On a bright Tuesday afternoon in Paris last fall, Alex Karp was doing tai chi in the Luxembourg Gardens. He wore blue Nike sweatpants, a blue polo shirt, orange socks, charcoal-gray sneakers and white-framed sunglasses with red accents that inevitably drew attention to his most distinctive feature, a tangle of salt-and-pepper hair rising skyward from his head.

THERE IS ONE place that I discovered on my short stay in Romania that I wanted to recommend it to you. Brasov, my hometown, is surrounded by mountains and there are myriad choices when it comes to choosing your hiking destination.

Let’s Google together. Open a Web browser and search for T-shirts. I’ll wait. Is the first thing you see a search result? I’m not talking about the stuff labeled Ads or Maps. On my screen, the actual result is not in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or even eighth row of stuff. It’s buried on row nine.

WHEN PETER COPPING stepped down as creative director at Oscar de la Renta four years ago, he began spending more time at La Carlière, the 15th-century manor house he and his French husband Rambert Rigaud bought 12 years ago. Located in the Normandy countryside just two hours from Paris, the home was once a weekend escape from the city …