Robert Downey Jr. on Broadway, African Diaspora fashion and more NYC events

Each week, Alexa is rounding up the buzziest fashion awards, hotel openings, restaurant debuts and popular cultural events in NYC. It’s our curated guide to the best things to see, buy, taste and experience around town.

What’s making our luxury list this week? Robert Downey, Jr. on Broadway, a huge new Arc’Teryx store in SoHo, and a social sauna opens on the Flatiron.

Arc’teryx Equipment has opened a two-level, over 14,000 square foot store at 580 Broadway. It is the Canadian brand’s largest retail space to date and features a ReBIRD Service Center that offers a full suite of services from full chain replacement to hardshell refills, as well as light repairs, washing and waterproofing of used equipment. This location also debuts ReGEAR shopping, with a selection of refurbished pre-owned items for sale, as well as the A-Frame Cafe, offering Arc’tonics, specialty coffee and tea, Garuka Bars and Shār trail mix. Arcteryx.com

“Ilit Azoulay: Things Things” opens today at the Jewish Museum. This is the first solo museum exhibition in the US devoted to the work of interdisciplinary artist Ilit Azoulay (Israeli, b. 1972; lives and works in Berlin), and features works from 2010 to the present. A new work Unity Totem (2024), “min[ed] the Jewish Museum’s collection of ritual objects such as Torah finials and amulets. Primarily created by Jewish communities throughout the Arab world, including in the artist’s family homeland of Morocco, the objects in the photograph are suspended from a smoking green hat like a cone of incense, spinning as they stir up new spiritual energy outside in the world. ” Through Jan. 5, TheJewishMuseum.org

“Good writers borrow. Great Writers Steal,” is the tagline of “McNeal,” a new play written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar and starring Robert Downey Jr. He plays Jacob McNeal, considered one of the greatest writers of his generation. his and a “perpetual candidate” (but never winner) for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also has a new novel, an estranged son, “old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination” with “McNeal “, directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher, is at the Beaumont Theater through November 24. McNealBroadway.com

Next week brings the long-awaited opening of Africa’s Fashion Diaspora at the Museum at FIT (MFIT). The exhibit “explores the role of fashion in shaping international black diasporic cultures…[and] is the first to examine fashion as a mode of cross-diasporic cultural production.” 60 fashions, including clothing and accessories, will be on display, created by black designers from Africa, Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean. They include names many will recognize – Patrick Kelly, Wales Bonner, Aurora James for Brother Vellies, Telfar and Olivier Rousteing for Balmain – with a host of others, set in dialogue with each other. The exhibit is curated by Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costumes at the Museum at FIT, and is accompanied by a multi-author book edited by Way and published by Yale University Press. Until December 29. FITNYC.edu.

Toronto-based Othership has opened their first American outpost in Flatiron. Billed as a “social sauna and ice bath experience,” it includes what they call a “performance sauna,” a room dedicated to ice baths, and a tea lounge set around a fireplace. A variety of classes are offered (they are divided into three categories (up, down and around for energy, relaxation or emotional connection) as well as evening accompaniments. Introductory pricing starts at $64 for a drop-in session, with class passes ranging from $33 to $67, and membership options starting at $51 per month