00:00:17 Speaker 1: Pushkin after the highest profile of careers shaping contemporary culture around her, Deborah Needleman is now part of a tradition as old as time itself. As one of her generations most influential and often intimidating editors, founding Domino, editing WSJ magazine and then t the New York Times Style magazine. Deborah's impeccable instincts and strong convictions influenced how we define excellence, see beauty, and perceived taste. But at the height of her power, she left starting again as a student of weaving, making baskets up state, not glossy magazines in Manhattan. It's an improbable story, but one that is less surprising when you understand that she's always been more inspired by the beauty and dignity of the daily practices of people and places around the world, whether it's semit gardeners in England, weavers of textiles in India, makers in Japan. Debora now travels using a project or the making of an object as a way to comprehend cultures more deeply. She now approaches the world as an enthusiastic, curious apprentice, but she cannot help becoming a master at whatever she puts her mind in hand to. Here's my conversation with my mentor and friend, Debra Needleman. Welcome Deborah to Traveling Through. I was thinking before you came on here that you know, we're friends obviously, and we have a lot in common. But one of the things that we don't have in common is that I was not the editor in chief of Tea, the New York Times style magazine. You wrote for it, Yeah, I did, but like write at number two hundred and fifty seven of importance. But I want to ask you, because you've had dramatic life pivots in terms of your work and interests, and it's always evolved, what was the last trip that you did or took as editor in chief? 00:02:08 Speaker 2: Probably it was going to the fashion shows. So that's sort of a month of travel New York, London, Lawn, Paris. So being away from home and being in that little fashion bubble for a month very sort of luxurious what would be considered luxurious travel? 00:02:25 Speaker 1: And did you get tired of doing that? After what five years of being away for like what it's almost two months a year basically at least. 00:02:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, to say I was tired of it is euphemistic for how I felt about it. I hated it. 00:02:40 Speaker 1: Really, What was it? Kind of what was the whole situation? I kind of a little bit picture, you know. 00:02:45 Speaker 2: I think for many people, going to fashion shows sounds like a really sort of glamorous thing. But I think, like a lot of so called glamorous things, when you are really involved in them, they're not that glamorous. 00:02:56 Speaker 1: But it was. 00:02:57 Speaker 2: Incredibly luxurious travel. We stayed in really fancy hotels, but you're in a little bubble being driven around, and you know, full day of fashion shows is about getting in and out of a car, being in terrible traffic, sitting on a hard bench waiting for a show to start for half an hour, and then the show's about seven minutes, and then five thousand people trying to get out one door and doing it again and again, and then going out at night. 00:03:25 Speaker 1: So I don't know. 00:03:26 Speaker 2: For me, it just I really didn't like the idea of being told where to go and when to be somewhere. 00:03:34 Speaker 1: I know you well, and I know that you're actually kind of a homebody in a way, and you're likely very independent and like to work with your hands and like to kind of have a solitary life. So I imagine that, you know, you left that job pretty like immediately and then went to explore another interest, which was broommaking. 00:03:59 Speaker 2: It weirdly, yes, I mean I had never really worked with my hands, and that was the idea, and I had never really been solitary, and I think being in so many social situations in that job made me long to be alone and to learn to work in a different way. I quit my job with this idea sort of almost out of nowhere, of becoming a basket weaver. And I was not like a crafty person. I had never done anything with my hands, and I'd always sort of lived in my head as a writer and editor. So in a way it was a big break. Someone had told me about this thing called folk schools, and the best one in America is the oldest one, called the John C. Campbell Folks School in Appalachia, and they didn't have a basket weaving class. When I had decided to quit my job, I decided I wanted to learn to become a basket weaver. But they had a broom making class, and I thought, well, that's natural fibers, so I'll take that. It was the week of the Paris fashion shows that I was, you know, instead of being at the Bristol Hotel and being driven around in a black Mercedes, I was at this place where the mornings if the morning started with this thing called like morning Song, where someone would sing and play the fiddle and tell stories, and there was clog dancing, and it was just this whole experience of just learning to work with your hands. And I mean, it just couldn't have been farther away from where I would have been that week otherwise, and it was incredible. I just loved the idea of meeting these people I never would have met before. And there is something about like you know, you hear about like quilting circles. There is something really beautiful about a bunch of strangers coming together and working on something and learning something at the same time and making something. And there's this kind of intimacy that I realized you can have with strangers. And it doesn't mean that you know you're best friends with them for life, but there is a real connection and that was something I was really missing. There's not a lot of real connection in the fashion bubble. 00:06:08 Speaker 1: Was there a story that you commission and then like is it cumulative, because I know what I loved about like your tea or you know, even in Backing Domino, that was like the daily utilitarian thing of people making things that were beautiful. Like there was a thread through the magazines that you've shore like, is there a particularly memorable story. 00:06:30 Speaker 2: I think you're totally right. I mean, I think what I always tried to do as a magazine editor was find people that I thought were doing beautiful, interesting, original things and then sharing that and how they worked and how they thought. And the basket weaving thing did grow out of a story. We were doing a piece on a store that was opening in Mayfair in London, call of the New Craftsman, and it was all crafts people from around the British isles, and we were trying to choose which of the you know, I don't know forty artisans they worked with to feature. And I watched a short video of a basket weaver in Sussex in Lewis called Anne Maria Sullivan, and it was probably two minutes and I was sitting in my office at the New York Times in my life like box of an office, and you saw her going out into the willow field in the winter, all bundled up to harvest her willow and then bringing it back to her beautiful little woods studio and making on the floor barefoot, and I just thought, that's it, that's what I want. It turned out she lived right next to a friend of mine, so we went and took a class with her. But it was like a weird kind of aha moment, and in one way it seemed like a crazy break, a huge break. But in another way, I've always been a gardener, I'd been a garden writer, and I think those jobs that I had, I feel really grateful to have had those jobs, and I loved them. Being an editor of a magazine, I didn't like all the peripheral stuff, but I loved being in the office making a magazine. And in fact, we always called it like making a magazine. It was like a thing we made each month. It wasn't anyway. There is a through line of as you say, say from the magazine, I really like to highlight simple things that are beautiful and useful. 