Sunday Spotlights

Posted on August 9, 2026 by loiswhitmanhess

MacKenzie Scott Steps Back Into Spotlight With New Book

She posted four pages of a manuscript on a newly started Substack newsletter on Saturday and said that the novel would be released serially throughout August.

By Theodore Schleifer

Theodore Schleifer has covered MacKenzie Scott since 2019.

Aug. 8, 2026

MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s most scrutinized billionaire philanthropists who has scrupulously managed her profile, is making a return to the public eye.

Ms. Scott, the former wife of Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, announced Saturday that she had written a new novel, her first book since 2013. The novel is sure to draw more attention to Ms. Scott, an intensely private person who has only spoken through annual or biannual blog posts since 2020, when she began giving away billions of dollars a year and upending philanthropy.

The novel is titled “Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds)” and runs 80,000 words and 317 pages, according to the four pages of a manuscript that Ms. Scott posted on a newly started Substack newsletter on Saturday. Befitting her at-times cryptic communication style, Ms. Scott offered few details in the post beyond some of the manuscript’s so-called front matter: its title page, table of contents, character list and epigraphs.

Ms. Scott appears to be self-publishing the work on her Substack newsletter, whose name is the same as the manuscript. On Instagram, Ms. Scott encouraged her followers to “read and subscribe” at the Substack link, and posted a “Release schedule” that says the novel will be released serially throughout August. An aide to Ms. Scott did not immediately respond on Saturday to a request for any additional details.

Ms. Scott studied at Princeton University under the novelist Toni Morrison and won critical acclaim for her 2005 debut novel, “The Testing of Luther Albright.” Ms. Morrison wrote a blurb for it. Ms. Scott wrote a second novel, “Traps,” in 2013, and sat for a rare profile with Vogue. At the time, she was still married to one of the richest people in the world, whose company had disrupted the world of book selling.

Ms. Scott has cultivated an air of mystery in the 13 years since, granting almost no interviews even as she became a subject of fascination in the worlds of philanthropy and business. She finalized her divorce from Mr. Bezos in 2019, and almost immediately began giving away billions of dollars a year, with $7 billion in gifts awarded last year. She also briefly remarried.

Nonprofits that receive these enormous donations never hear from Ms. Scott directly, often only through intermediaries who take pains to avoid mentioning the name of their client. Since 2020, Ms. Scott has written a number of closely read, literary posts on a blog describing her approach to philanthropy and listing recent grant recipients.

Still, Ms. Scott, who is a major shareholder in Amazon and whose net worth now is estimated at over $38 billion, has often appeared uncomfortable with the amount of attention her unusual approach to philanthropy has attracted, regularly criticizing the news coverage.

“A belief in a diversity of voices drives my own communication choices as well. It’s what inspired me to override a personal preference for privacy and write a series of essays that bring attention to the work of these organizations,” she wrote in one post in 2022. “It’s what underlies my approach to press inquiries — respecting the autonomy and role of journalists by doing nothing to try to influence or control what they report.”

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Three years ago, on August 7th, we lost Richard Ekstract. Here he is with his wife Eileen.

We miss his creativity, and wisdom—and the way he made life more exciting for everyone around him.

So many of us looked to Richard as a guiding light. Now we’re on our own in a world that is filled with hate and despair.

He got out just in time but we believe had he stayed — he would have figured out a way to make people realize that they really wanted a life filled with hope and joy rather than misery and revenge.

He is deeply missed.

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After 23 years of a very tight relationship with architect Rene Alberto Rodriguez Bellucci and Dr. Howard Stark, we got to be the first to celebrate Rene’s birthday tonight at Prime Italian. We all met walking our dogs on the marina path adjacent to our condos. The dogs said hello first and we all knew we were destined to be together too. TV personality Steve Greenberg was with us from the start too. Happy Birthday Rene. Love Lois and Eliot Hess.

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Don’t Miss This Article

Posted on August 8, 2026 by loiswhitmanhess

How Roy Cohn Taught Donald Trump Everything
How Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump everything.

Read in The New Yorker: https://apple.news/AKyID-22bTOarBg-tD0OMfw?highlight=and

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What Is Your Reaction?

Posted on August 6, 2026 by loiswhitmanhess

Please send your thoughts to loisw@hwhpr.com

FASHION

The Next Met Gala Is Already Controversial

John Galliano, the designer convicted of a crime after public antisemitic remarks in Paris, will be the focus of the 2027 event. Who will sponsor it?

Galliano at the 2019 Met Gala. GETTY IMAGES

By Ashley Wong

Outcries over the 2026 Met Gala being sponsored by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos didn’t stop it from raking in more than $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute—a record fundraising haul.

The 2027 gala will be headlined by John Galliano, the designer who has been re-embraced by the fashion industry in the years since he was convicted in 2011 for making antisemitic remarks in Paris, where public insults based on religion, race and ethnicity are a crime.

