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New York Times: The Plush Pleasure of Velvet

LONDON — ’Tis the season for wearing velvet — or so it would seem during a browse through the Notting Hill branch of the high-end boutique Matches. In the shoe section there was Saint Laurent (poppy-red strappy sandals), Malone Souliers (gold and red embroidered mules in black velvet) and Aquazzura (deep-blue ankle boots), while handbags included clutches from Bottega Veneta in its classic intrecciato pattern in both cotton-candy pink and baby blue, and a gold spider-embroidered clutch in dark green velvet from the Turkish designers Sanayi 313. Read more

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New York Times: Centuries of Hats

LONDON — The back room on the ground floor of Lock & Co. Hatters is something of a tiny museum of the company’s 340-year history. In a glass case is a large ledger listing orders from customers like Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill, who wore a Lock silk top hat for his wedding in 1908. Read more

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New York Times: Mom’s Ring Remade

LONDON — When Jaleh Shahmanesh inherited her mother’s wedding ring, she knew she would treasure it but never wear it. The blue sapphire, surrounded by diamonds and set in white gold, was almost 100 years old and typical of the ornate rings popular in Iran in those days. Ms. Shahmanesh, born in Iran and now living in London, does not like white gold and felt the setting was too old-fashioned. Read more

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Wall Street Journal: Is the Result of the US Election Good Reason to Move Abroad?

LONDON: Even before Super Tuesday on Mar. 1, I was seeing comments on Facebook and Twitter from various people swearing that if Donald Trump, or Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, were to become president, they would move overseas—or to Canada. But the day after those results, Google announced that “How do I move to Canada?” searches from the U.S. had reached a record high Read more

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New York Times: Learning to Forgive After War

BELGRADE–In the spring of 2000, Simcha Applebaum, a retired Israeli colonel, was in the southern Serbian city of Kraljevo, working on a business deal with Maja Terzic’s father.

Ms. Terzic, now 35, was then a university student in Belgrade, acting as interpreter for the two men at dinner. When Mr. Applebaum reached for a glass, his sleeve went up and Ms. Terzic saw his tattoo from Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Read more

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