00:08:17 Speaker 1: Well. One of the things I think that we have in common as well, is, like you know, I come from the food perspective. I'm really interested in not that I'm a farmer, but I'm really interested yea, and farming and transformation of like the natural world. Yeah, product, and then how that embodies the environment and the tradition and like what people have at hand. 00:08:38 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's everything. I feel like you just sort of nailed it. It's you know, about the ways one which we're connected to the land, dependent on the land, and all that the land can do for us if we are respectful of its properties, whether that's like you know, making food, making incredible food or baskets. I mean, we're so you know, historically connected to the land. And the way we live now, and especially the way I was living as a magazine editor, is you're very separate from it. It's a thing like, oh, you make a beautiful gardener, you go on holiday. If your livelihood comes from the land, you have a natural respect for it. And I think that's true, whether it's food or basketry or you know, whatever it is, pottery. 00:09:27 Speaker 1: We're in New York, which is like the most urban of all urban landscapes, but you know another one like that you could think is not urban, but it's like totally built environment is venice right. I wanted to jump forward to a month that you spent in Venice last year, just talking about like the built environment, the natural environment, and like I was completely fascinated about this like basketry project that you were working on. So I'd love you to talk about a little bit the month that you spent there. 00:09:55 Speaker 2: I mean, I think, just I think what you were getting at first is we think of Venice as this place of glorious art and architecture, unbelievable alleys and the canals and no cars and we're taking a boat everywhere. But we do think of it as a built environment, which you know it is, but what it really is is a natural environment and a completely unique one. And the city is wholly dependent on the lagoon from you know, which it rises, and I think the lagoon is sort of overlooked or again as we were talking about before, seen as this sort of beautiful scenery outside of Venice. But the connection between Venice as a sort of urban place and the water is completely symbiotic, and you know, I mean it's why Venice floods, and so much has been done to the lagoon in terms of changing the direction, making it deeper so the big boats can come through and it's deeply affected the plants there. I'll get to basketree in a second, but it's deeply affected the plants there, which you know are really diminishing, and they were the things in part that kept the water from rising. So now there's this sort of artificial mose thing that like this big concrete thing that can come up to it from flooding, which works, but it's not helping the problem. And there's an amazing organization called we are Here Venice But anyway. 00:11:20 Speaker 1: Zoom around on little little boats stopping the cruise. 00:11:25 Speaker 2: Radical who found it It sort of single handedly got rid of the cruise ships which were destroying everything because they're just I mean, it's I guess My point is that Venice is a very fragile ecosystem. My husband and I decided we're older, the children are gone, we can work remotely. Why don't we go live somewhere for a month that you know that you kind of place that you can't really get to the heart of by visiting. Yeah, yeah, unless you're you know, to see how it works day to day, and you know, Venice is an incredibly hard place to actually live or you know, to go. 00:11:59 Speaker 1: To the dry cleaner. 00:12:02 Speaker 2: It's it's insane. It's a really really difficult place to live in a way. But anyway, so we had this idea, and simultaneously I had been asked to do a show of my baskets at a gallery called Casa Yali that's owned by Rosie Kahan, who is a glass designer and has a business called Yali Glass, and it's right outside. So initially I just thought, well, I'll make these baskets from the willow. You know that's local to me. Yes, upstate, I grow a little willow and I have a willow farmer across the river who grows for me, because I decided I didn't actually want to be a farmer, so I just thought, I'll show these baskets that I've made in New York. And as soon as I got to Venice, I realized that was a crazy idea because basketry is always about a particular place, and I thought, if I'm showing baskets in Venice, they should be connected to Venice, to its landscape, to its plants, and to the history of basketry and Venice. And as you know, I'm obsessed with research. I love researching things, so I thought well, I'm here for a month, and Rosie said, you can use this gallery space it's empty, as a sort of residency. And so I started to research Venetian baskets and there was no information. I mean, in general, baskets are sort of the bottom of the barrel in terms of craft, and in a place like Italy and Venice in particular, there's so much incredible high culture that no one was bothering to think about, you know, preserving like the velvet and yeah, exactly do Yeah, they weren't like, let's save the baskets. So I couldn't find any information. So I started to research through paintings Tintoretto and Caneletto, and it was fascinating. And as we'll probably talk about later, the way I really like to travel is to have a way into a place, and so this was like the perfect storm. It's just the dream where I could research basketry through art, and it gave me a way to kind of make my way through the churches and museums. 00:14:09 Speaker 1: Of whichever, like church or museums even stuff. I just then I just went for it. 00:14:15 Speaker 2: I just went like, you know, it's just a way to look at everything and just start picking out the baskets. 00:14:20 Speaker 1: And the baskets like a motif through all of the all of that art, like in jail. 00:14:25 Speaker 2: I mean it's like when there's you know, it's not in a kind of royal painting or necessarily religious painting, but paintings that are about everyday life, Okay, and you start seeing the same basket over and over again. So that was one half of it, and the other half was, Okay, I want to use the plants here. And that's when Jane Demasto took me into the lagoon and we started, you know, she works, she's a biologist, she works with all kinds of scientists and botanists tracking the plant life there, and I realized how diminished everything was, and that plants that had been natural and native to the wetlands and it's sort of a swampy you know, it goes from land to kind of silt and then underwater that the water had just become so oversalinated that they didn't anymore. 