Eye | Tiffany's New Look | NYC Whitney Museum Opens May 1 | Meryl Streep Funds Lab For Women Screenwriters

DesignTracker

Tiffany’s Fresh Breeze

Francesca Amfitheatrof, Tiffany’s design director, in the company’s showroom with her mood board pinned on the back wall. Credit Christopher Sturman/Trunk ArchiveYou have a company that’s 177 years old and still here,” Stellene Volandes, executive style director of Town & Country, recently said of the company. “A piece like the one Francesca designed is modern but also recognizes Tiffany’s heritage and that much of the company’s future lies in what’s been done in the past.

Cate Blanchett wears $400,000 Tiffany necklace at 2015 Academy Awards

Volandes speaks of Tiffany Design Director Francesca Amfitheatrof and the ‘piece’ she refers to is the jeweled bib worn by Cate Blanchett at this year’s Academy Awards. Five hundred carats of turquoise beads undulated on its surface, held in place with diamond-capped pins. Beneath them lay a platinum armature to which were affixed 400 additional carats of stones — turquoise cabochon, faceted diamonds, aquamarines all contrived to imitate the effect of sunlight refracted through water, writes the New York Timeswho profiled the challenges that the first woman named design director in Tiffany’s history.

Tiffany’s sales in the fiscal year ending in January 2015 amounted to $4.25 billion. The jewelry retailer now has 298 stores worldwide. What’s missing say luxury market insiders is originality.

Whitney Museum Opens May 1 In New York’s Meatpacking District

The new Whitney Museum, located in New York’s Meatpacking District. Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.The Renzo Piano-designed Whitney Museum in the Manhattan’s Meatpacking District has a ‘clunky exterior’ writes Paul Goldberger for Vanity Fair ‘but when visitors step inside, much is forgiven.’ The museum opens on May 1.

First, the interior, about which more in a moment, is fun to be in—visually active, strongly architectural, and excellent for the display of art. Second, Piano brilliantly comments on the old Whitney, never copying a single element from Breuer’s building but always evoking it, subtly, inventively, and powerfully. When you go into the new Whitney, you see all kinds of allusions to Breuer’s iconic building in the elevators, the staircases, and the ceiling grid in the galleries. But you never sense that Piano was trying to imitate the old building, or even to make you consciously aware of it. It feels like a private homage from one architect to another, acknowledging the fact that the older building was beloved and deserves to be remembered, even as the institution moves on. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken an eight-year lease on the Whitney’s former home; its first exhibition there will open next March.)

Meryl Streep Funding New Lab For Women Screenwriters

Meryl Streep announced Sunday afternoon at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival that she is funding a screenwriters lab for women writers over 40. The new lab will be run by New York Women in Film and Television and IRIS, a collective of women filmmakers.

Called the Writers Lab, the screenplay development program’s mission will increase opportunities for female screenwriters over the age of 40. This year the initiative will accept submissions May 1-June 1, with eight winning scribes named Aug. 1.

Among the mentors to participate in the Lab’s inaugural year are writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Beyond the Lights”), producer Caroline Kaplan (“Boyhood”), and writers Kirsten Smith (“Legally Blonde”) and Jessica Bendinger (“Bring It On”) writesVariety.

Luxury Brands On Apple Watch

Will the Apple Watch Eclipse the Classic Swiss Watch? Wall Street Journal

Which brings up the big ticking elephant in the room: Apple Watches will almost certainly never be heirloom pieces, no matter how much gold they are carved from, because, like your iPhone and MacBook, they will inevitably become obsolete. Meanwhile, mechanical watches can, with regular maintenance, last for decades if not centuries. This is a sentiment echoed by nearly everyone I talked to. (Apple declined to comment on the longevity of its watches.)

Luxury brands like Tag Heuer and MontBlanc will introduce their own smart watches that will be significantly less than Apple’s priciest version. ‘If I were to sell you a $10,000 or $20,000 smartwatch, my conscience would have a problem said Jean-Claude Biver,who is president of LVMH’s watch division and CEO of its brand Tag Heuer. Tag is developing their new smart watch with Google and Intel.