Time Sensitive

Fashion designer Rachel Comey has always done things in a tightly focused way—and on her own terms. For more than two decades, she has followed an independent, wholly original approach to clothing design and retail that has resulted in her eponymous brand’s staying power. From novelty underwear with pockets, to a hand-painted shirt that musician David Bowie once wore on the Late Show with David Letterman, to her trademark high-waisted, wide-legged Legion pants, Comey’s designs stand out for their artful craft, distinctive aesthetic, and no-fuss sensibility. Beautiful as they are, they’re also, in a sense, utilitarian: Comey spends her time imagining her wearers’ needs as they go about their days and designs around that. There is something about the entire Rachel Comey universe that comes across as effortlessly cool.

On this episode, Comey talks with Andrew about her 20-plus years in the fashion industry experimenting while staying true to herself, childhood memories that have helped shape her enduring designs, and her attention toward creating joy through clothing.

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• Rachel Comey
• [34:29] Fashion Week
• [47:39] Pioneer Works
• [49:14] High Maintenance
• [52:08] Legion Pant

For Céline Semaan, the founder of Slow Factory, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing climate justice and social equity, no obstacle is too big—or too conceptual—to surmount. Underlying all of Slow Factory’s efforts is the notion of “fashion activism,” a term that’s been credited to Semaan herself. The organization’s past projects include “Landfills as Museums,” which served as a meditation on what “trash” really is, and among its upcoming efforts is “Garment-to-Garment,” an initiative that will teach designers to make clothes from existing apparel instead of from rolls of raw fabric. Semaan is also currently developing the new Slow Factory Institute in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which will serve the dual roles of a factory for waste-led production as well as a Bauhaus-style school for climate justice.

On this episode, Semaan speaks with Spencer about fashion as a political act, the importance of finding ease with contradiction, and what a post-trash world could look like.

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

• Full transcript
• celinecelines.com
• slowfactory.earth
• [03:54] “Slow is Beautiful”
• [06:16] Open Education
• [10:58] “Cities at Night”
• [30:16] “Applied Utopia”
• [34:05] Slow Factory Institute
• [35:01] Colin Vernon
• [36:33] Slowhide
• [41:13] “Landfills as Museums”
• [51:25] “Garment-to-Garment”
• [01:08:41] A Woman Is a School
• [01:24:45] “The Revolution is a School”

For writer, comedian, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston, host of the How to Citizen podcast, humility is a tool to connect with people—and to bring them together around some collective sense of truth. Through his work, Thurston serves as an ambassador to his audiences, always considering what they’re going through and the questions they might ask. A Harvard graduate, he has advised the Obama White House and worked as a producer on The Daily Show, and is author of the best-selling memoir How To Be Black. 

A dogged dedication to transparency shines through all that Thurston does. Across his projects, he takes on nuanced discussions about race, technology, and democracy—and in the hopes of galvanizing his readers, listeners, and viewers, uses compassion and humor to make these subjects more approachable. Whether writing about Will Smith’s Oscars slap or the metaverse for the media company Puck (of which he is a founding partner) or hosting the new PBS travel series America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston, he navigates everything with great self-awareness, curiosity, and an open mind. 

On this episode, Thurston speaks with Andrew about storytelling as a collaborative process, the value of open-source technology, and the word “citizen” as a verb.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• baratunde.com
• [04:16] Sidwell Friends School
• [13:49] We’re Having A Moment podcast
• [14:59] Live on Lockdown
• [21:56] “How To Do a Data Detox In a Zillion Easy Steps”
• [25:06] Thurston’s TED Talk, “How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time”
• [39:01] How to Citizen podcast
• [01:22:27] How to Be Black
• [01:24:26] “The Human Shield Against Technology”
• [01:25:17] Thurston’s TEDx Talk, “Hacking Comedy”
• [01:32:53] America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston

Author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri grew up in what she has called “a linguistic exile.” Born in London to Bengali immigrants who moved to the United States when she was 3, Lahiri experienced a profound sense of alienation as a child and a longing for somewhere that felt like home. Then, during a 1994 trip to Florence, Italy, she fell in love with the Italian language, which she came to see as a gateway to exploring her life and identity further—or to, in other words, get beyond any imposed self. For the last decade, she has written almost exclusively in Italian, and has translated most of her Italian writing into English herself. A visceral energy rises up from her translated sentences, reflective of the strong emotional tenor she feels when engaging with the Italian language. 

