Meet Sylvie Millstein, A Female Founder In Fashion

Melding American sportswear and French flair, Sylvie Millstein's journey to founding the fashion brand Hellessy is anything but expected.

She launched Hellessy when she was forty years old, after a successful career at Chanel and while juggling a family with four children. Becoming a designer wasn't always the plan for Millstein, but working in fashion was—she made it her goal to work at Chanel after reading her first Vogue magazine at age thirteen.

"I became obsessed with fashion, but more precisely with the new Chanel designed by Karl Lagerfeld. I never thought I could be talented enough as a designer to join the creative team, but getting a Master [degree] from one of the top French Business Schools—known as the Grandes Écoles de Commerce in France—represents a golden ticket to enter any luxury group," the designer says. "So I made it my academic goal, graduated from HEC, and landed a marketing position in the LVMH group."

Soon after, Millstein moved to Japan where she took a position with the luxury house, Givenchy, and it was in the East Asian nation where her Chanel goals manifested. She was offered a job as a buyer with her dream company, eventually moving into a key role as the GMM for Chanel, Japan. For the company at the time, and given the size of the market, this was a career highlight.

She eventually left Chanel to relocate to New York to start a family, where Millstein found herself disillusioned with the state of the job market in fashion. "I could not find any position in the corporate fashion world that would be as exciting as what I already accomplished," she says. That was when the idea to launch Hellessy came to be. It felt like the next logical step in her career.

Evening Dresses Online

These Cocktails Are Sure To Add A Spark On Independence Day

Independence Day is often about cookouts and days at the beach, but it's also about toasting to all the freedoms Americans have fought so hard to achieve. That's something worthy of a celebratory toast! While toasting with Champagne is always a fantastic idea, these cocktails are sure to help to set the mood.A traditional frozen margarita is layered between strawberry purée and blue curacao, at Dos Caminos in New York City. "The Red, White, and Blue Margarita features our traditional frozen margarita layered between strawberry purée and blue curacao, making it a perfect festive treat to kick off the holiday weekend,” said Matthew Arrants, beverage manager.

An adult spin on a childhood classic, Chicago’s Onward serves a tall glass of sparkling Gran Passione prosecco with a floating firecracker popsicle for a festive Fourth of July treat.  “As you’re drinking sparkling wine, the popsicle slowly melts adding new layers of flavor. As you near the end when the colors gather at the bottom of the glass, the best part is the last three sips which creates a burst of the nostalgic flavors of cherry, lemon and blue raspberry from the classic summertime treat,” said assistant general manager Vicente Romero.

At Greene St. Kitchen in Las Vegas,  this cocktail is made with butterfly pea flower infused Pineapple Plantation rum, Kalani Coconut liqueur, coconut cream, soda, strawberry sorbetto and gold dusted mint leaves.  "Stars and Stripes was inspired by one of my favorite ice pops off the local ice cream truck, the Rocket Pop. It was my go-to and always reminded me of 4th of July. No matter what time of year, I enjoyed one!" says master intoxicologist Eric Hobbie for Greene St. Kitchen.

'Immeasurable' Impact Of Jean-Michel Basquiat On Exhibit At The Brant Foundation

Chances are you've seen some kid somewhere wearing a Jean-Michel Basquiat t-shirt whether you knew it at the time or not. It likely featured a crown with his name scrawled in all caps underneath.

Chances are you've also never actually seen one of his paintings in person.

And chances are you will not have another opportunity again like the one being presented now through May 15 at The Brant Foundation in New York City's East Village to see so many of his best works in one place at one time.

Basquiat began his career as a graffiti artist before rocketing to international contemporary art superstardom in the 1980s, dying of an accidental drug overdose in 1988 at 27-years-old.

An early death naturally limited his artistic output. His background with graffiti and being a black man resulted in museums turning up their noses at his work when it was still affordable. Private collectors, like Peter Brant, namesake of The Brant Foundation, however, flocked to him, driving up his prices.


By the time museums had caught on, it was too late.

As a result of these unique circumstances, Basquiat's art proves exceedingly difficult to find in public collections making this exhibit, Jean-Michael Basquiat, all the more rare.

If you've never seen a work by Basquiat in person, you are in for a treat.

"I think the experience of seeing a Basquiat work in person is immeasurable," The Art Newspaper reporter Gabriella Angeleti, who has seen the exhibit, said. "It has an immense energy that almost dwarfs the viewer. It's an emotional experience and that's something hard to translate when you view the work through a screen or a book."

In 2017, Basquiat dethroned Andy Warhol, a mentor and admirer, as the most expensive American artist at auction when a Japanese billionaire purchased his Untitled (1982) at a Sotheby's auction for $110.4 million including buyer's premium.

