You can now buy the perfect ass.
The options are endless.
Good morning. Doesn’t New York feel so so right now? This time of year is the opposite of a void, when every time I step outside something happens.
Over the weekend I went swimming at the beach, and my friend accidentally took a margarita from the bar into the bodega, and I stayed on the phone for an hour on my walk home in Brooklyn at 2am. I know it’s a common conversation, to both note on and appreciate what’s right in front of us — the weather, the weddings, the dinner plans. But the warm nights and bowls of cherries and unlabeled bars of mushroom chocolate and the over-the-top displays of love and beautiful dresses and sweaty hair on Instagram make me happy. This time of year I also get so jealous of anyone younger than me, seemingly with less pressure and a smaller, slower clock. I’m so happy I got to spend my 20s here.
To afford her beautiful life, Athena Calderone had to copy-and-paste it — and then let you buy it. Ms. Calderone almost went broke renovating the townhouse that cemented her place in the interiors world — one look at these photos and you recognize it, especially the kitchen. I remember first learning about her and her blog EyeSwoon when I was working at The Cut in 2016 when I was 20, and feeling so far away from ever understanding design like this. Today, there’s Laila Gohar and Molly Baz and Melanie Massarin and TikTok and pretty much everyone has some sort of design sensibility and take, but Calderone really led this world for me. “It was being seen everywhere. It was being copied everywhere,” Ms. Calderone said of her townhouse in Brooklyn that she poured millions of dollars into. Even influencers have breaking points. “I remember being in Miami at an event, and an architect said to me, ‘Do you realize there’s a building going up in Williamsburg and the entire building’s kitchens is your kitchen?’” Another good story about the comedown from influencer stardom.
The business of the perfect butt is booming. First of all, I’d like to say I have a class called Best Butt Ever at Equinox today at noon. The actual year of the butt was 2014, not because the calendar said so but because popular culture coalesced around the territory. That’s when Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” and Kim Kardashian’s Paper magazine cover, and the belfie (butt selfie) twerked into the mainstream. But today, we’re seeing butt products ready to buy off the shelf — stick the word “Brazilian” on a butt treatment and be prepared to swim in revenue. Brazilian Bum Bum Cream is a cult favorite of many friends, Megababe just launched Le Tush Butt Clarifying Mask, and even Soft Services is showing a lot of ass in their marketing. Body care is a booming industry, so it makes sense that beauty brands are finding a way to market specifically to one of the most important body parts, aesthetically. When I’m in Amagansett next week, I’ll try really hard to give you my guide to having a hot butt selfie in the Hamptons.
I went to the city of SIN and I wrote about it for DimePiece. I wax poetic about TIME.