Violet Grey Launches Perfume Label With $1,100 Fragrance
The Extrait, nosed by perfumer Jérôme Epinette, is housed in a limited run of 1100 'handcrafted' glass flagons, according to its description on Madame Grey's direct to consumer website, which quietly appeared this month. The scent is advertised as a 'transfixing ode to the one that got away' on Madame Grey's website, where it's available for pre-order, but no scent profile information is provided.
The fragrance is also distilled into a hair mist, Pour Cheveux Strip-Tease available now for $100. A hair mist, featuring a less concentrated version of the Extrait scent, is available for $100. (Madame Grey)
The website also announced the Madame Grey Estate, a space on New York's Upper East Side described as the 'studio and private art collection of creative director Cassandra Grey.' The space will be open from June 2 through 7, and will culminate in an auction of fine jewelry and objêt from the likes of Cartier and Fabergé, alongside a bottle of the Extrait de Parfum.
Violet Grey was founded in 2013 by Cassandra Grey, a stylist and marketer who is credited with helping launch brands like Augustinus Bader on the strength of her network and editorial perspective. Farfetch purchased Violet Grey in 2022 to build its budding beauty division, an aim it later abandoned; Grey purchased the retailer back from Farfetch in fall 2024 with the private equity investor Sherif Guirgis, who became co-owner and chief executive.
Since then, Violet Grey has expanded east, opening a shop-in-shop at Long Island department store Hirshleifers, and will open its Madison Avenue boutique in June.
Despite only recently appearing, Madame Grey has been in the works for some time. The brand's associated Instagram account, @madamegrey_parfum, has steadily posted moodboard imagery including Guy Bourdin photographs and midcentury interior design objects since 2019.
Learn more:
Cassandra Grey Buys Back Violet Grey — With Some Help
The cult beauty retailer's founder teamed up with investor Sherif Guirgis to acquire the business back from Coupang, the South Korean owner of Farfetch.
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Chicago Tribune
5 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Co-living buildings offer ‘attainable luxury' for Chicago's young professionals, students
Nestled in the heart of the Printer's Row district in the South Loop, Straits Row appears like any other high-rise in downtown Chicago. It has a modern interior design and high-end amenities that are standard for luxury housing in the area. But the building has a feature that separates it from most such high rises in the city: Half of its units are co-living apartments, where tenants rent a single bedroom and share a kitchen and living room with other tenants. Rents at co-living buildings are often 20% to 30% below the market rate for a studio or one-bedroom in the same neighborhood. Straits Row, at 633 S. LaSalle St., began leasing in February. The 18-story building has 132 units and 358 beds, with half the units traditional apartments and half co-living apartments. The bedrooms and living rooms are fully furnished, so residents new to the city can move in without bringing furniture. The building's amenities include a workspace, a gym, a pool and lounges. The city has only a handful of co-living buildings, but the trend has grown in recent years, driven by high housing costs in urban areas, according to a report by market consulting firm Grand View Research. The global market size was $7.8 billion in 2024, and is expected to more than double to just over $16 billion by 2030, according to the report. The model allows students and young professionals to live in popular neighborhoods without the high price tag of a traditional apartment or the headache of finding roommates, said Nick Melrose, founder and CEO of Melrose Ascension Capital. Melrose developed the building alongside Q Investment Partners, a Singapore-based firm that bought the site in 2019. At Straits Row, the rent for a single room in a four-bedroom starts at $1,699. That's well below the average studio apartment rent of $2,186 in Printer's Row, according to 'This gives them the option to live in an apartment that is a nice apartment — it gives a luxurious vibe at a lower cost,' said Madison Kerrigan, the building's property manager. The location made it a great spot for co-living, Melrose said. It caters to students at several college campuses within a short radius, including DePaul University's Loop campus, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University. Multiple transit options nearby offer a quick commute for young professionals working downtown. Three miles north in Lincoln Park, Post Chicago offers a similar setup, with 107 units that are mostly co-living. The building, at 853 W. Blackhawk St., is part of the Big Deahl, a 7-acre project by Structured Development that put up residential buildings on a site previously zoned for industrial buildings. The project also includes a 34-unit affordable condo building and a traditional apartment building. J. Michael Drew, founding principal at Structured Development, said the firm pursued a co-living project to offer an affordable option in a hot neighborhood for young professionals. Beyond the standard amenities, Post Chicago also offers weekly cleaning for co-living tenants. 