Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we're eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com. |
A Men's Wear Shop That Also Sells Pastries |
 | | Café Leon Dore, where dark walnut paneling, brass accents and a marble floor and counter provide an elegant backdrop for Greek coffee and pastries.Harrison Boyce |
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Last summer, the Colombia-born, New York-based interior designer Sarita Posada, whose previous projects include the Standard Hotel in the East Village (with Shawn Hausman Design) and Palm Heights on Grand Cayman, was asked not just to take on the London flagship of Aimé Leon Dore, Teddy Santis's heritage streetwear brand, but also the attached cafe and espresso bar. With the latter, she sought to create a warm, elevated space for people to come together — "community is such a big part of the brand," says Posada. Drawing inspiration from storied European establishments like Café Einstein in Berlin and Café Central in Vienna, she opted for a bruised Calacatta Viola marble counter, dark walnut paneling on the walls and a hand-cut gray-green and creamy white marble mosaic floor. Posada also included personal touches, such as black-and-white photos of Santis's Greek family: his parents on a date (chaperoned by his grandmother), his grandmother on a road trip with her cousins in the '50s. The hope is that people will pop in for a freddo espresso or an herbaceous Greek mountain tea after shopping or on their way to work, and maybe see the green leather banquet — or the melomakarona (honey walnut) or kourabiedes (almond) cookies — and be convinced to linger. aimeleondore.com. |
Decorative Pieces by a Master Potter |
 | | Akio Nukaga's Kokeshi Vessels are inspired by the traditional Japanese wooden dolls of the same name.Tsutusmi Yano |
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After being in business nearly 75 years, the Sausalito, Calif.-based Heath Ceramics is still beloved for its durable but beautiful plates, cups and bowls, but many of the company's most dedicated fans also fervently collect its design collaborations with various global makers, some of which sell out online in minutes. Up next is Heath's partnership with Akio Nukaga, a veteran potter from Kasama, Japan, who works with his wife, daughter or the occasional assistant to make pieces with pleated surfaces that are inspired by traditional shinogi carving techniques. The ceramist has been collaborating with the team at Heath since 2009; for this year's presentation, "A Single Line Will Lead Me," opening this week, he challenged himself to move away from functional pieces like, say, mugs and saucers and instead create vessels, sculptures, vases, totems and other artistic one-offs that are primarily meant to be displayed. (In variegated stripes of gray, umber and marigold, the items would look especially nice nestled between books on a shelf.) "Akio's 59, and his body is telling him to slow down," says Tung Chiang, Heath's studio director. "It's not about making more work but about making more significant work. He wants to leave his footprint as a potter in the world." heathceramics.com. |
Work Wear Essentials From Alex Mill and Brut |
 | | From left: Brut x Alex Mill Vintage Tent Rework Jacket (pictured in yellow and blue), $285; Vintage Patch Perfect Weekend Tote in army olive, $225; and Vintage Patch Bucket Hat in blue, $125, alexmill.com.Diana Bartlett |
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Alex Mill, the New York-based men's and women's fashion brand, will launch a capsule collection this month with the cultish Parisian vintage archive and ready-to-wear label Brut. Somsack Sikhounmuong, a co-founder and the design director of Alex Mill, first came across Brut, which specializes in military and work wear, in 2018. "I was drawn to the clarity of the point of view and the quality of the clothes," he says. "I'm a huge fan of a good edit, and theirs was one of the strongest out there." He and Paul Ben Chemhoun, Brut's founder, worked together to create three limited-edition pieces: an Alex Mill cotton tote bag that comes in a variety of neutral tones, and a Brut work jacket and bucket hat that both come in bright blue or yellow, all decorated with hand-sourced vintage and custom patches. Additionally, 200 pieces from Brut Collection, which uses new fabrics to re-create vintage cuts, and the label's Rework program, which recycles vintage materials into new styles, will be available to purchase in New York for the first time, at Alex Mill's store in Soho, starting July 20. The Alex Mill x Brut Archives Collection will also be sold at the brand's uptown store, and online. From $125, alexmill.com. |
