Every September and February, the T women’s fashion team — the creative director Patrick Li, the women’s style director Kate Lanphear and editor at large Nick Haramis — and I take off for the Milan and Paris fashion weeks. Over those 16 days, we’ll see dozens of shows and have just as many meetings; and while we see one another at the shows themselves, our individual schedules often diverge. Between shows, Kate and Nick might be at a presentation for an emerging young designer; Patrick might be having a coffee with a stylist or photographer he wants the magazine to work with; I might be having breakfast with a brand’s marketing director.
Which is why my favorite ritual of those weeks is the team dinner. It takes place on the last night of Paris Fashion Week, and it’s sacrosanct. Together, we talk about shows we’ve seen, gossip we’ve heard, people we’ve met, story ideas we’ve had, theories we’ve developed. But along with gathering as colleagues, it’s also a time for us to gather as friends, to spend time in one another’s company and to reflect on how lucky we are to do what we do, even with its many absurdities and occasional annoyances. I eat only Asian food in Paris (I can’t tolerate too much butter and, anyway, the Japanese and Vietnamese food there is excellent), so we usually go to a team favorite, a rollicking, romantically lit Southeast Asian place called Bambou in the Second Arrondissement. After, we always take a group picture, have a group hug and then go back to our rooms to pack for the next day’s flight home to New York.
Given how much I enjoy this tradition, I loved reading about other people’s equivalent team dinners in our story about six different staff meals. Sometimes — as in the case of the filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s group lunch that she hosts for the members of her distribution and production company, or the one that the visual artist Cai Guo-Qiang holds for his studio or the ones that the chef-owner Jeremy Lee has for his restaurant staff — the food is almost as important as the company. In other cases, it’s less central to the experience: At the fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra’s studio, or at the theatrical production of “Stranger Things” or at the office of the architect Tatiana Bilbao, the food is simple or casual. But whether lunch is catered or bought by the individuals from a deli, every one of these creative leaders agrees: The essential thing here is not what’s being eaten but the people eating it. “To do your best [at work],” DuVernay says, “you should feel that you’re wanted, that you’re comfortable. … Sitting down, inviting people to be themselves, sharing a good meal — these are the building blocks.”
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