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![hearing well. I got the orders all wrong and then, confused
at my own mistake, dropped a plate, the warm bloody steak
landing on my foot with a plop. The owners, two women,
gently suggested I rest.
I was feeling more and more jittery, but I didn’t want to go
home, equivalent in my mind to admitting defeat. If I didn’t
stick this out, I would never be a writer. “I just have to rest,”
I told myself. “I just have to get somewhere where I can rest.”
A man I’d been seeing on and of, whom I’ll call Paul, got
in touch. He was on his way to France. Did I want to meet
up? A friend had ofered him a house in the countryside in
Bordeaux. On my way there to meet him, I pictured myself
falling in front of moving cars on the street, out the doors of
the speeding train. I clutched lampposts, guardrails. I even
pictured myself falling when there was nowhere to fall, when
I was simply sitting waiting on a bench.
Paul was a writer himself, ten years older than me, and full
of opinionsabouthowtodoeverything—howtopeelapear,
wear your hair, clean your ears, keep a strict writing regimen,
talktostrangersonthephone,wipeatileloor.Plunginginto
a relationship in my state was overwhelming, and even more
so with a man who intimidated me. I stumbled around the
house, tried to force myself to speak, gave up and took to the
bed, where I lay nearly catatonic, staring out at the vineyards
in their pretty little rows, until Paul inally persuaded me to
get on a plane and ly home.
Nervous conditions run through the family bloodlines,
along with more serious maladies like manic depression. My
grandmother’sgreat-auntCloverHooperAdams,anaccom-
plishedportraitphotographer,wasmarriedtoHenryAdams
and written about by Henry James. (“Clover Hooper has
it—intellectual grace—Minny Temple has it—moral sponta-
neity,”Jameswroteof thetwowomen[Templewashiscousin]
who served as models for his great American heroines, Daisy
Miller and Isabel Archer.) For her part, Clover once quipped
of James’sstyle:“Hechewsmorethanhebitesof.”Whenher
father died, Clover, age 42 and deeply depressed, committed
suicide by drinking developing luid; after spending time in
variouspsychiatricinstitutions,Grandma’ssister,Bunny,was
given a lobotomy—the only way, doctors assured the family,
that she would be able to return home and take care of her
two small children. But not all the stories were tragic. My
great-great-grandfather Ned Hooper, who had a proclivity
toward depression, lived a full life that included a successful
marriage and ive childrenaswellasadistinguishedcareeras
treasurer of Harvard University—before he checked himself
into a psychiatric institute near the end of his life.
Inowfollowedinhisfootsteps,thoughinmycasetheclinic
was my grandparents’ turn-of-the-century twelve-bedroom
manor house just down the road from the
Mount, Edith Wharton’s grand home in
Lenox, Massachusetts. At Cherry Hill, as
the house was called, mental illness wasn’t
shunned—there was no woman in the
attic—but, rather, managed. I was one in a line of many
refugees who showed up at the house in a fragile state and
foundasafehaven.Decadesearlierthearrangementhadbeen
formalized when the founder of the Austen Riggs Center,
the tony psychiatric institution in neighboring Stockbridge,
approachedmygrandparentswithaproposition.Theinstitu-
tionwasexperimentingwithanewprograminwhichpatients
who’d made progress would be sent to live in nearby homes.
Aware of my grandparents’ acceptance, even valorization,
of eccentricity, as well as of their need for money—they had
suffered a great loss of wealth during the Depression and
afterward, due to my grandfather’s spendthrift ways—Dr.
Riggs asked if they’d be interested in housing Riggs’s outpa-
tients during the latter stages of their treatment.
The doctors at Riggs were enamored with Grandma,
whose indirect methods and subtle ways they thought of as
wonderfully creative. “They were all just so peculiar that you
immediately felt that you were OK,” Sally Begley, a Riggs
outpatient who became a lifelong family friend, says of the
scene at Cherry Hill. As part of the curative process, Sally
had been enrolled to take care of a baby—my uncle Nick,
as it turned out—and took it upon herself to clean up the
kitchen every night after dinner. Even after she’d returned to
Radclife, she would rush back to the house on weekends to
study; later, she and her new family settled in the cottage at
the bottom of the drive.
