The T List: Five Things We Recommend This Week

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 [email protected].

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Scenesters, Rejoice

London-based restaurateur Richard Caring (the Ivy, Annabel’s) is the latest to join in Miami’s boom, unveiling an outpost of his big-box fusion brasserie Sexy Fish just in time for the holidays. Designed in collaboration with Swedish architect Martin Brudnizki, the restaurant’s maximalist features include an illuminated floor, plenty of coral leather and onyx and a fanciful outdoor garden. Inside, diners will find ten sculptures by Damien Hirst; an installation of 26 shimmering fish suspended from the ceiling, courtesy of the architect Frank Gehry; and DJs spinning under a giant octopus. The magnates might be harder to spot — there’s a private dining room with seating for 30 and a wall-length fish tank. “Miami will cool down to some extent in the future,” says Caring, “but I have a feeling we’ll be the last man standing.” sexyfishmiami.com.

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The Spirit of the Atelier

A year after the French watercolor artist-illustrator Marin Montagut opened his first shop in Paris, he has immortalized the hidden ateliers, emporiums and hubs of vanishing trades that have long inspired his work in a new book. “Timeless Paris,” released this fall by Flammarion, is an enchanting visual ode to the city’s artisanal heritage and its few remaining redoubts of old-world craftsmanship. Through archival drawings, collages and photographs, Montagut celebrates what he calls the “soul” of Paris: from the historic bookseller Jousseaume, tucked away in the glass-covered Galerie Vivienne, to the monumental woodworking of Féau & Cie to La Maison du Pastel’s hand-blended pigments. “These places are what’s left to resist the sameness of the modern city,” says Montagut. “I think they’re worth celebrating.” $40, rizzoliusa.com.

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Homage to a Brazilian Modernist Master

After encountering the work of modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi during trips to Brazil, the renowned video artist Isaac Julien “became a kind of Lina Bo Bardi groupie,” he says of the designer of iconic buildings such as the São Paulo Museum of Art, a brutalist masterpiece from 1968. His fondness for Bo Bardi, who was born in Italy but spent most of her career working in Brazil until her death in 1992, has culminated in a fascinating show at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, N.C., that considers her legacy through a series of video installations that amount to a poetic meditation on her life and work. The legendary Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro plays the older Bo Bardi, and her real-life daughter Fernanda Torres plays a younger version, an aesthetic decision that, like Bo Bardi’s prescient work, seems to set past, present and future in dialogue. “Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvelous Entanglement” is on view through Feb. 27.

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Scents of the Subcontinent

By Caitie Kelly

India has historically been relegated to the role of exotic other and repository of raw materials by the beauty industry, but a new generation of Indian entrepreneurs is flipping the script with products that channel their makers’ experiences of home. Ranavat’s Resurfacing Saffron Masque, which utilizes an alpha hydroxy acid blend along with calming saffron, reminds founder Michelle Ranavat, a first-generation South Asian American, of “childhood visits to India when we would instantly smell saffron as we walked into a temple.” Ben Gorham, who grew up visiting his grandmother in Mumbai, evokes the city’s pungent contrasts in his newest fragrance, Mumbai Noise, with its notes of coffee, sandalwood and davana, a fruity-smelling herb native to India. Lilanur, a new fragrance line launched this year by Anita Lal, founder of luxury retailer Good Earth, pairs Indian and French perfume traditions with scents like Davana Cèdre, which was crafted by master perfumer Honorine Blanc and blends davana and cedar with pink pepper, angelique, cassis and musk. Before starting Prakti, her beauty brand, Pritika Swarup grew up making masks inspired by Ayurvedic medicine with her mother. Her nourishing MahaMask uses rich turmeric butter and amla oil, derived from the Indian gooseberry tree, to hydrate parched skin.

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Lamp Lust

While working at the London design store 8 Holland Street, which she helped establish in 2018, Rowena Morgan-Cox would admire the shop’s sculptural mid-century Italian sconces and pendants. But when it came time to decorate her home, she discovered that it was difficult to find lamps, beyond vintage treasures, that were functional, unusual and affordable. Her new line, Palefire, grew out of this realization and from a desire — after a stint working at London’s Fine Art Society — to make something with her own hands. The studio’s inaugural collection comprises eight styles of lamp, including a 1950s-inflected diabolo-shaped uplighter and an Art Nouveau-esque table light with a dramatic oversize shade, each of which can be made to order in various solid colors and patterns inspired by the work of female designers such as Sonia Delaunay and Marion Dorn. While they have the pleasingly imperfect texture of ceramic, the pieces are in fact made from recycled paper pulp. From $245, palefirestudio.com.

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