How to spend it in September

SEE

Celebrating 60 Years of Gucci in Japan 

It’s been 60 years since Gucci landed in Japan. To celebrate, the brand is staging an exhibition dedicated to its signature Bamboo bag, which dates back to around 1947, at their gallery in Ginza, Tokyo. Around 400 archived models will be on display across two floors, and a special curation of bags from the ’80s and ’90s has also been reimagined by local artists and artisans, including photographer Daido Moriyama and master goldsmith Morihito Katsura. These will be available for purchase at the exhibition’s close. Inès Cross

SHOP

MACK at Judd Foundation in New York

To coincide with the autumn release of Donald Judd Furniture, art book publisher MACK is hosting a three-day pop-up store at the Judd Foundation in New York. Shop old and new titles, including books from their new A24 catalogue. Popular authors Sofia Coppola, Collier Schorr and Alec Soth will also be making appearances, with book signings scheduled across the weekend. IC

DRINK

Mr Lyan Martinis and french fries in Soho

First enticed by an invitation for a dinner of “champagne, chicken and caviar”, the renowned mixologist Mr Lyan has now become a regular at Soho restaurant Bébé Bob. This autumn he turned his hand to their cocktail list, designing a series of drinks (a red apple spritz, a signature martini) to be paired with a snack menu of mini chicken schnitzels with caviar or trout roe and chicken fat doughnuts and french fries. Baya Simons

SHOP

Barneys returns to New York

Nearly five years after it closed its doors, heritage department store Barneys is back for a limited-time only in downtown SoHo. The pop-up is a collaboration with luxury cosmetics brand Hourglass, which launched its first ever beauty counter at the original Madison Avenue store. Expect a programme of beauty events and limited-edition products, including a Barneys x Hourglass Cosmetics eye shadow palette. Rosanna Dodds

SEE

Ariana Papademetropoulos’s psychic paintings in Milan

The California-based artist, celebrated for her ethereal watermark paintings, makes her debut in Italy in September with a new series of oil paintings based on five years of recordings with her psychic. The works explore the spiritual realm: “planets plunging into the abyss and giant soap bubbles to ghostly parlour animals and sensual female bodies bewitched by spells”. An old-school telephone booth has been installed alongside the paintings to allow visitors to listen to the pair’s meandering conversations. IC

EAT

Dinner with Tate Modern, Carousel and Audio Visual Arts Festival 

Carousel restaurant has teamed up with Audio Visual Arts Festival for a multisensory dinner at London’s Tate Modern. A five-course set menu cooked by Michelin-starred chef Yoji Tokuyoshi is accompanied by a DJ set from Gilles Peterson. Bar tickets are also available, welcoming guests from 9pm for drinks and katsu sandos to fuel a second set and after-party. IC

BUY

A book for young film critics in the making

Hey Kids, Watch This! intends to offer more interesting answers to the question of “what could the kids watch?” than a perfunctory scroll through the streaming services. Produced by indie production company A24, it has endless ideas for child-friendly films, from regular movies that work as family films (such as An American in Paris) to lost and forgotten wonders like the animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which was made in 1926 using beautifully detailed cardboard cutouts. There’s also trivia and games, and a section with space for young readers to rate each film and give their own reviews. Baya Simons

SEE

Motoring unicorns gather in the hills of Bologna

The 2024 Concorso d’Eleganza Varignana 1705 brings together 30 of the world’s finest pre-1973 classic cars in the grounds of the Palazzo di Varignana, in the hills outside Bologna. Now in its second year, the car show will see vehicles judged in classes including “prewar period”, “excellence from Stuttgart”, “the best of Motor Valley” and “British postcards”. A new special class, the FuoriConcorso, pays tribute to the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, the first Ferrari by Enzo Ferrari in all but name (when he left Alfa Romeo in 1939, Ferrari was legally bound not to use his own name on any car or company for four years). Highlights from across the show include an Alfa Romeo Tipo 6C 1750, Lamborghini Miura Prototype, Benz “Jadewagen” 8/20 PS and a Maserati 3500 Vignale Spyder. Tim Auld

