Lifestyle
The Olsen Twins Go to the Beach
There was a Cybertruck parked on Main Street in East Hampton, outside the Altuzarra store. It was a Sunday afternoon in June, and traffic stalled for a moment. Even the rich are not immune to rubbernecking a brutalist behemoth.
The monster truck marked the end of an avenue of monograms — the island’s main luxury shopping drag, with $850 raffia handbags and $15,000 decorative surfboards. You know their names: Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Lululemon.
Two and a half miles down this same street, however, quaintness emerged. East Hampton turned into Amagansett, and that flashy boutique strip became a town square with white wood-paneled cottages. There was a shoe store called Brunch, a children’s clothing chain called Pink Chicken, a jewelry and gift shop called Love Adorned. A Cybertruck here would read as a declaration of war.
It was near these cottages that the Row, a brand founded in 2006 by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, quietly opened a store on Memorial Day weekend.
Quietly is how the Row tends to operate. Not only in its clothing — often described as “quiet luxury,” a term used to describe very expensive basics — but also in its communication.
The founders rarely give interviews, advertise or otherwise promote their line. While the Row did announce its Amagansett opening on Instagram, that account is more outwardly devoted to sharing modern art than to moving product. In February, the brand caused a stir at Paris Fashion Week by asking its runway show attendees to “refrain from capturing or sharing any content during your experience” — which is, for many, the primary reason for attending a fashion show. The audience was encouraged to write down thoughts instead.
Somehow this stance works. In an industry overrun by influencers, the Row’s silence is stark. Monasticism is chic. There is an impression of exclusivity and taste, buoyed by the extreme prices. One of the Row’s most popular items, the Margaux bag, ranges in price from $3,490 to $6,810, depending on size and material. It is timeless and ladylike, the kind of purse that might remind Kendall Jenner of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The Row’s stores also have a reputation for being intimidating at times, even among seasoned high-end shoppers.
One loyal Row customer told me she felt like “peasantry” in the Los Angeles store, which houses an untouchable swimming pool. At the store in Manhattan — a townhouse with a limestone spiral staircase — “there is one guy who works there that all my friends are afraid of, who radiates a very ‘you can’t sit here’ vibe,” said Jess Graves, the writer of a shopping newsletter called The Love List, “even to girls I know who walk in wearing the brand head to toe.”
The Amagansett shop is different. It operates out of a house with roots in the 19th century, formerly occupied by Tiina the Store, the Hamptons’ Gap for billionaires. (Tiina stocked the Row.)
It has a porch and a screen door and a woven beige carpet. The fitting rooms are harshly lit behind denim patchwork curtains. (By contrast, the spacious wood-floored dressing rooms at the Upper East Side store, where I recently tried on a $1,550 white cotton poplin tent dress that made me look, tragically, like a hospital patient, have soft lighting and softer robes.)
There is no statement artwork in Amagansett, unlike the London store, where an oval light installation by James Turrell greets visitors at the entrance. The vintage furniture is noteworthy — there’s a black chaise shaped like a person from the 1970s by Olivier Mourgue Bouloum and a white painted wooden lounge chair from the 1930s by Robert Mallet-Stevens. But the décor, with its Asian and African influences, is not the point.
The point of the store is the large selection of jewelry, home wares, snacks and skin care by more than 20 brands and artisans that are not the Row. Shampoo from Florence. Beaded necklaces from Greece. A mother-of-pearl caviar set. A bronze lighter carved to resemble tree bark. A packet of dried mango and a jar of raw almonds. Vintage glass candlesticks that can be purchased only in a set of a dozen for $16,000.
There are racks of ready-to-wear clothes made by the Row, of course, the selection tailored to this beach town: bike shorts ($1,050), denim shirts (also $1,050), ribbed tank tops ($670), sleeveless silk maxi-dresses ($1,890). Ms. Graves bought herself a raffia bag here earlier in the season. (“It felt very appropriate while I’m out here this summer,” she said.)
But the Row confirmed that the Amagansett store is its first attempt at a “local” store concept. What this presumably means is a space that is more relaxed, filled with objects that complement the brand’s vision of itself, staffed by sales associates who do not scare people away but warmly help shoppers track down sold-out jelly flats. Not that the Row’s fans are easily scared away: Even those who are intimidated don’t stay away for long, these masochists for cream-colored cashmere.
In retrospect, the popular jelly shoes, along with the beach towels that models wore as scarves on the Row’s runway in September, may have been a sign that the brand was loosening up — that brightness and humor were coming to this austere world. (Its most recent look book showed a silky camisole dress layered over pants, Y2K-style.)
A British client of the Row visiting the Amagansett store marveled at the vibe shift. Where was the icy indifference? “I don’t think it would fly with the audience here,” she said.
Lifestyle
Yes, romance & fantasy novels are political. : It’s Been a Minute
Lifestyle
Supermodel Carol Alt ‘Memba Her?!
American model Carol Alt was only 22 years old — and 5′ 11″ — when she shot to stardom after she was featured on the cover of the 1982 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.
Alt was featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Cosmopolitan, as well as, scoring sought after ad campaigns like Cover Girl, Hanes, Givenchy and Diet Pepsi.
Lifestyle
‘Fireworks’ wins Caldecott, Newbery is awarded to ‘All the Blues in the Sky’
Fireworks, by Matthew Burgess and illustrated by Cátia Chien has won the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and All the Blues in the Sky, written by Renée Watson has been awarded the Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature.
Clarion Books; Bloomsbury Children’s Books
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Clarion Books; Bloomsbury Children’s Books
The best books for children and young adults were awarded the country’s top honors by the American Library Association on Monday.
Illustrator Cátia Chien and author Matthew Burgess took home the Caldecott Medal for the book Fireworks. The Caldecott is given annually to the most distinguished American picture book for children. Fireworks follows two young siblings as they eagerly await the start of a July 4th fireworks show. Paired with Chien’s vibrant illustrations, Burgess’ poetic language enhances the sensory experience of fireworks.” When you write poems with kids, you see how immediately they get this,” Burgess told NPR in 2025 in a conversation about his book Words with Wings and Magic Things. “If you read a poem aloud to kids, they start to dance in their seats.”
The Newbery Medal, awarded for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature, went to Renée Watson for All the Blues in the Sky. This middle-grade novel, also told in verse, follows 13-year-old Sage, who struggles with grief following the death of her best friend. Watson is also the author of Piecing Me Together, which won the 2018 Coretta Scott King Award and was also a Newbery Medal honor book. “I hope that my books provide space for young people to explore, and say, “Yeah, I feel seen,” Watson told NPR in 2018. “That’s what I want young people to do — to talk to each other and to the adults in their lives.”
This year’s recipients of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards include Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes (author award) and The Library in the Woods, by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (illustrator award). Arriel Vinson’s Under the Neon Lights received the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Los Angeles based artist Kadir Nelson was honored with the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has appeared in more than 30 children’s books.
This year’s Newbery Honor Books were The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser; A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez by María Dolores Águila and The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri.
Caldecott Honors books were Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan, Our Lake by Angie Kang, Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale from a Little Cave by Drew Beckmeyer, and Sundust by Zeke Peña.
Edited by Jennifer Vanasco and Beth Novey.
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