Some warned Lahiri against her decision to embrace Italian, practically considering it career suicide. But she remained unmoved. Despite her many triumphs until that point—including winning the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and having her popular novel The Namesake (2003) turned into a Hollywood film—the pivot brought about a new flood of creativity. Since 2015, Lahiri has produced more books than there have been years, including her most recent, Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University Press), which was published in May. Her first book of Italian short stories, Racconti Italiani, or Roman Stories, will debut in the fall.

On this episode, Lahiri speaks with Spencer about translation as a political act, the vocabulary of architecture, and language as a portal to understanding one’s place in the world.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• [12:35] The Lowland
• [16:33] Translating Myself and Others
• [22:32] The Clothing of Books
• [22:32] The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
• [23:11] Whereabouts
• [25:00] Confidenza
• [25:12] Ovid’s Metamorphoses
• [33:41] In Other Words
• [36:14] Racconti Italiani
• [39:35] The Namesake
• [43:38] Interpreter of Maladies
• [47:53] Unaccustomed Earth
• [59:44] Jhumpa Lahiri on Charlie Rose
• [01:07:38] Philip Guston

Jancis Robinson wrote the book on wine. Literally. The author of the first four editions of the definitive Oxford Companion to Wine, she has also published some 20 books on the subject and more than 1,500 articles for the Financial Times, for which she has been the wine correspondent since 1989. A member of the royal family’s wine committee, she also helps select wines for Queen Elizabeth II. A trailblazer and a nimble scholar, Robinson—who, in addition to her work at the FT, pours her expertise into her jancisrobinson.com website—was the first wine writer ever to become an M.W., or Master of Wine, a rare distinction.

With nearly five decades in the trade, Robinson has an acute awareness of the forces behind the field’s constant evolution, and gives her readers context so that they can understand what it all means. Her primary interests lie not just in the flavors of wine, but rather in the stories that wines tell about where they came from, how they’re made, and what they reveal about the world. A supporter of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation, a nonprofit working to improve soil health, she also helps amplify the many ways in which the climate crisis is impacting the wine industry, such as harvest dates and “smoke taint.” By her account, the wine world is in more flux today than ever before. 

On this episode, Robinson speaks with Spencer about the power of old vines, the trials of translating taste and smell into language, and why some of today’s most thoughtful producers are packaging great wines in cardboard boxes and cans.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• jancisrobinson.com
• [15:10] Regenerative Viticulture Foundation
• [17:16] The World Atlas of Wine
• [22:43] Vintage Time Charts
• [26:47] “Ancient Vines and Stunning Wines, But Portugal’s Douro Valley Has a Problem”
• [28:37] Historic Vineyard Society
• [28:48] Sideways
• [31:14] Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course
• [43:09] Master of Wine exam
• [46:04] The Oxford Companion to Wine
• [49:45] The 24-Hour Wine Expert
• [57:53] Wine Grapes
• [59:53] Design Classics
• [01:00:51] The Royal Opera House

Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza believes that music can unite people across cultures and has spent the past 45 years showing audiences how it can be done. One of his latest projects exemplifies this philosophy: Beginning in October, once a month during the Friday Kabbalat Shabbat services at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, Broza will present tracks from Tefila, a new album that recasts the service’s traditional prayers and hymns as a blend of folk, jazz, pop, and classical songs. Performed by Broza, who sings in Hebrew and plays guitar alongside a global band of strings, horns, and gospel singers, the effort is a culmination of a lifetime spent honing his craft, which is rooted in the idea of music as a potent tool for facilitating dialogue and social change. 