00:15:11 Speaker 1: It's interesting that, like there are really interesting people returning to the city, because yeah, we're talking ten years ago, it was like, okay, that is a city set to be a stone set in amber all the young people were living. Exactly why is it now? Do you think that there's like a return For. 00:15:29 Speaker 2: One, it's one of the most spectacular, beautiful places. 00:15:34 Speaker 1: Its beautiful city in the way. 00:15:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and there's nothing like it anywhere in the world. But I think that people are starting to feel a real responsibility to it, and just the beauty of it is drawing people back. But there is a really interesting group of people living there now, both local and kind of expats. 00:15:51 Speaker 1: We're almost kind of going back in, you know, leaping forward. We're not starting at the beginning of your of your travels, which is you know, it's not chronological, but you've just come back from Morocco, which is like the next evolution of the basket kind of project. Can you tell me a little bit about this. 00:16:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, So I've been asked by a friend of our to do a show on Moroccan basketry Berber basketry at the Ysel Museum in Marrakesh. Basically, what we see in the Souk is kind of in one way it's the death of Moroccan basketry because they are objects that are completely made for us as tourists. But on the other hand, it's a way that the tradition is still living because there is a market for it. But the Berbers are Amazegu as they preferred to be called, are the sort of indigenous nomadic semi nomadic tribes that have been in Morocco since, you know, before the Arabs, before the Spanish, before the French. Everyone. And what I was hoping to find and did find are these pockets of places where people are still making for themselves and for their own use. Is it in the south of the North both I was in the north, in the Reef. We took a really incredible road trip from the kind of Atlantic side, the Tangier side, over the Reef mountains to the Mediterranean side. It was such a fun week because it got I got to sort of indulge in all my kind of research fantasies of like going into the homes of collectors, going into archives. I love an archive. 00:17:29 Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because like you're just talking about doing a road trip in Morocco. But I guess people don't really realize because they go to Marrakesh, or maybe they trans transfer through Casablanca, maybe Fairs Tangier. Let's say they usually fly between those things. But actually, Morocco is an incredible road trip country. Yes, and even you know, no one would think, really, oh, I'm going to be my own driver in this. 00:17:54 Speaker 2: Now, I don't that would be probably be hard. I don't know that you could. Well, I think, yeah, I guess obviously you could. 00:18:01 Speaker 1: I think it'd be a It's a fun adventure also because it's like wildly different landscapes, and I think the idea of what it is. You know, you can go up into the Atlas Mountains going once and like it was in the spring, and you know, there's these just like wedge valleys full of roses. R's incredible. And then another time it's like. 00:18:22 Speaker 2: It's a rock boss yes, or then it's a rocky arad landscape, or then it's a pine forest. But the views and the expanse and the space. 00:18:32 Speaker 1: Well. The other thing as well is like some parts you can go there and you're like you feel like you're in southern Italy in a wine region. Like it's the most hilarious thing because you know you're not supposed to drink alcohol there, which of course, but there's like a rose that everyone drinks, right. And I went and visited or talked to the wine maker about the Moroccan wine and actually not horrible. Not it's a daily kind of thing, but you know you think that it's you know, they're not wine producers. But then I asked the guy, okay, so how many bottles are you doing? And it was like you think it would be ten thousand or something and he said two million. Who's buying that export? I've never had Moroccan wine at a restaurant in you know, in New York or Dada. And he said, I said, how many bottles any of you exporting in a country where alcohol's banned? And he was like none, really, yeah exactly. Yeah, anyway, it's just to say that, like. 00:19:26 Speaker 2: Wait, but alcohol is not banned, not banned, but you're not it's not too well again, there's a you know, there's a mix of populations there, so for sure, for sure. 00:19:34 Speaker 1: I just mean that it's like you don't think of it as a wine it's. 00:19:37 Speaker 2: Not Ireland or it's not it's not Ireland where everyone's strong, or France where there's great wine. 00:19:42 Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I shouldn't say that, but it's just that it's not like a place necessarily you think as a wine making region and I think like sometimes people have a view of Morocco as being one yes kind of thing. 00:19:55 Speaker 2: But I think that's the thing. I mean, that's you know, not to just out your business, but that is what you do, and that is how I like to travel, where you're finding different ways into a place and it's high and it's low, and it's you know, the great fancy hotel and also a shack somewhere on the beach, and Morocco is you know, rich with that, and I think that's hard for people to find on their own. 00:20:22 Speaker 1: You know, when you're seeing someone on a trip and they're like posting on Instagram, that's one of the actual you know, there's a lot of problems with like traveling and tourism and social media. But at the same time, like when you see someone on a trip, which I was looking at your trip because you don't post that often, and it's that feeling that someone's on fire in curiosity, I kind of like get super excited and I was like thrilled to talk to you about that particular trip. 00:20:50 Speaker 2: I did feel on fire because it was a kind of trip that was like firing all my synapses of like going into beautiful houses, going into museums, meeting weavers, and then I mean, I'll tell you what I thought was sort of magical for me. But obviously I had a kind of privileged access in that I had this itinerary worked out, we had researched things, I had you know, Arabic speaking translator from the museum who is also just a sort of really smart, wonderful person, and the driver was great. But I think, you know, for all of us, even if we go to a place without that kind of access, having a particular interest and bringing that interest of yours into a place is such a fantastic way to kind of connect to a place in a way that you wouldn't really do otherwise. On this sort of Morocco trip like you're talking about, and whether it's you know, art or craft or music, whatever, food, whatever your thing is, it just allows you to travel through a place you know and get to know it better or get to know the peace exactly. 