ALCYNE

Rules, for Keeps

The home of London’s oldest restaurant has been given to the National Trust. The unusual arrangement should ensure that very little changes. Rules has survived two world wars, ten monarchs and London’s periodic enthusiasm for demolishing its own history. Its latest change is rather more reassuring. The building on Maiden Lane where the restaurant has traded for 228 years has been given to the National Trust. Thomas Rule opened it as an oyster house in 1798, and it soon became a fixture of thea

The Wolseley, Without Corbin and King

The checkerboard floor is coming to New York. The people who taught the room its manners are not. The Wolseley is coming to New York, although “coming” makes the whole thing sound rather more straightforward than it is. Its address, 130 West 44th Street, has already spent years as a hotel. Built in 1905 for The Lambs, a theatrical club, the building was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White and later became The Chatwal, with The Lambs Club restaurant downstairs. Hyatt ended its asso

Beauty

What Does Niche Mean Now?

Niche fragrance was once defined by what it stood apart from. As conglomerates and hundreds of new houses enter the category, the word is beginning to lose its meaning. Not long ago, finding an unusual perfume required some effort. A particular shop, a recommendation, perhaps a bottle brought back from another city. Brands were smaller, distribution was selective and encountering somebody wearing the same fragrance was rare enough to feel mildly conspiratorial. Now niche fragrance has conventi

Travel

Four Suitcases Worth Taking Seriously

Aluminium, fibreboard, and a plastic shell pressed to look like woven leather. Most suitcases are sold on the promise that travel will become effortless once the correct piece of polycarbonate has been purchased. Airports expose the limits of that argument quickly. The better cases make a smaller claim. Most of that claim rests on the shell: what it is made of, and what happens to it after a few years in the care of baggage handlers. A few are also good-looking. Rimowa Classic Cabin Rimowa'

Travel

A House Called Ómós

In Abbeyleix, a small town in Ireland’s Midlands, chef Cúán Greene has turned a derelict Victorian house into a restaurant and guesthouse built almost entirely by people he already knew. In September last year, Millbrook House was still without a roof. The Victorian building, once part of the de Vesci family's Abbey Leix estate, had spent years in decline. Its internal walls had collapsed, vegetation had taken hold and little remained beyond the original shell. By July, it had reopened as Ómós,

Travel

Five Irish Hotels for Not Going Anywhere

Five Irish hotels where rain improves the proposition. By Friday afternoon, the rain has settled in and any plan involving the car has lost its charm. This is when a hotel begins to earn its keep: a hall to get lost in, a spa built around a Japanese stone bath, a library with a bookcase that is not really a bookcase. Five Irish hotels for a weekend the forecast has already planned. Adare Manor Look up in the Great Hall and there is a stone man with toothache crouched beneath the Minstrels’ G

Culture

What Do I Like?

Find a thing you like now — a restaurant, an artwork, a hotel, a coat — and you barely have the thought before the phone is out. Who knows about it? Has it already been written up, discovered, done to death? Should you have known about it six months ago? The phone is very good at answering all of this. Less useful on the more basic question: what do I like? Taste used to have a little more privacy. You saw somewhere, liked the look of it and went in. Somebody sent you to a bar, or a waiter per

Culture

London Before the Algorithm

As Tate Britain prepares to revisit the decade when fashion, art, photography and nightlife occupied the same rooms, the clothes are the easy part to copy. Juergen Teller photographed Kate Moss in 1998 with pink hair, little apparent production and none of the polish that would later become standard around a model of her stature. David Sims was making fashion pictures that could look almost hostile to fashion. Alexander McQueen turned runway shows into events people still describe from memory.

Fashion

Notes from Paris Men’s Fashion Week

Seven collections from the S/S 2027 men’s shows to return to. Paris closed the men’s season with the usual collision of large houses, smaller presentations and enough competing narratives to make instant verdicts fairly useless. A little distance helps. At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello’s clothes were the least elaborate thing in the room. Michael Rider’s Celine made room for several different silhouettes at once. Julian Klausner continued to find his footing at Dries Van Noten, while Jonat

Culture

The Art Calendar: September–December 2026

The exhibitions, fairs and openings to keep track of before the year closes. The autumn art calendar has a fairly dependable geography. New York begins in September, London reaches full volume around Frieze, Paris takes over the following week, and Miami provides the slightly overheated conclusion in December. There is considerably more happening than anyone reasonably needs to see. These are the dates to file. New York Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony New Museum New Museum 24 September 2026 – 31 J

Fashion

Willy Chavarria Puts the Waist Back on Men

Everyone talks about the size of a Willy Chavarria trouser. The more useful question is where it begins. At the top of a Chavarria trouser, the waistband sits where a waistband used to sit — at the waist. On the body, that decision reorganises everything below it. The Cholo Chino rises high over the hip, opens into deep pleats and falls into a wide leg: high waist, wide leg, as the label puts it plainly. The legs lengthen, the torso compresses and the chest reads broader. A familiar male silho

Travel

Five European Hotels That Still Feel Like Someone Chose Everything

Four you can book now. One you cannot. All five have something most luxury hotels spend a great deal of money trying to simulate: a point of view. The expensive hotel is remarkably easy to recognise. Pale stone, excellent sheets, a sculptural chair, a bathroom large enough to make you reconsider your own housing situation. Nothing about them is badly designed, and you could move half the furniture between them without anyone noticing. The five below are different. Someone made decisions, some

Culture

David Lynch Liked Instructions

At Pace Los Angeles, the artist's photographs show how many of his strangest ideas came with instructions. David Lynch once bought a fish in London, took it home, cut it into pieces and photographed the parts as though they belonged to a model aeroplane. He called it Fish Kit and supplied instructions for putting the fish back together. In Mexico, he made a chicken version. The duck was less successful. There were too many small parts for the photograph to record clearly. It is a useful detail