"It's interesting to stand in front of Untitled, (1982), for example, and reflect on what Basquiat would have made of the whole circus around his work if he were still creating today," Angeleti said.

Advance tickets for Jean-Michel Basquiat have long been sold out. A limited number of same-day tickets are available. Contact The Brant Foundation at ticketsnyc@brantfoundation.org to have your name added to a waitlist. Each day the foundation accommodates people on the waitlists for entry on a first-come, first-serve basis. Walk-ins will not be permitted.

Basquiat fever, hot as ever three decades after his passing, has had an unusual effect on the art world and art-admiring public, with a potential silver lining for fans according to Angeleti.

Joe Beef and the Excesses of Restaurant Culture

For Americans living through turbulent times, Canada can seem like a refuge. The Montreal chef David McMillan figures it doesn't hurt for Canadians to have a getaway plan, too. Since 2012, he's owned a lakeside cabin in the Laurentian Mountains, accessible only by boat. It's equipped with solar power, fishing rods and rifles, and enough dried provisions to last a year. McMillan, who has three young daughters, told me, "If anything is weird, I could grab everybody and head up there." The cabin was an inspiration for "Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse," McMillan's second cookbook with Frédéric Morin, his partner in five Montreal restaurants, including Joe Beef. Published late last year, and co-written with Meredith Erickson, a cookbook author who was one of Joe Beef's first servers, the new book is in part a tongue-in-cheek survivalist's manual, with instructions for building a subterranean bunker, making hardtack, and growing endive in darkness. By "apocalypse," the authors mean a range of modern ills, from the "constant noise" of social media to the threat of nuclear war. "We don't want to just survive," Erickson writes. "We want to live it out in full Burgundy style." To that end, the book also collects more than a hundred of the chefs' recipes, including a tater-tot galette, sweetbreads cooked with charcoal and licorice, and a rendition of jambon persillé, a Burgundian charcuterie of ham suspended in parsleyed jelly.

Joe Beef, which opened in 2005, is McMillan and Morin's first and best-known restaurant. It specializes in ambitious but unfussy French cooking—no white tablecloths, no minimalist dishes sprinkled with microgreens or gold leaf. Situated in the former industrial neighborhood of Little Burgundy, near the Lachine Canal, the restaurant has the feel of a ragtag bistro, with vintage furniture and stuffed animal heads mounted on the walls. The menu, written only on chalkboards, in French, is defined by exuberant immoderation, a blend of the haute and the gluttonous. On a given night, it might include a traditional foie-gras torchon or a sandwich of foie gras on white bread; tartare of raw duck, venison, or horsemeat; and a hulking strip steak topped with cheese curds—a Québécois staple—or fat links of boudin noir. Often, it includes dishes that aren't French at all: skate schnitzel, porchetta, barbecued ribs cooked in the back-yard smoker. Diners willing to spend at least a hundred dollars apiece can forgo ordering and let the kitchen stuff them with a dozen courses of its choosing. The food writer John Birdsall once published an ecstatic piece on the site First We Feast titled "I Puked at Joe Beef and It Made Me a Better Man."

For a long time, McMillan and Morin made a point of living the experience that they were selling. McMillan was known for drinking with his customers, and then downing bottles of wine long after dinner service was over. The chefs' spirit of extravagance helped make Joe Beef a success. In 2007, they opened Liverpool House, two doors down, to accommodate Joe Beef overflow; four years later, they expanded Joe Beef into an adjacent space, doubling its capacity. And, a couple of years after that, they opened a wine bar, Le Vin Papillon, two doors down from Liverpool House. Today, they employ a hundred and fifty people. But their ethos of excess proved unsustainable. In an essay for Bon Appétit, in February, McMillan wrote, "The community of people I surrounded myself with ate and drank like Vikings. It worked well in my twenties. It worked well in my thirties. It started to unravel when I was forty. I couldn't shut it off."

Food truck fundraiser for unpaid school lunch charges

Not only were they serving fresh food, but they were helping students in the consumer and technical education program, otherwise known as CTE, learn about the food truck business.

"My favorite answer to that is always being my own boss making my own decisions," The Woodshed Mobile Wood-Fired Pizza owner Tom Babler said when asked about what he enjoys in the business.

Family and consumer sciences and the business departments at Logan Middle School made the decision to join forces and teach students about the real-world food truck opportunities.

"It’s really fun you know seeing how they run their food trucks," Eighth-grader Tyler Stevenson said. "And how they make their food."

The co-founders of Midwest Bites Food Truck worked with the school staff to turn the event into a fundraiser. "We figured that we could make it into a big fundraiser for the school lunch program in hopes that the community will come out and support that and reduce any debts that are out there for the school lunch program," Midwest Bites co-founder Mary Walleser said. "Because no kid should be hungry."

According to Feeding America, one in six children does not know where their next meal will come from.