Author: Merrel Briona

A lifelike horse, eerily human figures and enormous heads in a clear ball whose eyes followed guests around the room: It was hardly an ordinary Tuesday evening in New York, but then again, Gentle Monster has never been particularly interested in ordinary.

The South Korean eyewear brand took over 23 Wall Street for an elaborate celebration of its “Intelligent Eyewear” collaboration with Google and Samsung, drawing a crowd that included Joaquin Phoenix, Alex Consani, Anok Yai, Charles Melton and Paloma Elsesser.

Guests first selected a pair of glasses before being escorted through a series of fantastical installations, including encounters with dancers and figures that looked almost, but not quite, human. Along the journey the enormous floating heads spoke in different languages, their words translated through the eyewear — a surreal spectacle with a technology purpose.

The installation was unmistakably Gentle Monster, whose in-house creative teams have helped make its theatrical environments a signature of the brand. The experience opens to the public Friday and runs through Nov. 23, offering visitors a preview of its forthcoming “Intelligent Eyewear” collection developed with Google and Samsung.

Consani and Yai, faces of an upcoming campaign, were more interested in the personality a good pair of sunglasses can provide. Yai recalled that her first pair were pink and came from Walmart. Consani’s were also pink, although hers came from Disneyland.

And sunglasses after dark? “Sunglasses at night is a positive,” Yai declared.

Upstairs, things took a considerably elegant turn. Two long, glossy black tables, dressed with red-orange flowers and flickering candles, welcomed guests for a dinner prepared by acclaimed New York restaurant Atomix.

A saxophonist provided a jazzy soundtrack as guests settled in for an elaborate meal, with service so precisely choreographed that dishes appeared before diners almost simultaneously. Despite the size of the gathering, the mood was intimate and convivial, the kind of dinner where nobody seemed particularly eager to leave post dessert.

Gentle Monster founder and chief executive officer Hankook Kim addressed the room, admitting that he had been nervous about speaking until Phoenix confessed that he was nervous, too.

Kim spoke about his fascination with the space between consciousness and unconsciousness, which he calls the “intermediate world.” After spending time downstairs, guests probably had a fairly good idea of what he meant. He also thanked Phoenix and director Jonathan Glazer for their campaign film, along with Consani and Yai for their work with the brand.

Elsesser, meanwhile, had a somewhat less philosophical wish for the future.

Asked what she’d most like a digital personal assistant to do for her, the model had a one-word answer: “snacks.”

“I always want something crunchy and something saucy,” she explained, elaborating on her affection for dips, vegetables and assorted sauces.

With the holidays approaching, she was looking forward to “some rest and some reprieve and just recentering.”

Outside, fans were still gathered behind barricades, screaming as the evening’s famous faces emerged into the New York night.

Gentle Monster clearly has quite a fandom and Consani, who received plenty of screams, offered a fitting warning for herself: “My monster, her name is Alex, and she’s always outside. Be warned.”

For years now, we’ve watched as president Donald Trump and his family have enriched themselves by launching dubious cryptocurrency schemes — at the same time that the White House should be holding the industry accountable.

There’s serious money at play. Trump and his family made off with nearly $3 billion during the first year of his second term alone, raising major flags among transparency and ethics advocates.

But following a Democratic sweep in last week’s midterm elections, Trump’s crypto empire could now be facing some major accountability. And investors are already getting spooked: as Gizmodo points out, crypto ventures with direct ties to the president, including World Liberty Financial and the memecoins $MELANIA and $TRUMP are hitting all-time lows after the elections.

The crypto industry overall spent about $170 million in its attempts to boost Republican candidates in the midterms, but ended up getting trounced.

“This is an awful night for crypto,” one industry lobbyist told Politico. “From a Hill perspective, they are going to be lit on fire against crypto.”

Democrats are gearing up to take control of both chambers of Congress in January, and it’s likely we’ll see them go after the president’s crypto endeavors. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has accused Trump of naked “corruption” by turning one of his crypto businesses into a bank, is already reportedly gearing up to kick off a fight.

“Big Tech CEOs, Administration officials, Trump family crypto businesses, Wall Street executives, and giant corporations should preserve their documents and prepare to answer tough questions,” an unnamed aide for the Senate Banking Committee, which Warren is poised to take over in January, told Politico in a separate story.

“You’re going to see a lot of ​investigations,” Stifel chief Washington policy strategist Brian Gardner told Reuters.

Banks are also preparing to assist in upcoming probes into Trump’s crypto ties — and corporate donors could be the first to be investigated.

Last week, Democratic senator and oversight panel member Richard Blumenthal sent off some early warning shots in the form of a letter addressed to a number of crypto companies — including the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial — informing them that they could soon be forced to produce documents.

The companies “failed to adequately respond to the Subcommittee’s requests and have not produced any responsive records,” the letter reads. If they don’t “voluntarily produce the requested records and information by January 4, 2027,” it’ll “leave the Subcommittee with no choice but to consider alternative measures to obtain compliance.”

Congressman and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform member Robert Garcia (D-CA) put it even more bluntly.

“LAWYER UP,” he tweeted following the midterm elections.

More on Trump and crypto: Investors in Trump’s Crypto Coin Are Now Screwed Beyond Belief

When TAG Heuer and Time+Tide released the first Sundowner back in November 2024, all 250 pieces were gone in 24 hours. A solar-powered Aquaracer in sandblasted titanium, with rose gold accents and a khaki strap, inspired by the Australian outback, turned out to be exactly what people wanted.

Well, almost exactly.

The one complaint I kept hearing, and the one I had myself, was that it wasn’t mechanical. Solar is practical. It’s also not what gets most watch enthusiasts excited. So two years later the Sundowner is back, and this time around TAG Heuer and Time+Tide listened. The Aquaracer Professional 300 x Time+Tide Sundowner II is automatic, it’s a proper 300-meter diver, and it comes on either a fitted rubber strap or a full titanium bracelet. It’s not a new colorway of the old watch. It’s a different watch that happens to share a name and a mood.

The Sundowner II is built on the Aquaracer Professional 300, which means a case that measures 42mm wide, 12mm thick and 48mm lug-to-lug. That’s a step up from the 40mm original, and on paper it had me a little nervous. I have a 6.75-inch wrist, and 42mm is usually where I start paying attention. But the case is Grade 2 titanium, sandblasted to a matte gray, and that changes things. It’s light. Not feathery, but light enough that the size never becomes the story. The lugs are short and turn down toward the wrist, so the watch sits flat and doesn’t overhang. It wears smaller than the numbers suggest.