramillo and styled by Marcus Correa, the book is available at Now Instant. 939 Chung King Road, Los Angeles.
Street Grandma opens in the Arts District
Playful, feminine, masculine, oversize shirts and pants. Street Grandma’s new showroom features its unique silhouettes in a space that feels — as the namesake suggests — like nana’s house. Open Saturdays by appointment only. 941 E. 2nd St., Los Angeles. streetgrandma.com
“Ninety-six and Pissed” by Magdalena Suarez Frimkess at Marciano Art Foundation
Magdalena Suarez Frimkess “Untitled,” 2025 Pencil and colored pencil on paper Unframed: 24 x 18 in.
(From the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York. Photo by Marten
Elder)
Part of an array of new openings for the spring, artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ show “Ninety-six and Pissed” features more than 30 new cartoon drawings, expanding her universe of irreverent “caracteres.” Opening May 6. 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. marcianoartfoundation.org
“Nascence” by Maddy Inez at Megan Mulrooney
Maddy Inez “Blood Bloom,” 2026 Glazed Ceramic
(From the artist and Megan Mulrooney, Los Angeles. Photo by Paul Salveson)
L.A.’s roots in colonial agriculture run long and deep. Sculptor Maddy Inez, granddaughter of Betye Saar, crafts a series of ceramic vessels — each an ode to different plants brought over during the transatlantic slave trade — reframing gardening as an act of resistance. Opening May 16. 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. meganmulrooney.com
Skip the line. Community Goods is coming straight home to you this month in a collaboration with Rocky’s Matcha. The unique blend from Yame, Japan, has a nutty taste, umami finish and comes in a bright orange tin. Available online at rockysmatcha.com.
Sprüth Magers 10-year anniversary
Kara Walker “Invasive Species (to be placed in your native garden)”, 2017 Bronze
(From Sprüth Magers and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins)
The influential gallery is celebrating its 10th year in L.A. with an exhibition titled “10 Years LA!,” featuring works by Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger. Opening May 15. 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. spruethmagers.com
Hunza G X Burberry
Who said Burberry is just for winter city streets? The iconic beige check gets a casual revival in a collaboration with swim brand Hunza G. See it on totes, bucket hats, board shorts and slippers this summer. Available now at hunzag.com.
Supervsn X Lauren Halsey
(Supervsn. Photo by Russell Hamilton)
(Supervsn. Photo by Russell Hamilton)
For the grand opening of “sister dreamer” sculpture park in South-Central, Lauren Halsey collaborated with streetwear brand Supervsn on a new collection, Camo We Live In. As the name suggests, the collection reworks camouflage as a collage-like reflection of culture in public spaces. Available at supervsn.com.
Dover Street Market X Comme des Garçons sale
Dover Street Market is hosting an L.A. sale, taking over Mica Studios in downtown. Called Market Market: Message Market, the sale will feature past season Comme des Garçons collections and Dover Street Market favorites with discounts of up to 70% off. Happening May 8 through 13. 356 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles. losangeles.doverstreetmarket.com
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