00:21:58 Speaker 1: It's like the crack in the door that you have to push. Yeah, and then you asked to be invited into these people that are both I mean. 00:22:06 Speaker 2: If someone if you're interested in food and someone else there is interested in food, they're thrilled to meet you, and yes, exactly, it's the door opens and then they're like, you need to talk to this person or go to this place because. 00:22:18 Speaker 1: It's a deeper layer than like, oh, I'm fascinated by your culture and your sites in your city. If that makes sense to go, then like you plug into someone's like minded passion or respect. And that's also like when all the doors just swing open. I remember we went on a trip to together. Now we've been on a futures together, but the iconic one was in textiles in India, right, So you know, after you'd left T I kind of wrote a very earnest letter to you because you know, I was like my favorite editor. I just love your point of view and admired the magazines that you created. So I wrote you and I was like starting the business, and I said, hey, I don't know how how I even presume that this could possibly be possible, but would you be interested in like exploring Indian textiles with me? And so you and I went on a research trip. 00:23:11 Speaker 2: First, did we Yeah? 00:23:13 Speaker 1: Yeah we did. 00:23:14 Speaker 2: We didn't. 00:23:14 Speaker 1: No, we we did because we went, Yes we did. We did it beforehand, I'm telling you we did. 00:23:19 Speaker 2: I have a really bad memory. 00:23:20 Speaker 1: No, we did one. So we went and arrived in di Vali in Rajastan and then we went to Bengal. 00:23:28 Speaker 2: David, I have to mention that. So so you asked me to co lead this this kind of craft textile trip to India with you, and you know you've never asked me again. It was kind of a disaster. 00:23:44 Speaker 1: You know what. Well, if you ask anyone that came with us, it's you know, our mutual friend said, it's like still the best trip that she's ever done. So it was. 00:23:53 Speaker 2: It made me so stressed out. It made me realize I could never do your job. The stress of wanting everything to be perfect. 00:24:01 Speaker 1: Well, yeah, of course, but you know the other. 00:24:03 Speaker 2: Thing was just hard in India. 00:24:04 Speaker 1: Well for sure. We can talk about how we almost burned down calcutt up a little bit later, but just on that point, like I'm on so many dozens of WhatsApp groups now of people that fall in love with each other and on a trip, yes, exactly. I remember my colleagues at Conneaus Traveler. You know, I was a bit of a lone wolf travel writer just like bopped off and did my thing and came in every so often for the pitch meetings. But yeah, it's like if you're an editor at large, as you well know, it just means they want you out of the office. You don't bother large. They don't want to see when I told them I was starting this business because it really started in India actually on a group trip, because I thought, oh, actually, India is such a place, and they plug into this like not exaggerated, it's real, but exaggerated sense. You know, it's it's so. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: You created such beautiful experiences there. I mean I think you know sometimes you describe your business as a magazine story brought into life, and I think that was what you created. When did you send thousands of candles? 00:25:07 Speaker 1: Well, I mean from you that's a big compliment. But yeah, we were in a place in Maheshwa. There's an extraordinary hotel, maybe like one of the defining hotels of like what I'm yes, why I'm interested in the way it's personal, beautiful, grounded in the place. 00:25:22 Speaker 2: Couldn't be anywhere else than where it. 00:25:24 Speaker 1: Is exactly kind of every corner you go around is sort of minhog era, well interious, no, and so you know, one of the things that they do is they take people out on the boat at dusk and then put candles through and so it's almost floating, like floating loads of candles candles, but of course, like I wanted to do it. 00:25:42 Speaker 2: You know, ten thousand candles in. 00:25:45 Speaker 1: That direction on leaves as well, so like not like some giant waste that's going to be hitting down the the. 00:25:51 Speaker 2: So they could be collected afterwards. 00:25:53 Speaker 1: Well no, they they just like the candles go out and then the leaves just you know, become part of the river. I think it's just important to say that. In fact, it was someone else that kind of said to me, berated me the first time that I did that. I was like, on leaves actually bidegradable anyway, that's as an aside, but you know, sometimes you can do these kind of I think one or two of the dinners that you can create because candles are so and light is so important. And we went during the Festival of Lights, which is Divali, which has become a lot about fireworks, but it's much about candles too. And I remember actually we were in Calcutter. And sometimes I have like an exaggerated sense of like what I want a dinner or a thing to be. And so I was thinking calcutter, yeah, that decrepit colonial yeah era clok exactly, because it just doesn't exist anymore. But I was setting up the dinner, you know, all the guests were coming later, and Debra was coming later too. What had happened is there'd been like a national shortage of you know, wax candles, beautiful like safe wax candles. I just remember you coming to me and saying, you know, there's no candles in India right now, and I was literally, what the fuck it's true. I was like, come on, you can find candles in India, I mean exactly, And so we send people out in every conceivable direction to find them. Anyway. They came back with candles. Great. So I'm you know, setting up the dinner and everyone's about to arrive and start lighting the candles, and all of a sudden, they kind of melt very very quickly, and then they're starting to kind of flame, and it turns out they're paraffin candles, the ones that are like have been illegal for decades elsewhere, and starting to light the table cloths exactly, and there starts to be a fire in this wood decrepit kind of Gentleman's Club. 00:27:36 Speaker 2: And again I didn't understand. I was like, why is no one blowing out the candles? We're starting a huge Fireho why are all these people just standing around? So I started going and like blowing out the candles, not understanding that they were paraffin and you blow on them and like the hot liquid was just all over. I was like scalded. 00:27:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So she has a giant burn. And I'm like, we're at the end of the thing. The guests are arriving, and so they all arrive, and then of course the food was disaster because it was like gray English through nothing to do with Indian thing, but it ended to be like such a comedy of errors that it was a perfect ending. Although I think. 00:28:12 Speaker 2: Those kind of disasters are better in retrospect. They make for good stories, even though if they're really stressful. 