Themes of building bridges and breaking barriers run throughout Broza’s vast catalog. Among his 40-plus albums, many of which are multi-platinum, with English, Hebrew, and Spanish lyrics, several put American and Spanish poems to melody. His first song, “Yihye Tov,” or “Things Will Get Better,” from 1975, became and remains a soul-stirring peace anthem for Israel; his 2014 album, East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, features both Israeli and Palestinian musicians. Whether playing for three people (as he once did, in the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, as it was being shelled by rockets) or thousands, Broza takes great care to convey a sense of empathy and hope into his dynamic compositions.

On this episode, Broza talks with Andrew about music as a connective tissue, how dialogue can lead to respect, and why feeling trumps thinking almost every time.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• davidbroza.net
• [07:45] Yehonatan Geffen
• [07:45] “Yihye Tov” 
• [21:51] “The Sixteenth Sheep” 
• [33:42] Tefila
• [37:42] “Not Exactly Christmas”  
• [43:17] Misa Criolla
• [50:51] Sharona Aron
• [54:21] Wellesley Aron
• [01:21:01] One Million Guitars

If life is a garden, the writer, editor, and craftsperson Deborah Needleman certainly knows how to dig and cultivate it. Early in her career, she followed a nonlinear path in the media industry that was, for the better part of a decade, slow and steady—and then, upon launching the home design bible Domino in 2004, meteoric. Over the next dozen years, Needleman rose to become one of the magazine world’s most in-demand editors, serving as the editor-in-chief of both WSJ. Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Across this work, her deep appreciation for beauty, craft, gardening and nature, and unfussy, richly layered interiors shined through. By the end of 2016, though, Needleman decided that she had had enough of the whirlwind hustle of the magazine business. She sought a way to work with her hands, not just her head. 

So she slowed down—way down—and turned to the meditative acts of gardening and craft. She headed to the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, where she took an introductory broom-making course. Soon, she began producing a limited-edition “Garden Tea” of herbs such as chamomile, lemon balm, and mint. And she kept writing: Throughout 2017 and 2018, Needleman traveled the world, studying local crafts for the T column “Material Culture.” In time, she began to work more consistently with her hands, establishing a humble craft practice, primarily focused around basketry, that she continues to build upon today.

On this episode, Needleman talks with Spencer about the pleasures of producing objects from modest materials, what her current craft endeavors have in common with magazine-making, and the deep inherent value of a patina.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes: 

• Full transcript
• [07:52] The December 4, 2016, issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine
• [11:23] “For the Love of Italy” 
• [16:21] Deborah Needleman’s home in upstate New York
• [18:44] “Long-Stemmed Neuroses” 
• [20:33] “The Anti-Martha”
• [22:22] Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End 
• [25:23] Piet Oudolf
• [37:15] “Lessons in the Humble Art of Broom-Making”
• [41:59] Deborah Needleman’s Side chair
• [47:19] John C. Campbell Folk School
   

Bethann Hardison has, with great finesse, risen to become among the most vital voices in fashion. A self-described “advocate” who currently serves as Gucci’s executive advisor for global equity and cultural engagement, the former model and agent is a powerhouse figure who has not only reshaped conversations around diversity and anti-racism industry-wide, but has actively pushed for and, in turn, made change in terms of representation, from advertising campaigns to editorial shoots to runway shows.

Hardison brings a nuanced, lived approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, one that is wholly her own, and one that she has practiced from a young age. With subtle (and sometimes, not-so-subtle) force—and through projects such as the Black Girls Coalition, which she co-founded in 1988 with her friend the model Iman, and the Diversity Coalition, which she started in 2013 by calling out certain brands for not using any models of color in their runway shows—Hardison has stepped up again and again, speaking truth to power, against what was, and in some respects remains, a long, ongoing lack of representation. This work has earned her a matriarchal place in the upper echelons of the fashion world, with recognitions such as the 2014 CFDA Founder’s Award. Hardison is currently at work on a memoir about her life, and a documentary about her path to fashion and diversity work by the filmmaker and director Frédéric Tcheng is also underway.

