Why Richard Avedon Is More Relevant Than Ever – Tiffany: Not Just a Shopping Destination, but a World-Class Museum – How Jane Hertzmark Hudis Keeps Estée Lauder Fresh
Dear Reader,
The Editorial Team of TextileFuture is inviting you – for your personal reading – to enjoy three features.
All three items were firstly published in the Wall Street Journal Magazine and we are very happy to present these items to you.
The first feature is entitled “Why Richard Avedon Is More Relevant than Ever” and you can learn about the work and background of this very talented photographer and why his oeuvres are so special. The item is enriched with a varietey of this works and very enjoyable reading.
The second item bears the title “Tiffany: Not Just a Shopping Destination, but a World-Class Museum” and it offers you an insight into Tiffany’s new store in New York City (USA) with some revealing captions.
The third feature is about “How Jane Hertzmark Hudis Keeps Estée Lauder Fresh” and it is based upon an interivew with the creator of the Hudies.
We have selected threse three features for this week personal reading for you and we feel absolutely sure that we made the right choices, for these subjects of interest. On top these are excellent reading and worth your time!Please return next week, when the new edition of the TextileFuture Newsletter is ready for your reading.
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Have a splendid week ahead, accompanied with our best wishes for further success.
We would like to apologise also for the inconvenience of a late dispatch of our Newsletter a week before, the reason were computer problems, we had to fix before. Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Editorial Team of TextileFuture
Here is the beginning of the first feature:
Avedon photographed celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, but his most personal work depicted farmers and civil rights activists.
By guest author Ted Loos | Photographs by Richard Avedon for the Wall Street Jounal Magazine.
April 19, 2023
When the French luxury-goods mogul François Pinault had his picture taken by the photographer Richard Avedon, the resulting image, published in 2000, showed the billionaire gleefully manipulating a marionette of a devil, complete with pitchfork.
Pinault, whose empire includes Christie’s auction house and fashion labels like Gucci, was one of a long line of important people captured by Avedon over a 60-year career behind the camera, during which he became the pre-eminent fashion photographer and then the most famous photographic portraitist in the world.
Francis Bacon and Richard Avedon, Paris, April 11, 1979’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
When the French luxury-goods mogul François Pinault had his picture taken by the photographer Richard Avedon, the resulting image, published in 2000, showed the billionaire gleefully manipulating a marionette of a devil, complete with pitchfork.
Pinault, whose empire includes Christie’s auction house and fashion labels like Gucci, was one of a long line of important people captured by Avedon over a 60-year career behind the camera, during which he became the pre-eminent fashion photographer and then the most famous photographic portraitist in the world.
Avedon photographed celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, but his most personal work depicted farmers and civil rights activists.
Had his picture taken by the photographer Richard Avedon, the resulting image, published in 2000, showed the billionaire gleefully manipulating a marionette of a devil, complete with pitchfork.
Pinault, whose empire includes Christie’s auction house and fashion labels like Gucci, was one of a long line of important people captured by Avedon over a 60-year career behind the camera, during which he became the pre-eminent fashion photographer and then the most famous photographic portraitist in the world.
“It was an endless wait to prepare the shoot, which lasted only a couple of seconds,” Pinault says, recalling the Paris session. But in that time, one powerful man got a sense of the abilities of another. “Richard Avedon, who was a remarkable psychologist, knew how to create the perfect conditions to capture a certain truth,” adds Pinault. He later became a collector of the photographer’s work. “He used to play a cat-and-mouse game of patience, observation and dazzling intuition.”
Now Pinault is among the more than 150 prominent figures who have chosen a picture they admire by Avedon, who died in 2004, for a large exhibition celebrating the centenary of the photographer’s birth. Avedon 100 opens in May at Gagosian Gallery in New York.
‘Penelope Tree, hair by Ara Gallant, New York, June 1967’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Pinault picked one of Avedon’s most famous images, the 1957 picture Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York—known to many as “sad Marilyn” because, despite her shimmering sequined dress, she seems to be caught in a quiet, reflective moment. The Gagosian show also features crowdsourced selections of Hilton Als, Larry Gagosian, Elton John, Spike Lee, Polly Mellen, Sally Mann and Hillary Clinton. Gagosian and Rizzoli have collaborated on a book featuring about 150 works, to be published in May.
Avedon 100 is intended to put a contemporary lens on the work of the artist who produced indelible images like Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, 1955—one of the most famous fashion images of the 20th century, made on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar and included in the new show. (His top two lots at auction are both prints of this image, with the most expensive of all fetching $1.8 million at Christie’s in 2020; the next two most valuable works are both prints of his 1967 portfolio featuring the Beatles.)
Allen Ginsberg’s family, Paterson, New Jersey, May 3, 1970’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
In his 30s, Avedon was already famous enough that Fred Astaire played a thinly veiled version of him in the 1957 movie Funny Face, opposite Audrey Hepburn. His decades of editorial work, including long relationships with Vogue and the New Yorker, were interspersed with deeply personal projects that consumed him for years. Avedon’s black-and-white portraits of cultural and political figures seem now like the definitive images of the subjects, from Francis Bacon and Stephen Sondheim to Henry Kissinger and Malcolm X. “He was stripping the picture down to the subject with exacting clarity,” says Philip Gefter, the author of the 2020 book What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon. “They’re both documents and monuments.”
