Photography by Derek Peck. White Shirt Raquel Allegra Navajo Shawl Perez Sanz

By the time she was 13 years old, Florence Faivre had already been living in Bangkok for five years, having relocated with her family at age 8 from the picturesque town of Aix en Provence, in Southern France. The move was a culture shock, to say the least, and her new home was hardly as quaint and easygoing as her old one. Still, youth was on her side. Her Thai was progressing moderately, and she was quickly becoming fluent in English (her parents thought it best to send her to an American school). She was also tall for her age, not to mention, a striking sight — owing partly her to half-French, half-Thai lineage.
     One day, as she made her way down the stairs of her family’s house to get a glass of milk, still in her pajamas, she found herself face to face with a Thai film producer who happened to be meeting with her brother. The producer took one look at her, remarked on her impressive height, and mentioned that she might look good in front of the camera. “I was like, ‘Okay I get to be on TV!’” says Faivre, who now lives in New York and remains fully amused by the happenstance that’s been guiding her life ever since that life-changing moment. “All the parts that I ended up getting were kind of recommendations.

Photography by The Standard New York

After roughly two years of construction in one of the more desolate stretches of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, the highly anticipated Standard New York is finally pulling back its doors this December — well, sort of. For its soft opening, this latest and most ambitious addition to hotelier André Balazs’ über-sleek suite of Standard hotels will book a limited number of rooms for guests eager to check out what all the fuss is about. In fact, the hotel won’t really have a hard opening so much as a gradual unveiling of different sections as they’re finished — including a restaurant adjacent to the lobby and a bar/lounge on the top floor. The completion date for everything is set for sometime next spring.
However it opens, the Standard will inject a much-needed dose of style and bustle into the neighborhood, which has become littered with sub-standard destinations of late. The eighteen-floor, 335-room hotel is a bold addition to the Westside skyline, consisting of two semi-separate pieces set at an angle and supported by a series of strategically placed columns. Half of the hotel literally straddles the soon-to-be-revitalized High Line, making it perhaps the most dramatic High Line-related architecture we’ve seen yet. And although it doesn’t yet connect to the High Line (special permits are required), reps for the hotel don’t discount the possibility.

Photography by João Canziani

Leaning over his laptop, Brady Corbet is busy downloading a movie. It’s not what you think. The film is a self-written-and-directed 11-minute short called Protect You and Me — one edit of it anyway. He’s “screening” it for me in a living room on a 17-inch screen and laptop speakers. The first of a series of short films he’s planning to make, themed around protection, this one takes place at a New York restaurant, where a man meeting his mother for dinner grows increasingly uneasy about a stranger lurking in the window. From there, the story takes a surreal, manic turn and then ends abruptly. It’s not done yet, he explains, and illustrates this at one point by making L’s with his fingers to indicate where the camera needs to push closer into the frame. Another scene needs to be re-cut, and so on…
     A feature film director? Someday, Corbet supposes. As for now, the young actor has managed to land one of the lead roles in acclaimed Austrian director Michael Haneke’s first (and possibly only) American film — a close remake of his own 1997 drama, Funny Games — opposite Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Michael Pitt. Haneke’s last film, Caché, won him Best Director honors at Cannes in 2005, along with a formidable array of other awards.