Here & There #9

Our new What’s In My Bag series, a very fall recipe from Maine, and luxury brand expert Tracy Georgiou on why travel should be a little difficult and her favorite hotels that nail the small details

WHAT’S IN MY BAG with Larissa Thomson

We were talking recently about our nostalgia for those “What’s In My Bag” stories from magazines in the ‘90s that were equally voyeuristic and actionable. So when our friend Larissa Thomson, the founder of Onda Beauty, mentioned her thoroughly edited in-flight wellness kit, we asked her to spill the contents of her personal item and tell us about everything that makes it in the bag. (You can read more of Larissa’s winter and summer travel skincare secrets here.) Consider this the first in a new series!

For a bag, I use the Clare V. leather duffle carry-on and I like to organize things in bags inside that. I always save the cotton dustbags I get when I buy something at Clare V or really anywhere, and use those to separate what’s in my bag. One holds everything I need to sleep, one has supplements, and another has random things like lip balm, hand sanitizer.... anything I like to grab quickly.

There’s always a travel pillow in my bag—Trtl is the best, especially for people with neck issues! I don’t go on any flight without it. Plus, it’s so compact and easy to tuck into a carry-on. I’ll admit, it’s not the most chic, but when it comes to getting sleep on the flight I don’t care what I look like! The Drowsy Silk Sleep mask is also a must for pure comfort and blocking out all light. It’s like a silk sleeping bag for your eyes.

I also pack a sarong or cashmere scarf—I have an old oversized grey Rag & Bone scarf that doubles as a blanket. I’ve been using it for years and it still looks brand new! I also just got a sarong in Greece that I used as a scarf when flying back. I get so cold on airplanes so I wear Jenni Kayne cashmere socks, too.

For non-toxic antibacterial wipes I like the Everyone lavender wipes, and for hand sanitizer this one from Jao is my go-to. De Mamiel Altitude oil, which has multiple benefits—it soothes, revives and has antibacterial properties, which are all perfect for in flight. Just inhale.

Bonjout’s Le Balm is the perfect multitasking travel companion, the ultimate product for hydrating, soothing and nourishing. Since it’s a balm, it skirts the liquid issue, and is so compact it can fit easily in any travel bag. Le Balm has 68 compressed and active serums, so it is small but mighty! Regenerating, repairing, and all else all while you’re flying, and of course once you’ve arrived. There is an unscented version as well for skin sensitivities.

Anfisa An-Gloss Ceramide Lip Treatment is just one of those great things to have on hand everywhere you go. Infused with ceramides and peptides, it has a very buttery finish and is deeply hydrating, soothing and plumping. No more dry cracked lips! Monastery Attar balm in the tube for hands, etc. And I keep the Le Bonne Brosse travel hair brush and my Bose Noise canceling headphones on hand, too.

I try to stay hydrated on the plane and LMNT electrolyte packets are great! I just add them into my water bottle—there’s no sugar, they taste delish, and keep me hydrated. For a snack on the plane, I’m totally addicted to these freeze-dried organic blueberries, which are so perfect to take on flights—crunchy, healthy, delicious and filled with antioxidants plus not a mess.

COPY THAT

A few weeks ago at the Brooklin Inn in Maine, I fell in love with the simplest eggplant dish. The spices tasted perfectly autumnal, and the eggplant—which can easily get mushy—had a nice crunch to it. They let me in on their secret, and now that eggplants are everywhere at the farmers market, it’s become a go-to weeknight side dish. —Carly Shea

Cut and salt the eggplant into inch-size cubes an hour or so before you plan to fry, let it sit on a towel or hang in a colander to allow excess water to drain.

Spice some honey: a dash of ground clove, some ground black peppercorn, and a few chili flakes. Warm the honey and let the spices steep.

Dredge the eggplant in Wondra Flour (important for texture) and fry in a pan with a shallow layer of olive oil until crispy, salt to taste.

Drizzle with honey and most importantly: zest a lime over top.

YOU SHOULD MEET… TRACY GEORGIOU

By Carly Shea

Tell us a bit about yourself! What do you do and how did you get started down this path?