'Lincoln Park is the most desired neighborhood for incoming graduates who are entering the workforce,' he said. 'But it's one of the more expensive neighborhoods to find housing.' For Manuel Carcamo, co-living was an easy choice as a student and when he was just starting his career. Although he lives in a studio now in Straits Row, Carcamo previously lived in two co-living units. The first was as a student at the University of Indiana's Indianapolis campus, renting a room in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom unit. He wanted to live off campus but couldn't afford to live on his own, so co-living was a convenient option. Having roommates helped build social interactions and helped him explore the new city, he said. 'I moved to Indianapolis from Chicago having known nobody there,' he said. 'So moving into a four-bedroom apartment with three strangers, that was kind of daunting, but it did also work out for me, in terms of connecting me with some of my best friends.' Those bonds Carcamo made have remained. This October, he said, he's officiating the wedding of one of his college roommates. After college, Carcamo moved to Columbus, Ohio, and co-living was again a cheaper, convenient way to secure housing. This time, he lived in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-living apartment with one roommate. 'I think it's a great opportunity for people that are really looking to put their head down, get their start in their career, and try to figure out the city,' Carcamo said. Now, Carcamo said, he prefers the privacy of a studio apartment. He works from home and having the comfort of his own space is the main reason he chose to live in a studio when he came back to Chicago. But he said he wouldn't rule out co-living again. Melrose has three other buildings in development: A $90 million, 19-story building at 626 S. Wabash Ave. that has some co-living units, and two buildings in Fulton Market that are traditional apartments. Melrose said he wants to ensure all his buildings offer 'attainable luxury,' catering to a middle demographic that would have a hard time renting in much of downtown Chicago. 'We have opened up a demographic that would love to live here that couldn't otherwise afford to do it, until we built something like this,' Melrose said. 'That feels better to me than catering to some lawyer or doctor. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that's not what drives me.' For developers and building owners, co-living can generate more income than a traditional building with the same number of units. Renting by the room allows developers to charge more per square foot than they could with a usual two- or four-bedroom apartment. According to a 2020 report by Cushman & Wakefield, co-living can increase net operating income by an average of 15% because of the higher density, while offering lower rents. Co-living buildings have slightly higher operating costs than traditional apartments, the report said. They often have shorter lease terms and more turnover, and Drew said having the right management is important to take advantage of those returns. 'As long as you're operating it efficiently and effectively, yes, the returns can be, and are proving to be, better than a conventional' property, he said. But securing financing on a co-living project can be difficult. Straits Row was initially planned as an all-co-living building, and Melrose said there was some hesitancy from institutional lenders to finance the project, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the housing market. That led the developers to change the building to half co-living and half traditional. 'There's a market for 500 (co-living) beds, but with lenders, especially, who are the most conservative folks in our industry, it was the path of least resistance,' he said of the decision to put fewer co-living units in Straits Row. 'So that got lenders a lot more interested.' Drew said at Post Chicago, there was less hesitancy from lenders about the co-living model. He said the rising rent environment means lenders understand the demand for lower-cost alternatives. 'The attraction to a lender is that they recognize the ability to push rents and to be able to take advantage of a market when you're in a rising rent environment,' he said. Co-living has seen significant growth in the last decade, especially in high-cost cities such as New York and San Francisco. According to the Cushman & Wakefield report, there were fewer than 100 co-living beds available in 2014 in North America. That grew to more than 7,000 by the end of 2019. Gail Lissner, an appraiser and managing director for Integra Realty Resources, said some of the earliest co-living buildings in Chicago were smaller apartment buildings that were repurposed. One example was a three-flat in Lincoln Park that was turned into a 12-bedroom co-living building. As the model gained traction, interest from developers and lenders led to larger, new-construction buildings such as Straits Row and Post Chicago that looked more like luxury housing. Now, renters can find large, modern co-living buildings in Pilsen, the South Loop, the Near West Side, Lincoln Park and elsewhere. Co-living isn't likely to take over the Chicago housing scene, but experts said it's an underserved market that is likely to remain strong as rents continue to rise. Lissner said co-living buildings operate best near big employers and universities. 