Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/720642
16 I won't delve into details about our transformation (but, God, I love it) since our publisher, Monica Bickers, covers it so beautifully on page 18. For the first time in 22 years, we did not publish an August issue so that our editors would have the luxury and time to venture further afield to write and photograph. Arts editor Catherine D. Anspon and creative director Michelle Aviña flew to L.A. to spend the day with artist and restaurateur Michael Chow, who travels to Houston for Texas Contemporary Fair (opening night Thursday, September 29). Our team spent the day in his oft-photographed Beverly Hills home and his studio with its paint-spattered windows, adjacent to his Hockney-envisaging pool (pages 100–104). A few weeks later, Michelle Aviña, along with photographer Mindy Byrd and stylist Doug Voisin, hopped aboard Air France, for which tickets had been unnervingly canceled three days prior, due to a cabin strike. Darling Pierre de Saint-Albin, Air France directeur de la communication, pulled all manner of strings and, with tricks up his sleeves, rerouted our team through Atlanta and on to Paris to the newly renovated Ritz Paris (four years in the making), for which the opening had been delayed by months due to an electrical fire in January. The revised opening date occurred just under our printing wire. Thus, despite cabin strikes and inconvenient fires, this month's cover and 12 fashion pages drip with refreshed Ritz opulence (pages 68–79), alongside a love letter to this grandest dame of all, penned by contributor Rob Brinkley. But how did this come to be? The Ritz's dashing directeur général, Christian Boyens, along with Bar Hemingway maestro Colin Field, the Ritz's directrice de la communication Anne Benichou, and Air France's Pierre de Saint-Albin had been in Houston for a cocktail soirée at Becca Cason Thrash and John Thrash's home, where it was announced that Liaisons au Louvre IV will take place in June 2017 … with a stop at the Ritz. So that is how we all met, and how this cover and photographic portfolio at the Ritz came to be. A long and winding road to a glorious denouement. Holly Moore Editor-in-Chief holly@papercitymag.com letter editor HUNT SLONEM