My own “cure”was difuse; it was multifaceted. A good
partof itwasthat,whileprovidedmealsandshelter,Iwasleft
tomyowndevices.Aschildren,wehadalwaysvisitedCherry
Hill twice a year—in the summer to sail on the Stockbridge
Bowl, in the winter to ski and celebrate Christmas—but until
this visit, I had never been there on my own. At irst, I just
stayedinmyroomandintheadjacentbathroom,takinglong
baths.Then,tentatively,Ibegantowanderthroughthehouse,
rediscovering childhood wonders. Grandma, who was from
a family of hoarders, was a hoarder herself: Bare lightbulbs
hung from the basement ceiling illuminated rows and rows
of ear trumpets, sewing machines, irons, antiquated micro-
scopes, while in the attic rested the entire estates of ances-
torslonggone—JohnLaFarge
nostalgia
I began to wander through
the house, rediscovering childhood
wonders: John La Farge watercolors,
Whistler paintings, little velvet boxes
stuffed with human hair
TO THE
MANOR BORN
THE AUTHOR’S
GRANDMOTHER
AT THE AGE
OF FOUR.
SafeHaven
C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 28 6
V O G U E . C O M
JOHNBRIGGSPOTTER/COURTESYOFMAXINESWANN
134 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/vogueusapril2016-160327105057/85/Vogue_US_April_2016-138-320.jpg)
![people aboutaretalkingupnext
SchoolofROCKDirector John Carney (Once) discovered the
power of music somewhere in the early eighties.
His new film, Sing Street, which he calls “a
fantastical version of my teenage years,” is set
in his hometown of Dublin, at a moment when
the Irish economy was sliding and music videos
were on the rise. Sixteen-year-old newcomer
Ferdia Walsh-Peelo stars as Conor, who starts
a band to impress an aspiring model with the
mesmerizing name Raphina (Lucy Boynton).
The makeshift group, called Sing Street after its
members’ parochial school, becomes a paragon
of New Romanticism, replete with Flock of
Seagulls hair, guyliner, and chintzy music videos.
Walsh-Peelo was cast for his proficiency on
the guitar but felt a connection to more than
the music. “My granddad, my father, and my
uncles all went to Synge Street school [the film’s
namesake and shoot location], and it’s hardly
changed—the hallways, the uniforms,” he says.
Born in 1999, he was less familiar with the musical
era, and so he immersed himself. “I’d never
come across that stuff before, but I’m a whiz
now,” he says. Walsh-Peelo particularly got into
Hall & Oates and now describes M’s song “Pop
Muzik” as “seminal.” And while Walsh-Peelo is
already auditioning for new roles—Sing Street
premiered at Sundance and will be released by
Weinstein this month—Carney might be pleased
to know that the film’s actors still regularly get
together in Dublin to jam.—MARK GUIDUCCI
NOTEWORTHYStep into spring with Adrienne Wong’s whimsical
hand-bound journals in seasonal shades of rose,
daffodil, and aqua. The New York–based Wong
was a graphic designer before getting into decor
and stylishly updating the notebook—with cover
illustrations of soft graphics and organic shapes that
play off traditional gilded edges.—SAMANTHA REES
design
BY THE BOOK
JOURNALS AVAILABLE AT
ADRIENNEWONG.COM.
KISS ON
MY LIST
THE ACTOR
PLAYS A
SINGER WHO
WOOS LUCY
BOYNTON’S
CHARACTER.
V O G U E . C O M
212 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
UPNEXT:COURTESYOFTHEWEINSTEINCOMPANY.
DESIGN:LUCASVISSER.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/vogueusapril2016-160327105057/85/Vogue_US_April_2016-210-320.jpg)
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Vogue_US_April_2016
This magazine document provides a summary of various articles and sections within a fashion magazine. It highlights a cover story on musician and fashion mogul Rihanna. Other articles discuss upcoming Olympic fashion in Rio, spring denim trends, athletic wear influencing fashion, and music icons like Rihanna and Kanye West launching influential fashion lines. The editor's letter discusses the growing fusion of sports, technology, wellness and street style influencing both fashion and major fashion shows.
