Author: NY TIMES

Like the tagline of a horror movie, the shoes … had teeth.At the Japanese label Doublet’s fashion show in Paris this January, models tramped out in dress shoes with their toes angled upward, like the ajar maw of a bass at feeding time. At the top and bottom of this flapping cavity were puny metallic teeth. Inside, the surface was polished tongue red.“Monster shoes” is how Shintaro Yamamoto, the designer of these wide-mouth wonders, described them. (They looked, to my eyes, like infant-scaled versions of the sandworms from “Beetlejuice.”)Mr. Yamamoto, 50, of Tokyo, is the footwear Dr. Frankenstein behind the…

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing the biggest revolt from Democrats in years, but in a conversation with The Interview after his crucial vote supporting a Republican federal spending bill this past week, he tried to brush off questions about whether he should step aside. Democratic officials appeared stunned when Schumer did an about-face on the spending bill, arguing that the choice was the lesser of two evils. Schumer defended his decision in the second part of our wide-ranging interview, even as questions over his leadership by senior party officials continued.Here are three takeaways from the shutdown portion of…

French Champagne producers do nearly a billion dollars’ worth of business with the United States every year. But on Friday in Épernay, the world capital of sparkling wine, the only number on anybody’s lips was 200.That was the percent tariff that President Trump has threatened to impose on Champagne and other European wines and spirits exported to the United States, in a trade war that exploded this past week after the European Union countered Mr. Trump’s penalties on steel and aluminum with its own duties on American products.The triple-digit menace landed like a thunderbolt in Épernay, rattling workers in nearby…

A man who looks like Musk, only 20 years younger and better rested, eats hummus before another cut to belly dancers with large breasts, shapely hips and full beards. This jarring sequence brings us to the chorus: “Trump Gaza, shining bright/golden future, a brand-new light/feast and dance, the deed is done/Trump Gaza, No. 1.”As the chorus repeats, we enter the “after” portion of the spot. A child walks down a shining boulevard, holding a Mylar balloon shaped like the president’s head. The president himself chats up a younger woman in a casino. Money falls from the sky. The aforementioned golden…

Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened.Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment.“I’m worried we have kids and parents that are taking all of these other medications and then delaying care,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the sickest children in…

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLady Gaga’s sixth solo pop album, “Mayhem,” was released last week, and its retro palette immediately connected with many of the singer’s most devoted longtime fans.Produced by Gaga, the rock revivalist Andrew Watt and the pop fixture Cirkut — with what Gaga has described as substantial input from her fiancé, Michael Polansky — the LP gestures pointedly back at the sounds of the pop star’s ascent in the late aughts and early 2010s. In a surprising amount of promotional interviews for a modern star of her caliber, Gaga has also cited a…

A delegation of Syrian Druse made a rare trip to Israel this week and visited a shrine revered by the faith as Israel seeks to extend its influence inside Syria after the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.Both Israel and Syria have sizable communities of Druse — an Arabic-speaking religious minority scattered across the Levant region. But with the two countries formally at war for decades, Syrian Druse were generally unable to enter Israel to visit sites holy to their faith.Sheikh Muwafaq Tarif, a Druse leader in Israel who helped organize the two-day visit, said roughly 100 people arrived on…

At his job at an apparel store in SoHo, Thomas Lanese uses phrases that he would never utter outside of a work setting, like, “I’ll shoot this email to you by end of day.” Sometimes, he said, it feels like he is living two separate lives.It is something fans of “Severance” might relate to. In the buzzy show that concludes its second season on Apple TV+ next week, the characters literally live two distinct lives.Their “innies” (no relation to belly buttons) are their work selves. Their “outies” exist anywhere outside of work. They have chosen to work for Lumon Industries,…

Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, set European pigeons flying in circles when he suggested last month that given rising mistrust in President Trump’s commitment to NATO, he wanted to talk to France and Britain about extending nuclear deterrence over Germany.Warning that a “profound change of American geopolitics” had put Poland, as well as Ukraine, in an “objectively more difficult situation,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland suggested the same, while hinting that Poland, with its long history of Russian occupation, might eventually develop its own bomb.Then Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, said this week that it was time for the United…

In late 2022, New York freelance star Breanna Stewart held a meeting at a New York City steakhouse to hear ideas about changing the professional women’s basketball landscape.Stewart is preparing to spend another WNBA offseason abroad. Alex Bazzell, husband of Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier, also saw his wife playing overseas for several seasons. He made a business proposition to Stewart to keep most of the WNBA stars in the United States during the winter.On the wine, Stewart is immediately interested in the unrivalled concept, a 3×3 league for professional women that will promise the highest salary in the American…