The Grazing Board, vol. 7

I fixed you a snack: Tom Ford coming for Jeff Koons; our agenda for summer in Highlands, N.C.; and a swim dress to save my buns from embarrassment.

Jun 17, 2025

This week’s tasting platter is tailored for those craving inspiration in the form of contemporary style titans facing off, the best sandwich I’ve ever had, and your new perfect swimsuit for family fun. Let’s dig in!

7 minute read.

1. I did not want them to see this…

I recently took Cosima (my daughter, who is turning 3 in September!) to “Splash Island Waterpark” at the Mount Pleasant Palmetto Islands County Park. I had been dragging my feet on this because being around water with her is an epic adventure: she has zero fear, thinks everything is hysterical, and thinks she is an Olympic skilled swimmer. The pool club? Exhausting because she is addicted to the deep water, but we have to hold her up the entire time, obviously. The ocean? An undertaking because she loves nothing more than for waves to crash down on her and draw her out. The answer? This fun place!

It’s a beautiful, clean, safe, calm (with great parking, bathrooms and locker rooms and snack bar), series of two large wading pools with ocean shelves, the deepest part of the far end of one pool is over Cosi’s chest, but otherwise both pools are between her knees and waist. Fun because she is truly flopping and splashing down into water even though she can touch the bottom, as opposed to other splash pads where it’s just a fountain sputtering out of the floor. There are geysers and little waterfalls and a 16-foot “otter slide” that she can do herself. And, thrillingly for me, I spied about eight very serious lifeguards standing around hyper focused, which I love. (See in the below photo the lifeguards in yellow and red at the top and bottom of the otter slide? That’s how it was in real life — two lifeguards just for this shallow slide alone.)

The only hitch? I personally do not like doing the whole “I am running around after a busy toddler, literally bending over at the waist the entire time, in a bathing suit, with fellow strangers there to see my body in moments when I am too busy to keep a baby alive to make sure I am properly covered up.” I know some people don’t care, but I just don’t want other fathers or random dudes to see me in a bathing suit when things are in motion as I wrangle a busy child. And Cosi is busy. So I wore a pair of linen beach shorts over my one-piece swimsuit, but they got so wet that I felt absurd.

For our next marathon afternoon at toddler heaven, I found THE PERFECT SWIMSUIT.

This is the “Swim Dress” by Andie. It is a swimsuit with a dress over it. The dress part is not detachable entirely, but you can lift it all the way up to the chest to reveal the pretty suit underneath. I love the flattering low dipped neckline and adjustable spaghetti straps, and I really like the cut and coverage of the bottom. The dress part is the right length and body skimming, but not compression tight nor baggy loose. It just feels very pretty! Very flattering! Essentially a tennis dress perfected for the pool. I will not mind literally running around after a happy splashing baby in front of other parents in this. I am normally an XS but tried the Small and it fits great!

I love sharing my problem-solving finds with you! This is a wardrobe staple if you have summer pool parties or children’s birthday parties with splashing water toys. I would wear with a white button-down shirt tied in the front at the waist!

Here are other styles in swim dresses, linked below, with notes on why you’d like them:

Manuela Swim Dress in Santorini - love the wrap sarong silhouette

Mesh V-Neck Mini Swim Dress - if you like a short skater skirt

Scoop Neck Swim Dress - if you like a loser tank dress silhouette with no waist seam

Scallop Edged Swim Dress - in regular, petite, plus, and long torso

2. ICONOCLASTS: Tom Ford x Jeff Koons

I recently came across a snippet of an interview that Tom Ford gave years ago. Here is a montage of wildly inspiring things he has said over the years, such as “relying on talent is for losers.” Boom.

He is impeccable in all ways: articulation, style, vision, drive. It made me miss so deeply a documentary series called ICONOCLASTS on the Sundance Channel. I was addicted. Deeply addicted.

In each episode, one iconoclast interviewed another, bringing cameras along for a behind-the-scenes dive. Like “Cops,” except its one wildly successful creator hunting around for another instead of an officer after a perp. The most provocative episode for me was Tom Ford interviewing Jeff Koons. No… interrogating is more accurate.

