The T List: Six things we recommend this week
A new Manhattan bathhouse, a collection of Philippine textiles — and more.
T Magazine
December 10, 2025
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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.

SEE THIS

The Artists Reviving the Legacy of Air Afrique

Two men sit in office chairs and a third leans against a desk between them. A framed photo on the wall behind them shows a man in a pilot’s uniform.
Four Parisian artists have archived ephemera from the African airline Air Afrique, some of which will go on display this month at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. From left: Lamine Diaoune, Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam and Jeremy Konko. Not pictured: Djiby Kébé. Ilyes Griyeb

By Zoë Lescaze

In 1961, as Africa was moving beyond its colonial past, 11 newly independent nations decided to form an airline. For the next five decades, Air Afrique carried passengers in stylish jets emblazoned with a black antelope insignia and a steeply slanted italic logo that conveyed a propulsive sense of progress. The company also became a symbol of liberation-era ideals, supporting avant-garde cultural projects — a fashion show, films, expositions — that countered outdated assumptions about the continent. It was with these initiatives that the airline, which ceased operations in 2002, unwittingly “planted the seeds of its own renaissance,” says Ahmadou-Bamba Thiam, one of four Paris-based artists of African descent who are now reviving Air Afrique’s legacy through a collective of the same name.

The group’s founder, Lamine Diaoune, bought the rights to the company’s name and logo in 2019, and began amassing an archive of its ephemera, which he shared with the photographers Djiby Kebe and Jeremy Konko. Photo shoots with those objects led to exhibitions in Paris, beginning in 2021, and subsequent projects have included a magazine devoted to Afro-diasporic culture as well as collaborations with brands like Louis Vuitton and Nike. Now, several items from their archive — including a pilot’s pin, an in-flight magazine and a plaid suitcase — will be included in “Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination,” an exhibition opening this month at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, that focuses on how photographic portraiture circulated notions of Pan-African solidarity at midcentury. “I want our generation to look at what our elders have done,” says Thiam, “and see the roads that have been paved for us.” “Ideas of Africa” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from Dec. 14, 2025, through July 25, 2026, moma.org.

STAY HERE

New Orleans Guesthouses Filled With Vintage Décor and Local Art

Left: a two-story building that’s painted white and has porches on both levels with ornate balconies. Right: a room with leopard-print carpet, a turquoise coffee table, an orange couch and a red armchair.
Left: the exterior of Luna, a new guesthouse in New Orleans from the company Dear Valentine. Right: the home’s front parlor. Augusta Sagnelli

Melissa Shelton, a former executive at the design companies Vitra and Carl Hansen & Son, grew up in New Orleans, where she gained an appreciation for the city’s mix of Greek Revival, Victorian and Creole architecture. In 2024, she founded Dear Valentine, a company that renovates historic homes, turning them into guesthouses. Her portfolio now includes seven houses; the two newest ones opened in October. Shelton worked with a local team including Southkick Historic Preservation, a company that guides homeowners and developers through the preservation process, to restore the 19th-century buildings, then filled them with a mix of vintage and modern furniture, local artwork, Sangre de Fruta toiletries, Bertazzoni kitchen appliances and robes made in collaboration with the New Orleans brand Lehka. The latest properties, called Luna and Lyra, share four connected courtyards. Luna has eight bedrooms and Lyra has nine. (Guests can book one room, a few, or the entire house.) Common spaces include a parlor and a kitchen: Luna’s parlor contains a pair of vintage leather club chairs, a Louis Phillipe walnut- and-black-marble commode, a painting by the Southern artist Mary Ball and an Annie Selke leopard-print rug. From $195 a night, dearvalentine.co.

COVET THIS

Textiles Woven From Philippine Pineapple Leaves

Squares of fabric arranged in a grid. Each square has an object on it, such as a seashell, a clover flower or a button.
Fabrics by Tela, photographed with objects representative of nature, weaving, and domestic life. “The goal wasn’t to create anything too narrative,” says the line’s founder, Eugenia Zobel de Ayala, “more of an abstract composition that captures the spirit of Tela.” Clover Green

By Carmen Rosy Hall

Before Eugenia Zobel de Ayala started to develop Tela, the textile collection she launched this month, she created a custom set of Roman blinds for her Manhattan living room windows in piña fabric. The sheer textile, woven from the fiber of pineapple leaves, is typically used for men’s shirts in the Philippines. Zobel de Ayala, who grew up in Manila, and her longtime friend and collaborator the New York-based interior designer Noah Ruttenberg chose the material as a way to introduce a bit of privacy without losing light. They stitched together 30-inch piña panels with off-center stripes of embroidery. “Patina is the whole point,” says Zobel de Ayala. “There’s character, texture, and even color implications that result from handmade materials.” Three years ago, she began working with expert weavers across the Philippines to develop piña fabrics with added durability, reinforced with silk and strategically sewn patterns. The brand’s upholstery fabrics are made from heavy cotton. Inspired by the Filipino tradition of layered formal wear, Tela’s range is designed to be mixed and matched. Stripes and ginghams in earthy browns and oranges, pinks and purples are named after women in Zobel de Ayala’s family and those she works with in the Philippines. The first Tela collection is on view by appointment through Jan. 30 at McGrath, New York; from $210 per yard; tela-ny.com.

