Funny thing about success: It never quite looks the way it’s supposed to. From childhood, we’re taught to seek it, work toward it, and achieve it at all costs. We expect it to arrive wrapped in corner offices, tailored suits, and Champagne towers tumbling in slow motion. But what became clear as we put together our third annual Success Issue is that, for those featured in these pages, it’s less a destination than a kind of sovereignty—the freedom to ignore convention, to take the detour, or to even celebrate the ordinary with gusto. In their telling, success lives in joy, in transformation, in the courage to step outside prescribed lanes, and sometimes simply in the work itself. It’s far more interesting—and, it should be said, intangible—than the clichés ever allow.
Which brings us, fittingly, to Lenny Kravitz. In her profile, Jazmine Hughes finds the rocker in Topanga Canyon, fresh from his Las Vegas residency. He recalls the SoHo loft he once lined with scavenged mirrors, a sanctuary built on instinct rather than on means. The same impulse to make has carried him through the years—to Grammy-winning songs, into his own design studio, and to the fruit trees he tends
on his Bahamian property. Success, he tells Hughes, isn’t about possessions or trophies but about the act of creating—whether it’s a song, a space, or (judging by a six-pack that would knock Father Time on his back) a body kept in fighting form. One thing is certain: At 61, slowing down is nowhere on the set list.
Mastery, in some cases, can come with a knowing wink, as staff writer Tori Latham discovers. Aldo Sohm spends his days curating rare vintages for Eric Ripert at New York City’s acclaimed Le Bernardin, yet on a Caribbean beach he happily stumbled upon the charms of Whispering Angel, a $20 rosé. The admission might unsettle a more self-serious sommelier, but Sohm’s gift is that he never confuses expertise with pretense. Robb Report’s lifestyle director, Justin Fenner, meanwhile, catches up with Dr. Barbara Sturm, who reigns over a multimillion-dollar skincare empire built on regenerative medicine from her chalet in Gstaad. Despite the alpine trappings and celebrity devotees, she waves it off with a shrug: Life, she says, is “a journey that can be adjusted.”
Success can also look a lot like reinvention. Digital editor Nicole Hoey captures Yankees legend Bernie Williams in a second act every bit as ambitious as his first. After four World Series rings, he returned to school at age 45 to pursue his other love, jazz guitar—trading the roar of the Bronx for the quiet rigor of the conservatory and performances on world-class stages. Ben Oliver, for his part, follows Lynn Calder, who stepped out of petrochemicals and into the driver’s seat at Ineos Automotive, charged with turning billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s pub-born notion into a marque positioned to spar with Land Rover.
And then there’s Stephen Carter. Staff writer Abigail Montanez spotlights the production designer who gave Succession its now-canonical look of stealth wealth: penthouses hushed to the point of menace, boardrooms gleaming with the chill of power, even dinner tables set with illicit songbirds sculpted from marzipan. Yet off set, he’s more likely to be found at a punk show in Brooklyn than at a gallery opening in Chelsea.
The stories here remind us that success laughs in the face of easy definition. It can be playful or exacting, public or private, rooted in discipline or sparked by a sketch on a napkin over a pint at the corner bar. What it rarely is, however, is predictable—and maybe that’s what makes it worth chasing in the first place.
Enjoy the issue.
Top: Artist Peter Uka’s portrait Lenny, Familiar Corner (2025) in his studio in Cologne, Germany.
Authors
-
John Vorwald