'I think they belong in certain locations,' she said. 'They belong in the downtown market where you have the employment. They work well where you have universities. So we tend to see them clustered a little bit more there.' Part of the challenge of operating a complex with co-living apartments is making sure renters know about it, Melrose said. It's easier to recruit students, who are used to dorm-style living, but Melrose said he thinks the renter base of young professionals will grow as they become more accustomed to that style of living. Kerrigan, the building's property manager, is active in Chicago housing Facebook groups and online forums to pitch Straits Row to people looking for an affordable option downtown. The complex also partners with universities and corporations to market itself to prospective city residents. 'A lot of it is building partnerships and just making sure that Straits Row is known as the newest co-living spot,' Kerrigan said. 'We do sometimes have to explain what co-living is, but once we explain that, people seem to really like it.'
USA Today
5 minutes ago
- USA Today
America's fascination with the kiss cam: For better or worse, it's here to stay
'Are you not entertained?' Russell Crowe's Maximus famously bellowed to the Colosseum crowd in the 2000 film 'Gladiator.' But for decades, kiss cams have been posing a different question to U.S. sports fans and concertgoers: 'Are you not the entertainment?' Whether lighthearted distraction or comic relief, the ubiquitous arena and stadium feature is as American as apple pie — or at least as American as baking an apple pie and posting it on social media. Live competition and performance offer us communal experience on a massive scale, but they also offer a chance to make memories and — with the aid of kiss cams — to become part of the entertainment ourselves. For a few back-to-back moments, as the camera zeroes in on its various targets, fans watch with curiosity, anticipation, excitement and maybe even self-conscious dread. 'These events are epic, nostalgic, and for some even narcissistic,' said Adam Resnick, founder of 15 Seconds of Fame, a Los Angeles-based company whose app allows participating fans featured on in-venue video boards like kiss cams to download and share the footage as a digital souvenir. The origins of the kiss cam are frustratingly foggy but Resnick and others agree they burst onto sports scenes in the 1980s, in the years after sports franchises began introducing increasingly massive color video screens at ballparks and stadiums. Designed to fill breaks in the action and typically set to cheesy pop ballads, the kiss cam was a major innovation that shifted the focus from courts and fields into the stands. The feature is pretty much a slam dunk, with the camera's roving eye picking out random pairs of people in the stands who may or may not be actual couples — and therein lies part of the fun. Reactions are broadcast on the venue's giant video boards: If they kiss, the crowd cheers, while refusals draw playful jeers or laughter. "We love love," said Pepper Schwartz, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. When couples oblige, she said, "it's a feel-good feeling that transfers from one person to another and makes us optimistic." Kiss cams are cheap entertainment designed to keep audiences engaged when they could easily check out, said Joseph Darowski, an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. 'The energy of the live crowd is incredibly important, and the kiss cam helps to prevent it from dying down,' said Darowski, co-author of 'Survivor: A Cultural History,' a book that in part explores the rise of reality TV. 'Sporting events are not just about the game being played. It's the entire entertainment experience.' Any additional theatrics are generally a bonus — at least for the audience. But as illustrated by the now infamous July 16 incident at a Coldplay concert in Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, that's not always the case for the featured individuals. When reactions tell the story It was the shot broadcast around the world – the TikTok'd footage of a couple at a Coldplay concert caught mid-cuddle. 'Either they're having an affair, or they're just very shy,' Coldplay singer Chris Martin quipped after seeing the video from the stage. The video of the July 16 incident at Gillette Stadium has received more than 129 million views on TikTok alone. The viral moment and its professional and personal fallout, Schwartz said, prompted reactions ranging from amusement and fascination to, for those who've been involved in similar circumstances, schadenfreude and relief. But it wouldn't have unfolded the way it did without the kiss cam. The couple seen on the screen "could have saved themselves from worldwide derision had they waved and looked like, 'This is no big deal,'" Schwartz said. "But they took the second instinct, which was to flee. And that was the funny one." 