Autumn Years Winter 2023/24

continuing its online magazine and that Manos could keep the magazine and its mailing list, if he wanted to. He and Barbara were retired; they had time and thought this would be fun. Manos ex panded the magazine’s content beyond luxury hotels and destinations to include food, wine and restaurant reviews—his personal loves. The magazine had a large online following, and Manos started to get invited on press trips to develop more content to feature in it. Admittedly a bit jealous, Barbara thought, “Why can’t I write about travel for the magazine?” Some 80 percent of their Trident clients were luxury travel related, so she too knew a great deal about the travel indus try. In short order, Barbara established herself as a travel writer and is now the storyteller she always aspired to become. This post-retirement career was all about fun; Barbara and Manos had no desire to build another business, hire staff and accountants or bother with sales and ad vertising. Although they do sometimes collaborate on stories and edit each other’s work—without fighting after years of practice, they joke—Barbara and Manos have distinctly different writing processes. Barbara’s writing style is personal and emotional. Her stories make the reader feel like a good friend who is sitting with her having an intimate conversation about the people she met, the places she saw and the things she experienced. Barbara travels with a paper notebook, and what she sees and experiences is grist for her writing mill. Throughout a trip, she takes notes and drafts the beginning paragraphs and

The Leading Hotels of the World their largest. By the early 1980s and with Bar bara’s support, Manos was an established photographer and filmmaker who pro duced award-winning photos, films and multi-projector shows receiving accolades that enhanced his previous accomplish ments that included a couple Time maga zine covers. At Trident, Barbara learned the ad vertising, photography and multimedia business from Manos and developed her writing skills. “Each project had a specific budget and we typically hired freelance help,” explains Barbara. “Some budgets, however, were too tight to hire freelancers, so I would often step up and write scripts for inexpensive TV com mercials and marketing pieces, as did Manos.” As the business and her respon sibilities grew, Barbara stopped taking night classes. “I was learning more by living,” she says, and that, of course, in cluded living and working with Manos. Trident very soon outgrew its space and moved to a 5,000 square foot loft on 21st Street, between 5th and 6th Av enues. Barbara and Manos conveniently

Barbara and Manos in Lapland, Finland, 1994. The temperature was minus 40 degrees.

lived a short walk away on 14th Street and 5th Avenue. Their work increasingly demanded that they travel the world, which they welcomed. In 1994, when the internet was in its infancy, Manos recognized the powerful potential of this emerging technology and set up for The Leading Hotels of the World, one of the earliest online magazines, LuxuryWeb Magazine (www.luxuryweb.com). By the late 1990s, film and multime dia production technology had transi tioned to digital from analog, making the analog equipment in Trident’s studio obsolete and of little to no resale value, despite the fact that Barbara and Manos had invested more than $500,000 in it. In their mid-sixties at the time, Barbara and Manos decided to retire. Since they no longer

needed to live in Manhat tan, they opted to make a “temporary” move to Hack ensack—Barbara wanted to try living on the West Coast, but Manos preferred staying on the East Coast since they still traveled to Greece to visit his family fairly often. In 1999, The Leading Ho tels of the World told Ma nos it was not interested in

Barbara and Manos in Cyprus with Henry and Millie Rucker, 1995.

40 AUTUMN YEARS I WINTER 2023/24