I lead a creative company called Long Weekend. I’m an expert in luxury brand development and specialize in the nexus of lifestyle and hospitality.

I spent almost a decade at J.Crew, where I developed their women’s brand partnership program. In the first eight years we did over 250 collaborations, and it was such a pivotal time to be at that brand, taking a mall brand and evolving it into a fashion authority through the lens of who we partnered with. I got to do crazy things like fly to Copenhagen to buy my favorite New Balance shoes, just to come back and show the New Balance US team what style I wanted to commercialize. It was 2009, it was a different day and age. Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet, so discovery felt a little different.

Then I spent four years at Loeffler Randall, and I ran their merchandising and marketing. I made the jump from there into hospitality because I got in touch with the developer of the Lake House on Canandaigua who was working on another project in Florida and one in The Bahamas, and needed someone to oversee brand for them.

From there, I built Long Weekend to work across industries, brand experience, and partnerships. I believe that if people fall in love with brands in an authentic way and they have a joyful emotional connection, that is the path to 10x growth, so that’s the premise that I work with clients on now.

Hospitality and fashion seem more intertwined than ever—as someone with a view into both worlds, how do you see them overlapping (or diverging) right now?

When I zoom out, fashion is an industry that’s required to continually reinvent itself, and hospitality is an industry that largely stays very similar, and incumbents really make their names by doing the same things over and over and creating the standard. So I’m excited about the current time in hospitality where there’s a new generation that has purchasing power and wants to travel in a slightly different way.

I was in London during Wimbledon and went to Tracksmith, and they had 100 people there to run at seven o’clock in the morning on a Friday. That’s such a beautiful hospitality moment that lives within a retail store. I was talking to a woman there who moved to London and didn’t know anyone, and this was how she started to create her community. They’re hosting a run, but they’re really offering hospitality to their customers. For me, it’s interesting when the two become intertwined. I’m less interested in the slap-our-fashion-brand-name-on-this-hotel-suite-and-deck-it-out-in-our-prints kind of collaboration, and I’m more interested in where you can really meet your customers where they are and dazzle them. I do a lot of partnership work, so I think about this very often, and I’m hard pressed to find amazing hotel retail collaborations that I get excited about. So I think there’s a lot of interest and a lot of space for these two industries to co-mingle and to learn from each other.

You spent eight years at J.Crew before starting Long Weekend—if J.Crew were a hotel, what would it be like?

I’m obsessed with this question. And J.Crew, if you’re reading this, call me. I have the developer and the designer.

I’m sure it’s been whispered about in the halls there for a really long time, but I think their particular brand of American optimism would function so great as a hospitality portfolio. One of the things that I find European hotels do so well is this kind of attainably luxurious experience. And to me, who is better at that kind of relaxed, high-touch dressing than J.Crew? I think you’d have a spirited, casual place where there’s kids running around barefoot, and dogs are welcome, and it would be waterfront with sweeping vistas, but you could also translate it to a city. I hope I’m lucky enough to work on that project.

Where do you look for inspiration—whether for travel, design, style, or work projects?

I look anywhere and everywhere. I’m a huge fan of print and I try to read a couple books a month. Every time I start a project, buy a stack of books. When I was working on a hotel in Connecticut, it was a Tina Barney book with a bunch of kids at a water park. It’s always something that’s a little bit irreverent and off the mainstream.

I think the digital tools we have are handy, and they’re great rocket boosters, but I definitely turn towards the physical, environmental, and emotional. I’m highly impacted working in hospitality with the exchange between people, and so even a felt experience that I’ve had can inspire a whole project. At a hotel I’m working on right now, the feeling of a wonderful connected-to-self meditation is something that we think about and we talk about, whether it’s when we’re looking at a logo or talking about guest experience. So it’s not always visual, sometimes it’s felt too. The look-feel act has to click for something to be really, truly inspiring for me.

I loved your recent post about how “travel should be a little difficult.” Do you have any favorite places that might be a logistical hassle but are all the more rewarding because of it?

