Brian ReaDentures Be DamnedMom’s best friend, Jean, lay dying in the hospital. She wanted no visitors. When Mom pressed Jean’s daughter for an explanation, she confided that her mother was embarrassed because she could no longer wear her dentures. My mom, Joan, showed up anyway. Before she entered ...

Anthony Bourdain called America’s professional kitchens “the last refuge of the misfit,” in an essay published in The New Yorker in 1999.They’re a place, he wrote, that embraces those who have turned their backs on the 9-to-5 grind and have given up on “ever having a Friday or ...

At the end of last week, we published our list of the 25 best clothing stores in New York. Scroll through it and tell me what we nailed and what we left out.Working on this list was personal. My first several jobs in New York were in retail ...

The group of people gathered for a closed-door meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May was unusual by any measure: Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director and a Met trustee; Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute; the fashion designer John Galliano — ...

Benni and I were married for almost 61 years, until our late 80s. We were not a perfect match. He was an early bird; I’m a night owl. He watched sports and news; I binge British crime dramas. He liked home; I like out.On the other hand, he ...

Last week, the actor Devyn Dalton received, quite possibly, the world’s biggest compliment.She was in New Zealand filming her next project, when she was awakened at 4 a.m. by the buzz of her phone. “I was like, ‘What is going on?’ It just blew up — my phone ...

An odyssey is a journey of homecoming, but the trek to the AMC Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to watch this summer’s blockbuster in the wee hours of a Sunday morning was closer to a pilgrimage. Filmgoers were driven by a need to see ...

Brian ReaBack on LandAfter years of trying for another baby, I couldn’t stop thinking about Florida’s Weeki Wachee mermaids — women undulating underwater in bright tails and fixed lipstick. My husband saw how grief had hollowed me out and told me to go. So I left our family ...

“Our parents? Were married?” Kaia Gerber said sarcastically, feigning shock on a bright blue carpet while celebrating Ryan Murphy’s new show “The Shards” on Monday night in Manhattan. “That’s our bit.”Despite her rapport with her castmate Homer Gere now, she insists she never met the young actor, whose ...

On a rainy March morning, 25 folding chairs were set out on the floor of Meadow Lane, a gourmet market in Lower Manhattan that is normally brimming with influencers, Tribeca moms and finance bros picking up lunch. Today the place belonged to McKinsey & Company.The consultants are the ...

Dramatic orchestral music begins to play as a woman steps into frame, sitting down in a comfortable chair in a well-lit, tasteful-yet-nondescript living room. She tucks a few errant hairs behind her ears, adjusts a microphone on her lapel and wriggles back into the seat to get comfortable.“Are ...

“Love Island U.S.A.,” which wrapped its eighth season earlier this month, has always been more than a dating show. It’s an invitation to press your face against a one-way mirror and watch strangers flirt, connect and navigate conflict while audiences assign attachment styles, spot red flags and decide ...

These shoes look like your lips after you’ve eaten an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids.Known as the ruched (or puckered or scrunched) loafer, they look like a standard lithe loafer until you hit the toe, which wrinkles like a shirt in need of ironing. Go into any ...

Brian ReaIntroducing Uncle JayMy daughter’s birthday falls three days after my late brother’s. Every July, while I hang lanterns and fill gift bags, grief flashes through me. My daughter is 6 and doesn’t know she should have an Uncle Jay. He was nine years my junior, a boy ...