Inside Long Island's Swankiest Shopping Center

A Tour of a $250M Mansion that Comes with Staff, Art Collection

Chinese Billionaire Earns 170 Million American Express Points | CNBC

Houston Is the New Capital Of Southern Cool

Perhaps it's unseemly to begin with such a comparison. Houston is America's fourth-largest city, an international metropolis of great institutions and great wealth. It has professional sports teams; it has operas and ballets. Why compare it to a city that is half the size and a fraction as diverse?

But Austin, as Lawrence Wright points out in his book God Save Texas, is the Texas city that is permissible for those who live outside Texas: urbane, hip, progressive, and Texan in all the romantic, right ways (swaggering, wild, western) without so many of the wrong ones (conservative, provincial, big-haired). Also, Austin is unimpeachably cool—even if Austinites will spend half of any conversation bemoaning how much less cool it is now than at some point in the past, usually, by coincidence, the point at which they arrived.

Then, sometime over the past five or six years, things started to change. As somebody who writes about food, I could hardly miss it. With its mix of exploding immigrant communities and ambitious, sophisticated variations on upscale dining, Houston had decisively shrugged off its reputation as a city of steak houses and chains to become increasingly mentioned as one of the nation's great restaurant cities. In these pages, David Chang called Houston the next food capital of America. This year, it earned two spots on my annual list of Best New Restaurants, a distinction shared only with New York City and Los Angeles.

https://www.gq.com/contributor/brett-martin

Chef Chris Shepherd turned his James Beard Award–winning restaurant Underbelly into UB Preserv, a shrine to Houston's multicultural cuisine.

Russian Billionaire Gets Green Light for Upper East Side Mega-Mansion

Brokers speculate that mega-mansion could be worth around $125 million. Good things come to those who wait, apparently — at least in regards to the construction of mega-mansions by Russian billionaires.

After ruling against his original plans to combine three homes into an 18,255-square-foot Upper East Side mansion — with a 30 foot backyard and a swimming pool in the basement — in April, the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday approved new plans submitted by Roman Abramovich, who has a net worth of $9.3 billion and owns Chelsea F.C. Once complete, the newly combined home will be one of the largest in Manhattan and brokers speculated that it could add around $50 million to the value of the property, although no Manhattan townhouse has ever changed hands above the $100 million mark.

BY KATHRYN HOPKINS 

www.mansionglobal.com/

Polo Hi Tech Is Back

Ralph Lauren's colorful early '90s outdoor gear gets a very 2018 upgrade.Polo Hi Tech was hard to miss when it first debuted in the early '90s, even as the market was increasingly saturated with color-blocked Crayola anoraks and ski pants. The label first appeared on Polo Sport pieces in 1992, on everything from hoodies to outdoorsy jackets and vests and, of course, polos, and stayed put until 1994. Looking back on the collection now, what's most notable about the initial run is how R.L. & Co. were attempting athleisure two decades before that awful word entered the menswear lexicon. And by 2018 standards, the newly reimagined lineup is very now, which is to say it's bold and logo-ed out and unmissable inside twenty yards. The time between the original and the revival has also allowed for improvements on the fabrication front, so the performance elements are on par with actual athletic gear versus the papery nylons of decades past, and updated fits mean armholes won't sit at your ribcage (but brand enthusiasts will be happy to know that a reproduction of the original Polo Ralph Lauren label sits inside most garments). But the best news about the 2018 Hi Tech collection might be that you'll actually be able to get your hands on it. The collection is available now at ralphlauren.com and will hit the shelves of select retailers this fall.

https://www.gq.com/contributor/matt-sebra

High Times at the House of Bijan...

This is the House of Bijan.

Since the late 1970s, Bijan and its suits ($10,000), ties ($1,000), and exotic leather jackets (your mortgage payment) have been a secret handshake of sorts for many of the richest and most influential people on the planet. “Somebody who shops at Bijan, they’ll see their friends wearing maybe a black suit, but they’ll notice that the lining is yellow, and they know, Oh, that gentleman knows about Bijan. He’s been to Beverly Hills. He’s been to Rodeo Drive. This is a gentleman that wants the best of the best and he can afford it,” says Nicolas Bijan, the impeccably-groomed 27-year-old at the helm of the house. “It’s unintentional on our part, but there’s kind of a whole aura around Bijan that definitely plays some role in the psyche of our clients.”

The House of Bijan has grown bigger than ever. So big that Bijan is churning toward a $1 billion valuation, Nicolas says—a staggering number for a company with only about 50 employees. So big that LVMH purchased the two-story Rodeo Drive boutique in 2015 for $110 million. So big, in fact, that Nicolas claims that the Rodeo Drive store now has the highest sales per square foot of any menswear boutique in the world.

BY 

SAMUEL HINE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY 

MAGGIE SHANNON

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