The Artist Sculpting a Terra-Cotta Forest

Step by Step

Sylvie Chantecaille’s Beauty Regimen

Interview by Caitie Kelly

I use less and less as I get older, but I make sure what I do use is really great. First thing in the morning, while I’m still in bed, I spray Chantecaille rosewater all over to help myself wake up. Then I shower and use Leonor Greyl Shampooing Reviviscence — on my hair and on my body, too — then Christophe Robin’s Shade Variation Mask in Baby Blonde. I am so devoted to my colorist in New York, Sharon Dorram, so I do all I can to preserve her work. If I do a blowout at home, I’ll use Dyson’s Airwrap. After the shower, I apply our Bio Lifting Serum and Rose de Mai Cream. In the summer I follow that with our Anti-Aging Face Tint in sheer bronze, and in the winter I’ll use our Sheer Glow Rose Face Tint and Future Skin foundation in one of four tones depending on how much sun I’ve had. The tints give you a little bit of a highlight and make your skin look delicious. I use a number of eye products, including our Nano Gold Energizing Eye Serum and the Eye Cream from the same range. When it comes to makeup, one thing I have to have is a very good eye pencil — I’m partial to our Luster Glide in Earth or Olive Brocade, which is green with a little blue. And I have a myriad of lipsticks but, right now, I’m using a lip tint we launched this summer. It looks so natural and is really moisturizing. If I have been outside all day, I will sleep in our Gold Recovery Mask and, the next day, it’s like my skin has no memory of being in the sun. And if I’m going to be on television, I’ll do our Bio Lifting Mask to help with wrinkles. I’m a gardener and don’t get manicures, but my mother got me started using Dior’s Creme Abricot on my nails — that and Aesop’s Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm. I get pedicures at Spa 27 in East Hampton and I do acupuncture in Amagansett with Sandra Foster. I love Arnican, too. If you have a bruise just use that little orange tube. Le Wild is my signature scent — it’s based on a wild gardenia found in a forest in Brazil and is really fresh but has a lot of energy. I feel that it represents my life in that all that I love is wild. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Covet This

A West Elm Collection From a Fashion Designer

By Caitie Kelly

When the fashion designer Mara Hoffman began crafting her home collection for West Elm two years ago, she found working beyond the body, and with hard materials like ceramic and metal, rather thrilling. “When fit isn’t a focus, you can really keep your attention on the emotionality, beauty and function of what you are designing,” she says. Yet the neutral palette and textured fabrications of the resulting 22-piece collection, which includes everything from lighting to furniture to throw pillows, reflect the aesthetic language she’s developed through her clothes. In some cases, the pieces even take direct cues from her ready-to-wear — a black-and-white ceramic side table and matching vase, for instance, were inspired by her Amy dress. Others nod to the sense of balance she’s found amid nature at her home in upstate New York. Hoffman’s dedication to natural, recycled and organic fibers carries over here, too: Items have been Fair Trade-certified wherever possible and incorporate recycled faux shearling, organic cotton and Forest Stewardship Council-approved wood. Two favorites of Hoffman’s are a ceramic wall hanging and a bowl in the shape of a spiral, one of her signature motifs. Although, she says, “we ended up with a tightly curated offering so each piece feels really special,” she continues, “I’m such a fan of vintage ceramics and it felt good to create some of our own that will hopefully become vintage themselves one day.” Mara Hoffman + West Elm retails between $19.50 and $799 and will be available starting Sept. 12 at westelm.com.

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A Photography Sale With Work By Ansel Adams and More

By Kurt Soller

The past few years have been fruitful for those interested in collecting artists’ prints via the internet. Often the people who make the work — or the institutions that help support them — are looking to raise money for a cause (or for themselves) during difficult times, or they’re just at home, staring at their walls, and perhaps interested in sharing some beauty with others. Particularly exciting is a new online sale, starting today and running throughout the month, that’s being hosted by the New York not-for-profit Aperture, which publishes photography, plans programming and, since its founding in 1952, has worked to build community and solidarity among photographers. In celebration of its 70th anniversary, the organization has launched “Seventy x Seventy,” for which 70 different photographers have offered signed (or estate-stamped) 8-by-10-inch prints in limited editions of 70 for $250 apiece, with proceeds going to the artist or a charity of their choice — and to Aperture itself, which has been selling prints since the 1960s. This time, the grouping is as sprawling as it is inspiring, featuring work by legends like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange; contemporary icons like Dawoud Bey and Catherine Opie; and recent stars like Tyler Mitchell and Ethan James Green. It represents a rare opportunity for those who want to start — or expand — an art collection, but it’s also fun just to browse, if only to see what most catches your eye. aperture.org/70×70.

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An Arboreal Exhibition at Gagosian Rome

Rome’s Villa Medici exerts a singular pull on the Tokyo-born artist Setsuko Klossowska de Rola. The wife of the French painter Balthus spent 15 formative years living in the Renaissance palazzo in the 1960s and 1970s during her husband’s tenure as director of the French Academy in Rome. “It was the golden age of cinema, and I had the chance to meet some fantastic film directors — Fellini, Visconti …” she recalls. It was also where she began to paint. Now based in Switzerland, Setsuko, 80, will return to Italy this month for “Into the Trees II,” an exhibition opening at Gagosian’s Rome outpost on Sept. 8. Her “Roman period” paintings, precisely observed still lives of domestic objects, will join newer works depicting oak, magnolia, citrus and fig trees and rendered in enamel-glazed terra cotta, bronze and wood, as well as paintings and works on paper completed in Switzerland. The terra-cotta trees only strengthen the Rome connection, as they were created in her studio at Astier de Villatte, the Paris-based ceramics label co-founded by Benoît Astier de Villatte, whom Setsuko first met when he was a baby in a pram at Villa Medici. Such coincidences amuse Setsuko, who sees magic everywhere she looks. “Old, dried-up trees can sometimes have new branches, a new renaissance,” she says of her primary subject matter. “That vitality is incredible to me.” “Into the Trees II” is on view Sept. 8 through Oct. 29, gagosian.com.

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A 150th Anniversary Collection From Bloomingdale’s

In today’s retail climate, department store birthdays are far from guaranteed, and yet Bloomingdale’s, a seasoned outlier, is celebrating its sesquicentennial. To mark the occasion, it partnered with over 100 brands on an anniversary collection launching tomorrow and comprising exclusive items that run the gamut from candles to tailored suits. Many of the offerings were inspired by the store’s famous black-and-white checkered floors, which were the work of the interior designer and visual merchandiser Barbara D’Arcy and first installed in the New York flagship’s cosmetics department in 1979. Salvatore Ferragamo produced a black-and-white braided leather belt and card holder, among other things. Aurora James of Brother Vellies made a gray scale version of her brand’s trademark slipper mules, in calf hair. And Polo Ralph Lauren, an offshoot of Ralph Lauren, which launched at Bloomingdale’s in 1967 with a collection of neckties that, in time, evolved into a full range of men’s wear, has put forth a pair of wristwatches, a hoodie and a knit pullover all featuring the well-dressed Polo Bear, presumably post-shopping spree, toting the store’s iconic Massimo Vignelli-designed Big Brown Bag. Men’s pieces starting from $110, bloomingdales.com.

From T’s Instagram

A Painter Whose Subjects Are His Siblings