It’s a place I haven’t been to for years, but Santa Fe—you know, teeny tiny airport, and no direct flight from New York is a barrier to entry for some. But then you get there and are standing in the middle of Georgia O’Keeffe’s living room in Abiquiu alone, with just one tour guide, and that’s worth the non-direct flight and the schlep.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time on Mediterranean islands. Favignana, Ventotene, Ponza, Ischia, and Maritimo are favorites. Hydra was the island for me that kind of started all six years ago. A friend recommended that I go so I went by myself and had time to slow down and discover, and feel all the stuff that maybe didn’t feel great, but was necessary, and that created a big shift for me.

Do you have any other philosophies that guide where and how you travel?

I travel a lot for work, and I also travel a lot personally. The one guiding principle for me is slowing down enough to check in with myself. It’s very easy to plan a trip off of someone else’s itinerary that’s like, “you should do these 10 things when you’re in Paris”. And actually, I know myself enough to know that I really only like to do three or four things in Paris. I really love an afternoon to do nothing. I think there’s something freeing about giving yourself permission to not always pack it all in. So I try to be really aware, because I think we’ve all experienced those trips where you’re checking the boxes, and that never feels good afterwards to me.

Working in hospitality, I imagine you notice when a hotel or restaurant really nails the small details that most people might overlook. Are there any that have been especially memorable?

I was just at the Pali House in Laguna—I don’t really drink, and that’s like a champagne soaked property. When the manager checking us in offered us champagne I said, “oh, that’s okay I don’t drink” and he was like, “I got you.” Then he went over to the bar and made me a handcrafted zero proof cocktail, just on the spot with the most enthusiasm.

That made me feel so seen and cared for. Now I’m a fan of their brand, and I know based on those two minutes that the team values taking care of people in an individualized way. There probably wasn’t a SOP on the perfect mocktail to make someone. But if you have a team that’s empowered, you don’t need that. He was just being himself, and that translated to a magical moment for me.

Since your company and newsletter are called Long Weekend, what does a perfect long weekend at home look like for you?

A perfect long weekend at home is definitely lots of walking, yoga class, going to the butcher shop and buying some great meat to cook, going to the farmer’s market and getting vegetables, taking a paperback book down onto the sand and reading and just kind of wasting the day away.

A go-to long weekend trip away?

I always find a long weekend away to be really recharging, so it doesn’t have to be far. Laguna has become a go-to long weekend away just because the beach looks totally different, and it’s nice to have the chance to sit in a cove rather than the wide open beach. I mean, it’s as simple as a change of perspective. That’s the magic of a long weekend, it doesn’t have to be an epic journey.

Favorite place to take someone visiting LA?

The beach in front of my house is a favorite spot. In the South Bay I go to the pier in Redondo a lot because it’s a fun scene, and it doesn’t feel like Los Angeles at all. And then I love taking people up to Malibu. It’s fun to discover new beaches and nooks and crannies there.

The Bowery Hotel; Lo Scoglio

A hotel (or a few) you love…

This is how people must feel when they’re asked to pick a favorite child. Staying at The Mezzatorre for the first time is still one of the most magical experiences I’ve ever had. I think that family and that group do a great job with hospitality and I really look forward to staying at their property in Umbria.

For many years after leaving New York, the Standard East Village was my home away from home. The Bowery Hotel was also somewhere that I loved to return to. I used to live in the East Village, so I like to pretend that I still live there when I come back. And the Bowery living room—I don’t know what could be better.

When I stayed above Lo Scoglio I felt like a member of the family. I was hanging out with the dog, and you just walk through the restaurant at any time of day or night even when it’s not open to get to the beach and the town. I took myself there for a few days for a reading and writing retreat and I felt very cared for.

A hotel (or a few) you’d love to visit…

Colombe D’or, Hotel de la Plage, I’d love to go to Les Roches Rouges or Petunia to experience a Beaumier group hotel; drop into the Belmond Spendido for a night to play some tennis at their courts; check into Pensione America in Forte dei Marmi. Hotel Carasco in Lipari—I fell in love with Salina a few summers ago so I think Lipari and Stromboli are next in that part of Sicily.

A few things you don’t leave home without?

I’m a carry-on queen and meticulous packer, and I have a carry-on toiletry bag with a travel size replica of everything that I need in my day to day life so I can just grab it and go. And a passport comes with me even if I’m traveling domestically because you never know.