Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday, along with monthly travel and beauty guides, and the latest stories from our print issues. And you can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com.
Step by Step
Charlize Theron’s Favorite Sunscreen and Serums
Usually the first thing I do in the morning is wake up my daughters because their alarms are going off but apparently they can’t hear them. Then I brush my teeth. I’m a Sensodyne girl and use an Oral-B electric toothbrush. I’m a big proponent of brushing your tongue; I’m also a twice-a-day flosser. I don’t use face wash in the morning — I prefer not to wash off all the moisture that I’ve tried to put into my skin the night before. If there’s dry weather, I’ll use a light serum, like Le Sérum from Dior’s Capture line, or 111Skin’s Vitamin C Booster. Other times I’ll just wear my Clé de Peau SPF 50+ sunblock. The color is this soft pink, and it’s incredibly creamy, so it feels like you’re putting on moisturizer. I’m a fan of dry brushing, and I’m a really big lover of a steam. I’ll add some eucalyptus essential oil and do some breathing. I have a giant bottle of the Kiehl’s grapefruit body wash that lasts forever. When I get out of the shower, I do a pretty solid skin routine. I start with the Koh Gen Do Cleansing Spa Water. Then I put on a hydrogel face mask and use the Dior Prestige Le Pétale tool lightly over it — it might be the totally wrong way to do it, but I really like it. I love all the Capture serums, and I’ll alternate between the Retishot and Hyalushot, which I only use once or twice a week because it lasts. And I love the Capture Totale Intensive Restorative Night Creme. I want something that’s got a heavy tone to it when I go to bed because in the morning it feels like I’m just saturated with moisture. I’m not very blonde right now — for this movie, “Apex,” I’m shooting in Australia, I’m quite natural — and am taking care of my hair with Olaplex’s shampoo and conditioner. I also love Virtue’s Damage Reverse Serum and Restorative Treatment Mask. On a long flight, I use a moisturizing allergy drop for my eyes, put on the Laneige lip mask and sleep as much as I possibly can.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“For some time, my father, a writer, had a dream to find a little hut in the Alps where in the winter the snow might keep him trapped there for weeks,” says the Belgian hotelier Luna Lybeer. Her parents eventually found such a hut, abandoned on the edge of the Valtellina valley, which runs from the northern tip of Lake Como to Bormio in Italy; they then passed it on to Lybeer and her husband, Wout Allegaert. The couple transformed the 20th-century customs post (built to stop smugglers going between Italy and Switzerland) into Rifugio Val di Togno, a five-bedroom mountain cabin with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that opened quietly for guests in 2023. After driving to Arquino, the closest town, guests are picked up in a car with four-wheel drive that takes them 30 minutes into the mountains, “up about 27 switchbacks,” says Lybeer. Alternatively they can do the two-hour hike up. The property, which is completely self-sufficient — the water comes from a nearby spring and electricity from a water turbine — is all-inclusive out of necessity. “There’s nowhere else to eat nearby,” Lybeer says. She and Allegaert bake sourdough bread and prepare vegetarian dishes such as risotto with wild mushrooms sourced from the forest and vegetables from their garden; eggs come from their chickens. “We also make really good beer from stinging nettles,” she says. Artisanal cheeses come from their friend Tito, a shepherd whose cows they (along with guests so inclined) sometimes help herd into a nearby mountain meadow. About $180 all-inclusive, per person per day, rifugiovalditogno.com.
Covet This
Murano Glass Vases Inspired by Nature and Danish Women’s Wear
“If you look around palazzos or museums, there are flowers everywhere, made in concrete or marble or wood,” says the Milan-based Argentine artist Conie Vallese. Her work similarly translates blossoms into more durable forms, as seen in sterling silver cutlery with delicately wrought petals and bronze chairs sprouting life-size lilies. Flowers adorn her latest project too: a suite of five handblown glass vases, created in collaboration with the Danish women’s wear label By Malene Birger. The project came about in tandem with the brand’s spring 2025 campaign, which features Vallese against the backdrop of the Florentine villa Torre di Bellosguardo. The creative director Maja Dixdotter envisioned clothes “for a woman who is anchored in her identity and dresses for herself, even in the quiet moments at home,” she says — a narrative “naturally framed around Conie.” The collection includes a dusty blue maxi dress with stylized floral buttons, botanical print silk separates and a crocheted coat in black and ivory. For the vases, Vallese worked with a family-run glassmaker in Murano, sketching the initial shapes in chalk on the floor; candy stripes and filigree detailing and exuberant flowers followed. The series made a brief appearance last fall in Paris during a showroom presentation, and is now offered for sale through By Malene Birger’s Copenhagen and Stockholm shops. $1,400, bymalenebirger.com; to purchase internationally, email sasha.ryvang@bymalenebirger.com.
