Kobe's daughter + St. Tropez check-ins + super Usher

life will leave you gasping, bruised, and checking your heart

square one.

Here in Los Angeles today, a statue of Kobe Bryant is being unveiled in front of what I continue to call Staples Center¹. I wrote about Natalia Bryant in 2021, a year after her father and younger sister Gigi were among nine people who died in a horrific helicopter crash². In California, we were just coming out of the rolling lockdowns and curfews of COVID. Our state, the most populous in the nation, was close to having lost over 100,000 people.

I was a bit bewildered that day at the Teen Vogue cover shoot³. Hadn’t been around folks from my media community — photographers, stylists, editors, assistants — in-person, in what seemed like forever. The day was brightly melancholy, yet because Natalia was at the end of her high school era and on her way to USC, there was also a magical, if slightly muted debutante energy. Eighteen is an obsessive, dreamy age, right? I kept asking myself, as hummingbirds flitted and outfits were chosen —what must that mean for a wealthy girl with (wh…