While chef Margarita Lorenzana-Manzke is best known for partnering with her sister, Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo, to open Wildflour, the wildly popular bakery-café in the Philippines, in America she has gotten James Beard-level cred as the founder and pastry chef of Republique, the restaurant she originated with her husband, chef Walter Manzke, in Los Angeles, California. The all-day-dining establishment is located in a Hollywood landmark that once housed the offices of Charlie Chaplin before it became home to iconic eateries like La Brea Bakery, Campanile, and now Republique. Margarita, or Margie, as she is fondly called, started cooking at seven years old. Coming from a family of food entrepreneurs — her parents owned and ran the White Rock resort and restaurant in Subic Bay — cooking was all she knew and loved. During summer she’d make chocolate treats to sell; in high school she started baking the Food for the Gods that Republique now sells as date bars. Wildflour … [Read more...] about The Republic of Chef Margie
The los angeles daily news
Tom Ford: Portrait of a perfectionist, anal-retentive, painfully shy vegan designer
Tom Ford has come early to rearrange the furniture. He thinks that the already stylish room in the hottest new private club in town, the San Vicente Bungalows, could be even more captivating. So a team of eight club staff members gets busy under his direction, pulling a potted plant from the terrace for one corner and setting up two dozen glowing amber votive candles.Ford himself redoes the white flowers, plucking out the roses and leaving in the ranunculus, because he doesn’t like mixed blooms. The Murphy bed he can do nothing about.As I enter, the designer is lost in thought, still fantasising about redoing the room in his own preferred palette, draping chocolate brown velvet on the walls.Everything in life can always be more sensual and beautiful, if you think about it. And Ford is always thinking about it. From the time he was big enough to push furniture, at six years old, he was rearranging it in his house. And giving his mother critiques on her hair and shoes.Being Tom … [Read more...] about Tom Ford: Portrait of a perfectionist, anal-retentive, painfully shy vegan designer
How an independent, driven woman moulded Barbie’s fashion for the better
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By Katherine Rosman The New York Times Fri., April 26, 2019 LOS ANGELES—Carol Spencer, 86, may be the most influential fashion designer you’ve never heard of. In the mid 1960s, she made a red pencil skirt with a white sleeveless blouse that had red stitching and three red buttons down the front. Short white gloves came with it. Thousands sold. In the 1970s, well aware that the counterculture’s loosening dress code had made it to the mainstream, Spencer designed a red bandana halter maxi-dress and a matching leisure shirt for men. Those designs were popular, too. In the Nancy Reagan 1980s, Spencer aimed for high-end appeal, making a one-shouldered ball gown in blue jacquard with an organza flower at the nipped-in waist and a cape. One of Reagan’s go-to couturiers personally approved the gown to be sold under his name: “Oscar de la Renta for Barbie.” Spencer has made wedding dresses, saris, go-go boots and caftans. All in miniature. … [Read more...] about How an independent, driven woman moulded Barbie’s fashion for the better