All posts tagged: Muddy

Party dresses to muddy boots: Kate Moss’s best fashion moments | Fashion

Party dresses to muddy boots: Kate Moss’s best fashion moments | Fashion

There are models, there are supermodels and then there is Kate Moss. Scouted aged 14 while waiting for a flight at New York’s JFK airport, the Londoner quickly went on to define the fashion aesthetic of the 90s. There have been countless magazine covers including 43 issues of British Vogue, scads of advertising campaigns spanning Calvin Klein to Chanel and Tom Ford and hundreds of catwalk moments including, most recently, a thong-baring appearance at Demna’s Gucci debut. She’s been sung about by Pete Doherty and Playboi Carti, sculpted by Marc Quinn and painted by Chuck Close, Banksy and Lucian Freud. The latter is now the subject of a new film, Moss & Freud. Directed by James Lucas and executive produced by Moss, it explores the model’s friendship with the then – 80-year-old painter during 2002 when she sat, pregnant, for him. That lifesize naked portrait later sold for £3.5m. Ahead of the film’s release on Friday, our writers reflect on their Mossy memories from the nineties to now. ‘She looks like a renaissance cherub’ Moody …

A Seat at the Table: The Big Business—and Muddy History—of the Boutique Mah-Jongg Boom

A Seat at the Table: The Big Business—and Muddy History—of the Boutique Mah-Jongg Boom

And while many are eager to claim the game as their own, as celebrities like Julia Roberts, Meghan Markle, Blake Lively, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Hilary Duff proclaim their love of mahj, it’s clear that anyone can play, regardless of their background. Beyond spreading the love of the game, there’s big money to be made in mahj—a reality just as true a century ago and in the intervening years as it is now. In its original incarnation and indeed as it’s still played by some, mah-jongg was a gambling game. When Babcock introduced it to the US and the American style of play was born, so too was a whole new category of accessories: Mah-jongg sets were typically imported from overseas, and cheaper, lighter tiles eventually began to be produced domestically. Traditionally, tiles were larger and heavier, and could easily stand on edge on a table. The thinner, more economical tiles, however, would tip over, necessitating the use of racks, and pushers, bars that allowed rows of tiles to be pushed neatly forward and put …