Starting in 2011, powerhouse Gagosian began representing the Richard Avedon Foundation, established during the photographer’s lifetime as the repository of his images and his legacy, and the two entities teamed up to make Avedon 100. The foundation is run by a board of directors including Avedon’s son, John, and his wife, Laura Avedon. Avedon was married twice, the second time to John’s mother, Evelyn Franklin.
There was an essential challenge, even for a large exhibit like this one: “How do you show the many Avedons?” asks James Martin, the foundation’s executive director. “He was constantly reinventing himself.”
‘Billy Mudd, trucker, Alto, Texas, May 7, 1981’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
In addition, “Avedon did an insane amount of work,” says Martin, noting that the photographer had well over 15,000 different assignments in his career. The headquarters of the foundation, in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood, stores some of Avedon’s 500000 negatives and thousands of prints, all made in his lifetime.
Martin, who was hired by Avedon soon after college and has worked at the foundation for most of his adult life, got to know the artist’s exacting nature first-hand. “He shredded images he didn’t like,” says Martin, recalling the hours he spent destroying images that Avedon considered subpar work, including some of the writer Dorothy Parker. “It was about controlling his legacy.”
Lew Alcindor [Kareem Abdul-Jabbar], athlete, 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York, May 2, 1963’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
When the French luxury-goods mogul François Pinault had his picture taken by the photographer Richard Avedon, the resulting image, published in 2000, showed the billionaire gleefully manipulating a marionette of a devil, complete with pitchfork.
Pinault, whose empire includes Christie’s auction house and fashion labels like Gucci, was one of a long line of important people captured by Avedon over a 60-year career behind the camera, during which he became the pre-eminent fashion photographer and then the most famous photographic portraitist in the world. ‘Francis Bacon and Richard Avedon, Paris, April 11, 1979’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
“It was an endless wait to prepare the shoot, which lasted only a couple of seconds,” Pinault says, recalling the Paris session. But in that time, one powerful man got a sense of the abilities of another. “Richard Avedon, who was a remarkable psychologist, knew how to create the perfect conditions to capture a certain truth,” adds Pinault. He later became a collector of the photographer’s work. “He used to play a cat-and-mouse game of patience, observation and dazzling intuition.”
Now Pinault is among the more than 150 prominent figures who have chosen a picture they admire by Avedon, who died in 2004, for a large exhibition celebrating the centenary of the photographer’s birth. Avedon 100 opens in May at Gagosian Gallery in New York. ‘Penelope Tree, hair by Ara Gallant, New York, June 1967’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Pinault picked one of Avedon’s most famous images, the 1957 picture Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York—known to many as “sad Marilyn” because, despite her shimmering sequined dress, she seems to be caught in a quiet, reflective moment. The Gagosian show also features crowdsourced selections of Hilton Als, Larry Gagosian, Elton John, Spike Lee, Polly Mellen, Sally Mann and Hillary Clinton. Gagosian and Rizzoli have collaborated on a book featuring about 150 works, to be published in May.
Avedon 100 is intended to put a contemporary lens on the work of the artist who produced indelible images like Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, 1955—one of the most famous fashion images of the 20th century, made on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar and included in the new show. (His top two lots at auction are both prints of this image, with the most expensive of all fetching $1.8 million at Christie’s in 2020; the next two most valuable works are both prints of his 1967 portfolio featuring the Beatles.)
In his 30s, Avedon was already famous enough that Fred Astaire played a thinly veiled version of him in the 1957 movie Funny Face, opposite Audrey Hepburn. His decades of editorial work, including long relationships with Vogue and the New Yorker, were interspersed with deeply personal projects that consumed him for years. Avedon’s black-and-white portraits of cultural and political figures seem now like the definitive images of the subjects, from Francis Bacon and Stephen Sondheim to Henry Kissinger and Malcolm X. “He was stripping the picture down to the subject with exacting clarity,” says Philip Gefter, the author of the 2020 book What Becomes a Legend Most: A Biography of Richard Avedon. “They’re both documents and monuments.”
Starting in 2011, powerhouse Gagosian began representing the Richard Avedon Foundation, established during the photographer’s lifetime as the repository of his images and his legacy, and the two entities teamed up to make Avedon 100. The foundation is run by a board of directors including Avedon’s son, John, and his wife, Laura Avedon. Avedon was married twice, the second time to John’s mother, Evelyn Franklin.
There was an essential challenge, even for a large exhibit like this one: “How do you show the many Avedons?” asks James Martin, the foundation’s executive director. “He was constantly reinventing himself.”
By the end of his career, when Avedon was as famous as some of his subjects, those abilities may have been somewhat overshadowed by the other engine of his achievement: the galvanizing personality that got the world’s most powerful people to agree to sit for him. “There was a force field around him,” says Jeffrey Fraenkel, the San Francisco photography dealer who worked with Avedon late in his career. “Everyone felt it in his presence. I suspect he was born with it.”
Twiggy, hair by Ara Gallant, Paris, January 1968’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Avedon was a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper East Side, taking in museums frequently. “He spent his youth at the Met, and it was imprinted on him,” says Fred Iseman, a lifelong friend of Avedon’s son, John. Iseman—a private equity executive who owns several Avedon works, both gifts and photographs he collected later—grew up with the photographer as what he called a “second father.” In his view, classic European portraits had a special hold on Avedon. “You can’t tell me Dick wasn’t influenced by Hans Holbein,” Iseman says.
