The back windows of Tourists, a renovated 46-room motor lodge that opened in North Adams, Mass., in 2018, overlook 80 acres of Berkshires forest land. Now, a foot trail winds through those woods, connecting the hotel to two neighboring houses in the town’s Blackinton Historic District, a former mill community. Both accommodations — one sleeps up to 11, the other six — were restored for Tourists Homes, a new offshoot that allows larger groups to book individual houses. “As a joke we call them the mullet houses — business in the front, party in the back — because [we preserved the] 1860s fronts but we gave the backs all the benefits of contemporary design,” says Tourists co-founder Ben Svenson. Similar to the company’s original property, both houses embody a retro, chalet-inspired aesthetic (each has a wood-burning stove) and are furnished with bespoke pieces made by local carpenters (the larger house has an oversize round Douglas fir table for family-style dining) and vintage gems curated by the interior designer Julie Pearson (the smaller house comes with an original Rhodes Mark 1 piano). The back decks of both homes offer scenic views of Mount Williams and Mount Prospect. All houseguests get access to the hotel’s pool and community events, including a free concert series featuring visiting musicians who play in exchange for room nights. The two Tourists homes are available to book now (there’s a three-night minimum for the small house, a four-night minimum for the larger), along with a third house, a former five-room B&B, which the Tourists team plans to renovate in the winter. From $895 a night, touristswelcome.com.
Wear This
A Line of New Bags From LeSportsac and the Philadelphia-Based Brand Yowie
Before Shannon Maldonado founded Yowie, her Philadelphia-based design shop and boutique hotel, she was a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in the early aughts collecting colorful, functional LeSportsac nylon totes and handbags, drawn to their “sporty but chic quality.” Now Maldonado has collaborated with LeSportsac on a collection of nine new bags. The first three — a cherry red oversize hobo, an acid yellow cross-body tote and a spherical black bucket bag — are available today. The bags represent new shapes for the 50-year-old brand, all made with its signature ripstop fabric. A trained apparel designer, Maldonado drew inspiration from other sources that influenced her decades ago — Marc by Marc Jacobs accessories, ’80s- and ’90s-era photos of off-duty models, and vintage Prada and Miu Miu editorials — for a line that captures both a sense of nostalgia and a decidedly modern energy. From $95, lesportsac.com.
In November 2020, Francesca Cappelletti started her new role as director of the Galleria Borghese, the Rome museum that houses a collection of Renaissance-era Berninis and Caravaggios assembled by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, secretary to the Pope, in the early 1600s. With the museum closed to the public during the pandemic, Cappelletti had plenty of time to explore the less-famous works in the institution’s storage, unearthing pieces like a 1613 canvas depicting Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, by Lavinia Fontana, the Italian Mannerist painter from Bologna who was trained by her father, Prospero Fontana. Cappelletti says the discovery inspired her not just to bring painters like Fontana out of storage but to highlight modern-day women artists in the context of the palazzo’s historic collection and its extensive English-style gardens. Last week the museum inaugurated an annual series that will showcase work by contemporary female masters. “Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories” features 20 pieces from the French American artist, including her early marble sculptures of carved body parts and “Spider” (1996), one of her monumental bronze works, which has been installed in the Giardino della Meridiana, a part of the museum’s garden that’s rarely open to the public. “Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious Memories” is on view at the Galleria Borghese, Rome, through Sept. 15; galleriaborghese.beniculturali.it.
Drink Here
A New 200-Foot Concrete Table and Tasting Room at Oregon’s Antica Terra Winery
Maggie Harrison has been producing standout wine at Oregon’s Willamette Valley winery Antica Terra since 2006. But her property’s tasting room — housed in an unadorned warehouse — had seemed out of step with her refined bottles. That’s changing this summer as Antica Terra opens two new tasting spaces: the Barrel Hall and the seasonal Table in the Trees, an outdoor seating area with a 200-foot-long table. At the entrance to the Barrel Hall, a wide hallway funnels guests into a space illuminated by a cloudlike orb from the Los Angeles light sculptor Bennet Schlesinger. The outdoor table, set in a grove of Oregon white oak, is a ribbon of concrete that was poured on-site and hand inlaid with rocks from the vineyard, with room enough for six seating areas. There guests can arrange for a picnic lunch from chef Timothy Wastell (think linen-wrapped bread, preserved wild mushrooms and hen-liver pâté from a nearby farm), accompanied by a six-wine flight. “Among those oaks, those acorns, that wind, our sheep,” Harrison says, “guests are a part of the elements that formed these wines.” She plans to have a full outdoor kitchen in operation next year. anticaterra.com.
Covet This
Stone Island and Dior Collaborate on an Elegant Capsule Collection
Stone Island, the men’s sportswear brand founded by the Italian designer Massimo Osti in 1982, has long been associated with exploration and adventure (a compass serves as its logo). Stone Island specializes in technical garments that are engineered to withstand and adapt to nature’s elements, like thermo-reactive down vests that change color when exposed to heat or nylon jackets that are extra resilient in rain and wind thanks to a vacuum-sealed layer of stainless steel film. Starting in the mid-80s, the brand has been particularly popular in Britain, where it was favored by a young Kim Jones, the English fashion designer and creative director of Dior Men. Now, Stone Island and Dior are coming together for a capsule collection that combines the Italian company’s textile innovation with Jones’s penchant for elegant silhouettes and unexpected color combinations. The new offerings include footwear (two styles of sneakers), bags (including Dior’s iconic saddle bag updated in embossed nylon) and jewelry: A pendant necklace, bracelet and signet ring all feature the Stone Island compass encircled by four Dior logos. Discerning adventurers and urbanites alike will be particularly excited about the outerwear. A teal silk car coat features a removable gilet, as does a salmon-hued blouson cut from chenille wool. Technical cotton field jackets with contrasting leather pockets come in black or a bright yellow, and a cotton and silk zippered bomber jacket is given the Dior touch with allover floral embroidery. The Dior and Stone Island capsule collection launches June 27; price on request, dior.com.
When Alvar and Aino Aalto completed their sanitarium in Paimio, Finland, in 1933, the tuberculosis hospital represented not only an inflection point in the young architects’ careers, but also a transformative moment for modernism. Airy, light-filled and colorful, the building was conceived, as Alvar put it, “to function as a medical instrument” by providing patients with ample access to sunlight and fresh air, which were understood, at the time, to be essential to the treatment of tuberculosis. With its generously sized social spaces and modest rooms designed down to the smallest detail by the husband-and-wife team, the Paimio Sanatorium, for all its rationalism and rigor, was also imbued with the warmth and sensitivity to setting that would come to define the couple’s careers. (Alvar continued to build widely following Aino’s death from breast cancer in 1949.) In May, almost 90 years after the main building’s completion, seven patient rooms opened for overnight guests. Most of the furniture pieces were designed by Aalto, while the linens, such as checkered throws by the Finnish weaving company Lapuan Kankurit, are by local makers. The simple rooms at Paimio offer visitors an opportunity to experience the sanitarium as it was intended: not as an architectural landmark, but as a gentle, restorative environment. From about $160 a night, paimiosanatorium.com.
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