TRY THIS

A Manhattan Bathhouse That Sounds Like a Rainforest

Left: a room with black walls and a sink that’s carved out of stone on a wood counter. Right: a room with off-white walls around a pool. A wood bench is next to the pool and gray sauna hats hang on one wall.
The design for Lore Bathing Club, scheduled to open this month in New York’s NoHo neighborhood, nods to the pared-down vernacular of Finnish and Japanese bathhouses. Sean Davidson

A fascination with bathing culture has lately swept New York, driven by the tradition of contrast therapy: the practice of toggling between temperature extremes, which studies show can ease muscle soreness while improving immune function and circulation. Consistency is key — and Lore Bathing Club, scheduled to open later this month in NoHo, aims to be a routine destination, with a membership model and communal spaces that can be booked through an app. Founded by the hospitality veteran Adam Elzer and James O’Reilly, who cocreated the shared work space NeueHouse, the minimalist two-level bathhouse was designed with an emphasis on natural materials. The large Finnish sauna, constructed in alderwood with recessed lighting, seats up to 50; there’s also an infrared version for gentler heat. The cold pool room is clad in travertine, with thermal benches to foster post-plunge conversations among bathers. In the background, they’ll hear live-streamed chatter from the Costa Rican rainforest, playing through Oda speakers shaped like colorful abstract wall reliefs. “You might start to notice the same birds singing in the morning or toads croaking in the evening,” says Elzer — patterns that help “wake up the system.” Coffee by La Cabra and Masha tea in the storefront cafe will do the same. Introductory rates are $55 for a single session, $149 for a one-week pass and $225 for a monthly membership, plus a $25 surcharge on weekends; lorebathingclub.com.

VISIT THIS

A Holiday Market at a New Gallery in New York’s SoHo

Left: small rectangular textiles are arranged in a grid on a wall. Below them is a bench comprising a piece of wood balanced between two large stones. Right: a pair of beige slippers sit on a folded duvet.
Left: textile pieces handwoven by the New York artist Jessie Mordine Young from her 2023 series “A Woven Year,” displayed at Onna House SoHo. Right: the New York-based brand Pantoffel makes slippers from sheepskin, available for purchase at the gallery’s holiday market through December. Left: Bre Johnson. Right: Kleinjan Groenewald

By Mackenzie Oster

In 2021, the curator and designer Lisa Perry opened the gallery Onna House in a modernist home in East Hampton, N.Y. The space only displays work by women, with a focus on crafts such as ceramics and textiles. “People don’t look at craft as a fine art and we absolutely do at Onna House,” says Perry. Last month, she carried that spirit into Manhattan, opening an additional Onna House location on the second floor of a SoHo building that formerly housed OK Harris gallery, one of the neighborhood’s pioneering art venues. The space is divided into a series of rooms — including one that channels Japanese style with tatami flooring and shoji screens — that evoke a feeling of intimacy and comfort, and that feature a rotating display of works. “We don’t wait for, say, four to six weeks to put up a show and then completely reset,” says Perry. “This is more like a home where you might find something new.” This month, Onna House SoHo is hosting a holiday market with pieces sourced exclusively from female designers and artisans. Items on offer include miniature ceramic sculptures created by the French artist Jacotte Capron, jewelry handcrafted entirely out of safety pins by the Japanese artist Tamiko Kawata and decorative mini coats handwoven from recycled fabric by the Dutch textile artist Meta Struycken. By appointment, onnahouse.com.

GO HERE

An Ever-Evolving Moroccan Hotel

Left: a bed in a room with a thick white rug and wood-slatted ceilings. Right: an exterior view of a building made of wood and mud. A garden in front of the building features grass and cacti.
The new Cabane at the Berber Lodge outside Marrakesh, Morocco, was constructed with traditional techniques. In the primary bedroom (left), the wool bedspread was made by the women’s cooperative Art Tissage Tam. Mark Anthony Fox

By Gisela Williams

In the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, a dozen adobe-like structures seem to rise from the rust red earth, surrounded by gardens filled with succulents and wild grasses. They’re the accommodations of Berber Lodge, which was opened as a nine-room lodge in 2017 by the French-Swiss designer and hotelier Romain Michel-Ménière. The property has evolved steadily since then: A hammam was completed in 2020, followed by a rammed-earth tower that stands next to the 50-foot-long pool and houses a small bar, finished in 2023. (After a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit the area later that year, Michel-Ménière was reassured to find the structures undamaged.) This month, the designer added a 700-square-foot house with an open-air lounge he calls the Cabane. The exterior is made of mud bricks and wood, the ceiling is straw, and the interiors are minimalist with pops of character like a Noguchi lamp, photographic works by the French artist Isabelle Ehrler and a dusty pink rug from Tribaliste in Marrakesh. Rooms from about $325 a night; the Cabane is about $395 for two including breakfast; berberlodge.net.

FROM T’S INSTAGRAM

A SoHo Loft That Reflects an Expansive Idea of Home

A man draws beaded curtains and beckons a visitor into his home.
Kayhl Cooper

Gabriel Hendifar, the artistic director and chief executive officer of Apparatus, a New York-based lighting and furniture studio, gives a tour of his SoHo apartment. When he first moved in, it was little more than a wood-floored white box with a few iron columns in the main room and a black marble wall in the shower. Now he’s surrounded by objects that evoke what he calls “the push and pull around the idea of home”: a pair of tapestries that once decorated his great-aunt’s house in Iran; a resin bust inspired by the work of the Polish American sculptor Elie Nadelman, who moved to New York City around the start of World War I. Click here to read the full story about the designer’s home and follow us on Instagram.

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