00:28:19 Speaker 1: Well of course, but the last image that I remember of that night with Debra was her running water in the bathroom like this with the bird smoking a cigarette. It was kind of amazing. 00:28:32 Speaker 2: God, you've never asked me to do that again? 00:28:34 Speaker 1: No, no, no, any time. 00:28:36 Speaker 2: No no, no, there's a reason you haven't. It stresses me out Yeah. 00:28:40 Speaker 1: This episode of Traveling Through is sponsored by Capital One. Capital one cardholders are passionate about unforgettable experiences. Together, we partner to connect these curious travelers to world cultures through expert guided journeys from the peaks of much Epitachu to the grand architecture of Vienna. These ones in a lifetime trips take you somewhere truly off the beaten path. Through Capital One Entertainment, eligible cardholders can book exclusive experiences and so much more, all while earning elevated rewards. Savor card holders earn eight percent cash back and venture X earns five x me Thanks to Capital One, your dream getaway is one step closer. After you left the magazine, you started to do a column four t called material Culture, And I think that's the kind of the first time we had any kind of connection around actually travel. We helped you with a trip in Japan. Is there things that like you've taken from Japanese? I mean, I think. 00:29:33 Speaker 2: Probably this is how I really got into researching around craft and traveling to places using craft as a way into a place. So Japan was the first trip, and I was doing a story on a catazome indigo dier So it's a kind of stencil on fabric and indigo. And I thought, like, I'm going to Japan for the first time. I've never been there. You know, my assignment is just this one thing, but I'd like to get as much out of Japan as I can, and so I appealed to you and worked with people that you know on your team that helped me plan an entire itinerary. It was really really into hans of meeting crafts people all over, going to a pottery village, woodworkers, metal workers. Because of working with your team, I think I probably saw, you know, fifteen or sixteen workshops crafts people in eight days, which I think is why people think I know a country better than I do. Why it's like I'd been to India once and you thought like maybe I could co lead a trip there with you, is because I'd go so hard. 00:30:38 Speaker 1: Yes your research, and I'd like to go. I think Japan is, like, I mean interesting for a million reasons. Yeah, but like I wonder if it's the only only country. 00:30:49 Speaker 2: Where you know the craft is revered. 00:30:53 Speaker 1: Well, exactly is exactly what I was gonna say, is in the National Treasures, Right, It's like intangible heritage exactly. 00:30:59 Speaker 2: There's all these ideas that it's so hard to imagine us having in America, where we you know, celebrate an idea of an intangible heritage. 00:31:09 Speaker 1: I mean, the last time I went to Japan was I think in August, and so I went to Fukushima actually, and I went to see one of the oldest bonzei growers makers, curbersper You know, I was fascinated by that, but I mean it completely blew my mind. And what this particular bonzei maker is inspired initially by the silver pine that grows and it's the most Japanese thing in the whole world that grows on the top of the volcano. The conditions of certain Bonzaye of that particular silver pine is that they can only sell it at like eighty years age. So it's bridging right, generation and generation. 00:31:53 Speaker 2: So someone's working on something that they will never see solved, but maybe working on something that somebody else started. Yeah, the feeling, I mean, that's another thing that's so amazing about Japan is the sense of ancestors and generational connection. For lack of a better world, I feel like they really feel like a lot of the crafts people really feel all the preceding generations that led up to their doing what they're doing. 00:32:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that is on one side, the most exciting thing about what we do and what we're both interested in is when and it's it's why material culture. The column that you did is such a brilliant name. The thing that excites me is living culture in those things, and a. 00:32:39 Speaker 2: Lot of times it's not the high culture. 00:32:42 Speaker 1: It's folk culture or popular culture for sure, or natural transformation. I feel really privileged that we're able to do this specific thing. They gave me and veat my boyfriend a seedling to fashion. How quickly did you kill it? Well? I was so terrible. 00:33:02 Speaker 2: I mean he had arrested home. 00:33:04 Speaker 1: Debora knows Vitan is like he's an architect and incredibly thoughtful and just like precision totally. 00:33:11 Speaker 2: You probably stuffed it in the. 00:33:12 Speaker 1: Bar, snapped one of the branches. But with the waiya so, I don't know, mine is going to be really wacky. But you know, they say to us come back in a few years. I mean that was like quite moving. 00:33:26 Speaker 2: Yes, No, the dedication to craft in Japan is like nothing I've ever seen. I mean said this Dier. I went to see this, ye. I mean he made all his own stencils based on like seventeenth century stencils, and he had, you know, an indigo dive that in the backyard and he'd been doing his craft for I don't know, thirty or forty years. Didn't feel he was a master and was so connected to his dive that he you know, he couldn't go to his son's wedding because with these dive outs, you have to watch the fire and make sure the temperature and mix the indigo. So I mean his life he was just so dedicated that you know, I think probably personal parts of his life really suffered. 00:34:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean exactly the same things. These bonds they can't leave that there, Yeah, they cannot leave. And also that I mean on a side, they're getting robbed occasionally, so now they have these big fences and oh god, that was depressing to hear. But you know, just the idea that it's alive in that way. Yeah, And you know, we had a very privileged access, but sometimes travel and when you open that door and you're curious and you offer that experience, even if it's a rare experience. We were contributing to a side income that you know, maybe plugs the whole of the theft or continues to be able to allow them to have some person when it's too hot to take in those gigantic bonds. I like, inside, yah, they can't do it. 00:35:01 Speaker 2: What I was sort of alluding to with these the Berber baskets, it's like we were amount to size craft and folk culture a lot of the time, and we want it to be a certain way. But the fact that basket weavers in say Morocco can earn a living basket weaving even though they're making drek for the soup they're making, like you know, fake ormez birken bags out of asparto grass or rush or palm. It's alive. It's not how you know, we romanticize it necessarily. It's not perfect. 00:35:40 Speaker 1: Do you bring back styles of baskets into your practice and then or do you have a usually from a particular. 