What’s Happening: The embattled label’s latest collection may be perceived as a plea for normalcy after months of scandal. Perhaps the fashion world is ready to acquiesce.

The Download: Little screams “spring” about Balenciaga’s Resort 2024 collection, an assortment of dark, enveloping pieces the French label describes as “an observation of metropolitan motion.” (Most looks simply evoke Kim Kardashian’s blacked-out Met Gala dress, but dialed down a few notches.) In the rainy Mau Morgó–directed campaign film, released this week, models adorned in puffer opera trenches, towel-wrap skirts, and leather stiletto boots scuttle past the facade of Balenciaga’s Parisian headquarters retrieving pennies off the sidewalk and flagging down taxis—pictures of quotidian city life.

Never one to shy away from social commentary, perhaps Demna is repositioning his embattled label as striving for normalcy following months of scandal. The former harbinger of haute has endured a fraught year: close entanglements with Ye came under scrutiny following his public antisemitism and racism, and viewers claimed a disastrous campaign promoted pedophilia. Despite public apologies and promises of self-recrimination, the aftermath was swift and devastating. TikToks of people destroying Balenciaga products went viral, Kardashian condemned the label’s choices, and sales plummeted. Fashion labels often trifle with offensive gestures, but Balenciaga’s opprobrium suddenly seemed dire.

Months have passed, though, and both the social media mob and the fashion machine seem to have moved on. Anna Wintour extended Demna an olive branch at this year’s Met Gala, where he hosted a table for emerging designers who otherwise couldn’t afford tickets. Perhaps that sent signals to parent company Kering, which doubled down on its commitment to the label by dressing its chief executive, François-Henri Pinault, in a Balenciaga tuxedo on the Cannes red carpet. Ditto for Michelle Yeoh, Isabelle Huppert, and Alton Mason, who wore Balenciaga without a hitch. The notoriously outspoken Diet Prada didn’t even weigh in.

So is all forgiven? “We’ve seen in the past that media mishaps have an impact for two to three quarters and then normalize,” Luca Solca, a luxury goods market analyst, told the New York Times, expecting Balenciaga to bounce back by late 2023. Recall that fashion enthusiasts have tried to cancel the irascible duo behind Dolce & Gabbana for nearly a decade with little success. Wintour was instrumental in getting John Galliano back on his feet after a drunken antisemitic rant got him sacked from the top job at Dior. Deep-pocketed clients, fashion editors, and frenzied stylists don’t always share progressive worldviews and are often suckers for well-tailored clothes, even in spite of a label’s perceived outlaw status.

Therein lies the Sisyphean challenge facing Demna, whose avant-garde leanings have helped cultivate a very online consumer base that’s hyper-perceptive to any trace of social injustice: Recreate the spark that propelled Balenciaga to fashion’s highest echelons without stepping on any toes. According to critic Vanessa Friedman, however, that “requires the alchemical combination of products and desire [he] once generated by upending all expectations and challenging stale ideas of ‘beauty’ and ‘luxury,’” she writes. “While the cruise collection had some of that embedded, such pieces no longer seem revolutionary. The magic that was once there, that sense of gleeful, liberating, absurdist challenge? That still hasn’t come back.”

In Their Own Words: “Social media can be a catalyst for change,” Tahirah Hairston writes in The Cut. “What was once something easily swept under the rug has now become the center of callout culture and internet outrage. It has forced brands to take immediate action and be more transparent, but the verdict is still out on the lasting repercussions and whether it has systematically changed the fashion industry.”

Surface Says: The hottest new corporate gig may very well be “chief comeback architect.”

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Designing Delicious is produced in partnership with Dorsia, a members-only platform with access to reservations at the most in-demand restaurants in New York, Miami, L.A., and The Hamptons.

Is the venerated printed menu back in fashion? As QR codes, those pixelated pawns of the pandemic age, lose favor among the dining-out set, restaurants are reembracing the sense of grandeur, even whimsy, a well-designed menu delivers.

At Soothr, a noodle bar in Manhattan’s East Village, the founders tapped artist Chonticha Meenin to illustrate the vibrant Thai-focused drink menu inspired by Gal Nopparat (nine gems), said to deliver good fortune. The just-opened Alba Accanto, Cucina Alba’s crudi bar offshoot, imbued its aperitivo-style menu with Florence-bred talent Isabella Cotier’s sketches. Tablescapes of fruit-garnished drinks, a plate of fresh sea bass, a fashionable couple lingering at a seaside two-top on a sunny day—the Vogue contributor’s evocative vignettes transport guests to the Amalfi Coast.