Avedon attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he co-edited the school’s literary magazine with James Baldwin. Starting in 1942, Avedon served in the merchant marines during World War II, taking ID photographs—a fitting beginning that he appreciated later as a wellspring of his work.
Precocious and driven, Avedon was at 22 already shooting for Harper’s Bazaar, launching a two-decade relationship with the title that led to him serving as the magazine’s chief photographer. He helped transform what fashion pictures had traditionally been—elegant pictures of models and clothes in studios—into something more dynamic and cinematic, frequently shot out in the real world, like in the streets of Paris.
“Avedon blur.” Martin says the photographer would use tissue paper during printing to diffuse the image. “It was one way of imparting movement. A slower shutter speed got that effect too.” Martin adds, “It was part of making a name for himself.”
Iseman recalls a favourite image, taken by the French photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, of Avedon leaping across the studio to get a shot, camera in hand. “It captures his energy, focus and purposefulness, and his weightlessness and magic,” says Iseman. Avedon brought the same spirit to his advertising work, creating in 1980 the now-infamous Calvin Klein campaign featuring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields in tight jeans (“You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing”), and later forming a two-decade-long relationship with Versace.
Collectors today respond most enthusiastically to Avedon’s fashion images and his celebrity portraits. “Among postwar photographers, he’s one of the few to break a million at auction,” says Darius Himes, international head of photographs at Christie’s. “Avedon is one of those great photographers whose images stay in our minds.” Avedon often made editions ranging from 10 to 50 prints per negative (though he sometimes made editions of 2 and, once, an edition of 200). The estate cannot make posthumous prints from existing negatives (as is sometimes done by others, to create more supply), so there is a limited number to be had, even of the iconic images. “It is a connoisseur’s market,” says Himes. “You have to be patient if you’re going to buy one at auction.” In an era when digital photography reigns, the market for ever-rarer, traditionally produced images may be getting more robust—in May of last year, a Man Ray photograph went for $12.4 million.
“They said it was arrogant for a fashion photographer to talk about Race and problems in America.” — James Martin
Beginning in the 1960s, Avedon took a turn toward the topical and the political that would define the second part of his career, and he created a style to match. In 1964, he published Nothing Personal with his old classmate Baldwin, who had become renowned for books like The Fire Next Time. The collaboration, which married Avedon’s photographs to Baldwin’s text, looked at hard truths of American society, with a focus on race. The criticism of the book was fierce. “They said it was arrogant for a fashion photographer to talk about race and problems in America,” says Martin. And in the face of the blowback, “He took a long pause” from portraits, Martin adds.
But by the end of the decade, he was ready to take his new approach to another level, and the results are on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the form of three enormous mural photographs made from 1969 to 1971. Together, the unframed works, which hang on cleats, take over an entire gallery, all standing 10 feet tall, with one more than 35 feet wide.
On view until October, the three groupings of multiple figures depict Andy Warhol and members of his Factory, including Paul Morrissey and Joe Dallesandro; the U.S. military architects of the Vietnam War; and a leading set of opponents of that war, the group of dissidents known as the Chicago Seven. The works were printed in sections and then combined, with the figures lined up as if in a frieze. The murals have not been on view together at the Met in more than 20 years, having spent that time rolled up in storage.
“They’re huge, and they create an effect on your body, your shoulders, your eyes and consciousness,” says Jeff Rosenheim, the Met’s chief photography curator. “It’s a very physical show.” He adds, “It’s a very sexy way to think about what a photograph is.”
The late 1960s was a tumultuous time in American history, and as Fraenkel notes of Avedon, “He always wanted to be relevant.” The depiction of the opposing cultural forces may have been an attempt to make the viewer pick a side. “It makes you question what group you’re part of,” Rosenheim says.
Jerome Smith and Isaac Reynolds, civil rights workers for CORE, New York, December 10, 1963’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
For these, Avedon used an old-fashioned-looking 8-by-10 camera on a tripod—a Deardorff or a Sinar Norma, whose mechanics helped him maintain eye contact with his subjects. This increasingly became his choice for portraits. (The Lartigue photo cited by Iseman showed him using a small, hand-held Rolleiflex camera, the better for nimbly moving around.)
Martin says that Avedon also instituted a “series of nos,” stylistic choices he renounced, including the use of props, to facilitate direct confrontation between viewer and subject. Plain white backgrounds helped. “He wanted to set himself apart from his earlier work,” says Martin. “The murals at the Met are part of that. And that stripped-down look stayed with his portrait work through most of his career.”
Avedon used that treatment for the images in The Family, a Rolling Stone commission of 1976 that resulted in pictures of the presidential candidates and life on the campaign trail, as well as encompassing portraits of other leading American figures. Most notably, it led, in a slightly looser form, to his late-career series In the American West, considered by many to be his masterpiece.
Shot over five years in 21 states, the series was commissioned by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Avedon exposed 17,000 negatives in the process of producing images like the most famous one in the series, Ronald Fisher, Beekeeper, Davis, California, May 9, 1981, a shirtless man covered in bees. As opposed to much of his work, the subjects weren’t famous—they were farmers, miners and waitresses. But at the same time, Avedon was doing advertising work like the Brooke Shields images. “His dexterity is unusual, and you see that in the choices in the show,” Martin says of the Gagosian exhibition’s variety.