The Galliano gala and corresponding museum exhibition come at a time when institutions have been willing to revisit characters once considered irredeemable. In announcing his involvement, the Met didn’t name any sponsors of the event, which since 1995 has been chaired by Anna Wintour, the global editorial director at Vogue and a longtime Galliano supporter. Past years’ gala announcements have named sponsors; a representative for the Met said that sponsors for 2027 would be revealed at a later date.

Galliano and Wintour, who has continued to appear by the designer’s side during his comeback. ROSE HARTMAN/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

Amy Odell, author of “Anna: The Biography,” characterized the choice of Galliano as perplexing from a fund-raising standpoint. “Are sponsors going to be OK with that?” she asked.

Since 2023, the Met Gala has raised over $120 million for the Costume Institute, with support from companies including Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and Condé Nast, which owns Vogue.

Requests for comment from Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and other past sponsors including Apple and Gucci weren’t immediately returned. A Condé Nast representative, in response to questions including whether the company intends to sponsor next year’s Met Gala, cited a statement that Wintour made last week.

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” read the statement, which noted the designer’s professional highs and lows. “The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.”

In a separate emailed statement, Jonathan Newhouse, Condé Nast’s board chairman, referenced his longtime backing of Galliano. “I was proud to support him during a difficult period,” Newhouse said. “I hope he continues to create for years to come.”

The blockbuster fundraiser may become less essential, however. In May, the New York Times reported that the Costume Institute is potentially on track to becoming financially self-sufficient by 2030, and possibly 2028.

Galliano made his antisemitic remarks while serving as creative director at Dior, where he was promptly fired. He also lost his role at his namesake John Galliano brand. Galliano has said that he was drunk and struggling with substance abuse at the time. He has since gone to rehab, gotten sober and sought counsel from Jewish leaders.

Galliano with Dior models in 2010. GETTY IMAGES

As plans for the 2027 Met Gala came together, Galliano, Wintour and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton met with representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, among others.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, attended two meetings, including one with Galliano. He initially had concerns about how the public might react, he said. But his worries were soothed by what he characterized as a sincere desire among Galliano and gala organizers to use the event to demonstrate how people can atone for mistakes.

The Jewish leaders pushed for the gala’s corresponding exhibition to prominently acknowledge Galliano’s past behavior. Titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” the exhibit will span his work from 1984 to 2024 and begin with material addressing his antisemitic comments.

“Until I met John, until I had those conversations, I wasn’t 100% sure what I would find,” Jacobs said. But he did not believe he was being used as a shield for criticism. “If I didn’t feel that John had done the hard work of earning back his good name and making amends for his horrifying rant, I would have pushed back and not lent my support.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that his organization accepted Galliano’s apology long ago. “It’s on the Met and partners to meet the moment, not with token gestures around one exhibit,” he added.

Part of the issue, said Hen Mazzig, a Jewish writer and Israel advocate with more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and X, is that the public was not privy to the meetings. Even if the exhibit takes a nuanced approach, Mazzig added, that care may not translate to the gala itself—a party that derives its power from glamour and a star-studded red carpet where A-listers dress theatrically in outfits that pay homage to the affair’s theme.

Rihanna in Galliano at the 2018 Met Gala.

“There is no footnote on a party,” said Mazzig.

Buzz about a possible Galliano exhibit at the Met had been percolating in the fashion world for years, said Dana Thomas, author of the 2015 biography “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.” Thomas said she didn’t believe the exhibit had widespread public support yet, “and that is what they are going to have to deal with for the next nine months.”

Interest in Galliano’s Dior designs has recently found a new audience, as younger generations have increasingly sought out Y2K-era vintage fashion. In March, the designer announced a two-year partnership with Zara, the fast-fashion giant owned by the Spanish company Inditex. A representative for Inditex did not respond to requests for comment.

Galliano had previously spent a decade as the creative director at Maison Margiela, starting in 2014. His final show for the brand in 2024 received widespread glowing reviews. Throughout Galliano’s comeback, Wintour has continued to appear by his side.

The year he started at Margiela, Galliano presented a British Fashion Award to Wintour, who accepted it wearing one of his designs for the brand. In January, the two sat next to each other in the front row at a Dior fashion show in Paris. In a 2023 documentary about Galliano, Wintour said she didn’t worry about how their friendship might affect her reputation. “I just wanted to help him,” Wintour says in the film.

Odell, the Wintour biographer, said the announcement of Galliano’s Met retrospective reminded her of something that André Leon Talley, Vogue’s longtime editor at large who died in 2022, told the author when she asked him what Wintour’s greatest strength was.

“Talley said, ‘She can turn a no into a yes,’ ” Odell said.

Helpful Hints

Posted on August 4, 2026 by loiswhitmanhess

July In Miami, Busy, Busy

Posted on August 2, 2026 by loiswhitmanhess

Congratulations to Fountainhead Arts for creating the FH Forum, a group of 12 women who make it possible for artists to secure their work in museums around the world. Pictured here is FH alum Sarah Zapata’s (red bow) with her solo exhibition at The Bass Museum. I also got to meet Bass’s curator Jasa McKenzie (upper right corner) Many thanks to Fountainhead’s Forum for this exciting adventure.