Since opening in 2020, American Bar has served as a hive for society’s upper echelon looking for a little uptown panache in the West Village. Artist, designer, and FT Weekend columnist Luke Edward Hall captures the essence of the clubby dining room with his motifs of well-coifed patrons. When French co-owners Thibaut Castet and Theliau Probst were envisioning Maison Close, Paris’s famed menu artistry was at the top of the list. So the duo turned to Victoria Tentler-Krylov, a trained architect-cum-children’s author with two New Yorker covers to her name. Her watercolor scenes depicting the city’s inimitable characters—the fashionable It girl, frenzied waiters, ladies who lunch—are the definition of joie de vivre.

Jack Lenor Larsen was one of the most influential textile designers of his era—an endeavor that instilled deep appreciation for craft and motivated him to travel the world as a voracious and discerning collector of objects. He’d bring them back to LongHouse, his tranquil East Hampton estate anchored by a Shinto-inspired house designed in collaboration with architect Charles Forberg. Inside, a medley of worldly objects mingled with local finds that he’d constantly rearrange to see familiar items afresh.

LongHouse remained open only to Larsen’s friends and family for decades, but upon his death, in 2020, he expressed a desire for the house to open for all—his gift to future visitors. That caught the attention of Abby Bangser, the Object & Thing founder who has brought roving design showcases to historic residences by Gerald Luss, Eliot Noyes, and James Rose. With the help of venerable curator Glenn Adamson and gifted stylist Colin King, the fair’s latest outing, “A Summer Arrangement” on the home’s guest level, proves there’s much wisdom to glean from Larsen’s non-hierarchical approach to arranging objects.

“Larsen liked to say his work would never be done,” says Carrie Rebora Barratt, director of LongHouse, “and meant for his arrangements to be carried on by artists who’d be inspired by his collections and home.” That notion applies to the dozens of talents featured inside, many of whom are debuting never-before-seen work for the occasion.

Larsen’s beloved Magnum fabric on the guestroom bed inspired wall-mounted textile works by Liz Collins and Kiva Motnyk; ceramic vessels by Rashid Johnson and Johnny Ortiz-Concha are perched atop Larsen’s collection of Wharton Esherick tables. Also not to miss: Simone Bodmer-Turner’s first-ever paintings and wood combs on petite pedestals by Teague’s Path.

“We’re still catching up to Jack Lenor Larsen,” Adamson writes. “His all-embracing vision of art, craft, and nature remains a model to which most of us can only aspire. Not that we should stop trying. As another season has come to LongHouse, we look back with respect and forward in anticipation. For there are many arrangements to come.”

When: Until Aug. 25

Where: New York Print Center

What: The venerated Brooklyn Museum curator Carmen Hermo lends her practiced eye to support the institution’s efforts to launch the careers of eight emerging printmakers. Works by Aaron Coleman, Julia Curran, Juana Estrada Hernández, Lois Harada, Nina Jordan, Farah Mohammad, Jacquelyn Strycker, and Eriko Tsogo are organized around a central theme of transformation and reference both our era’s “intense social and political upheavals” and the medium’s evolution in the hands of those representing its future.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Artificial Intelligence Could Lead to Extinction, Experts Warn [BBC]

Indian Official Drains Reservoir to Retrieve Phone Dropped While Taking Selfie [CNN]

U.S. to Give Away Free Lighthouses As GPS Makes Them Unnecessary [The Guardian]

Eating Disorder Helpline Fires Staff, Transitions to Chatbot After Unionization [Vice]

Woman Wins Cheese Rolling Race Even After Being Knocked Unconscious [My Modern Met]

Bear Helps Itself to 60 Cupcakes From Connecticut Bakery, Scares Employees [AP]

Maryland Students Prank School by Listing It on Zillow As “Nice Half-Working Jail” [HuffPost]

New York Art Week and NYCxDesign recently brought the city’s cognoscenti out to Hudson Yards for a week of marquee fairs. While traversing the manicured square on Manhattan’s West Side, our thoughts strayed away from furniture debuts and blue-chip art and instead onto the preventable suicides of four young people who jumped to their deaths at the Heatherwick Studio–designed Vessel since its 2019 unveiling. Architects and developers can work together to prevent such tragedies by breaking the stigma around the issue and implementing preventative measures.

Based in the Piedmont region of North Carolina since 2001, Skram is a maker of sustainable heirloom furnishings at-scale for design-driven residential, commercial, and hospitality spaces. The company has earned a following for an approach that emphasizes innovative design, natural materials, and top workmanship.

Surface Says: With a portfolio ranging from cork side tables to porcelain chandeliers, the handmade objects from this North Carolina studio are nothing short of exceptional. Each product shows the expert hand of founder A. Jacob Marks, who founded Skram around minimalism, innovation, and environmental awareness.

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