There’s nothing more anxiety producing than wondering if you’re going to catch the Coronavirus or whether your city might be the next to be locked down. In the meantime, everyone seems to be going about their business as usual with more hand washing. I’m vacillating between calm and panic so I’m shopping to make myself feel better. If you’re not self isolating at home, I’ve put together some fun things to do this weekend and beyond.

I got to experience American Bar during fashion week and now it’s open to the public. It’s the latest darling of the fashionable set due to team who was also responsible for Cafe Clover and especially the well connected Kyle Hotchkiss Carone. Pack your hand sanitizer and head downtown to the charming restaurant that also includes menus and lampshades drawn by Luke Edward Hall.

It’s supposed to be 60 degrees on Sunday and almost 70 on Monday so I suggest a long walk in Central Park and calling in sick on Monday to enjoy it. This photo is from early April of last year but I think we really are going to have an early spring this year. The buds are already out on the trees on my street and the tulips are popping up all over town. The best part is that you are less likely to come in contact with any germs out of doors.

There’s a new Gerhard Richter exhibition Painting After All that just opened at the Met Breuer. It “will consider Richter’s six-decade-long preoccupation with the dual means of representation and abstraction to explore the material, conceptual and historical implications of painting. Spanning the entirety of Richter’s prolific and innovative career, the exhibition will present over one hundred works that focus on his specific commitment to the medium, as well as his related interests in photography, digital reproduction, and sculpture.” I hope to check it out myself this weekend.

I hope travel abroad becomes acceptable again so I can see the exciting new exhibition Betty Catroux: Feminine Singular at Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris. The special exhibition to Betty Catroux, fashion icon and Yves Saint Laurent’s “female double” will include pieces that Betty Catroux made to the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent. Luckily, it runs until 11 October 2020.

If you have a chance to see David Hockney: Drawing from Life at the National Portrait Gallery in London, you must go. It is “first major exhibition devoted to David Hockney’s drawings in over twenty years and explores Hockney as a draughtsman from the 1950s to the present by focusing on depictions of himself and a small group of sitters close to him: his muse, Celia Birtwell; his mother, Laura Hockney; and friends, the curator, Gregory Evans, and master printer, Maurice Payne.” It runs until 28 June 2020.

My favorite movie of the year, Emma, finally opens in wide release this weekend. As you know, I saw it the night it opened in New York and loved it so much that I went to see it again. Johnny Flynn plays the best version of Mr. Knightly and I fell down the rabbit hole of his work as a musician and actor. I didn’t realize that I had seen him in his previous roles and you should check them out on Amazon Prime and Netflix but I’m most excited to see his upcoming films and television roles. He’ll playing David Bowie in Stardust which will cover a short period of the singers life when he was in America in 1971 that should be debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival. He’s also starring as Ian Fleming alongside two other Jane Austen heroes Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen in Operation Mincemeat, which centers on the events surrounding the World War II deception plans to keep the Allied invasion of Sicily hidden. And lastly, I hope the Coronavirus won’t delay the fall filming of Ripley in Italy. Johnny Flynn will star as Dickie Greenleaf alongside “hot priest” Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in the eight episode series for Showtime based on the Patricia Highsmith novels.

The Burnt Orange Heresy is getting mixed reviews but I can put up with anything that takes a place in an Italian villa so I’m still going to see it this weekend. Hopefully, the reviews will mean the theater won’t be too full of germy people.

If you want to do some spring shopping this weekend, Shopbop Spring Event Sale is on until 8 March 2020. The more you buy, the bigger the discount.

New York implemented a no plastic bag policy this week so I had to stock up on reusable grocery bags. They come in 32 different colors so you can choose one to match your outfits or for each season. Just make sure you wash them on a regular basis so you aren’t spreading germs around every time you shop.

I’m on an English kick lately and House of Trelawney by Hannah Rothschild just arrived for me to start reading. It’s described as “a dazzling novel both satirical and moving, about an eccentric, dysfunctional family of English aristocrats, and their crumbling stately home that reminds us how the lives and hopes of women can still be shaped by the ties of family and love.” Sounds perfect.

I decided this week to buy myself an early Birthday present even though it’s in April just in case we all get quarantined. I figured that even if I can’t use my new Celine Triomphe Basket Bag, I can look at it while I’m stuck at home.

Bon weekend and don’t forget to wash your hands!

XOXO,

HC