Time Sensitive The Slowdown

The British fashion legend Paul Smith talks about his deep, 40-plus-year engagement with the country of Japan, where he operates more than 150 stores; his long-view approach to building a business that transcends time; his ever-growing collection of rabbit ephemera; and the metamorphic impact of music and humor on his life and work.

The Belgium-born writer and critic Lucy Sante, author of the new book “I Heard Her Call My Name,” a memoir about her recent gender transition at age 66, discusses various out-of-body experiences and dislocations she had in her younger years, why she thinks of the 1960s as “a kind of magic time,” her life-transforming literary journey, and her decision to open the floodgates of her womanhood.

The British interior designer Ilse Crawford discusses her approach to crafting beautiful, highly original spaces that push against today’s speedy, copy-paste, Instagram-moment world; her early career in media, including as the celebrated founding editor of the U.K. edition of Elle Decoration; and her personal definition of the word “slow.”

The Italian chef Massimo Bottura, famous for his three-Michelin-starred restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, talks about the art of aging balsamic vinegar; his vast collection of thousands upon thousands of vinyl records; his deep love of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Maseratis; and how he thinks about the role of time, both literally and philosophically, in and out of the kitchen.

Curator Helen Molesworth, author of the new book “Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art,” discusses her lifelong engagement with the work of Marcel Duchamp; the transformative power of a great conversation; and the personal and professional freedom she has found in recent years as a roving, independent voice in the art world.

The architect Annabelle Selldorf, principal of the New York–based firm Selldorf Architects, talks about the links she sees between Slow Food and her architecture, the intuitive aspects of form-making, and why she considers architecture “the mother of all arts.”