Situated on a seven-acre lot at the foot of Catamount Mountain and just west of the part of the New York-Massachusetts border where the Hudson Valley meets the Berkshires, the newly opened Little Cat Lodge is an ode to the region’s historic ski culture and that of the Swiss and Italian Alps. Once a stagecoach station, the building, formerly known as the Swiss Hutte Inn and Restaurant and now under the purview of Matt Kliegman and Noah Bernamoff, has a rustic European-chalet aesthetic that was achieved using local materials — the walls of the 14 guest rooms, which were designed by the local firm Love Is Enough, are mushroom wood and the custom beds were handcrafted out of maples cleared from the mountain last year. The hotel dining program, which is helmed by the James Beard Award-nominated chef Jason Bond, boasts two distinct spaces: There’s a bright and airy restaurant with an elevated menu inspired by classic Alpine dishes, and a cozy tavern with terra-cotta floors and a wood-burning fireplace that was designed for après-ski drinks and bites. Indeed, guests can expect easy access to nearby slopes, including those of Catamount Mountain Resort, which is right next door, and will also want to wander into the woods to check out the lodge’s barrel saunas. In the warmer months, they have their pick of hiking and biking trails, and Little Cat has an outdoor swimming pool with plenty of lounge chairs. From $345, littlecatlodge.com.

This has been the summer of the crop top and along with the trend toward showing more skin has come a slew of new skin-care products that encourage us to treat the rest of the body as carefully as we treat the face. Follain’s Resurfacing Body Scrub was inspired by a clay mask from the brand’s house line and in addition to clay the thick paste contains hydrated silica to smooth out rough patches and salicylic, glycolic and lactic acids to peel away the outer layer of the skin. This and Kate Somerville’s ExfoliKate Resurfacing Body Scrub, also derived from a brand mainstay — the ExfoliKate Intensive face mask — and in which lactic and salicylic acids are combined with fruit acids and pumice to slough away dead cells, can each double as a mask if left on for a few minutes. You’ll also find pumice, as well as pore-cleaning acids and calming niacinamide for reducing that post-scrub redness, in ZitSticka’s Fizz Fountain. For an all-around gentler solution, look to Soft Services’ Smoothing Solution Calming Gel Exfoliant, a serum meant to be applied before moisturizer that uses acids along with urea, an emollient, to soften skin over time. It works especially well on those with skin conditions like keratosis pilaris. Finally, Topicals’ Slather Exfoliating Body Serum has that famed face product ingredient, retinol, for combating roughness and aging all over.

Emmanuel and Christina Di Donna, the husband-and-wife owners of Di Donna Galleries on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, have made names for themselves with important exhibitions showing the work of Surrealist giants such as René Magritte, Jean Arp and Leonora Carrington. In 2020, they opened an offshoot in Southampton called Sélavy, its name a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. In contrast to their heavily researched, museumlike shows in the city, the Long Island space offers a rotating salon-style platform where art, design and decorative arts commingle — and a chance for the pair “to do beautiful shows based purely on taste,” says Emmanuel. This year’s summer salon, which closes on Labor Day, presents postwar works by the Arte Povera painter Giorgio Ascani, better known as Nuvolo (Italian for “cloud”), whose framed patchwork compositions pieced from dyed salvage textiles and deerskin subvert the traditional canvas with their texture and sculptural qualities. These works are shown alongside handcrafted elm and leather furnishings, such as a pair of generously proportioned campaign-style armchairs and a hefty wooden slab sideboard, by Pierre Chapo, an architecturally minded French woodworker who was a contemporary of Charlotte Perriand and Serge Mouille. Though Nuvolo and Chapo, born just a year apart, never met during their lifetimes, “bringing them together was an easy choice,” Emmanuel says. “Both were passionate about their creations and relied heavily on the beauty of their materials and the simplicity of forms.” On view Thursdays to Sundays, or by appointment, through Sept. 5, selavy.com.

In the documentary “Walchensee Forever” (2020), the German filmmaker Janna Ji Wonders looks at four generations of women in her family and their relationship to the Walchensee, one of the largest alpine lakes in Germany, which in one way or another has shaped all of their lives. Wonders’s grandmother Norma Werner, who was 104 when filming began, talks about inheriting the cafe her family opened at the lake from her mother, and Wonders’s mother, Anna Werner, recalls the ’50s- and ’60s-era bohemian adventures she and her sister, Frauke, had everywhere from Mexico to San Francisco to a famed commune in Munich. The film, which is ultimately about the search for identity and the cycle of life, premiered at the Berlinale just before the pandemic and won several awards but continues to make waves. On Aug. 31, Schloss Elmau, a castle estate and resort in the Bavarian Alps that maintains its founder’s legacy of hosting musicians and thinkers, will hold a screening of it in its concert hall, after which there will be a discussion with Wonders and Anna. Fittingly, Elmau is only a half-hour drive from Walchensee, so perhaps those moved by the documentary will opt to see it in person. To Wonders, who splits her time between Munich and the lake, it’s a place to recharge and, as the film attests, “a silent witness to all the human drama.” walchenseeforever.de.