One percenters are people, too. They put on their Brionis one leg at a time. They have their own problems, like finding the right outfits for their poodles. To ease their pain, we offer these mags.
The Robb Report features some of the finest luxuries, from brands like Fabergé to getaways in Venice. Unfortunately, the articles read like paid advertisements, despite covering interesting subjects such as Louis Vuitton’s artisanal workshops near Paris. When the mag features wines or hotels, it’s not to review with the possibility of a negative rating. It’s as if everywhere the rich go and everything they consume is perfect. Even the wealthy could benefit from some balance and advice on what’s worth the big bucks and what’s not.
With model Christy Turlington gracing the cover, we expected DuJour to be just another big, glossy advertisement. A look inside proved us wrong. For a mag whose sole purpose is to cater to “people with expensive tastes,” as co-Editor-in-Chief Keith Pollock said in his introduction, we reluctantly say of the launch issue: Not bad. Not bad at all. DuJour, which boasts as an adviser Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan, has a great layout and real content, including interviews with “It” designer Jason Wu and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
Town & Country fashions itself as the voice of old money, but it isn’t stuffy or self-congratulatory about it. Instead, it’s sophisticated and clever enough to create a tabloid spread on cads preying on rich women throughout the ages, keyed to a new production of “The Heiress” on Broadway. In a nod to the unsavory beginnings of many fortunes, a feature on China details the corruption that’s fueling that nation’s growth.
WatchTime’s Editor-in-Chief Joe Thompson claims that the biggest story in the Swiss watch world is the dwindling supply of hairsprings — tiny springs, thinner than a human hair — that’s critical in watch movements. You wouldn’t know that from a cursory glance inside the monthly glossy timepiece mag, which devotes its cover feature to a review of the new Rolex Explorer II (which scores mediocre ratings, by the way).
Yankees manager Joe Girardi has been renowned as a good Samaritan ever since he stopped at 2 a.m. to help the lady in the traffic accident after the 2009 World Series. But in this week’s New Yorker, Girardi takes things to a whole new level, recalling the time he was sent down to the minor leagues during his stint with the Chicago Cubs. “I got sent down for 40 days, which was interesting, because I had come to know that the Lord Jesus was in the desert for 40 days,” Girardi tells Gay Talese. On a not-so-saintly note, Malcolm Gladwell chronicles the nauseating story of how Penn State perv Jerry Sandusky systematically set up “a pipeline of troubled young boys” by founding a nonprofit called Second Mile 35 years ago.
We’re still reeling from last week’s cringeworthy cover of New York, which was, in a typical show of TV-babyish gum-smacking, graced by Mindy Kaling. Who’s Mindy Kaling, you ask? Who the heck cares? This week, aside from a depressing feature on elite kids cheating at Stuyvesant High School, we get a somewhat trifling but amusing account of John Gotti Jr.’s hire of a hapless henchman to produce an upcoming Hollywood movie about his father, the Teflon Don. Junior felt he could trust the “325-pound, Brooklyn-accented salesperson” named Marc Fiore. The gentleman, however, didn’t go over so well in the offices of Hollywood producers. In case you’re wondering, yes, he had a time corralling Lindsay Lohan.
Time does an impressive job crystallizing last week’s YouTube-driven tumult across the Middle East on what must have been extremely tight deadlines. “The new normal in Egypt and Libya is not as perilous as in Pakistan. Not yet,” reporter Bobby Ghosh writes. That strikes us as a disturbingly safe statement. No less pithy is a photo accompanying another story about the sanctions against Iran, which shows a lonely salesman inside an empty “Apple store” in Tehran. While the storefront is anything but authorized by the folks in Cupertino, we’re wondering how long the shop and its big glass window will last before it goes the way of KFC, so to speak.