“I wanted to do a portrait on Jeff Koons. Not only do I have tremendous respect for him as an artist, but I find him also a bit of an enigma. He almost sort of talks out of both sides of his mouth, to coin a popular phrase. And I want to really sit and have a conversation with him about what he’s creating because, sometimes, I think what he’s saying is the most intelligent thing I’ve heard anyone say about, let’s say, a particular comment on the world or a particular piece of art. And the other times, I’m really not sure whether he’s just not totally full of shit.”

Well, well, Tom. You’re draped in London verbosity, but your Texas is showing. And I like it.

Keep in mind that this interview was done in 2005, when Koons was taking the contemporary art market on a wild goose chase. I would know. I was on the Sotheby’s evening auction floor from 2007 to 2009 working in Client Development (hunting around for the top few hundred art collectors in the world to make sure they did not go to Christie’s) for the Contemporary Art Department.

Anyway, I just loved how Tom went after Jeff with such intellectual confrontation, but also personally enjoyed spending two days lunching and chatting and exploring the artist’s Chelsea studio. It feels like two excellent trial lawyers playing cat and mouse in the courtroom, then clapping each other on the back to get a drink once the jury is dismissed. “I’m coming for you.” But also, “I’m aware we’re both players in a Tron.”

I HIGHLY recommend watching the ICONOCLAST episodes on YouTube (thank God they’re there).

TOM FORD X JEFF KOONS

3. Our Highlands Fling: The Vacation Plan

Phil, Cosi and Dutch (the Golden Retriever) and I have taken an extended vacation to Highlands, North Carolina, each summer for about three years in a row now, plus a winter vacation the year prior. Highlands reminds me of Sag Harbor if it were nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains and not on Gardiners Bay.

Charleston’s humidity is unbearable for the entire season and summer can be boring here, so you need to break it up. Growing up in Manhattan, I always enjoyed a “city summer” with a short work week of al fresco dinners punctuated by zipping out to Long Island for three day weekends of mayhem, maybe with a longer vacation somewhere interesting at some point in the season. Here in the South, it’s different. You just decamp to somewhere local-ish with better weather.

For us, the house we rent is perfect because rather than being perched up on a picturesque mountain cliff, it is right behind town, just walking distance to the shops and restaurants, but a bit secluded behind a large pond and some quiet roads. I might be in the mountains, but I’m still from Manhattan, and I need to be able to walk. A perfect house for days of pushing a stroller and and leading a Golden Retriever to breakfast in cool mountain air. My Highlands process is to re-book the same house each year far in advance, put the cancellation reminder on the calendar for months later, and finalize our summer plan when that deadline eventually rolls around.

Look at how small Dutch was. He's a beast now!

This year, we’ll be visiting for an extended stay that covers Fourth of July, and I’m so excited because the town does a very cool celebration with outdoor music festivals, fireworks, etc. All very family friendly, but festive. It will be the busy season with visitors, so I made a plan in advance:

We love to eat dinner at a restaurant called Wild Thyme, so I made reservations for every other night at 5:30 PM. It is perfect for a toddler and cool summer evening supper. Do I think we’ll actually eat at the same restaurant that often? No. But we can keep or cancel the reservations as they come up, and this way we won’t be hearing, “sorry, we’ve been booked for weeks” when we call the hostess at the last minute with rumbling tummies.
The Hudson Library has a very cute Children’s Wing and they have two programs for little ones on days that we will be in town, including a fish/river presentation and a drum circle. So cute. Those are on the calendar for post-nap activities.
The Bascom Center for Visual Arts has their Community Day when we’ll be in town, so we can drop in for all sorts of children’s craft activities, arts projects, and special family fun.
The Biological Station is a favorite way for children to explore the incredible mountain nature-scape without having to scale inclines. Cosi will feel like an adventuring mountaineer without losing her step. Perfect.
I always book a spa day at the Old Edwards Inn & Spa for myself and Phil. We take turns, since obviously someone needs to be with Cosima, so we each get a very long afternoon at this place where, in my opinion, you really go to enjoy the extremely encompassing spa amenities more than an actual a treatment. Phil gets a massage and I just book a basic pedicure because I don’t like strangers poking at me, but I do like to go a few hours ahead to snooze in the relaxation room, eat lunch on the spa patio, dip into the various plunge pools, do the “car wash” shower, and sit in the sauna and steam rooms. Pro tip: When you look online and see that your treatment is not available on the day you want, call them anyway. It is. Always works for me.