On this episode, she talks with Spencer about her “queen-ager” energy, her glass-half-full philosophies around death and dying, her efforts to call out fashion industry racism, and her rational, deep-seated concerns for the future.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• bethannhardison.com
• @bethannhardison 
• [29:07] CFDA Founder’s Award
• [51:32] “The Battle of Versailles” runway show
• [51:43] The October 1974 cover of Essence
• [55:54] Issey Miyake and Twelve Black Girls
• [01:00:36] Black Girls Coalition
• [01:19:00] The “All-Black” issue of Italian Vogue

There is perhaps no one on the planet with a bigger-picture view on the impact of design—in all of its manifestations—than Paola Antonelli. As the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design as well as its director of R&D, Antonelli consistently expands notions and definitions of what might be considered “design,” and shows how, in no uncertain terms, design connects to practically everything we see, touch, hear, taste, smell, and do. With great passion and energy, she is the ultimate clear-eyed booster of this wide-ranging realm she holds dear. 

Antonelli’s most recent output—the book Design Emergency: Building a Better Future (Phaidon)—is not only an outgrowth of her prolific 28-year career at MoMA (during which she has worked on related projects including the 2005 exhibition “Safe: Design Takes on Risk,” the 2015 book Design and Violence, and the 2019 Triennale di Milano exhibition “Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival”), but also a result of the pandemic. During lockdown in spring 2020, Antonelli, together with the British design critic and writer Alice Rawsthorn, conceived and launched @designemergency on Instagram, a still-ongoing feed that highlights voices central to key global issues, all of them related to improving the world through design. The effort is yet another example of Antonelli’s talent for synthesizing a vast array of provocative projects, designers, products, and ideas; bringing them to the forefront; and giving them much-needed attention. 

On this episode, Antonelli talks with Spencer about time as a frustration, the myth of speed, the importance of going with the flow, and the many design emergencies constantly taking place all around us.

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• [04:15] Museum of Modern Art
• [04:15] @curiousoctopus
• [05:38] Objects of Design: From the Museum of Modern Art
• [06:09] “Machine Art”
• [12:54] “Humble Masterpieces”
• [15:44] “Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design”
• [17:42] “Design and the Elastic Mind”
• [25:14] “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology”
• [29:34] Design Emergency
• [29:34] Alice Rawsthorn
• [33:43] @design.emergency
• [45:18] “Items: Is Fashion Modern?”
• [47:02] The 3,000-Year History of the Hoodie
• [51:03] “Safe: Design Takes On Risk”
• [01:04:45] Design and Violence

Alfredo Jaar illuminates truths that often escape popular consciousness. Through his work, the artist and filmmaker raises awareness about sociopolitical issues that have been forgotten, suppressed, or ignored, including genocide and the displacement of refugees. Simultaneously, he informs and engages viewers, urging them to be present for those who need their attention most. With all that he makes, Jaar maintains a heightened sensitivity to the limits and ethics of representation. His aim? To provide viewers with a different perspective on the world and reveal their connections to its many crises—and to be moved to act.

Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1956, during a time of intense media censorship, Jaar early on developed an understanding of how to discuss injustices through a different kind of language. He immerses himself deeply in the subjects he documents, which have included Brazil’s Serra Pelada gold mine and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While Jaar’s work focuses on specific events, there’s a haunting sense of timelessness to it. Take his landmark “A Logo for America” project, which points out that when we say “America” and mean “the U.S.,” we’re claiming a region that is only partially our own. Shown around the world, it has gained multiple new meanings since its 1987 debut. Currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of its 2022 Biennial (through Sept. 5) is a video by Jaar, amplified with special effects, of the 2020 police attacks on demonstrators in Washington, D.C.

On this episode, Jaar speaks with Andrew about how tragedies reveal inequities, gathering multiple perspectives to understand global issues, and slowing people down so that they can see. 

Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Full transcript
• alfredojaar.net
• [03:43] “Manu”
• [06:36] “Between the Heavens and Me”
• [23:56] “Lament of the Images”
• [54:54] Nicolás Jaar
• [01:01:09] “Rushes”
• [01:03:32] “Cries and Whispers”
• [01:11:22] “A Logo for America”
• [01:18:25] “The Rwanda Project”
• [01:20:40] “Six Seconds”