Wear This
An Akris Handbag That’s a Tribute to Its Founder
The eastern Swiss city of St. Gallen has long been a center of textile development, going back to the Middle Ages when local flax crops fueled a booming linen industry. It was here in 1922 that Alice Kriemler-Schoch founded the company that would eventually become known as Akris (a shortened version of her name). The company initially specialized in the production of aprons; it added a range of women’s ready-to-wear in the mid-1940s. Handbags were introduced much later, in 2009, under the direction of Kriemler-Schoch’s grandson Albert Kriemler, who took on creative direction of Akris in 1980, a position he still holds today. Now, Kriemler is introducing a new bag, the Alice, in tribute to its founder. Made of Italian calf leather, it features a tripartite interior within a rectilinear body and is topped with a curved handle. An optional strap allows its user to wear the bag across the body or slung over one shoulder, as it was worn when it debuted at Akris’s spring 2025 runway show in Paris. Echoing the palette of the brand’s seasonal ready-to-wear offering, the bag will be introduced in four shades: a sandy ecru, blush pink, pearly white and black with gold hardware. Available for preorder, $3,490, akris.com.
The De Plesman Hotel, which opens on March 1 in The Hague, is in a five-story red-brick Art Deco building that was once the headquarters of KLM, the world’s oldest still-operating airline. It was designed by the Dutch architect Dirk Roosenburg, who was childhood friends with Albert Plesman, the founder of KLM, from whom the hotel takes its name. The 120 rooms come with parquet floors and furnishings upholstered in textiles inspired by retro geometric patterns from the 1920s and ’30s. The hotel has partnered with De Galerie Den Haag, a local art space, to display a collection of paintings and photographs that were created for the property by artists, including the Dutch painter Casper Faassen and the Scottish photographer Soo Burnell. Suss, the hotel’s brasserie named after Plesman’s wife, serves a menu that’s geared toward comfort food with dishes such as Dutch oysters, sautéed cod with fennel sauce and a pear tarte Tatin. But De Plesman’s best amenity might be its location: It’s only 30 minutes from Schipol airport by train and sits midway between the heart of The Hague (which has several of the Netherlands’ most famous museums, including the Mauritshuis, where Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With the Pearl Earring” is displayed) and Scheveningen, the country’s best-known beach resort, on the North Sea. Amsterdam is only an hour away too, which makes De Plesman a great base for day-trip excursions. From about $105 a night, deplesman.com.
Consider This
A Glass Flacon Designed by a Parisian Facialist
When Anouk Biard opened her skin-care studio in Paris in 2021, the facialist — who practices kobido, a traditional Japanese massage technique — furnished her Ninth Arrondissement space with just a handful of antiques, including a Josef Hoffman chair and an Art Deco vitrine. An array of 1930s French inkwells and Chinese snuff bottles, filled with the organic oils that she incorporates into her signature treatment, lined the shelves. “You don’t need much, but what you do have should be beautiful,” says Biard. This month, she debuted her own glass flacon, which is handblown in Toulouse and packaged in a pouch made from 18th-century silk. The first run is limited to 45 bottles — 10 of which can be found at New York City’s Desert Vintage boutique — and sold alongside seven facial oils, including skin-softening safflower and a vibrant red St. John’s wort. Biard also imagines the 100-milliliter vessel going beyond the vanity: “You could even fill it with olive oil in your kitchen,” she says. “Why not?” $498, available at Desert Vintage in New York and Anouk Biard in Paris; email anoukbiardkobido@gmail.com for more information.
