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Portugal’s Algarve Region Gets a New Retreat
Set in a natural park within Portugal’s Algarve region, the farmhouse hotel Quinta do Pinheiro is a 10-minute walk from protected dunes, oyster farms and barrier island beaches that can only be reached by swimming or boating. Initially built in 1870, the estate was purchased in 2021 by the Dutch couple Martijn Kleijwegt and Monique Snoeijen, who wanted to restore the property and turn it into a retreat. Now there are five stylish cottages designed by the Portuguese architect Frederico Valsassina and his daughter, Marta, all with two or three bedrooms, a dining room and a kitchen. Window frames were painted red, which is traditional to the region; floors were laid with local Santa Catarina tiles; and the old bread oven and distillery remain on the property. While there’s not a restaurant at the hotel, the staff can arrange for a chef. For a meal out, the town of Tavira — a Roman settlement founded in 400 B.C. that’s famed for its churches and bell towers — is a scenic 90-minute hike (or 25-minute ride on one of the property’s electric bikes) away. In May, it’ll become much easier for New Yorkers to visit this part of Portugal thanks to a new United Airlines direct flight between Newark, N.J., and Faro, the capital of the Algarve region. From about $380 a night in the low season (November to March), quintapinheiro.com.
Wear This
Opera Pumps for All Occasions
For his spring 2025 Pavillon des Folies collection, the Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele, known for his gender-fluid bohemian spirit, tempered his brocades and ruffles with a historical element of men’s evening wear: the opera pump. Originally a component of men’s formal dress dating back to the Regency era, opera pumps, or court shoes, are characterized by a low heel, a grosgrain bow and a slightly higher vamp than a ballet flat (but one that’s low enough to show off a luxurious sock). In the Victorian era, they became the popular choice of footwear for gentlemen visiting the opera and have since been worn by everyone from Marlene Dietrich to Frank Sinatra to Colman Domingo. Valentino’s version, called the Bowow ballerina, joins an array of similar designs released lately. The New York label Bode, also known for its sartorial nods to the past, sells pairs for both men and women in patent and napa leather. Thom Browne, a champion of reinterpreting formal dress, and the New York designer Suzanne Rae both produce varieties for women. And Manolo Blahnik offers a velvet pair for men. A footwear relic, opera pumps have traditionally only been available for purchase at more old-school shoemakers like London’s Arthur Sleep — and have been notoriously difficult to find in women’s sizes. Though the silhouette has remained largely unchanged to this day — the biggest riff is Valentino’s cutaway detail near the bow — the way they’re worn certainly has. Domingo, for one, recently paired his with an embroidered evening vest, black trousers and pointelle socks.
The Spanish fashion house Loewe has teamed up with the French cognac maker Hennessy to release a shaggy casing for the distillery’s Paradis decanter, turning the curved bottle into more of an objet d’art. The Muppet-like shell, covered in hundreds of shredded calfskin leather strips, is inspired by the chestnut burr, the prickly pod that grows and ripens the seedlings within. The case’s three colorways — green, brown and black — represent the life cycle of the burr and echo the bands of chestnut wood that encircle Hennessy’s barrels as protection from wood-boring beetles. The limited-edition casing is offered for the standard 700-milliliter bottle, which features 400 intricate knots, while a three-liter bottle created for the collaboration comes with a case made of 875 knots. Even the most avid collector may have to sleuth to secure a box set — which comes with the decorated decanter, a pipette for extracting cognac and two stemmed cognac glasses — as there are only 47 units of the three-liter and 177 of the 700-milliliter available worldwide. Hennessy Paradis x Loewe launches March 17; from $2,850 for the 700 milliliter, hennessy.com.
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An Elegant New Hotel in Downtown Litchfield, Conn.
The leafy center of Litchfield, Conn., offers layers of architectural history — buildings range from embellished white-box Colonial Revival homes to linear structures by famous Modernists such as Marcel Breuer and John M. Johansen — plus proximity to swimming at Connecticut’s largest natural lake, Bantam Lake, and hiking and birding on the grounds of the nearby White Memorial Conservation Center. But until recently, there was no place to stay downtown, unless you happened to have a friend with a guest room. This month, Belden House & Mews will become the second option for visitors (after the Abner, which opened in September 2024). The family behind Troutbeck, a country house hotel in nearby Amenia, N.Y., has transformed a complicated property on the green into “the hotel that really ought to have been here all along,” says the co-owner Anthony Champalimaud. He worked with his mother, the hotel designer Alexandra Champalimaud, to preserve the architectural features of an 1888 Colonial Revival doctor’s mansion and an adjoining 1950s Modernist structure that they’ve combined, in a tribute to Litchfield’s architectural variety, to create Belden House. Inside, the buildings are further unified with custom grass cloth wallcoverings and, in the Mews building, four-poster spindle beds built by a local craftsman. Champalimaud, who lives a few doors away, says the atmosphere is meant to be “residential.” To that end, the Belden House restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with items sourced from local farms and the Connecticut seashore, in the mansion’s original dining room. Belden House & Mews opens March 28; from $500 a night, beldenhouse.com.
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A Gallery in Corsicana, Texas, That’s a Homecoming for Its Founders
In 1894, oil was discovered in Corsicana, Texas, and it became the state’s first boomtown. By the late 1950s, its once elegant downtown had fallen into major disrepair. When the sisters Katharine and Susan Hable were growing up in Corsicana in the ’70s, “it felt a little like a ghost town,” says Susan, who’s now an artist and runs a design company with Katharine in Athens, Ga. But in 2022, when Katharine moved back to their hometown and Susan came to help her find a place, they discovered a growing creative community. “I felt a pulse that wasn’t there before,” says Susan. “We discovered a very cool art residency and collective called 100 W Corsicana.” They decided to purchase a two-story building downtown and, after two years of renovation, transformed the space into a gallery, which opened last month. The ground floor displays a mix of Susan’s artwork — including organic cut paper works, and abstract sculptures of ceramic and plaster and cast bronze — and the jewelry collection she recently created in Jaipur, India, as well as rotating exhibitions; the upstairs will host art workshops, community events and the occasional pop-up dinner. “If we can expose people to something they’ve never seen before,” says Susan, “then half our job is done.” hablegallery.com.