'It could have been a vanilla, fleeting moment,' Resnick agreed. 'However, their reaction told a story." The episode illustrated how kiss cams have provoked occasional embarrassment and controversy since their debut. In addition to outing potential infidelities, their use in the past has been accused of pressuring unwilling participants to take part and shamed for promoting homophobia by showing same-sex couples for laughs. It also showed the hazards of baring private matters in public in the age of kiss cams, smartphones and social media. 'The expectation of privacy at a public event has never existed, and today, with camera ubiquity, it's preposterous for anyone to take that position,' Resnick said. More often, though, kiss cams offer those attending live events the chance to score a cameo in their own experience, claiming part or even all of those 15 seconds of fame once foretold for all of us. The power of those moments, Resnick said, lies in their organic nature. 'Authenticity can't be staged in real time,' he said. 'It resonates in the social zeitgeist.' Kiss cams 'an important metric' of acceptance The kiss cam's evolution hasn't been without its stumbles. In 2015, Syracuse University discontinued its kiss cam feature after a letter to the local newspaper cited a pair of troubling instances at the football team's game against Wake Forest. Steve Port of Manlius, N.Y., wrote that the kiss cam segment had twice featured young women who expressed unwillingness to participate but were forced to anyway, either by their male counterpart or by surrounding students. Meanwhile, a dozen or so years have passed since some major league sports franchises were accused of promoting homophobia by using kiss cams to poke fun at other teams. In those cases, after featuring a series of smooching male-female couples, the kiss cam segments ended by focusing on two of the home team's rival players, or even fans – suggesting they might kiss, and that doing so would be comedic. As a fan of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars complained after such a segment in a 2013 letter to team owner Shahid Khan, initially reported by Outsports: 'Hilarious, right? No, and the message is clear. Jaguars are heterosexual and approved. The opponent is 'gay,' disapproved and the butt of a crude joke.' A year earlier, pitcher Brandon McCarthy of Major League Baseball's Oakland A's had similarly condemned the practice after a game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. 'They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight,' McCarthy posted on the social platform now known as X. 'What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend.' Later, McCarthy — now sporting director for the USL Championship's Phoenix Rising FC — told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If there are gay people who are coming to a game and seeing something like that, you can't assume they're comfortable with it. If you're even making a small group of people ... feel like outcasts, then you're going against what makes your model successful." Before long, franchises were striving to be more inclusive, and in 2015, MLB's New York Mets told the Huffington Post they would no longer feature opposing players in their kiss cam segments; that same year, the Dodgers included a gay couple in its kiss cam. 'Kiss cams are an important metric in measuring how acceptable certain people are in a given community,' said Stephanie Bonvissuto, an adjunct assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Hunter College and Brooklyn College, both part of the City University of New York system. In early 2017, the Ad Council's 'Love Has No Labels' campaign produced a commercial featuring kiss cam footage from that year's NFL Pro Bowl in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people had been killed seven months earlier in a mass shooting at gay nightclub Pulse. 'Kiss Cams have been a part of sports culture for years,' the opening text read, but at that game, it continued, they 'became part of something bigger.' The images showed pairs of individuals, outlined by a heart, broadcast on Camping World Stadium's giant screens. Friends were featured. So, too, were same-sex and interracial couples. Then the camera zoomed in on two women in the stands, one of them wearing a shirt reading 'Orlando survivor.' The two turned and kissed, to the crowd's delight. Still, Bonvissuto said it's still rare to see LGBTQ couples featured on kiss cams beyond Pride Night events. While cautioning that she hasn't seen any statistics on such representation, she said the footage she's viewed largely features white, able-bodied and seemingly cisgender individuals. 'Kiss cams act as a means to exclude certain people,' she said. 