Where does Charlotte Gainsbourg eat in Paris?
More importantly, where does Vanessa Beecroft buy her rugs?
This is an archived post from an old Christmas Gift Guide. Certain links have been updated or deleted to reflect the ever-changing retail landscape. Below the paywall: A vacation idea from my father-in-law & the best beauty books according to Alexis Page.
GOOD CELEBRITIES
Twice now I’ve spotted Charlotte Gainsbourg eating a very leisurely dinner at Yen. She seemed like a regular. (Is it the Omen of Paris? No.)
Vanessa Beecroft has the best taste of any artist in the world. I make a note anytime she drops her location on Instagram, something she does all the time. (She once admitted, to the New Yorker magazine, that shopping whips her into “a ravenous and stupid frenzy.”) I’ve noticed that no trip to New York, for Vanessa, is complete without a stop at Kermanshah Gallery, the third generation establishment on 5th Avenue, for antique rugs. (The Kermanshah brothers also source ancillary oddities from their travels, like this hand-painted Persian ceramic depicting a polo player.)
HOLLYWOOD FILMS
I like movies about Hollywood. Wag the Dog (1997) is about publicity. Waiting for Guffman (1996) is about fame hunger. Hurlyburly (1998) is the greatest movie ever made about amoral Hollywood agents. Kevin Spacey’s greatest role. It’s also the very best of the Anna Paquin slut canon, followed by 25th Hour (2002), Margaret (2011), The Squid and the Whale (2005). Insane that Natalie Portman ever went for her crown.
Speaking of slut canon: Heather Graham’s pitch-perfect performance as a slutty actress in Bowfinger (1999). She sleeps with the screenwriter until she realizes he has no power on set. Then she sleeps with the director. It was supposedly based on Anne Heche, which makes the feminist somewhere inside me fill with rage. (Heather really is the everywoman’s Naomi Watts.)
These films are all really famous but I’m always surprised millennials haven’t seen them!
Eat something, brush your teeth after
Cheese/fruit/sausage gift baskets are only tolerable as a hotel welcome gift. Better to stick to one foodstuff: Ship winter pears individually wrapped in gold foil. When I asked which company has the best Halibut, and the faculties to overnight it from Alaska, food critic Hannah Goldfield recommended the premium gift box from Sitka Salmon Share ($209). Sending fish to someone’s doorstep doesn’t have to be an insult!
Recently, a lovely gentleman sent me avocados. Pristine, ripe, overnight service.
“I like that scene in An American President when Michael Douglas sends Annette Bening a Virginia Ham, more people should be doing that,” says the painter Sam McKinniss. Chef du jour Alison Roman says she buys her bone-in ham at Snake River Farms ($141).
In the movie, the sitting President initially calls a flower shop and attempts to order his paramour’s state plant—a good present for the Patriotic Type. (Do those exist anymore?) Speaking of: set designer Janina Pedan made cheeky scarfs depicting a sinking Russian battleship (£100). All proceeds benefit Ukrainian relief. Pure silk. Buy one for a boomer relative.
For Christmas last year, Joycean Susie Lopez scraped the Joan Didion auction catalog and gifted me a copy of My Beverly Hills Kitchen: Classic Southern Cooking with a French Twist ($28) paired with a festive see-through, beaded bib from Simone Rocha (now on sale). For cooking naked?

Here are some of Didion’s favourite recipes. If you want to buy someone the suite of California Cookbooks owned by Didion—tied in a ribbon—get used versions of these.
Susie suggests a practical gift for hostesses: quality folding chairs from Bigelow Pharmacy, cleverly upholstered in fake Louis Vuitton and Fendi logoed leather. Call them at 212-533-2700. For lace tablecloths, she is an acolyte of Geminola. Dm only! All hand-dyed.
Writer Alice Gregory has been giving everyone tubes of Marvis toothpaste in limited-edition flavors she found in a Knightsbridge pharmacy: Earl Grey ($12.42), Black Forest ($15), Orange Blossom ($8.99), Matcha ($12.42), Rhubarb ($12.50), and “something they're calling Royal ($8) which boasts ‘charming oriental notes.’”
KUSTURICA
A few months ago, my husband announced that he wanted to show me Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995), because it has “the best bar fight he’s ever seen.” (This YouTube clip cuts off before the dénouement: best friends skipping down the street after impaling everyone in sight.)
If you liked Breaking the Waves and The Marriage of Maria Braun — famous sweeping films about adults mired by tragedy — and you haven’t watched any Kusturica, you’re in for a treat. Kusturica is the auteur of raw male charisma. He’s also a natural at capturing the choreography of romance i.e male friendship. This makes sense: charisma is the gasoline of love! I compare him to Fassbinder for a reason.
Start with Time of the Gypsies (1988), a movie about the rise of a minor teen gangster.
SHORT STORIES
A decade ago was the heyday for sunstroke-y white girl fiction in the New Yorker. I genuinely think the popular plot at this time—your boyfriend leaves because he never liked you in the first place—produced three of the greater short stories of our generation: Above and Below by Laura Groff; La Vita Nuova by Allegra Goodman; The Entire Northern Side Was Covered With Fire by Rivka Galchen.
Now that’s the narrative on every TikTok.
TRIPS
My father-in-law recommends this trip: