That Fenty Gent: Rihanna’s ‘Right Hand,’ Jahleel Weaver

That Fenty Gent: Rihanna’s ‘Right Hand,’ Jahleel Weaver


At 33, Jahleel Weaver has pretty substantially received the celebrity-stylist lottery.

As deputy artistic director of Fenty, the women’s all set-to-dress in and accessories line launched by Rihanna in May possibly, his days are put in working alongside a 9-time Grammy Award winner whose clothing model is backed by LVMH, the French luxurious conglomerate, and launched to her passionate enthusiasts devoid of regard to common seasonal rhythms.

Theirs is a near relationship. “We converse nearly every day,” Mr. Weaver reported. “I feel I’m her little brother.” However Rihanna is young, at 31.

“Creatively, he is my appropriate hand,” she wrote of Mr. Weaver in an e mail, “but at the similar time, it’s as if we’re spouse and children.”

The path that led Mr. Weaver to assistance guidebook the most talked-about trend debut of 2019, launched by just one of the most influential ladies in well-known culture, was a lengthy and gently winding a person.

At 18, he moved from suburban Maryland to New York to research vogue design at LIM College or university. Mr. Weaver helped aid himself by operating in income at Jeffrey, the large-end retailer in the meatpacking district recognised for its in depth shoe office and attentive consumer support.

He immediately met some well-known customers, numerous downtowners working in tunes, and began to type various. “To be functioning for, and developing a brand,” Mr. Weaver explained, “I usually think about my encounter at Jeffrey.”

Mr. Weaver was also making inroads doing the job as a freelance stylist absent from the retail outlet, and it was on a person of these gigs that he achieved Mel Ottenberg, who is at present the innovative director of Job interview magazine. Mr. Ottenberg had just begun collaborating with Rihanna on her 2011 “Loud” tour and introduced Mr. Weaver on to help him.

Soon plenty of, Mr. Weaver and Rihanna turned inseparable, traveling the globe with each other. (Mr. Ottenberg proceeds to fashion Rihanna on celebration, as he did in 2018, dressing her when she was a host of the Met Gala in a stunning jewel-embroidered, papal-impressed Margiela ensemble.)

Mr. Weaver, while he proceeds to journey extensively, now life primarily in Paris. He moved there in early 2018 to start work on Fenty’s debut, a quite stress filled undertaking.

“How do you place almost everything that Rihanna signifies into 1 assortment?” Mr. Weaver claimed.

The reply arrived to the pair late a person night time in the type of a music metaphor: an album and its release. Relatively than settle on distinctive, themed collections shown two times a year, Fenty would drop capsule collections during the yr, considerably as singles are unveiled in excess of the system of an album’s rollout.

This would heighten anticipation and established the brand apart from the grind of the vogue pack.

“Each launch,” Mr. Weaver stated, “can converse to something unique,” with inspiration taken from different elements of Rihanna’s particular style, be it smooth futurism or the history of Cameo.

“At the conclude, you have a full album, a total body of get the job done,” Mr. Weaver mentioned. “I think that’s the splendor about our launch schedule — there is a piece of Fenty for everything you may will need to get dressed.”

Basing Fenty’s approach all-around on the internet drops was a radical go, jolting the outdated seasonal routine with the hectic cadence of quick manner. But Fenty has been even far more slicing-edge in providing people of coloration a put at the leading of an industry nonetheless plagued by racial inequality and insensitivity.

When Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH announced Fenty, Rihanna turned the initially female and person of colour to set up a dwelling with the luxurious retail huge. At a time when higher-profile models continue to be plagued by racist missteps — just this calendar year Gucci was compelled to recall a balaclava knit-top rated that resembled blackface — the significance of Fenty’s debut was not lost on Mr. Weaver.

“All the obstacles that were damaged in that 1 working day, with that just one announcement,” he explained. “I really cried.”

Along with Mr. Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Olivier Rousteing functioning Balmain, Rihanna’s entry into the subject was more proof to many that adjust, on the other hand overdue, is lastly coming to the higher echelons of luxurious style.

Mr. Weaver is feeling optimistic. “Because of men and women like Ri constantly breaking limitations,” he said, “it would make it a ton a lot easier to exist in area where representation for people of colour didn’t always exist.”

And his personal position in that room?

“Honestly,” Mr. Weaver reported, “I assume I’m even now pinching myself.”



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In 2019, We Were There: 12 Favorite Dispatches From the Earth’s 4 Corners

In 2019, We Were There: 12 Favorite Dispatches From the Earth’s 4 Corners


Getting there would make all the variance. When our correspondents are on the floor — or underground or on the ice or at sea — they, and you, can get up shut to the tale, often uncomfortably so, uncovering vital information that no phone job interview could ever seize.

This implies touring to some of the world’s most significantly-flung and hazardous locations, from an Islamic Point out camp in Syria, to the jungles of Thailand where armed rosewood smugglers roam, to an Afghan arena where the vicious fighting canine pose the the very least of the hazards.

Residing there issues, far too. When our correspondents expend a long time as residents of the locations they protect, they uncover cultural truths about a state that only bit by bit reveal themselves. The Germans love to go rapidly and, as we’ll see, to get bare. The Senegalese will never miss a exercise session. The Lebanese may not like each other, but they adore basketball. In China, a parade can mean an eviction.

Invest sufficient time in a put and even humble objects and day to day animals can reveal outsize insights about a country’s mood and manners. Clay pots in Myanmar. Bagels in Montreal. A quirky ’60s convertible in Britain. A rooster in France. Snakes in Canada.

When covering India’s climatic extremes, a healthcare emergency intervened, and the tale turned not only about monsoons, but also about Indian culture, the human head and most cancers.

“I was taken for lifeless by a mortuary crew, who toe-tagged me with the pursuing ID: ‘Unknown Caucasian male, age 47 and a fifty percent,’” our reporter wrote. “Nothing could have cheered me up far more. It was only days until my 70th birthday.”

—By Rod Nordland

As South Korea’s birthrate plummets, rural faculties are emptying. To fill its school rooms, 1 school opened its doorways to females who have for yearned for many years to discover to browse and generate.

“Writing letters to my children, that’s what I dreamed of the most,” stated a single of the college students, who vary in age from 56 to 80.

—By Choe Sang-Hun images and video clip by Chang W. Lee

“Paraguay is the land of impunity,” said a infamous drug kingpin we interviewed in his jail mobile.

Australia’s premier metropolis has a scarce superpower: It turns urbanites into bird persons, and birds into urbanites. Interacting with the big avian population is a everyday experience and (generally) a delight.



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unrealistic-sexual-expectations-female-have

Unrealistic Sexual Expectations Female Have

Unrealistic Sexual Expectations Female Have

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An unrealistic sexual expectation!

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What answer did she get!

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J.K. Rowling Criticized After Tweeting Support for Anti-Transgender Researcher

J.K. Rowling Criticized After Tweeting Support for Anti-Transgender Researcher


J.K. Rowling, the creator of the “Harry Potter” series, was criticized by gay and transgender rights groups on Thursday after she expressed support for a British researcher whose views on transgender people were described by a court as “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”

The researcher, Maya Forstater, lost her job last year at a think tank in London and filed a lawsuit earlier this year alleging discrimination based on what she called her “gender critical” views, which she has expressed often on Twitter. Among them is the belief, which Ms. Forstater tweeted on Wednesday, that “it is impossible to change sex.”

An employment tribunal in London ruled against her on Wednesday, saying her views were “not a philosophical belief protected” by British law but were instead “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others.”

“It is also a slight of hand to suggest that the claimant merely does not hold the belief that trans women are women,” the court ruled. “She positively believes that they are men and will say so whenever she wishes.”

Mr. Rowling criticized that outcome and said she supported Ms. Forstater, who did not respond to a message seeking comment on Thursday.

“Dress however you please,” Ms. Rowling wrote on Twitter, where she has more than 14 million followers. “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”

Ms. Forstater’s case was widely reported in Britain but became an international news story because of Ms. Rowling’s tweet — and because of the backlash to it, which was powered in part by longstanding suspicion among some L.G.B.T. advocates that the author held negative views of transgender people.

Much of that suspicion has focused on Ms. Rowling’s social media activity. In 2018, she was criticized for liking a tweet that referred to transgender women as “men in dresses.”

A representative for the author said she’d had a “middle-aged moment” and hit the like button accidentally, according to The Guardian. But some critics viewed incidents like that differently in light of her expression of support for Ms. Forstater.

“Well, she finally said the quiet part out loud,” Jackson Bird, a transgender author, tweeted on Thursday. “This is really heartbreaking for a lot of folks. If Harry Potter is ruined for you, I completely get it.”

Ms. Rowling had not addressed the uproar by Thursday afternoon, and declined an offer from the L.G.B.T. advocacy group GLAAD to have an off-the-record conversation about the controversy, said the group’s spokesman, Mathew Lasky.

Ken Kleinberg, a lawyer for Ms. Rowling in the United States, declined to comment on the episode when reached by telephone on Thursday. Phone calls to The Blair Partnership, which represents her in Britain, went unanswered.

Anthony Ramos, who leads GLAAD’s engagement with celebrities on L.G.B.T. issues, said in a statement that Ms. Rowling had “now aligned herself with an anti-science ideology that denies the basic humanity of people who are transgender.”

On Thursday, Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, the most influential L.G.B.T. advocacy organization in the United States, accused Ms. Rowling of being an anti-transgender fundamentalist and demanded she apologize for her statement.

“J.K. Rowling says she’s opposed to fundamentalism in any form, but she’s promoting a harmful fundamentalism that endangers the L.G.B.T.Q. community — particularly transgender youth,” Mr. David said in a statement. “She should apologize.”





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U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti Said to Have Fathered Hundreds of Children

U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti Said to Have Fathered Hundreds of Children


United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti fathered and left behind hundreds of children, researchers found in a newly released academic study, leaving mothers struggling with stigma, poverty and single parenthood after the men departed the country.

While the United Nations has acknowledged numerous instances of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in Haiti and elsewhere, the study on Haitian victims went further in documenting the scope of the problem in that country — the Western Hemisphere’s poorest — than had been previously known.

“Girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated” by peacekeepers, who were stationed in Haiti from 2004 to 2017, and some of the women were later “left in misery” to raise their children alone, according to the study by two academic researchers.

“They put a few coins in your hands to drop a baby in you,” one Haitian was quoted as saying by the researchers, whose work was published on Tuesday by The Conversation, an academic website supported by a consortium of universities.

Of the people interviewed by the authors, 265 told of children fathered by members of the peacekeeping force, who came from at least 13 countries but mostly Uruguay and Brazil, according to a chart in the study.

“That 10 percent of those interviewed mentioned such children highlights just how common such stories really are,” they wrote. They noted that over the years, news organizations had reported anecdotal cases in Haiti in which “minors were offered food and small amounts of cash to have sex with U.N. personnel.”

The authors did not estimate the exact numbers of impregnated women or children left behind. But legal experts and aid workers say the problem has been pervasive, and that the United Nations has failed to assist the women.

The Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, a group of Haitian lawyers based in Port-au-Prince, has filed paternity suits on behalf of 10 children said to have been fathered by peacekeepers. Sienna Merope-Synge, a staff attorney at a Boston-based partner organization, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, said the groups had approached United Nations officials in 2016 about securing child support for the mothers but had received none.

“The U.N. must be much more proactive,” she said. “It shouldn’t be on a woman in rural Haiti to seek transnational action for a man in Uruguay.”

Others were far more critical of the United Nations, seeing the Haiti study as another instance of what they called the organization’s male-dominated ethos. Paula Donovan, a co-founder and co-director of AIDS-Free World, a group that has frequently castigated the United Nations over sexual abuse and gender issues, said the study had corroborated her views.

“This research confirms that standard U.N. practice is to exploit women — from those subsisting in tents to those presenting at conferences — and then squash them like bugs if they dare complain about sexual abuse and threaten the U.N. patriarchy’s 75-year-old culture of entitlement and impunity,” Ms. Donovan said in a statement.

While some mothers told the researchers of sexual violence by United Nations personnel, most of the stories recounted subtler forms of coercion, with peacekeepers trading small amounts of money or food for sex with women and girls who were often desperately poor. In other instances, women and their relatives described consensual relationships that ended when the peacekeepers left Haiti.

The authors said Haitians residing in communities around 10 United Nations bases had been asked “what it’s like to be a woman or a girl living in a community that hosts a peacekeeping mission.” The Haitians were not asked specifically about potential abuse or sexual relations with peacekeepers, according to the study, but participants raised the issue themselves.

“I started to talk to him, then he told me he loved me and I agreed to date him,” a woman was quoted as saying of her relationship several years earlier with a peacekeeper. “Three months later, I was pregnant, and in September he was sent to his country.” She added that she could not pay the fees to send her son to school.

The testimonies echoed a pattern seen in Liberia between 1990 and 1998, when thousands of children were reported to have been fathered by international peacekeepers.

In Haiti, the peacekeeping mission began as an attempt to bring stability after the 2004 rebellion that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the United Nations extended it after a catastrophic earthquake ravaged the country in 2010.

But the mission itself was devastating, according to human rights organizations and researchers. Peacekeepers have been accused of unintentionally killing dozens of civilians, and some introduced cholera to Haiti after the earthquake, starting an epidemic that killed more than 10,000 people and sickened more than 800,000. The United Nations has apologized for its role in the epidemic but has resisted legal efforts aimed at compensating cholera victims and their families.

The study’s authors recommended that the United Nations educate its personnel about the economic and social hardships of the mothers and children left behind. They also urged the world body to stop simply repatriating its people who are implicated in sexual exploitation or abuse, rather than turning them over to local authorities.

Ms. Lee, the lead author of the study, said member states that contribute troops to United Nations’ peacekeeping efforts also bore direct responsibility to help support the mothers and children.

“It’s not a U.N. problem, it’s a Brazilian military problem, or a Uruguayan military problem,” Ms. Lee said. “The U.N., though, hasn’t found a way to hold the troops of the member states to account.”

Rick Gladstone contributed reporting.



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Kumail Nanjiani and the Twilight of the Schlubs

Kumail Nanjiani and the Twilight of the Schlubs


On Monday, with a single Instagram post, another beloved schlub disappeared behind a set of muscles.

Kumail Nanjiani, best known for playing the most endearing of the nerds on “Silicon Valley” and the romantic lead in the film “The Big Sick,” shared an image of himself in which he looked significantly, well, stronger, than he did when he appeared in those roles.

He joined a select crew that includes John Krasinski and Chris Pratt. Those two actors were introduced to America as men of average musculature through office sitcoms; they are now covered in all kind of inflated ’ceps. Superhero franchises and the like have sucked in all three schlubs and many more besides, and made them mighty. Even everymen are now supermen.

“I never thought I’d be one of those people who would post a thirsty shirtless, but I’ve worked way too hard for way too long so here we are,” Mr. Nanjiani wrote in the photos’ caption. “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

The photos of Mr. Nanjiani were taken by Mark Upson, a photographer and videographer in London who said that the shoot occurred toward the end of last week in the gym where Mr. Nanjiani works out. They were taken to appear on the actor’s Instagram account, Mr. Upson said, because Mr. Nanjiani was proud of what he had achieved.

Mr. Upson said that the photo had been color edited, the darkness of the background altered and some of the more unsightly items dropped out, but that nothing had been airbrushed.

“The body and everything you see of him really is him,” Mr. Upson said. “He’s super-confident. It’s good to see.”

Mr. Nanjiani did add a cautionary note to his big reveal. “I’m glad I look like this, but I also understand why I never did before. It would have been impossible without these resources and time.” He thanked various trainers, a catering company and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, who wrote “The Big Sick” with Mr. Nanjiani.

Ms. Gordon tweeted, saying “My husband works hard for every role he takes, but he’s worked hard in many new ways for this one. I’m so proud of him. I always have been. Also, we spent the majority of this past weekend playing Borderlands 3 so don’t think he’s changed too much.”

Mr. Nanjiani wrote on Instagram that he had undertaken the transformation for his role in “The Eternals,” an upcoming Marvel film. (His publicist said he was not available to comment.) Similarly, Mr. Pratt and Mr. Krasinski both became visibly stronger before their first high-profile appearances in action films.

At this rate, and with superhero movies and television shows continuing to rake in money at the box office, it feels as if no schlub will be left untouched by Hollywood’s thirst for stars who look believable when doing superpowered things.

Given the dominance of action franchises available in Hollywood now, the stakes have become even higher for actors to become noticeably fit, according to Gunnar Peterson, a Los Angeles trainer whose gym is visited by actors including Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.

“There are huge franchise movies, there are big paychecks,” Mr. Peterson said. “You put yourself in a position to work more if you’re in better shape, I think.”

He added that he had seen a change in what his male clients were after in the past decade or so.

“Guys used to want to be lean,” he said. “And now they talk about full body and performance. They want to be athletic. It’s evolving. I started training people in ’85. Its different — it’s evolved through the ’90s and I think it’s on an uptick back to size and lean mass.”

Alison Field, the chair of epidemiology at Brown University whose research focuses on identifying the causes and correlates of eating disorders, said in an interview Monday that, over the past decade, the body images with which young men were presented had changed quite a bit.

“I think people in general associate weight concerns with females, but I think they happen as often in males,” Dr. Field said. “There’s so much targeting of messages and images to males. In females, there’s sort of this belief that you can never be too small. Males get the message that they can be too small, so you have pressure about stature, about physique and having very unrealistic body images portrayed to them and really marketed to them.”

Dr. Field said that the more extreme and unrealistic versions of images of male physiques may also encourage the use of workout supplements, which she said were thoroughly under-regulated and a “huge concern.”

For actors of all genders, dramatic physical transformations are part of the job.

“For your average person to achieve a similar physique would not be worth the time and effort,” Dr. Field said. “Having that much preoccupation with their body shape would not be healthy.”





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Where the Dom Pérignon Flows Downtown

Where the Dom Pérignon Flows Downtown


Little Sister

Downtown Manhattan

A petite blonde in a tight ponytail sashayed through the metal doors into the depths below. But three 40-something women in puffy coats grimaced when told it’s reservations only. An unshaven man in a black beanie couldn’t take the wait anymore and stormed off.

Little Sister, which opened under the Moxy NYC East Village Hotel in September, is the latest slice of the Hamptons to land right on the edge of the once-gritty East Village. There aren’t any graffiti-covered bathrooms and beer-soaked floors; instead this glittery lounge offers gold-speckled lacquerware tables and leather banquettes firm enough to withstand the sharpest stilettos.

The Place: Located across the street from Webster Hall, and three floors below ground, the golden-hued room was designed by the Rockwell Group and features curved wooden beams and a sheet of crystal whisky decanters anchored to the ceiling. It’s like partying in a ship’s hull.

The Crowd: Around midnight on a recent Friday, the lounge was filled with 20-somethings from a financial consulting company who swayed in reluctant harmony. A nearby table full of late-40s businessmen in French cuffed shirts danced strenuously with younger women in short, flouncy dresses and thigh-high boots.

They downed Dom Pérignon while one woman shimmied clumsily on the velvet couches. One man with a South American accent was overheard telling his date, “Always tip the bathroom attendant first, then you can do anything you want.”

The Playlist: DJ Price, a regular here, mixed upbeat club favorites like “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, and “Juicy” by Notorious B.I.G. with newer hits including “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo and “Dancing With a Stranger” by Sam Smith and Normani.

Getting in: Guarding the front door with praetorian precision is Wass Stevens, the former assistant district attorney, ex-boxer and longtime doorman, who has made and ruined many clubgoers’ nights. If he knows you, you’re in. If not, better luck next time. Try making a reservation online, but it’s no guarantee.

Drinks: You may want to check your credit limit before ordering. While most cocktails are about $20, including the Sister Midnight (made with Botanist Gin, Maraschino Liqueur, Lemon and Crème de Violette), the drink menu also includes a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII that goes for $10,000, as well as glow-in-the-dark jeroboams of Dom Pérignon for $7,600. An eight percent administrative fee (not a tip) is also added to the bill.

Little Sister, 112 East 11th Street (between Third and Fourth Avenues); 212-888-1095; Littlesisternyc.com. Open Thursday to Sunday, 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.



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Dispatch From the Land of Flight Shaming, or How I Became a Train Boaster

Dispatch From the Land of Flight Shaming, or How I Became a Train Boaster


In reality, much has changed since my last long-haul train adventure in Europe, more than a decade ago, when I backpacked through France and Italy with a boyfriend who would later become my husband. Today sleeping cars are a rarity, knocked out by budget airlines and their comparatively cheap fares, though a few European rail operators are moving to revive sleeper trains because of a recent increase in demand.

Not willing to endure an overnight sitting upright, I decided to instead spend my sleeping hours on this journey in hotels. I also built in lengthy stopovers to allow myself time to experience the cities I was passing through — embrace the journey — while also avoiding the hassle of missed connections.

After a five-hour train ride from Stockholm to Copenhagen, where my imagined cappuccino manifested as slightly stale coffee in the bistro car, I had a full day to enjoy the Danish capital, one of my favorite cities. There was shopping at Hay, a waterside spritz on the La Banchina pier, a hyperlocal dinner at Manfreds, and an ice-cream-flavored pale ale at Mikkeller & Friends. Before my early-afternoon departure the following day, I lingered over breakfast at The Corner at 108, then gathered provisions for the train: bread from Hart Bageri, a soft round of Arla Unika’s goat-and-cow cheese, and a half-bottle of Beaujolais from a wine seller inside the Torvehallerne food hall (kindly opened and re-corked for me). After a quick lunch — never leave Copenhagen without a couple of barbacoa tacos at Hija de Sanchez — it was onward to Hamburg.

Due to track works, the first leg of this five-hour trip was a headache, serviced by busses, which picked up a train-load of passengers at the central train station and deposited us two hours later next to a forlorn platform in southern Denmark. A lack of signage and personnel led to general confusion, but eventually a train trundled into sight, everyone boarded and the cars were shunted onto a waiting ferry that would sail from Rodby, Denmark, to Puttgarden, Germany.

The 45-minute ferry crossing was among the most comfortable parts of the journey, with my picnic of cheese, bread and wine spread out on a table by a window overlooking the calm waters of the Femernbelt strait. Once on the German side, the aging, three-car clunker rolled southward past spinning wind turbines, weather-beaten fishing hamlets and pancake-flat farmland as the sun set over the scenic countryside.

An on-time arrival in Hamburg after dark left just enough time for some spaetzle and schnitzel before falling into bed at a stuffy hotel next to the station. The next morning, the final day of the trip, the train departed Hamburg promptly at 6:01 a.m. (after a minor kerfuffle in which I accidentally spilled the contents of the hotel’s to-go lunch box across the platform). Five hours passed quickly on the comfortable German Intercity-Express (or ICE) train, where the only irritation was a grumpy passenger who refused to let me lower the window shade. In Karlsruhe, in western Germany, I transferred to another high-speed ICE that, after a half-hour delay, raced through eastern France and past Champagne vineyards, before arriving in Paris two and a half hours later. Eight hours after departing Hamburg, and two and a half days after leaving Stockholm, I hitched my baby-blue Fjallraven backpack onto my shoulder and strolled out of Gare de l’Est into sunny, late-summer Paris.

The final tally: 18 hours and 56 minutes of active travel time, 41.8 kilograms of carbon emitted, (300 kilograms less than that cheap, two-hour flight), one book of Alexander Chee essays read cover-to-cover, six Instagram stories of the passing views, countless naps and a piqued interest in discovering where else the rails might take me. I guess you could count me among the new generation of #trainboasters.



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Dreaming of an Artisanal Christmas

Dreaming of an Artisanal Christmas


For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this image of Christmas: a village nestled in a snowy valley, candlelit windows glowing against a night sky. I’m not sure where it came from. Growing up in sunny Southern California, my family strung lights on the palm trees in our yard and went to the beach on Christmas Eve. Most kids know about Santa’s sleigh, but I believed he traveled on a magic speedboat.

As an adult, I’ve searched for that old-fashioned Christmas, one of snow-tipped Yuletide cheer, sleigh rides, sugarplums and freshly cut pine trees trimmed with handcrafted ornaments. Though I visited the Christmas markets in European capitals like London, Paris and Vienna, I never really found it. Yes, the fairy lights twinkled, the sweet scent of mulled wine drifted, and sometimes snow crunched under my heels. Yes, the market stalls displayed an array of glittering ornaments for the tree and home. Yet upon closer inspection, the decorations were flimsy, their designs repeating from vendor to vendor as if they shared the same supplier: an industrial factory in a distant land.

Was my vision of Christmas a relic of fairy tales? Or could it still exist in a country that celebrates the Christmas tree with a traditional folk song, “O Tannenbaum”? When I recently reconnected with a high school friend who had moved to Germany, I asked her about German Christmas markets, expecting her to extol the storybook wonders of Nuremberg or Dresden. Instead, she described a place I’d never heard of: the “Christmas ornament town” of Seiffen in the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, a rural part of Saxony so devoted to holiday décor that Germans call it the “home of Christmas.”

Could this be the artisanal Christmas idyll I’d been dreaming of? To find out, I spent a few days in mid-October in this far eastern region of the former German Democratic Republic near the Czech border, immersing myself in the Erzgebirge’s traditional folk art.

I knew I was too early for Seiffen’s renowned Christmas market, which is held annually during the Advent season (the period that includes the four Sundays preceding Christmas), and I feared I was too early for Christmas at all. And then I ran into two competing food stands — one on each side of the street — the type of rough timber huts I associate with outdoor markets. Though it was a beautiful fall day, sunny and mild, a few families and couples had gathered at each stand eating grilled bratwurst and sipping mugs of glühwein, or mulled wine.

Clearly I had come to the right place.

Indeed, as I perused the workshops and galleries lining the Hauptstrasse, or main street, I found every single one bursting with hand-carved, brightly painted Christmas decorations. They ranged from thimble-size angels to spinning pyramids as tall as I am, to nutcrackers, Santas, woodsmen and more. Individually, each figure was exquisite, the fine details and droll expressions clearly the work of expert artisans. Collectively, however, they became overwhelming — the colors, tiny limbs, and faces turning into a blur of clutter.

Each figure takes about six weeks to create, and a five-person team is dedicated to painting only the faces to ensure consistency. The whimsical creations have a devoted international fan base and are exported to more than 25 countries.

Before I left the shop, Ms. Blaschke described some of the other crafts traditionally produced in the Erzgebirge. A few I knew: candle arches, nutcrackers and the Christmas pyramids, those small, delicate, tiered wooden carousels that are lit with candles and topped with a propeller that turns in the heat of the flames. But when she tried to describe the small wooden animals and figures called ring-turned toys (in German, Reifentiere), we both conceded linguistic defeat.

The next morning, after having breakfast amid nutcrackers and candle arches in my hotel’s dining room, I headed to the Freilichtmuseum, or Open-Air Museum to learn about ring-turned toys as well as the history of the Ore Mountain region. On the outskirts of Seiffen, tucked into a stream-fed valley, the folklore museum is a collection of mostly 18th- and 19th-century buildings gathered to form a traditional Erzgebirge village.

A cold rain fell during my self-guided visit but as I dashed from house to house, I told myself the damp weather and gusts of wind conjured up a Christmas-y mood. I thrust my icy hands into my coat pockets and tried not to gaze too longingly at the unlit tiled oven-stoves that had once served as a home’s sole source of warmth.

Through dusty windows I peered into a half-timbered, 18th-century miner’s house, the cramped, primitive conditions (the living room next to a goat stable, for example) illustrating the region’s historic poverty. In the 15th century the Erzgebirge was the most important source of silver in Europe — but mining wages were so meager, many workers supplemented their incomes with farming or woodworking. As the veins began to dry up in the 18th century, the local economy started to rely heavily on side gigs like woodworking, which evolved into toy making.

The region’s tradition of making highly detailed and handcrafted Christmas ornaments “also began here in the 1800s,” Dr. Auerbach continued as we gazed at an enormous, 19th-century Christmas pyramid. “Not for production, not for selling, but just made for the home, for the family.”

Toymakers created holiday decorations that reflected the Erzgebirge’s mining history. The candle arch, for example, resembles the entrance to a mine; like the Christmas pyramid, it features a blaze of candles symbolizing the mineworker’s constant desire for light. During the Advent season, towns throughout the Erzgebirge still host miners’ parades, the marching ranks dressed in traditional uniforms that resemble 19th-century military garb.

Upstairs, the museum traced the gradual decline of the local toy industry’s golden era, from the advent of metal toys in the early 20th century, to the rise of holiday decorations under the Communist German Democratic Republic of 1949 to 1990, when the state directed toymakers to focus prominently on Christmas to satisfy popular export demand. Today only six producers of ring-turned toys remain. “Now it’s mostly decorative,” Dr. Auerbach said. “Toys for the parents. Less for the children.”

He couldn’t offer an address, or any other information, but when I asked at my hotel, the woman at the front desk suggested I head south out of town on the Deutschneudorfer Strasse, a two-lane road. When I saw the sign, I pulled over.

A young woman answered my knock at the door. I didn’t have an appointment and I don’t speak German — but her face broke into a smile as soon as I uttered the words “nutcracker” and “Dr. Auerbach.” She ushered me into a bright workshop where half-painted nutcracker body parts were lined up with military precision. Her name is Carola Seiffert and she is one of five people employed at the family-owned Füchtner workshop.

Created by Wilhelm Füchtner in the 1870s, the Christmas nutcracker as we know it — that upright, clench-toothed toy soldier — “might have been inspired by Ernst Hoffmann’s story,” Ms. Seiffert said, referring to “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” which was published in 1816. “But also it was a form of satire.” Generally depicting an authority figure like a soldier, policeman or king, the nutcracker represented power — while the nut, cracked in its powerful jaws, symbolized the people. “It was a political joke,” she said.

Füchtner’s nutcrackers, carved from linden wood, their hair and beards created from scraps of rabbit fur, start at about 50 euros, or about $56, and the workshop also produces smoking men, or Räuchermänner: incense holders carved in the shape of little men, who puff smoke through their mouths. I found one such bearded chap, clad in green, irresistible. “He’s called the Ghost of the Woods,” Ms. Seiffert said. I bought him for 30 euros.

In fact, I found a lot of irresistible creations in Seiffen. I could have spent many hours at the workshops of Volkskunst or Richard Glässer, where the public is invited (for free at the former; with a modest fee of two euros at the latter) to observe the artisans as they glue small figures onto Christmas pyramids, for example, or meticulously paint nutcracker belts. And I could have spent many euros at the local galleries, especially Dregeno, the town’s cooperative of Erzgebirge arts and crafts, which sells the work of more than 120 artisans.

On my last morning in Seiffen, I walked up a hill to visit the Bergkirche, or mountain church. Built in 1776, the octagonal, steepled, butter-yellow structure is often depicted in Erzgebirge folk art.

Inside, the late-Baroque architecture created a sense of airiness; I half-listened to a German tour guide while I pictured the space at Christmas, ablaze with light and organ music. Lost in my thoughts, I left the church and promptly took a wrong turn, heading away from town.

When I turned, I saw pitch-roofed houses nestled in the valley and with a blink, imagined them covered with snow, candles shining from almost every window, glowing against the winter night. It was just like the Christmas village of my dreams.



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