‘Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
Several prominent contributors to Avedon 100, including actress Chloë Sevigny, Oscar-winning director Ron Howard and the Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra, picked American West images.
“With his plain background, everything else becomes important, like the expression and the pose,” says Dijkstra, who has had her own solo show at the Guggenheim Museum. “He’s making common people special, so that you take the time to look at them.” Himes of Christie’s thinks that, as far as Avedon’s market goes, these images may have the most upside: “They are so undervalued,” he says. “We’ve been working to inch that forward.”
Even in his later years, Avedon was involved in every detail, says Marla Weinhoff, who served as a set designer for Avedon from the mid-’80s onward, including on Versace shoots, and also was the interior designer of his homes. Weinhoff worked on his very last project, Democracy, commissioned by the New Yorker. “He was very controlling, but also very collaborative,” she recalls. “He had a generosity of spirit.”
‘Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York, May 6, 1957’ Photo: © The Richard Avedon Foundation
The field that Avedon mastered with 20th-century analog technology would never look the same again. “He died at the end of an era of photography,” says Martin. “At the very end of his life, we experimented with digital capture. But the whole industry was changing.”
By then, though, Avedon did not have much left to prove. He was the first photographer to have two exhibitions in his lifetime at the Met, and they came in an era when photography itself was finally being taken more seriously as an art form and as a valuable collecting field. As Gefter puts it, “Avedon’s career served as an avatar for the evolution of photography in the art world.”
In his own words, Avedon had a playfully philosophic take on his life’s work. “My photographs don’t go below the surface,” he said in 1970, adding, “I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.”
This is the start of the second item:
Tiffany: Not Just a Shopping Destination, but a World-Class Museum
When the redone Tiffany & Co. flagship store opens on the corner of Fifth Avenue, there won’t just be showstopping diamonds on display.
Julian Schnabel in front of an untitled 2021 work, which will be displayed at the revamped Tiffany & Co. flagship store on Fifth Avenue
By guest author Stephen Wallis | Photography by Nagi Sakai for WSJ. Magazine
April 20, 2023
When Tiffany & Co. reopens its New York City flagship on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street this spring, following three years of work, visitors will hardly recognize the street-level sales floor famously featured in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or any other floor, for that matter. Where dark-green marble and teak columns once surrounded a bank of art deco elevators, a showstopping painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat now hangs. It’s the same one, Equals Pi, that featured prominently in Tiffany’s 2021 ad campaign starring married musicians Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who crooned “Moon River,” the theme song of the 1961 movie. The canvas was chosen especially for the robin’s-egg-blue background that nearly matches Tiffany’s own trademarked blue. It’s an intentionally placed lure—inviting in those tourists who come to re-create Audrey Hepburn’s dreamy window-shopping scene.
In the new-look Tiffany, splashy art abounds: A concave, faceted stainless-steel Anish Kapoor wall sculpture in the third-floor wedding and engagement area seems tailor-made for celebratory ring-shopping selfies. Step off the elevators on the sixth floor, which is devoted to home and accessories, and there is one of Julian Schnabel’s signature broken-crockery paintings, from his Victory series; it depicts flowering rosebushes inspired by those that grow on his property in Montauk, New York. Schnabel has also created a limited-edition series of plates, which make their debut as part of an installation he conceived using a seven-foot-long tiled table surrounded by hand-painted bronze chairs with velvet cushions, all made by him, displayed next to one of his famed Blind Girl paintings, which is on loan to Tiffany.
Schnabel also designed limited-edition stoneware sets of plates, which will be displayed at an installation of his own design. He calls the trademarked colour Tiffany Blue “endearing.”
The project is a rare commercial collaboration for Schnabel, who says his connection with the company, as with so many people, goes back to Audrey Hepburn and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But the biggest factor in his decision to participate was the man who reached out, Peter Marino, the New York–based architect and art collector.
For decades, Marino has been a go-to architect for LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, masterminding sumptuous, often art-filled boutiques for LVMH’s brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bulgari, Hublot and Fendi, including several near Tiffany on 57th Street. (And in Paris, the new Dior flagship, which includes a gallery and a restaurant.) Soon after finalizing its $15.8 billion acquisition of Tiffany in January 2021, LVMH brought in Marino to take over renovations of the Fifth Avenue flagship, which had been planned under Tiffany’s previous management team and were already underway. He set out to reimagine virtually every aspect of the flagship’s interior.
‘Blue Leo,’ 2022, by Gregor Hildebrandt. Photo: Blue Leo, 2022, by Gregor Hildebrandt, compression-molded records, metal bar, marble plinth, 216 x 31 x 31 cm, Photograph By Roman März
Tiffany: Not Just a Shopping Destination, but a World-Class Museum
When the redone Tiffany & Co. flagship store opens on the corner of Fifth Avenue, there won’t just be showstopping diamonds on display.
When Tiffany & Co. reopens its New York City flagship on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street this spring, following three years of work, visitors will hardly recognize the street-level sales floor famously featured in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or any other floor, for that matter. Where dark-green marble and teak columns once surrounded a bank of art deco elevators, a showstopping painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat now hangs. It’s the same one, Equals Pi, that featured prominently in Tiffany’s 2021 ad campaign starring married musicians Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who crooned “Moon River,” the theme song of the 1961 movie. The canvas was chosen especially for the robin’s-egg-blue background that nearly matches Tiffany’s own trademarked blue. It’s an intentionally placed lure—inviting in those tourists who come to re-create Audrey Hepburn’s dreamy window-shopping scene.