00:35:47 Speaker 2: I most of my work, the things that I make are from a sort of European tradition France, Spain, British Isles. But I bring back I mean it's sort of a way you know that I travel is I bring back baskets that are done in different techniques and want to make everything, which is another reason I'm not really good, because every beautiful thing that I see I want to try and figure it out and make it. 00:36:12 Speaker 1: I love a kind of souvenir somehow. I like the little figurines and figurine you stole from Yeah, well exactly. I mean I wasn't going to tell that story, but you can maybe see that little camel in the back there. I really wanted to, yeah, exactly. Our first fight was actually about this. There's not been so many. Actually, sometimes you just those things imbuse so much meaning, and to me that's really important. And I like the bring back little knick knacks. That's what I know. 00:36:42 Speaker 2: So it's like it's it's an amazing little object in itself. It reminds you of the trip, and it reminds you of stealing it out from under. Well, the thing is that you winning a fight exactly. The other animal experience that we shared was when we were in the Natural History Museum of Calcutta, which if anyone has a chance to go, I mean, I love a decrepit place that was glorious and ground and at another time, and. 00:37:09 Speaker 1: This makes the old old Egyptian museum look like MoMA, for example. 00:37:14 Speaker 2: It's so like the scale of it is ground, the beautiful wood built ins, but you know, no money to keep it up. And I just remember there being this taxidermied I don't even know what kind of animals, may a lynx, like. 00:37:30 Speaker 1: A Himalayan mountain lion or something along those lines. 00:37:33 Speaker 2: It must have been like before it was shot, it like had just gone mad, and so its eyes were bugging out, and it just was like the most insane piece of taxidermy. And for a long time we sent it back and forth of like as a meme, sort of as like. 00:37:47 Speaker 1: At the end of the day exactly. I mean, you did have a second degree burner, I have to say so fair enough. I wanted to ask you what place are you most intrigued to travel to? What is peaking your interest right now? 00:38:03 Speaker 2: Well, I'm, you know, deep in this Morocco moment. 00:38:07 Speaker 1: I remember someone that you've never been. 00:38:09 Speaker 2: I've never been to Switzerland, and I'm sort of intrigued by the architecture of those chalets and all wood paneled interiors. 00:38:15 Speaker 1: Well, there's one place that I'd love to return with you, because we had a very special trip there, and I'm like hiding my little souvenir in here with my because it was very propped. And look at this, it looks like I'm gone to a circuit party. But anyway, I have I haven't had a big clacky fan at a circuit party, but I do have Spanish friends and one of my favorite places that was an amazing trip. It was from Spain to the Ferrier the Fair of April, and that's like so beautiful. It's like that place where costume and culture come alive. Like it's like interesting because there's no artifice there somehow it's very exaggerated and it's a live culture and it's like that's the thing that I get super excited about. And I love that trip, you know. And it's also like I've been back a number of times. I love that as a prior trip, Yes we did one. We love a festival. I love a festivalcause it is. 00:39:12 Speaker 2: It is when like a place comes alive. 00:39:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's carnival. 00:39:16 Speaker 2: I mean in general, I shy away from places during those times because I'm an hedonic. I don't know, because I don't like to have that much fun. I don't like to lose myself that way. 00:39:26 Speaker 1: No, but I think you know, when they are still real and there isn't like a ferris wheel, yeah yeah, on top of the festival, like that is the culture at its most. Yeah. 00:39:37 Speaker 2: I mean even a place like Harbor Island where we used to go with the children during Junkanoo with a big parade like it was an amazing thing for the children to be to get immersed in a place like that and to see the spirit of a place. 00:39:53 Speaker 1: No, for sure. I mean the County Fair like it's it's it's got something yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah for sure. And if you can plug into that, it's the doorway in with people. It's like, I think that people should travel for that. I understand that sometimes they're completely rammed by people, but if you can figure out a way. I've never been to kind in Yeao, but I am desperate to do really. Yeah, absolutely, I really want to do that. But you know, I returned and I wanted to talk to about Andalucia because the last time I went back. You remember the flowers that we bought in, you know, because you've always got You've got the flamenco dress beneath. 00:40:27 Speaker 2: You might have giant flower. 00:40:29 Speaker 1: Giant flower. Anyway, we went to like polyester Land because no one's going to be paid. Everyone didn't want to spend five euros on those things. But honestly, you'd buy two or three dresses in your life if you're a woman like that, that are really expensive. It's like your wedding dress. But there are all the accessories. And I bought one of the flowers because it kind of just reminds me of the trip. But it's made entirely of feathers. Oh, that's amazing, it's seriously beautiful. Oh it's right under the. 00:40:55 Speaker 2: Oh that thing we bought in is that Barcelona? 00:40:58 Speaker 1: No, no, no, that was in Sevil exactly. That's the Expoto. So it's like the Moorish heads. Have you ever been to the Santa Fe Folk Museum? Oh? 00:41:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, and the folk Art Festival once a year in the summer in July where they bring in crafts people from I don't know, ninety or one hundred different countries. It's incredible. 00:41:17 Speaker 1: I was interested in Santa Fe like I'm interested in New Orleans, in the sense that like it's got something something like America. 00:41:24 Speaker 2: We haven't talked about America much. 00:41:25 Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I. 00:41:26 Speaker 2: Mean, I mean Santa Fe is a completely sort of sue generous place as what was the place you just met, oh, New Orleans, Like there's nothing like it. I mean, it's like it's so quite, it's really foreign. It has such a sort of different culture. 00:41:40 Speaker 1: Well it's a mix of culture, that is, it's it's the best of all, you know, Santa Fe. I knew that that, but I didn't really understand it. What's the room of folk miniatures. 00:41:51 Speaker 2: It's oh, Alexander Girard, Yeah, was a fantastic artist architect I think it was an architect. 00:41:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, not and he had Alexander Girard has. 00:42:00 Speaker 2: Jonathan Adler is very inspired by Alexander Gerrard. Oh, I didn't see like the sort of childlike and humorous. 