Sacred Musings: Winter 2026
It's been a while; here's a travelogue.
Bonjour à tous et à toutes,
Yes, I know, it’s been a minute. Between Frieze in Los Angeles, the French Film Festival in New Orleans, and that whole business where I was profiled in the New York Times (and subsequently put on the front page of the international weekend edition, which, surreal doesn’t cover how that felt) — I’ve had little time to commit to Sacred Monster. (I won’t lie: I have had a bit of writer’s block lately, but my intellectual wheels are starting to turn again.)
You might have noticed that my output has changed, and to reflect that, I’ve lowered the prices for paid subscriptions… so if you’ve also been debating laying down your credit card and getting access to the entire archive, take this as your sign !
The last few weeks have been packed, as I’ve traversed New Orleans, London and Paris, working and playing in equal measure across the three cities….
I’ve had a deep love of New Orleans since my first visit back in 2009 to tour colleges. Over the years, I’ve come back every time I could, which has been often.
Immediately upon touching down I was overjoyed to be back — I dropped my bags at my hotel and took a leisurely walk around the Garden District to gain my bearings. After saying hello to Marissa at Century Girl Vintage, I moseyed to Garden District Books to pick up something new to read. It faces Lafayette Cemetery #1, which is currently closed but reopening soon, upon which I highly recommend visiting. I finished my day with the first of many delicious NOLA meals at Miss Shirley’s, run by the charming Shirley Lee, who hand-makes her dumplings daily. As someone who is coeliac, it’s rare I get to enjoy gluten-free dim sum, and Miss Shirley’s was that rare offering. Her ‘Mardi Gras leftovers’, which were purple and stuffed with the trimmings of local crawfish, pecans, and greens, were unbelievable.
The following day, I hopped onto the St. Charles streetcar — which is lovably unreliable — to have a wander around the Vieux Carré. I paid a visit to the Nous Foundation, which is a beautiful and modern new addition to Toulouse Street. Nous is devoted to the promotion of Francophone culture and language in Louisiana, and is one of only three (!) dedicated French and Francophone bookshops in the United States. I was delighted to meet co-founders and husbands Rudy Bazenet and Scott Tilton while there, and get an invite to join them on their balcony the next evening, where I indulged in one too many glasses of champagne. I also fell in love with their dog Chaoui, whose name means ‘raccoon’ in Louisiana Creole.
The next evening, I was happy to see a crowd at the opening of La Belle et La Bête, an art show I co-curated with 812 Royal Gallery. At one point, the proceedings stopped to watch a second line parade make its way down Royal; it was about as NOLA as it gets.
By the weekend, the Festival was in full swing, and I delighted in introducing screenings of both Orphée and La Belle et La Bête with the crowd of cinephiles who gathered at the historic Prytania Theatre. Fun fact: the Prytania was where Ryan Coogler and crew would screen dailies while working on Sinners. The Prytania also has some of the best merch ever — Los Feliz, Vista, New Bev, you are all on notice!
For the Festival’s REEL Futures day, I was invited to speak to a group of insightful and curious students at Loyola University. I loved going back to school for the day, and was seriously impressed by the questions Professor Camille DeBose — and her students — asked of me.
The highlight of any trip to New Orleans, for me, is a visit to M.S. Rau, the storied antiques shop on Royal Street. I like to say it’s actually one of the foremost small museums in the United States — just shoppable (if your net worth is at least nine digits.) I have seen truly unbelievable things pass through their doors over the years, like Edward VII’s siège d’amour which he had custom-built for his favorite Parisian brothel (Le Chabanais); the only original copy of the Zapruder film not owned by the U.S. government; shrunken heads; Napoleon Bonaparte’s death mask; the deposed King Farouk I of Egypt’s entire bedroom set; the top hat and opera glasses that Abe Lincoln was wearing that fateful night at the Ford Theatre; an armoire from the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas; and so much more. It feels like the entirety of history of we know it has been in there, from dinosaur bones and wooly mammoth tusks to the first computer and rocks collected from the moon by the Apollo 13 crew. One of my group was amused to see that a sizable slab from ancient Egypt boasting beautiful hieroglyphics cost less than most of the paintings in the Frieze tent ($50,000).
New Orleans is, of course, synonymous with jazz and no visit is complete without a visit to at least one jazz club. After a hectic week and nearing exhaustion, I treated my team to a performance at the iconic Preservation Hall. Time is porous in there; it slows down and speeds up, wrapping everyone in its small audience in a cocoon of great music and eternal optimism. Don’t forget to leave the musicians a tip !
After a talk at the Résidence de France, it was time to rush back to the Hotel Peter and Paul (my favorite place to lay my head in the Crescent City, I’ve been staying there since before Covid-19) to pack my bags and brave the ICE-occupied, TSA-shutdown lines at MSY, so I could head to my next stop…
London !
I was grateful to be invited to preview the eye-popping Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum ahead of its public opening. I had just enough time to drop my bags, order in a little Dishoom and snooze before I was up and at it…. only haute couture could get me out of the house, en tenue, before 8am.
I am happy to report that the grotesque travel day and early wake-up was well worth it. The exhibition is breath taking, balancing Elsa Schiaparelli’s most groundbreaking designs with Daniel Roseberry’s modern showstoppers. Of course, the highlights for me were the iconic Cocteau collaboration coats, as well as the inclusion of a drawing of Schiaparelli by Cocteau that came from the Wunderman collection.
After the morning at the V&A, I strolled down the street to Harrod’s to say hello to the team at the Schiaparelli boutique there. It is a marvel, designed to resemble a surrealist apartment, complete with a gorgeous Cocteau-inspired painted ceiling. I highly recommend a visit, even if just to ogle the design. I have to thank Alan and his colleagues, who are art history obsessives and perhaps just as passionate about Cocteau’s work as I am. As they handed me a (shocking) pink box with a gold brooch inside and winked, “a little scorpion for a little scorpion,” I felt incredibly lucky to have made friends like them.
Work hard, play harder, and after my Schiap morning, a night out was due. My friends brought me to the London’s chicest club du jour, Lost, aptly named as it is located inside of a cavernous empty cinema multiplex in Soho. With phones locked in pouches, extremely low lighting, countless staircases, and DJs in every room (including the toilets), I was pleasantly disoriented for hours. It is as if M.C. Escher designed a nightclub.
Finally, I hopped on the Eurostar to check on my Parisian apartment for a quick 48 hours of meetings — but I was still able to make time to stop by my friend Ariana Papademetropoulos’s dreamy show Glass Slipper at Thaddaeus Ropac. While there were plenty of young people looking to get a ‘grammable photo of themselves in her Air-scored fish tank, I loved her (literally) steamy painting of a couple coming together in the condensation above a stove. Ariana’s a neighbor of mine in Los Angeles, and the show was a welcome reminder of one home in another, which is where I find myself now, snuggling with my beloved dachshund Louis, who I missed terribly while I was away.
More (very) soon,
Chloë