kurtsoller

Funny start to 2023: I’m playing myself on tonight’s episode of @gossipgirl! Thanks to @aleshea.harris for being the greatest scene partner a non-actor could ask for, @adamchanlerberat for all the advice about being “on set” and, most of all, @joshsafran for writing me into his wild ride of a show. It was FASCINATING to see how the HBO sausage gets made, and I’m just so honored to have experienced this strange and silly day last summer. (The first photo is by @andybaraghani’s friend @dsabshon, which feels very GG in and of itself.)

We don’t often do traditional celebrity cover profiles at @tmagazine — and when we do, it’s because we feel a famous person is both a real artist and very reflective of the culture right now. Both those things are certainly true of Robert Pattinson, who will soon star in Bong Joon Ho’s next film, “Mickey 17.” My friend and colleague @nickkharamis wrote the story, which turned out just as fun and strange as the person it’s about — they spent days in London together, making pottery, wandering about. At one point, as Nick writes, “Pattinson is hunched over a worktable, hand-sculpting a mug with a distinctly phallic handle. ‘It’s a giant carrot,’ he clarifies — a gift for his hosts. They must really like carrots, I offer, but the joke doesn’t land. ‘I just think it’d be quite satisfying to have a cup this large,’ he says. As I begin to wonder if I’ve offended him, he leans back to appraise his work. ‘It’s got a bit of a curve in it,’ he says with a smirk. Intentionally making a clay penis in front of a journalist isn’t just a choice; it’s a challenge. ‘I’d love to see how you’re going to use this,’ he tells me.” Keep reading at link in stories. Excellent photographs by @collierschorrstudio, too, with styling by @jaymassacret

Cold night walk through Washington Square Park 🍎

Since it barely snows in the city anymore — a fact that irks me — the Thanksgiving dusting in the Massachussets mountains felt extra cozy and special. (Taken from a dark room at my uncle’s house in the Berkshires, while looking for wild bear.)

Sourdough is OVER. Long live white bread! Love this piece by @equittner from the new issue of @tmagazine, with accompanying original art (part of his ongoing “Bread Man” performance series) by the Japanese artist Tatsumi Orimoto. As Akira Akuto, the co-owner of Los Angeles’s erstwhile Konbi, says in the piece, today “people just want something a little easier in their daily consumption. White bread is soft and comfortable to eat; with sourdough, you have to chew it, and it’s a very tactile feeling.” 🍞

Nara Smith voice: My husband was craving tacos… so we booked a last-minute weekend in Mexico City. Food is from: @elpozoledemoctezuma, @lina.cdmx, @laesquinadelchilaquil, @barbacoagonzalitos and @fuuuugaz. (Not pictured: @contramarmx and @meromamx forever!) The cool building is the Folkloric Ballet School, built in 1968 by Agustín Hernández Navarro, whose futuristic Modernism inspired Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982). The vase with the face is on display at Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology (@mnantropologia), where I’m thrilled I finally visited to learn about centuries upon centuries of ritual human sacrifice, and other great things. Happy Halloween! (The city was full of great decorations, but my photographs didn’t do any of them justice.)

It’s GREATS season here at @tmagazine. We have four honorees this year (see my stories!) but this year I was especially thrilled to edit a profile by one of my favorite writers, Lauren Groff (@legroff), on one of my favorite musicians, @florence Welch. The results are weird and fascinating and beautiful, befitting the artists themselves; as Lauren writes, “Welch may not call herself spiritual, but the thing she kept pulling herself away from speaking about is the thing at the center of her, which she sometimes calls ‘the monster,’ sometimes ‘the beast.’ She struggles to control it, but it seems to be the source of her creative energy. ‘The beast is very good when it’s onstage. The monster is really useful and full of rage and glory and power,’ she said. But as soon as she began talking about the beast, she grew agitated; it felt wrong. Her spiritual sense ‘doesn’t feel like something I should advertise, because it’s really sacred,’ she told me, and changed the topic once more. When an oracle hears the voice of God and shares what she heard with others, she’s doing the same thing that an artist does while making art.” Photographs by @luisalbertorodriguezstudio; styling by @vanessareidofficial.

Good(bye) summer. 📸 powershot candid @chen_jason.

Some (incidentally) green, red and brown things I liked recently in London, Somerset and Milan. 1. @thenomadhotel breakfast atrium. / 2. The @8hollandstreet entryway. / 3. @quovadissoho 🤤. / 4. Good light, good clouds. / 5. Stonehenge dahlia festival. / 6. Little chapel at Babington House. / 7. @tonynikolla in the walled garden. / 8. @pietoudolf’s garden at @hauserwirthsomerset. / 9. Scallop satay at @osiprestaurant, one of my two or three favorite meals so far this year (blurry edition). / 10. The Roman Baths in… Bath (musta been lit in 56 A.D.). / 11. Tea, topiary, grumpy man, etc. / 12. Bath’s cool curved architecture. / 13. Trofie al pesto at @ubarba (because @hanyayanagihara said so). / 14. Milan’s Santa Maria presso San Satiro — “the trompe-l’œil church.”

For @tmagazine’s latest design issue — out now — I wrote about the Balinese escape that @studio_jencquel made for @gildaskitsune, the co-founder of the brand Kitsune, who was both charming and honest about the fact that he wanted to build the place because his life had become too stressful. I guess it’s a house story masquerading as a mental-health PSA: “His hearing and eyesight started to go: ‘You get to a limit, and you decide to be outside the scene,’ he says. He watched his friend Virgil Abloh die of cancer at 41 after giving all his waking hours to his career as a fashion designer. Meanwhile, other businesspeople — Loaëc mentions Kanye West and Elon Musk — were boasting about sleeping in their offices, treating their employees badly or, worse, attempting to get involved in politics and change society. ‘I think it’s all ego: “I want more stores, I want bigger stores, I want to fly private” — or other things that’re terrible for humans,’ he says. ‘But what’s the pleasure in that journey?’” Photographs by @joshrobenstone.

Back to the Island of the Apocalypse.

Sunblock.