In the new-look Tiffany, splashy art abounds: A concave, faceted stainless-steel Anish Kapoor wall sculpture in the third-floor wedding and engagement area seems tailor-made for celebratory ring-shopping selfies. Step off the elevators on the sixth floor, which is devoted to home and accessories, and there is one of Julian Schnabel’s signature broken-crockery paintings, from his Victory series; it depicts flowering rosebushes inspired by those that grow on his property in Montauk, New York. Schnabel has also created a limited-edition series of plates, which make their debut as part of an installation he conceived using a seven-foot-long tiled table surrounded by hand-painted bronze chairs with velvet cushions, all made by him, displayed next to one of his famed Blind Girl paintings, which is on loan to Tiffany.
The project is a rare commercial collaboration for Schnabel, who says his connection with the company, as with so many people, goes back to Audrey Hepburn and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But the biggest factor in his decision to participate was the man who reached out, Peter Marino, the New York–based architect and art collector.
For decades, Marino has been a go-to architect for LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, masterminding sumptuous, often art-filled boutiques for LVMH’s brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bulgari, Hublot and Fendi, including several near Tiffany on 57th Street. (And in Paris, the new Dior flagship, which includes a gallery and a restaurant.) Soon after finalizing its $15.8 billion acquisition of Tiffany in January 2021, LVMH brought in Marino to take over renovations of the Fifth Avenue flagship, which had been planned under Tiffany’s previous management team and were already underway. He set out to reimagine virtually every aspect of the flagship’s interior.
‘Victory at S-chanf IV,’ 2021, by Julian Schnabel. Photo: Victory At S-Chanf Iv, 2021, by Julian Schnabel, oil, plates and bondo on wood, 72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm), © Julian Schnabel, Photograph By Tom Powel Imaging, Courtesy Of The Artist And Vito Schnabel Gallery
LVMH’s goal for the 186-year-old American jewelry and luxury goods company is to marry Tiffany’s legacy of venerable design with cool, contemporary style. Nowhere are those efforts more important than inside the iconic Fifth Avenue store, now dubbed the Landmark (despite it not holding landmark status). Not only the crown jewel of Tiffany’s 337 boutiques worldwide, it is also central to the firm’s history and identity.
“We see the building as a cultural hub,” says the company’s president and CEO, Anthony Ledru. “Without it, Tiffany is not the same brand.” While declining to cite specific numbers, Ledru says the renovation represents “by a lot” the largest investment LVMH has made on a single store, overall and specifically for art.
That investment speaks to LVMH’s business ambitions for the brand, which has been something of a star performer since joining the group’s portfolio. “We doubled the business on high jewelry the first year, and we doubled again the second year, which is quite exceptional,” says Ledru. The next step, he says, is updating existing Tiffany stores or creating new ones. “This year, there’s really a big acceleration at the global level—in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Paris, in Milan, in London,” he says. “The Landmark is the first big one.”
The granite, marble and limestone art deco facade of Cross & Cross’s seven-story 1940 building has been preserved, and its familiar bronze Atlas clock—refurbished and reinstalled—still flexes its muscles above the Fifth Avenue marquee. On top, a new, eye-catching three-story glass extension, designed by architect Shohei Shigematsu of the firm OMA, glows like a beacon.
A rendering of the refreshed Tiffany & Co. store, showing the new top floors, designed by OMA.
Inside, “it’s a total new building,” says Marino, who recounts getting a call about the project from Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the morning after the deal closed. The aim, Marino says, was to create a fresh look and identity for Tiffany, which, as he puts it, “had drifted towards a very middle ground of taste, totally nondescript.”
A major component of the strategy is art, both specially commissioned works and existing ones acquired for the project. Many areas of the building now display works by blue-chip names like Richard Prince, Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst, James Turrell, Rashid Johnson and Sarah Sze, in addition to Schnabel, Kapoor, Basquiat and others. While art is a standard component in the LVMH-Marino luxury retail playbook, here it was taken to another level.
“What you’ll see in the store is quite unique in terms of the number of artworks and the pedigree of the artists,” says Alexandre Arnault, executive vice president for product and communication at Tiffany and Bernard Arnault’s second-oldest son. Arnault fils consulted closely with Marino and his father—one of the world’s leading art collectors—on acquisitions and commissions.
Even before the renovations, few stores could match the Tiffany flagship’s draw as a nexus of culture and commerce, occupying a prominent position on one of the world’s most famous shopping corridors. Still, visitors today expect visually stimulating and shareable displays or in-store amenities that go beyond shopping.
The flagship’s revamped main floor. Photo: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
The sixth-floor cafe, originally introduced in 2017, has been redesigned, featuring jewelry-themed ceramic wall sculptures by Molly Hatch, and will be called the Blue Box Café by Daniel Boulud. Galleries on the eighth and ninth floors will host long-term rotating exhibitions. “We really wanted to give the feeling of this being more than just a store and a full experience,” says Alexandre Arnault.
Many of the artworks in the store have a connection with Tiffany, whether visually, in their use of Tiffany-like blues, or with their content. And several of the works that will be on display, including pieces by Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, Sarah Sze and Schnabel, are part of Tiffany’s permanent collection. Basquiat’s Equals Pi is on loan from the LVMH collection, and there will be a group of works on loan from Marino.