SHOP

Inventive wooden furniture from Piet Hein Eek in New York

Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek made his name transforming unsuspecting scrap materials into artisanal furniture, with his scrapwood Waste’ table and Waste Waste table made from even tinier offcuts. In a new exhibition for The Future Perfect in New York, he pushes himself to try new forms and finishes. Eek will debut a scrapwood cupboard, a “crumbling” recycled wood cabinet, an organically shaped lounger created using old metal tubes and a Waste Waste Waste coffee table finished in high-gloss lacquer. Marion Willingham

BUY

A book of John Craxton’s paintings of cats and their many moods

The cats of Chania often congregate around the city’s archeological sites, finding in the ruins an abundance of shade and cool stone. The British painter John Craxton, who made the island of Crete his home in later life, liked to paint them as they sat on the monuments. He had loved cats his whole life and Greece offered plenty of feline company, as well as the peace in which to paint. His depictions, often made from memory in his studio, are now the subject of a book. “Craxton’s cat pictures run the gamut of emotions from self-confident to fearful,” observes writer and curator Andrew Lambirth. They span “the self-possessed pampered house guest regally reclining on her favourite cushion to the tiniest ball of fluff kitten frightened of a mouse”. His cats are playful, independent creatures – qualities that many saw in him, too. BS

SHOP

Expertly curated clothing and homeware on Chiltern Street 

Maria Lemos began her career doing PR for Sonia Rykiel in Paris before moving to John Galliano, eventually opening her own boutiques in London and Athens, named Mouki Mou for her daughter. Her latest venture is M.II, a boutique which expands her usual womenswear and homeware offerings with an edit of menswear and a clutch of new labels. The shop, found on Marylebone’s Chiltern Street, will sell Kyoto-New York-based brand Taiga Takahashi and Antwerp’s Unkruid as well as Casey Casey and Extreme Cashmere. BS

BUY 

Merch for the romance novel community

831 Stories launched earlier this year as a “romance fiction company”, setting out to publish juicy reads with accompanying merch and fun, glamorous events like romance book swaps in wine bars. Their first book release follows a political strategist whose career has been derailed by her husband’s sex scandal, through to a professional encounter with a teenage boy band crush. The initial offering of merch features caps embroidered with romance literature tropes: “enemies to lovers”, “second chance romance” and “sports romance”. BS

EAT

Hauser & Wirth bring Italy to Bruton

Da Costa, which opens this September at Hauser & Wirth in Somerset takes its inspiration from co-founder Iwan Wirth’s grandfather’s home village in the Veneto region of Italy. The menu features traditional northern Italian recipes made with locally sourced Somerset produce, including vegetables grown in the walled garden (and some wines on the 100-strong list from its vineyards), cooked in the open plan kitchen. The walls host artworks by Philip Guston, Rita Ackermann and Berlinde de Bruyckere, alongside new additions by Italian artists Francesco Vezzoli, Umberto Manzo, and Roberto Coughi. Jessica Salter

BUY

Paintings by dentist-turned-fashion blogger Irina Lakicevic

In the 2010s, Irina Lakicevic was one of the most ubiquitous street-style stars on the fashion circuit. The dentist-turned-fashion blogger’s style, notably her penchant for Phoebe Philo’s Céline, made her a constant front-row presence for more than a decade. Then suddenly, five years ago, she vanished, retreating from the public eye to concentrate on her art. She’s since rebranded herself as a multidisciplinary artist, and is now debuting the work she created in the intervening years. Her hyper-defined, uncanny depictions of women on bicycles, which are made by feeding iPad-created digital sketches into AI software and transposing the prints onto a shimmering velvet fabric, are designed to mimic the “depth and lustre” of an oil painting, says Lakicevic. Dressed in bold, highlighter shades, her subjects proudly “show the span of their colours”, she says. A celebration of the joy of the street as a catwalk. Sara Semic