Quiet Luxury

and Delola, Le Bernadin & The Whitney Museum

Apr 9, 2023

Clockwise from Top.

Date Night

We had dinner last week at Le Bernadin, which we covered extensively on our podcast that we recorded on the drive home from dinner. The NYT recently awarded it 4 stars, which it has held since 1986. Pete Wells loved the scallop and leeks, as did I.

The sauces were just outstanding, and were particularly enjoyable for Raquel, who is always asking for gravies, dips and sauces when eating at home and is known as our in-house “saucier.”

One addendum: it turns out the painting of the old man at the bar is Grandpa Le Coze, a famous fisherman from Brittany, who it seems does not have much of a presence on the internet outside of the Le Bernadin’s social media posts.

Restaurant Review: Le Bernardin Holds On to Its Four Stars - The New York Times

We are trying to make monthly date nights more of a regular thing in our household, and are shooting to finally get into the Polo Bar soon!

Sssshhh: Sotto Voce Luxury

We are trying to figure out who coined the term “Quiet Luxury” but whoever did should have trademarked it because it keeps popping everywhere. It refers to the unbranded or minimally logo-ed apparel and accessories from brands like Loro Piana, Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli, and has been at least partially driven by the HBO Max series Succession:

On the second episode of the fourth and final season of "Succession," HBO's megahit show about an ageing media tycoon and his dysfunctional relationships with his four adult children, onetime golden child Kendall Roy wears, what, to the average observer, would appear to be a casual, low maintenance outfit of a zip-up hoodie and a baseball hat.
That relaxed sweatshirt, however, was Tom Ford and cost $1,390. The grey, unembellished cap was from Italian luxury label Loro Piana, and retails for $1,395. Combined, they were the embodiment of the "quiet luxury" look.
Call it "quiet luxury," "stealth wealth," or the most blunt, "low-key rich bitch."

Think Gwyneth’s Loro Piana cashmere sweaters in A Perfect Murder, or Gwyneth in her recent court room appearances.

While there doesn’t seem to be a definitive source for the phrase “Quiet Luxury” (cf. “vibe shift”), influential YouTube fashion executive Derek Blasberg has been advising the Succession team on their outfit and set choice.

Spritz Life

Jennifer Lopez is launching her own line of alcoholic drinks called Delola. I had assumed these drinks, which are essentially bottled aperol spritzes, were non-alcoholic given that JLo famously doesn’t drink. But no, they have alcohol, which has attracted a fair bit of controversy. See here, here and here.

She is certainly not the first celebrity to launch her own line of alcohol. George Clooney and Rande Gerber sign their bottles of Casamigos and their own Nike collab, Ryan Reynolds sold his gin company for $600M, and the list goes on. Basically every celebrity has their own alcohol line.

With JLo marketing this, it has to do well, even if she is not drinking it herself.

Museum Visits

Last week we took Noemi to the Met for the first time, and this weekend we took her to the Whitney. She is slowly acclimating to museums, and while we just missed the Edward Hopper exhibit, we did get to see Puerto Rican themed show no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, the first large scale display of Puerto Rican art in almost 50 years.

They also have quite an iconic permanent collection: Georgia O’Keefe, Andrew Wyeth, Jasper Johns, Alexander Caldor etc. etc. Noemi doesn’t have quite a taste yet for modern art, but she loves a big open room that she can run around in.

The trick for visiting museums seems to be to go either right when they open, or right when they close. We went to the Whitney at the very end of their day, and it was pretty empty by that point. We are slowly building up her attention span for art!