On the ground floor, a commission by Not Vital that is encircled by the central jewelry counter features 15 abstract portraits—geometric totems, essentially—of famous women who have worn Tiffany, from Shirley Temple to Babe Paley to Jackie Kennedy. Modeled in silver, the figures reflect the spectacular skylight overhead devised by Paris architect Hugh Dutton with “new technology, glass beams,” Marino says, “and it literally resembles a cut diamond, with thousands of facets.”
Schnabel in his studio with an oil painting on fabric, Childhood And Old Age, 2022.
On the third floor, Marino enlisted artist Rashid Johnson to create a commission for the Rose Salon, so called for its blush-pink fabric walls. The more than 12-foot-tall piece is part of his Falling Man series, featuring upside-down figures, typically composed of mirrored or ceramic tiles, their blocky bodies evoking the pixelated characters of early video games. For this iteration, Johnson painted the figure using wax over tiles custom-colored in Tiffany Blue.
“These works are meant to be kind of existential investigations, meaning the idea of man falling through space, finding himself,” explains Johnson. Working with Tiffany Blue fit into his ongoing experimentations with expanding his color palette. “Using that colour within this context really speaks to the place,” he says.
Asked if any artists took issue with the idea of incorporating Tiffany Blue into their commissions, Marino retorts, “You mean, did Michelangelo mind painting Jesus Christ when he was commissioned for the Sistine Chapel? I don’t think so.”
Schnabel, who calls Tiffany Blue “endearing,” used it as the base color for his stoneware plates, which have 22-karat-gold edges and feature the names of artists, filmmakers, writers and musicians, selected and handwritten by Schnabel. “I thought, OK, who would I like to have dinner with? Who do I care about?” he explains. “These are all names that touch a chord somehow in me.”
A stoneware plate, designed by Julian Schnabel, to be displayed at Tiffany & Co.’s redone Manhattan flagship. Photo: Julian Schnabel, ‘Untitled (Chinese),’ 2011, Inkjet Print, Oil, resin on polyester
It’s a highly personal cast of creatives, some dead, some living, from 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi to 20th-century poet W.H. Auden to contemporary artists Luigi Ontani and Laurie Anderson, both friends of Schnabel’s. Others include musician Benjamin Clementine and movie director heroes such as Luis Buñuel and Héctor Babenco.
A total of 12 names are spread across two sets of six sets of plates, each consisting of a dinner plate, a bread plate and a dessert plate (only five editions of the two sets will be available, priced at $7,000). Schnabel likes to imagine dinner-party guests trading plates to mix and match. “Why not have Lou Reed, W.H. Auden and Luigi Ontani together? It’s a way of rewriting history.”
Tiffany has a history of working with artists, dating to 1902, when Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of founder Charles Lewis Tiffany, was tabbed to be the company’s first art director. Decades later, in the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns teamed up on window displays for the firm and Andy Warhol created a line of Tiffany greeting cards. (Some collaborations can be risky and have mixed results for long-established brands like Tiffany, as with its recent team-up with Nike on Tiffany Blue “swoosh” sneakers, which were widely criticized by coolhunters online, even as they quickly sold out.)
The new leadership clearly sees value in partnerships with artists and plans to introduce more in the coming year. “It’s an opportunity for us to speak about our products in a different way,” says Alexandre Arnault, “and a way for us also to gather creative minds that can bring a completely outside view.”
Arnault was integral to the company’s collaborations with artist Daniel Arsham, whose limited-edition travel cases for LVMH-owned luggage brand Rimowa were conceived when Arnault was CEO there, and since has produced editioned objects and jewelry designs for Tiffany. Arsham’s 12-foot-tall sculpture Bronze Eroded Venus of Arles is positioned on the store’s third floor, encircled by the graceful staircase Marino designed with Elsa Peretti–inspired curves and transparent balustrades ornamented with rock crystal, as it spirals up to the eighth floor.
“I really turned the gas up on every single floor,” says Marino. “Each is its own planet with its own palette and its own product.”
The architect replaced dull wall-to-wall carpeting with floors of pale oak parquet and custom-woven area rugs. Dark paneling was swapped out for walls of white marble and shimmering mirror, fabric and expanses of artisanal lacquer. Sculptural display cases were tailored for each area, including dedicated spaces for the brand’s special collections by Tiffany’s legendary designers Jean Schlumberger, Peretti and Paloma Picasso. The furniture includes custom Marino designs, custom artisan designs and significant vintage pieces, reminders by association of Tiffany’s heritage as an exemplar of American design.
The staircase from the 7th floor looking down. Photo: Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
On the third floor, Marino created wavy, pearlescent walls and covered the ceiling in platinum leaf, a refined nod to the silver foil that famously lined the Factory studio of Andy Warhol, his first client. Bordering the floor’s main display areas are private selling rooms, each featuring the work of a different artist. Vik Muniz lined one space in a wallpaper of trompe l’oeil pink peonies he created with collaged bits of painted paper and then photographed. Damien Hirst clad another room with a wallpaper based on his exuberant pointillist-style Cherry Blossom paintings, an installation Marino says is “going to be a heart-stopper.”
Many of the artists who created works for the Fifth Avenue building have long relationships with Marino, few longer than Nancy Lorenz, who has been doing collaborations with him for nearly three decades. Lorenz conceived expansive installations for multiple spaces, including two series of handmade wall panels, her largest-ever commission.