A Traveling Supper Club Turned Restaurant and Dance Hall |
 | | Left: the interior of Tatale, at the Africa Centre in London. Right: omo tuo with nkatenkwan (groundnut soup flavored with indigenous African aromatics), sesame and parsley.Left: Felix Speller. Right: Cyrille Sokpor |
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By Samuel Anderson T Contributor |
Tatale, a former supper club launched by Akwasi Brenya Mensa in 2021 with the aim of showcasing West African cuisine, and that grew to serve 70 per event at various secret locations, has now taken up permanent residence at the Africa Centre in London. With a 33-seat restaurant appointed with terra-cotta and indigo walls and handmade kente cloth pillows and lamps, as well as an upper-level bar and event space with standing room for 100, the new setup allows for plenty of room for its founder's two creative outlets: dinner and D. J.ing. A music impresario turned restaurateur, Mensa strives to replicate the communal feel of chop bars, or roadside canteens, which he'd visit on trips to his parents' native Ghana growing up. "It's dining in a pure form," he says of the chop bar experience. "You'll find anyone there: businessmen, judges, schoolchildren. Everyone's there for the food." But while meat is often the main event in Ghanaian cooking, Mensa swaps it out when possible, as in Tatale's jollof rice with mushrooms or omo tuo, a sticky-rice cake dunked in spicy groundnut soup. Meat or no meat, however, Mensa sees cooking as a recipe for authenticity: "Food allowed me to express myself through my heritage," he says. "That of a Ghanaian, a West African and an African." tataleandco.com. |
Rustic Furniture in the Heart of Hollywood |
 | | Pieces from Green River Project's Twig Collection.Noua Unu Studio |
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Seventh House, a recently opened design gallery in Hollywood, is housed in a building Frank Gehry conceived as a live-work space for the well-known 20th-century graphic designer Louis "Lou" Danziger, and that was the first of the architect's works to receive widespread attention. Even today, nearly 60 years after its completion, the space feels surprisingly contemporary. Included behind its unassuming gray stucco facade are a courtyard and four graciously proportioned rooms with exposed two-by-four ceilings that are elegantly furnished by the gallerist Trevor Cheney, who pays homage to Gehry's original vision by creating residential-feeling vignettes. Currently on view is Green River Project's 10-piece Twig collection of rustic chairs, tables and lamps, which were fashioned — from branches of black birch found on Green River's co-founder Ben Bloomstein's property in upstate New York — using wet-in-dry joinery, a technique applied to combine woods of various moisture contents and in that way strengthens a piece's joints. "It's important that the integrity of the furniture remain intact," says Bloomstein's partner, Aaron Aujla. seventhhouse.la. |
A Close Read of Paula Fox's 'Desperate Characters' |
 | | A cat in brush near the Brooklyn Bridge, photographed by Erich Hartmann, circa 1955.© Erich Hartmann/Magnum Photos. Photo: Museum of the City of New York |
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The central incident in "Desperate Characters" (1970), Paula Fox's second novel for adults — and the next selection for T Book Club — occurs right at the beginning, when the main character, Sophie Bentwood, a literary translator in late '60s Brooklyn, is bitten by a stray cat. As we read on, we are kept in suspense as to how serious the bite is and whether or not the cat might be rabid. But the book is also about a more general sense of chaos and, as the title suggests, desperation. On the surface, Sophie and her husband, Otto, might seem resigned to the fact that now and then unpleasant things may disrupt their privileged, well-ordered existence sustained by the belief that they have the means — not just their wealth and cultivated tastes but the right middle-class moral values — to prevail. But over the course of one long weekend, we see what deep uncertainty and frustration roil just beneath. You can read Sigrid Nunez's full essay on the book here, and R.S.V.P. to a virtual talk she's giving on the book on Aug. 4 here. |
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