00:42:06 Speaker 1: And yeah, and in that room in the Folk Museum, it's sort of a land of me. It's like it's a small world and that kind of little miniature there is kind of that. But they basically have created all of these worlds of folk art figurines from all around the world. And I think, you know, I literally cried when I went into that because it is like a it's a small world. It's extraordinary I mean that's one of the most for me, amazing museums, not only in the United States but in the world. It's unreal. And if you're and kind of little known, yeah, that's the thing. It's like that museum hill in Santa Fe is quite extraordinary. I think it's one of the more interesting places to travel to. 00:42:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, Afte it's great. 00:42:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, yeah, exactly. And there's also a really amazing, bizarrely Japanese riokan there really, yes, it's so it's called ten Thousand Waves and it's in the hills of Santa Fe and it's surrounded by aspen trees. So if you go in the fall, it's like completely yellow and you're kind of bathing there. It's quite an amazing I mean, Stafe is just super weird, right yeah. Yeah. 00:43:14 Speaker 2: And then the whole landscape around Aboquei, around where Georgia O'Keeffe was, these sort of white rocks, no, no, incredible. 00:43:24 Speaker 1: If you were to distill down to one thing, I know that's that's difficult. But what is that doorway in for you when you're going to destinations or travel. 00:43:35 Speaker 2: I mean for me, it's now it's basketry and craft it used to be gardens. But I sort of learned this from my mother in law, my husband's mother, who was this kind of powerful, brave, kookie woman but also a homebody and hated to travel. And so she just started this thing of collecting egg cups because you know, they were small and you could pocket them when you traveled, but it was like almost like a sense of security. It gave her like a purpose when she traveled. I'm not sure that she, you know, really could learn about different places through their egg cups. Maybe you can, I think if you study anything deep enough, you know, And she ended up with I don't know, ten thousand egg cups. It was insane, wow, But it was for her the way for her to feel comfortable, because I think travel can be scary, particularly about the kind of travel you're talking about, not where you're going from fancy hotel to fancy hotel in a show for driven car, but where you're trying to really connect with people. It's a much more intense experience and can be like for me, I always dread a trip right before I go, and then I'm never happier than when I'm somewhere, and then I crash when I come home. But I think it just doesn't matter what the thing is. It can be something as stupid as egg cups. But I think giving yourself at least for certain type of personality, for me, it really really is helpful. So then i'm you know, moving through a museum. You know, you can't take in a whole museum. It's overwhelming. But if you're looking for one particular thing or one period that you're interested in. 00:45:14 Speaker 1: I mean it's somewhat The overatching idea of this show is that you can travel through a particular lens or Yes, I often think about like India through belief, Japan through ritual, Italy through food, Spain through fiesta celebration, cultural rights. 00:45:35 Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I think and that's you know, a framework that makes sense and a framework that makes sense to you and that you use for your business. And I think also, you know, probably people come to you with their particular passions and you build trips around that, and I just think, well, it's in such a nice way to be someplace where maybe you're a little off balance because you're out of your comfort zone. 00:45:59 Speaker 1: Well it's also you think you're going through that lens and you are right but it opens out into every doors you know, and then you start to it's linked to the food, it's linked to the religion, all of those things. I think it's like, if you want to feel at home in the world, to the point of your mother in law, Lois who by the way, if you want to read an amazing article about her, She's not kidding. This is an extraordinary woman, Lois Weissberg. 00:46:25 Speaker 2: You can look at around. 00:46:27 Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell wrote it for The New Yorker. 00:46:30 Speaker 2: But I mean the idea of that piece was like that she was no one famous. It was like, there's a little old lady in Chicago that knows someone, that knows someone that knows you. It was because her kind of mo was connecting people and being this conduit for creative people in different fields. And when you travel you don't have that power. You're at the mercy, and I think that was the thing. It was like, she couldn't be herself in a foreign place without like having junk shops to trol through. 00:46:59 Speaker 1: Right, Well, this has been fun. It's always fun with you. I love having a laugh, but I also love sharing our yeah, passion for the daily beauty of how people transform things. That is just magical. Yeah, it is completely magical. Just how does this happen over time that. 00:47:20 Speaker 2: You get to you know, through travel, you get to see things you wouldn't see. And I just remember like Diego della Valet, when I was in my fashion life, always talked about you know, he would do that oh sorry, he ran Todds Oh okay, and he's sort of like a sort of Italian businessman mogul, but he would always talk about, you know, the aroma and like his little fingers of I'm sure you know there's probably some thing that that means an Italian gesture. But it's this idea of getting the aroma of a place. And it's not necessarily like the fragrance. It's the atmosphere and a lot of that comes from everyday life and not from necessarily high culture. 00:48:04 Speaker 1: Well, I mean just on the essence or the smell of We once did a story which is one of still one of my favorite stories that we ever did, called the Essence of Earth that how bad smells like, Oh yeah, and transport you in not an entirely bad way. 00:48:20 Speaker 2: Well, all good fragrances that are made of that you know, of of bad? 00:48:24 Speaker 1: Oh really oh yeah, I think. 00:48:26 Speaker 2: It was like feces extractions. No, seriously, every really like beautiful perfume has a kind of nasty something because you know, it's like underarm smell. Anyway, this is going. 00:48:39 Speaker 1: But is there a place that comes to mind with you that has a bad smell that's like evocative to you. 00:48:44 Speaker 2: New DELI like that, you know, the smell of kind of pollution and burning. But I sort of love it the way I love like, you know, gasoline smell in a closed garage. 00:48:54 Speaker 1: Right, I mean I always think of like, you know, stale beer on carpet, you know, yeah, sort of that English pub irish thing thankfully now or most of the Australian pubs or they always have been like tiles and actually if you're going to have like a big piss night, it's called a night out on the tiles. Oh really exactly. I've had a few. 00:49:15 Speaker 2: No wet wet school bus was really bad, like loads of children on a rainy day, all like humid and stinky. 