The T List: Five Things We Recommend This Week

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we’re sharing things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. You can always reach us at [email protected].

Use This

The Most Moisturizing, and Nongreasy, Hand Creams

Washing our hands frequently and thoroughly is one of the simplest steps we can take to limit the spread of Covid-19 — but that can dry out skin. I recently spoke to Dr. Morgan Rabach, a board-certified dermatologist and a co-founder of LM Medical NYC, for help navigating the abundance of hand cream options. For a thicker lotion that can be used during the day, she recommends Neutrogena’s Norwegian Formula Hand Cream, a thick ointment that hasn’t changed since it first debuted in 1978. The medium-weight Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm from Aesop also absorbs quickly without leaving a greasy film and has a fresh scent — a blend of mandarin rind, rosemary and cedar atlas — that can help one breathe easier during anxious moments. The salon and nail-care brand Tenoverten created a restorative hand cream with a formula that, thanks to its proprietary blend of five oils, not only locks in moisture but also builds collagen and brightens skin using hydroxyproline and Kakadu plum. For an intense overnight treatment, try the Hand Repairing Gloves from the German beauty brand Magicstripes, which acts like a super-hydrating sheet mask for the hands. For more, visit tmagazine.com.

Few fashion designers working today are openly referencing visual artists past and present quite like Duro Olowu, whose clothing is made from patchworks of colorful, sumptuous textiles in silhouettes that often recall those worn by film stars of yesteryear. So it’s only fitting that Olowu, who is married to Thelma Golden — the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem — has expanded into curatorial work, creating epoch-spanning exhibitions that juxtapose photography, painting, sculpture and textiles with his signature spirit of cosmopolitanism and spontaneity. His latest project of this kind, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, draws largely from the Windy City’s wealth of public and private art collections. The personal-feeling result is crammed with local talent, including Kerry James Marshall, the Chicago Imagist Roger Brown and the city’s often overlooked Africobra collective. However, what stands out most is the knack Olowu, who worked with MCA senior curator Naomi Beckwith, has for gathering together work by artists you’d rarely find sharing space in an exhibition, including Jean Arp and Tomma Abts, Joseph Beuys and Ruth Asawa, and Barbara Kruger and Amy Sherald. It’s a reflection of how we live today, suspended in our own time and geography, but also — with the help of a more generous view — transcending it. “Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago” is on view through May 10, but the museum is currently closed through March 29 (so save this newsletter, and an in-person visit, for later), 220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, mcachicago.org.

Reorganizing your home during a global health crisis might seem a little like fiddling while Rome burns, but it provides a comforting illusion of control — and is at least a productive use of time when you’re morally obligated to stay inside. When I came across images of precisely stacked boxes on the website of the Canadian clothing and homewares store Neighbour, they spoke to my chronic, but recently much aggravated, neat-freakery. Made by the German stationery company Carta Pura, the boxes are wrapped in either silk-screened Japanese washi paper, including a white-and-gold checkerboard version that evokes the delicate precision of origami, or Carta Varese paper printed in Florence, Italy, using a special technique that produces particularly crisp and colorful patterns (for example, an Arts and Crafts-style red-and-blue design). I plan to buy a complete set of 10, in sizes to accommodate everything in my junk drawer — from spare buttons to instruction manuals — as well as jewelry and stray photographs. About $82 for a set of 10, shopneighbour.com.

After spending nearly a decade in New York behind the bars at Enrique Olvera’s Cosme and Diego at the Public Hotel, Fabiola Padilla decided to return to her native Mexico to open Bekeb, San Miguel de Allende’s first-ever mixology bar, where refined techniques are used to create housemade cocktails with unusual tastes. At Bekeb — set atop the new boutique hotel Casa Hoyos, a reimagined 17th-century Spanish mansion — Padilla showcases her knowledge of the area’s indigenous plants, which she acquired growing up in nearby San Miguel el Alto. (“I was born drinking tequila,” Padilla told me, laughing.) By combining locally grown herbs, such as anise-flavored hoja santa or lemony cedrón, with made-in-Mexico distillates like smoky mezcal and the lesser-known earthy sotol, she harnesses the complexity of flavors found in pre-Hispanic gastronomy. Each of Padilla’s 10 specialty cocktails is served in a handmade vessel, be it a ceramic tiki mug made in Querétaro or a honeycomb-shaped barro negro clay cup designed in Oaxaca. The food, too, will be well worth the trip once it’s safe to travel and gather again: Bekeb serves cricket-topped guacamole and a range of ceviche tostadas, created by the chefs Matt Conroy and Isabel Coss. 14 Mesones, Zona Centro, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.

Leopard print has become such a regular fixture on the runways that you could call it a new neutral. Still, for someone like me who mainly wears all black, an animal-print accent is a quick way to liven up an outfit. For spring, designers offered a fresh take on the trend: zebra stripes. Daniel Lee at Bottega Veneta showed his much-talked-about Pouch handbag in jagged black-and-white stripes with a chunky chain strap, while Tod’s introduced a top handle handbag as part of its new Timeless Collection, which consists of pieces inspired by the house’s archives. (It also comes in a pastel blue or more earthy tones). For lower-priced options, look to the minimalist Bulgarian line By Far or the Los Angeles-based brand Staud, which makes zebra-print purses in several different shapes and textures, including a slouchy calf-hair hobo and a primmer beaded shoulder bag.