We found your new apartment in the Prada skyscraper.
They should consider giving Emilia Petrarca the Tavi Gevinson 300 Ashland treatment.
Hello everyone.
Today’s newsletter includes: a Prada skyscraper might be coming to Midtown, the job listing everyone keeps texting me about, the mini pie company coming for your viral Instagram cakes, and New York is getting a lot of impressive new museum restaurants.
Before Air Mail’s Tom Wolfe Literary Prize dinner at Waverly Inn last night, I stopped by the Sophie Calle show at Paula Cooper Gallery per the recommendations of a reader named Jack. The exhibit, which closes in three days, is called ‘On The Hunt.’ Calle describes the work as “a catalogue of the qualities most desired in women by men, and in men by women, drawn from personal ads published in Le Chasseur français between 1895 and 2010.” The earliest personal ads include rich men looking to date orphans, and the most recent ones are pulled from dating apps like Tinder where seekers identify as “walking clichés” and Harry Potter fans. The texts are accompanied by photos of animals photographed at nighttime alongside hunting stands. I am so grateful when readers send me suggestions like this. It was nice to be in a quiet room with other New Yorkers for 30 minutes and look at something other than my screen.
There was also another smaller exhibit by Calle called ‘The Bronx.’ In 1980, Fashion Moda Gallery asked her to do a project in their South Bronx neighborhood, where strangers took Calle to a local spot of their choice (kind of like
’s Keep The Meter Running). Calle then listened to why locals chose those spots and photographed them there.If you’re free tonight, The New York Review of Books is hosting a reading with Molly Ringwald, Joana Avillez and David Shipley at Paula Cooper.
Honorable mention from the Air Mail dinner goes to Friend of the Letter Lauren Schofield, who made a Tom Wolfe hat cake for the party. I left before they cut the cake, but this morning Lauren told me that it was olive oil and citrus cake.
Over the weekend, a remarkably high-concept mini pie company called Fillings landed on my radar. I figured it was another Instagram creator who makes cakes for birthday parties and brand events. Then I realized Mindy Weiss, who should have a PhD in event planning, worked on the Fillings launch party… just days after she worked on Selena Gomez’s wedding. The Fillings pies are $20, and the size of something The Plaza might serve at tea. Each month, they drop new flavors online (this month it’s s’mores) and then customers pick up their little pies in Brooklyn.
The founder of Fillings is baker Katie Kaplan, a former marine with a 310 phone number. I spoke to her yesterday about what the plan is for her business (and found out Joe Haddad, who has worked with brands like A24 and Google, worked on her design).
The internet loves viral cake content, why make pie?
While I absolutely love cake and really anything with sugar in it, I think pie represents something truly honest. It’s messy, classic, and deeply American. It’s the kind of dessert that tells a story and brings people together.
With Fillings, I wanted to take something so familiar and make it feel fresh, sexy, and irreverent, but still warm at its core. In a world obsessed with frosting, I wanted to celebrate the crust.
I really like your logo and overall branding. How did you land on that?
It wouldn’t have been possible without the genius Joe Haddad, who is my creative designer. There’s a very careful balance of sincerity, sexy irony, flagrance, and subtlety in the Fillings brand. Reflecting on diners, road houses, and fragmented signage is where Joe and I found overlap. We knew we wanted the branding to feel nostalgic yet rebellious, a modern take on classic Americana that was playful and instantly recognizable.
I actually sent Joe a photo of a tramp stamp and said, “How can we turn this into our logo but make it high fashion? That’s America, right?” He completely understood the balance and brought it to life in a way that feels so true to the brand.