00:49:24 Speaker 1: But then you know, on the flip side, rain everything kind of sometimes is the most Like. 00:49:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, just like driving through Morocco just now, there was incredible fog and then it rained one night and it was so clear and it was like the citrus were blooming at this time, and it just the smell was divine and we like were clamoring up through wild time that smelt so good. 00:49:47 Speaker 1: Or that kind of moment between like magnolia grande flora when the rain comes before it turns brown. Yeah, that next morning it's like the most incredible. Yeah. I can think about that for a few different places than one of them seen anyway. So yeah, we have to stop talking, but we can keep talking. No, no, we have to stop talking. Now. I'm going to torch you with questions that you have to answer answer quickly, speaking and talking too much. Yeah. So favorite hotel. 00:50:21 Speaker 2: Hotel Locarno, maybe in Rome, just a small, not super fancy hotel. The rooms are beautiful, I like, very sexy, very kind of nineteenth century romantic, all decorated differently right in yeah, right, and off of it with a beautiful little garden, like not a fancy hotel, but just to me perfect. 00:50:42 Speaker 1: And a huge whysteria over now, unbelie. 00:50:46 Speaker 2: And I like a hotel that has like a proprietor you know, the. 00:50:49 Speaker 1: Owner is present. Yeah, is there a meal a taste that you could desperate to relive. You know. 00:50:56 Speaker 2: I'm not a foodie like you, but I was. I was in Lisbon for twenty four hours last week and someone just directed me to a Savich place that was so incredible. I don't even remember the name of it. But I think most memorable meal are not in super fancy places, at least for me. 00:51:15 Speaker 1: I like simple food, a place that you would always return home, a place that you'd never return I think Varanasi. 00:51:24 Speaker 2: Although I didn't hate it, it was just, you know, I felt like, so you know, var Nazi is where people bring their dead loved ones to be burnt on a funeral pyre. It's on the Ganges. There's all these spiritual seekers there and it's a magnificent place, but it is so foreign and it felt so apocalyptic, like I don't think I would bring myself to go there, and it was hard to fully process it. But it was magical and spiritual and just like the fog, the boats bringing tons of wood for these funeral pyres and people are burning and it doesn't smell bad. It's so polluted, and yet people are like doing their laundry in it and it comes out sparkling white like the whole thing is mystery, and it just feels like the beginning of humanity and the end of humanity, and it's just like a lot like again, just. 00:52:19 Speaker 1: A picture of humanity full stop. Yeah. The first time I went there, at the end of the day, I looked down at my feet and I was wearing two different shoes of entirely different genres because you were so spiritual. Yeah that's no, No, I'm so no. But because it is, it's overwhelming. 00:52:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, on the planet, I mean all over Indy you see cows walking around, but it's like there the alleys are so tiny, so you like, you know, they're one way, and you come up with a cow and you're like doing that thing. Are you going right or you're going left? 00:52:50 Speaker 1: Favorite shop or market? 00:52:52 Speaker 2: This might be a bit cliche, but the Paris Flea Market, the Paulbert Section just the best things for the home. 00:53:01 Speaker 1: What's your favorite museum. 00:53:03 Speaker 2: I'm going to go low, not high. I like a super personal, weird museum. So like Mario praz which is his collection in Rome. There's an amazing museum of wax fruit in Turin that's connected to an amazing museum of things that institutionalized insane people make there's unbelievable weavings. Also this museum in Istanbul called the Museum of Innocence, that is completely the passion project of the writer or Han Pamuk And it's a novel. There's a novel and then this collection that he's amassed of ordinary things that relate to the novel. 00:53:42 Speaker 1: Where have you felt most out of place? 00:53:45 Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever felt completely out of place anywhere, but I think in Japan it felt the most foreign to me. I mean, you can think like India is such a different culture, but it's chaotic. I understand it as in New York. Not that I understand it completely, but I feel comfortable there. In Japan, people were incredibly welcoming and kind, but I felt I was in the presence of a culture so different that it was hard to like be myself. 00:54:13 Speaker 1: Wherever you felt most at home. 00:54:15 Speaker 2: Oh right here with you now? 00:54:17 Speaker 1: Italy? 00:54:17 Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like Italy's my comfort zone. My you know, it feels easy, the food's great, the people are nutty, and you know they seek beauty as just a matter of ordinary life or just a matter of course and deliciousness. 00:54:32 Speaker 1: Beauty and deliciousness is yeah, it's like, yeah, Italians would. 00:54:36 Speaker 2: And ridiculousness, yes, over dramatic, it's. 00:54:41 Speaker 1: Just so fun. But it's like Italians if it was if you're like the lights were being cut off and hadn't paid the electricity bill on the Monday, they'd still get the pastigenion. 00:54:50 Speaker 2: Yes, totally, like nothing's going to stop them from having great food or like doing something beautiful looking good. 00:54:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I like to ask people, and remember this is like geography, real life, real obligations aside, what would you most likely to spend a weekend, a week, a month, a year. 00:55:12 Speaker 2: Okay, a weekend Tuscany, Umbria? Maybe our friend Camilla Guinness's house which can be rented, Villa Arniano, really. 00:55:21 Speaker 1: Just such a beautiful house, beautiful location, and we went on a vacation there. 00:55:25 Speaker 2: Yes, okay a week Hedra, I'd like to go back to. I guess I like a place with no cars, quiet, beauty, unbelievable landscape, just wandering around again, great food a month Naples or Mexico City. So you know, I have been doing this thing of the like where do we want to go for a month? And both of those places I think are so rich and layered that to be able to spend a month. 00:55:54 Speaker 1: There would be incredible, and a year. 00:55:58 Speaker 2: Probably venice. I mean, I feel like I uncovered some and there's still so much more I want. 00:56:05 Speaker 1: It's calling you for sure. Yeah, as well. I like to ask everyone what are you traveling through right now? 00:56:13 Speaker 2: Is that an emotional question? 00:56:14 Speaker 1: Yes, emotional, It's a life question kind of age. 00:56:18 Speaker 2: I mean, I think the idea of you know, I think a lot of the decisions I've made about my life recently are about, you know, getting older, not wanting to have regrets. And so I'm traveling through this idea of time, of limited time and how I want to spend it, and a lot of that is by traveling too. I'm traveling through traveling too. 00:56:45 Speaker 1: I well, I hope you spend some traveling time with me. One of my favorite travel buddies. Thanks Sarah, I love you, I love you. 00:56:54 Speaker 2: Bye.