For the sixth floor—where home is a renewed focus for Tiffany with the appointment of its own artistic director, Lauren Santo Domingo—Lorenz composed elegant panels of blue-gray lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl. On the seventh floor, which will feature what Tiffany claims will be the most impressive collection of its high jewelry anywhere in the world, she created atmospheric wraparound panels in lacquer, mother-of-pearl and water-gilt white-gold leaf—contemporary riffs on traditional Japanese cloud screens.
Marino has even conceived of a sort of shrine to Breakfast at Tiffany’s: the so-called Audrey Room on the fifth floor. Declining to reveal details, the architect describes it as a space where “anybody can take a selfie and be part of ‘Moon River.’ ”
This is the start of the last feature today:
How Jane Hertzmark Hudis Keeps Estée Lauder Fresh
As an executive group president of the Estée Lauder Companies, she wakes around 4 a.m. to read, but the last day of the weekend is her secret weapon.
By guest author Lane Florsheim | Photography by Yumi Matsuo for the Wall Street Journal Magazine
April 17, 2023
For Jane Hertzmark Hudis, an executive group president of the Estée Lauder Companies, Sundays are the new Mondays. They’re her moment to organize for the week ahead. “It’s my most relaxed, creative time,” says Hertzmark Hudis. “When I walk in on Monday, I know exactly what needs to be done.”
The native New Yorker, who’s worked at Estée Lauder for 37 years since graduating with her M.B.A. from Columbia, leads 10 brands under the company’s umbrella, including La Mer, Bobbi Brown and, recently, Tom Ford Beauty. (In November, Estée Lauder announced plans to purchase the overall Tom Ford company for more than $2 billion.)
For Hertzmark Hudis, keeping the 77-year-old Estée Lauder Companies on top of the beauty industry’s lightning-fast trend cycle means being a voracious consumer of Instagram and TikTok, as well as spending around 100 days of the year on the road, including, recently, in South Korea and Brazil. Business trips involve store visits and meetings with the company’s international teams, with sessions she calls “Jane Unplugged,” where she encourages employees to share anything they’d like with her. “The only way you understand the world is to travel it,” she says.
Hertzmark Hudis lives in Manhattan with her husband, Clifford Hudis, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the couple has two sons. Here, she talks about her early wake-up time; advice from Leonard Lauder; and why social media has had an “amazingly positive” impact on the beauty industry.
What time do you get up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do after waking up?
I get up between 4 and 5 a.m. I love to get started. The first thing I do is read. I devour the most amount of information in the least amount of time—news and social media. I get a handle on the world before I go back into the world.
How do you like your coffee and breakfast?
My Monday mornings are all about my lattes, a traditional one with whole milk. My favorite is from a place called Gregorys. And usually a plain yogurt with fruit or two poached eggs.
What’s your exercise routine?
I work out about four days a week, and I do a combination of yoga and strength training. But I don’t do that on Monday mornings. I’m focused on my work.
What’s a market you find particularly inspiring?
China is so inspiring. They’ve always been so ahead in terms of beauty and their commitment to beauty rituals, using seven or eight products at one time, versus here where sometimes we just want to do the least amount and get out the door. A lot of that extra usage in the East is now influencing the West. People are using more products, they’re more knowledgeable. They know so much more about ingredients and what they do.
How do you think about social media’s impact on the beauty industry?
I think it’s had an amazingly positive influence on the beauty industry. People used to have to go to a store to see products demonstrated, and the fact that all over the world you can experience skin care, makeup, hair care and even fragrance [online] has led to buoyancy across all four categories. There’s an involvement in beauty today via social media that couldn’t happen in a magazine or TV commercial. Beauty has become entertainment as well.
Who are your mentors?
One of my great mentors is Rose Marie Bravo; she was the CEO of Burberry. Leonard Lauder has been an incredible mentor. In my other world, I have an incredible husband, Dr. Clifford Hudis. I am madly in love with him, and we’ve been together a long time. And I have two wonderful boys. I think having children impacts your empathy and potentially your leadership style—how to be patient and how to give love and how to be understanding of other women in the workforce who face all kinds of challenges. And I love seeing the world through my children’s eyes and growing up a second time through them.
What do you do for self-care?
I take a bath every night. It’s my transition time from work. In my apartment, I can see the sky and we have a terrace and garden. It’s a great calm-down moment for me. Baths are incredibly restorative.
What’s your most prized possession?
My wedding ring.
What are you reading and watching?
I just started reading a book a friend gave me called The Other Side of the Coin, by Angela Kelly, the person who dressed the queen. In terms of watching, I’m a crime-show fanatic. I can watch Law & Order over and over and over again. I test myself: Do I remember what happened? It’s sort of the furthest thing from beauty. It’s intrigue and using my brain in different ways.
What’s a piece of advice you’ve gotten that’s been important to you?