'They're incredibly important in thinking about representation — who we're seeing and not seeing.' 'Socially acceptable' voyeurism But for the most part, kiss cams have offered streams of harmless fun, fodder for highlight and blooper reels and glimpses into the relationships of everyone from fellow citizens to celebrities and sitting and former U.S. presidents. Kiss cams, said BYU's Darowski, offer audiences the constant thrill of knowing they could be onscreen combined with 'a socially acceptable, safe form of voyeurism that is traditionally taboo.' The presumed authenticity of couples' raw, unrehearsed reactions is key, too, he said. 'So much of our entertainment is highly mediated, edited and packaged for our consumption,' he said. It doesn't always play out as planned – and not all of it is necessarily genuine, thanks to some sports teams' creative minds. Many couples share crowd-pleasing kisses. Others, not so much. Some, snubbed by their companions, stomp off in a huff or peck adjacent fans instead, while youthful pairs looking to lock lips are thwarted by chaperoning adults. Whether any of it is staged doesn't matter much. Fans and audiences alike have enjoyed their moment in the limelight. Resnick, of 15 Seconds of Fame, recalled a moment in June 2024 after a Dallas Mavericks loss in game five of the NBA Finals. The arena cameras zeroed on a fan tearful over the outcome. While it wasn't part of the kiss cam feature, 'the minute he saw himself on the Jumbotron, he smiled and kissed the girl (who was) with him,' Resnick said. 'That's all you need to know about what those 15 seconds mean to fans.'
Business Insider
6 minutes ago
- Business Insider
I've interviewed around 500 people. I can trace all my best and worst hires back to this single interview question.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Eli Rubel, a 37-year-old Denver-based serial entrepreneur and CEO of Profit Labs. His identification has been verified by Business Insider. This story has been edited for length and clarity. At any given time, I employ between 40 and 50 people on a full-time basis. I've probably interviewed around 500 people. I created my first company, an enterprise contract management software in 2010, and sold that business in 2014. Next, I bought a commerce business, spent four years turning it around, and sold it. Then, in 2019 I started a marketing agency called Matter Made, and in 2022, I started a second agency called No Boring Design. Today I still own both of those businesses but I have talented leaders run them. I just started a third agency called Profit Labs, which is a bookkeeping and accounting firm for agency owners. It took a lot of reps to figure out what felt like a genuine interview process for me. Now, I can trace every one of my best and worst hires back to this single interview question. My go-to interview question has evolved Originally I used to ask candidates, "have you heard of the zones of genius?" Most people hadn't heard of it at the time. I think it's more popular now and it's the concept that everybody has a zone of excellence, competence, and incompetence. So I would ask them "Can you walk me through your zones?" I discovered that the problem with the zone of genius question was that if you say zone of incompetence, people are on the defensive. They may think that they need to be careful about what they say because they're in an interview. It's still one of my favorite questions but it evolved into the question that I eventually got to, which is, "what gives you energy and what takes away energy in a working environment?" People tend to answer the question honestly That one question has made or saved me more money than any ATS or hiring tool I've ever used. When it's framed like that, it feels like you're an ally by asking the question. It's kind of like, "hey, I'm here to protect you from the things that don't that take away your energy." So I think people are just much more at ease and authentic when they answer the question. There is no right or wrong answer because ultimately I'm looking to figure out if this person is going to be well-aligned for the role. I don't want them to be a bad fit just as much as they don't want to be. For example, if they're interviewing for a facing account manager role and they answer the question by saying, "I love dealing with people and that gives me energy, and what takes it away is when a client pushes back on an idea that I share," that would be a huge flag for me. That tells me this person is not right for an account manager role because they're going to get their ideas shot down all the time. It's a red flag as it relates to this role, but it's not a bad thing in general. Maybe there's another role that is better for them, though. If I know what their skill set is, I can find a place for them where they're not pitching ideas to clients that are going to get shot down, but they can still leverage their skill of dealing with people. It's almost always the case that whatever they responded to the question is directly related to what I later see in manager feedback or in performance reviews.
