March 10, 2025

Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Erika Veurink, Ashley Wolfgang

Behold! A new series in which we test every version of a particular product from a single brand, to see what stands above the rest. (We call it "I Tried All The ...") For the very first installment, contributor Erika Veurink and I tried on all the jeans at Gap. Since Erika’s six-foot-two and I’m four-foot-11, we were looking for very different things in a pair of jeans. I, for one, thought I had weaned myself off skinny jeans but was pretty tempted by a pair that had just the right amount of stretch …

Also on the site: Liza Corsillo wrote about all the best stuff she saw at the New York Toy Fair. (Cork toys are having a moment, and there is a lot of Bluey.) And Top Chef host Kristen Kish told us about the palo santo sticks she uses to cleanse her hotel rooms on the road and the insulated slippers her wife found in the Arctic Circle (“They’re basically sleeping bags for your feet”).

Oh, and we still want to hear about your favorite jeans — what’s the pair of jeans you'll never throw out? How many pairs of jeans do you own? We’ll share the results in a future newsletter.

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This just in: Emma Wartzman has named the Breville Bambino Plus our new overall pick for best espresso machine. She’s been using hers for the past few months to make lattes every morning. She says “it’s by far my favorite machine I’ve tested. It’s so intuitive to use, requiring little maintenance or technical know-how.” 

Katherine Gillespie is also a fan and has been using the Bambino Plus daily for the past year and a half. One of her favorite features is the automatic steamer; with the press of one button, “the microfoam it produces is of a quality very close to what a talented barista could achieve manually,” she says.