Leonard Lauder always says, Relationships are forever. And to be kind and to say “please” and “thank you.” You never know who you’re going to meet along the way who could ultimately be your colleague, your boss. It’s happened to me. Someone I met very early on in my career ended up being the head of beauty at a very important retailer. Cherish and be kind to the people around you, because that’s what will carry you through your whole life.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Newsletter of Last Week
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Higlights of Last Week for your convenience just click on the item
Associations
Results of the 19th ITMF Global Textile Industry Survey https://textile-future.com/archives/109531
CEO
Succession: what really happens when a CEO dies? https://textile-future.com/archives/109253
China
Chinese Economy Defies Naysayers https://textile-future.com/archives/109409
Coffee
Meet the coffee chain donating 65% of its profits to the community https://textile-future.com/archives/109355
Companies
Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR Swiss Bossard Group Sales for the first quarter 2023 – Continued sales growth https://textile-future.com/archives/109262
Lenzing also offers locally produced TENCEL™ fibres to Chinese customers for the first time https://textile-future.com/archives/109349
Nestlé: Calling cold coffee lovers! Nescafé launches Ice Roast https://textile-future.com/archives/109419
Coal Is Too Hot to Handle—Maybe Even for Glencore https://textile-future.com/archives/109455
Destination for announced High-Fashion Menswear – Zegna is launching a new shop at Globus Zurich (CH) https://textile-future.com/archives/109503
Resolutions of the 79th Annual General Meeting of Lenzing AG https://textile-future.com/archives/109518
CALIDA Holding AG 2023 Annual General Meeting – all proposals approved https://textile-future.com/archives/109538
Georg Fischer Annual Shareholders’ Meeting approves all proposals https://textile-future.com/archives/109548
Rieter Annual General Meeting 2023 https://textile-future.com/archives/109593
Nestlé and PAI to create joint venture for frozen pizza in Europe https://textile-future.com/archives/109625
Covid
In 2021, 5957 persons in Switzerland died from COVID-19 https://textile-future.com/archives/109243
Data
EU gas consumption decreased by 17.7 % https://textile-future.com/archives/109499
EU hourly wages & salaries increased by 4.4 % in 2022 https://textile-future.com/archives/109561
Dive into Eurostat’s essential reads https://textile-future.com/archives/109565
Price of driving lessons up almost 5 % in 2022 https://textile-future.com/archives/109575
Government finance statistics: updated information https://textile-future.com/archives/109599
Government finance statistics: financial derivatives https://textile-future.com/archives/109601
Department Stores
Going down: the destabilising demise of the town-centre department store https://textile-future.com/archives/109443
EU
Energy savings: Commission presents new rules to reduce ‘standby’ consumption of electrical appliances https://textile-future.com/archives/109268
Antitrust: EU Commission prolongs validity of Motor Vehicle Block Exemption Regulation and updates the Supplementary Guidelines https://textile-future.com/archives/109272
Banking Union: EU Commission proposes reform of bank crisis management and deposit insurance framework https://textile-future.com/archives/109386
EU wins World Trade Organization case on India’s tariffs on information and communication technology products https://textile-future.com/archives/109390
COLLEGE MEETING: The European Commission appoints two Directors in the Publications Office https://textile-future.com/archives/109394
EU Commission calls for massive boost in enabling digital education and providing digital skill https://textile-future.com/archives/109406
EU Commission welcomes political agreement on the European Chips Act https://textile-future.com/archives/109428
Antitrust: EU Commission confirms unannounced inspections in the fashion sector https://textile-future.com/archives/109472
Mergers: EU Commission further cuts red tape for merging businesses https://textile-future.com/archives/109558
Events
Colorjet at ITMA 2023 in Milan https://textile-future.com/archives/109462
Fespa Munich: Programme Enriching Customer Experience through Personalisation https://textile-future.com/archives/109485
Karl Mayer: Sustainable lightweight construction at JEC World in Paris https://textile-future.com/archives/109509
OECD
OECD: Starting Strong: Empowering Young Children in the Digital Age presents new evidence and identifies key challenges for the early childhood education and care sector. It also presents and assesses policies that have worked in 30 countries https://textile-future.com/archives/109367
Science
Swiss Empa: Biodrones – Delicate, diligent, transient https://textile-future.com/archives/109370
Swiss Empa: Building insulation – Translucent bricks https://textile-future.com/archives/109586
Smart Homes
Report: 120 million smart homes in US, Europe https://textile-future.com/archives/109431
Switzerland
Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland files indictment against one person for providing support to IS and the Al-Qaeda https://textile-future.com/archives/109246
International criminal law: former Gambian interior minister appears before the Federal Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity https://textile-future.com/archives/109401
Swiss Federal Council adopts 2023 Space Policy https://textile-future.com/archives/109468
Swiss Federal Council discusses outcome of extraordinary session https://textile-future.com/archives/109480
In 2022, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland set operational priorities and initiated structural adaptations https://textile-future.com/archives/109541
Television
BBC chairman Sharp role at risk? https://textile-future.com/archives/109554
Ukraine
Ukraine: Switzerland sanctions Wagner Group https://textile-future.com/archives/109582
Ukraine joins the EU Civil Protection Mechanism https://textile-future.com/archives/109595
United Kingdom
Sunak’s maths plans overlook the real skills workers need today https://textile-future.com/archives/109493
Webinar
Groz-Beckert: Seminar in April: Avoiding fabric issues in circular knitting machines https://textile-future.com/archives/109620
WIPO
WIPO: Help select the winners of the 2023 World IP Day Video Competition https://textile-future.com/archives/109437
Worldbank
World Bank Releases Logistics Performance Index 2023 https://textile-future.com/archives/109606
WTO
WTO dispute panels issue reports regarding Indian tech tariffs https://textile-future.com/archives/109449
Applications invited for WTO Workshop on Article 67 of TRIPS Agreement https://textile-future.com/archives/109452