Courtesy of Alix Rutsey
HURS CURATORS
ALIX RUTSEY
The VP of Sales and Merchandising for Calvin Klein Collection and Collaborations on the Milanese Slips, Soho Udon, and Hollywood Hotel She Keeps Coming Back To
Alix Rutsey knows why things catch on. Born in Canada and based in New York, she has spent more than fifteen years in luxury fashion, with stops at Holt Renfrew and SSENSE before her current role as VP of Sales and Merchandising for Calvin Klein Collection and Collaborations. She has a rare instinct for the cultural moment, and for how to turn one into commercial success, whether that meant steering the relaunch of Calvin Klein Collection or engineering high-heat drops like Calvin Klein x Nensi Dojaka and Jung Kook for Calvin Klein. Few people can explain why a particular product suddenly resonates. Alix is one of them.
THE MILAN ATELIER FOR LINGERIE PURISTS
Vera Persiani opened in Milan in 1967, when Vera Persiani brought the linen tradition of her native Tuscany north with her, and set about making slips, camisoles, and nightgowns to measure, in fine silk, cotton, and lace worked entirely by hand. Her daughters Anna and Paola run it now, from a boutique on Via Guido d'Arezzo they opened in 2011, where the windows alone are worth the detour. Little has been surrendered to the speed of modern fashion. The pieces are still cut with sartorial precision and made to last, which is partly why a "Paola" slip dress remains a fixture in the Milanese wardrobe.
“While I was in Milan this Spring a friend introduced me to Vera Persiani, a small boutique that makes beautiful CUSTOM tailored silk slips, camis, and lingerie. They are feminine and sexy and in a very hot summer, they are all I've wanted to wear.”
“I love everything Sophie is creating. Her world and designs are INCREDIBLY elegant and this necklace is just sublime.”
GALLERY-GRADE, MADE FFOR EVERYDAY
Sophie Buhai has never been much interested in the line between jewelry and object. Since founding her studio in 2015, she has worked out of a 1986 postmodern house in Los Angeles with a small team and a circle of local master silversmiths, drawing on references that run from ancient adornment and Surrealism to Elsa Peretti, Claude Lalanne and the Vienna Secession. Her work hangs in galleries in Paris and Venice, yet the Celestial necklace could hang in a vitrine, but it’s far better around your neck: carnelian, onyx, freshwater pearls and Czech glass, hand-knotted on silk and strung to 50 inches. Wrap it twice, layer it, or let it hang. It’s the kind of piece that looks better the more you wear it.
THE JAPANESE RESTAURANT FOR DISCERNING REGULARS
Ojai has long been Los Angeles's favourite escape, a This is not the first time Omen Azen has come recommended, and it will not be the last. It has been a HURS favourite for years. Open in Soho since 1981, with roots reaching back to Kyoto, where chef and former Buddhist monk Mikio Shinagawa refined his take on Japanese country cooking, it has drawn cultural tastemakers for decades and still does. Do not be surprised to find Patti Smith, Meryl Streep, or Richard Gere at a nearby table. The room sits at the foot of a small brick apartment building, serene and unfussy, and the food is simple and very good: black cod, organic chicken teriyaki, sushi, and the namesake Omen, a bowl of handmade udon in hot or cold broth. Humble, focused, and beloved for it.
“Omen is my favorite restaurant in New York. The avocado salad is SENSATIONAL. The restaurant is very mellow, filled mostly with locals who have been eating there for years.”
“Leonard Baby is a New York based artist, whose work I fell in love with when I saw his show The Babys at Half Gallery. I was immediately MESMERIZED. I'm particularly drawn to the strength and elegance with which he portrays femininity. I'm lucky enough to have a small painting in my apartment and it's one of my most cherished pieces.”
THE PAINTER WHO MAKES NOSTALGIA UNSETTLING
Leonard Baby arrived in the New York art world about five years ago, posting jewel-like paintings of charged, cinematic moments to Instagram while keeping his identity hidden behind a pseudonym. The mystery only sharpened the appetite, and gallerists and collectors came quickly. His early subjects were borrowed film stills, beautiful and depersonalised, always with the sense that something darker sat just outside the frame. His recent work marks a turn inward, and it is his most intimate yet. Drawing on a strict religious upbringing and its attempts to pray away his queerness, the new paintings read as a love letter to his sisters, rendered in the eerie register he does so well, where a bright, storybook surface holds real melancholy beneath. In his hands, beauty always sits close to darkness. But we’ll let Alix tell you more.
THE HOTEL HOLLYWOOD NEVER TIRES OF
Chateau Marmont has been keeping Hollywood's secrets for nearly a century. Modelled on the Château d'Amboise in the Loire Valley and opened above Sunset Boulevard in 1929, it began as apartments before becoming a hotel discreet enough that anything could happen there, and usually did. Its mythology runs largely through its women: Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow among the early guests, and Eve Babitz, who put its den-of-iniquity glamour on the page. André Balazs restored it in the 1990s without sanding off its Old World patina. Nearly a hundred years on, it remains the rare hotel that trades on the century of stories held in its walls.