Since 2010 Detroit Soup has raised from $700 to $1,000 per dinner for more than 20 community projects—like a bicycle education workshop, or the design and manufacture of a coat for the homeless that converts to a sleeping bag—and the typical number of diners has grown from 20 to 200. "Right now Detroit feels like an underdog," says Amy Kaherl (below), Detroit Soup's current coordinator. "Someone needs to care for it, and that someone could be any one of us."

In October, you were delighted by the story of Mr. T, and many of you shared that you gained a new perspective on having a rat as a pet. But before you decide to bring one home, rat expert and director of adoptions at the San Francisco SPCA Laura Routhier says there are a few things you should know. 

A: Nothing against big, sweet, heady fragrances, but the ones you've been trying may be too big, sweet, and heady, says Adam Eastwood, cofounder of luckyscent.com. He suggests you try something light and sheer with a citrus or white floral base (like gardenia or jasmine). But if you've already gone down that garden path and still smell a bit more indecorous than you'd like, you may be one of those people whose skin just doesn't tolerate fragrance. (Why the intolerance? There are so many variables in formulas and skin chemistry, it's probably impossible to determine.) 

Calice Becker, executive perfumer at fragrance and flavor company Givaudan, has a solution: Spray your favorite fragrance in your hair, where it won't react with your skin. And because hair contains oils, it's very good at retaining scent, she says. 

Keep in mind: Some fragrances are specially formulated for hair; try the sexy Serge Normant Avah Eau de Parfum ($60; sergenormant.com). For details see Shop Guide.

For more than three decades, she has drawn from art history, mythology, and world events to create beguiling sculptures, like a series of cultural icons (Friar Tuck, Albert Einstein, Saint Theresa) imagined as babies, or an interpretation of Snow White in which the dwarves embody the seven deadly sins. In the current exhibition, at New York's PPOW gallery, Fox turns her playfully subversive eye to the sea, sculpting oddly sexual worms and mollusks a few surreal degrees removed from nature. "Creating these animals felt like intelligent design," she says. "I got to run my own little version of evolution."

Her Inspiration

Fox first discovered her affinity for sculpture when she experimented with the form as a teenager during summer camp, and honed her technique as an art major at Yale. "I felt at home in sculpture," she says. She is particularly excited by improvisation, incorporating her models' peculiar traits into her sculptures. The mermaid's awkwardly bent fingers, for instance, derive from the model's own double-jointedness. "That kind of discovery is an almost mystical thing," Fox says. "The model becomes a coauthor of the work."

Her Process

Fox begins her sculptures of humans by photographing a model in a predetermined pose, then shapes, carves, plasters, and paints terra-cotta in a process so intensive that each adult-size sculpture takes roughly a year. "I spend a lot of time getting the curves right, because they create the rhythm and the mood," Fox says. "Sculpting is like standing on a mountaintop before you ski the slope, thinking about how you'll curve your way down."