More Related Content
Vogue_US_April_2016
- 1. FROM MUSICIAN TO MOVIESTAR TO MOGUL, IS THERE ANYTHING SHE CAN’T DO? APR THE SEASON’S ESSENTIAL ACCESSORY: A ROBOT PLUS: NEW WAVE THE FASTEST FAMILY ON EARTH BORN TO RUN A CELLULITE BREAKTHROUGH? THE FIRM HEAVENLY BODIES HOW TO TRAIN LIKE AN OLYMPIAN FASHION’S
- 48. april C O NT IN U ED > 6 4 78 VOGUE.COM 80 EDITOR’S LETTER 94, 106 MASTHEAD 114 TALKING BACK Reactions far and wide 120 CONTRIBUTORS 122 UP FRONT When she met Andy—an aid worker like herself—he’d sufered an unimaginable tragedy. Falling in love, Jessica Alexander would discover, doesn’t mean letting go of the past 128 NOSTALGIA With her young life going sideways, Maxine Swann took the cure at her grandparents’twelve- bedroom manor house out of aWharton novel,where eccentricity was embraced flash 136 IT GIRL Riley Keough 138 TALKING FASHION White, wide-leg trousers 140 TNT Elisabeth TNT goes to the world’s end only to discover that New Zealand is even more spectacular than she had imagined TRAVIS SCOTT AND JOAN SMALLS IN NIKELAB X RT. PHOTOGRAPHED BY GREGORY HARRIS. MOMENT OF THE MONTH, P. 270 getsome AIR V O G U E . C O M 46 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 66. april C O NT IN U ED >7 2 142 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Noella Coursaris Musunka and her team of volunteers are educating 231 girls in the Congo—and that’s just the beginning 144 THE HAMISH FILES 155 WOMEN: NEW PORTRAITS By Annie Leibovitz view 166 DUTCH MASTER Designer Ronald van der Kemp’s free spirit is just what fashion needs right now 170 STRIKE A CHORD Guitar-strap bags hit all the right notes 172 FINE LINE Show your stripes in La Ligne, a new chic- essentials label 174 CRAFT WORK Form follows function in Loewe’s furniture capsule 185 HISTORY OF HAIR Over the course of the last century, hair’s most memorable moments have had their roots in Vogue beauty & health 194 FLASH DRIVE Pat McGrath, the force behind some of fashion’s most directional beauty looks, is charting another course—of the runway and into your makeup bag 198 TEA TIME Jo Malone London’s deliciously reined new fragrance line is steeped in traditions of sensual sipping 200 RIPPLE EFFECT Kate Christensen takes the plunge with a forward-thinking treatment for cellulite 206 FORCE OF NATURE San Francisco’s Credo boutique is changing perceptions—and complexions—with its clean-beauty concept peopleare talkıngabout 209 THEATER Ben Whishaw and Saoirse Ronan play foes and former lovers in Ivo van Hove’s Broadway revival of The Crucible 210 ART Mitchell-Innes & Nash puts on a survey of nudes, landscapes, and more by Tom Wesselmann MODEL GRACE HARTZEL IN A MARNI TOP, A NINA RICCI SKIRT, AND PRADA SHOES. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MIKAEL JANSSON. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, P. 236 Lean IN 210 MOVIES Richard Linklater conjures 1980s Texas with Everybody Wants Some, and Tom Hanks stars in A Hologram for the King 212 UP NEXT In Sing Street, sixteen- year-old Ferdia Walsh- Peelo plays a would-be rock star in love 212 DESIGN Take note of Adrienne Wong’s whimsical hand-bound journals 213 TELEVISION A thrilling adaptation of The Night Manager has Tom Hiddleston as an unlikely spy 214 TRAVEL A visit to Guatemala calls for a stay at the Coppolas’updated lakeside resort 214 BOOKS Spring novels feature lost girls in the big city 214 SCENE Two NYC restaurant vets celebrate new openings fashion &features 217 TOMORROWLAND How will the future family live and dress? Our prognostications include android au pairs, salads from airborne pods, virtual-reality vacations on demand— and plenty of cool and ultracomfortable day chic FASHIONEDITOR:CAMILLANICKERSON.HAIR,SHAYASHUAL;MAKEUP,HANNAHMURRAY.SETDESIGN,NICHOLASDESJARDINSFORMARYHOWARDSTUDIO. PRODUCEDBYMARCUSWARDFORNORTHSIX.PHOTOGRAPHEDATLASPOZAS,XILITLA,WITHFUNDACIÓNPEDROYELENAHERNÁNDEZ,A.C.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE. 64 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 74. april cover look VENUS RISING Rihanna wearsa Tom Ford dress. To get this look, try: Lightful C Tinted Cream SPF 30 with Radiance Booster, Mineralize Skinfinish Natural in Dark Deep, Veluxe Brow Liner in Velvetstone, Amber Times Nine Eye Shadow Palette, False Lashes Waterproof mascara, Lipstick in Touch. All by MAC Cosmetics. Hair, Yusef; makeup, Mark Carrasquillo. Details, see In This Issue. Photographers: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman. 230 WORKING IT Rihanna has revealed a new sound, launched an agency, designed a debut fashion line, and is embarking on a 63-city world tour. Can global domination be far behind? By Abby Aguirre 236 WELCOMETOTHEJUNGLE A lush, sculpture-strewn Garden of Eden in the mountains of central Mexico makes a torrid setting for the season’s most sultry (and, sometimes, surreal) lowers–by– Frida Kahlo looks 250 FREE STYLE Nineteen-year-old Katie Ledecky has emerged as a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, breaking multiple world records in races short and long. What’s her secret? asks Robert Sullivan 254 KICK OFF Since their electrifying win at last year’s World Cup, the U.S. women’s team has ignited soccer mania. Reluctant striker Hamish Bowles trains with star scorer Alex Morgan 260 BORN TO RUN Ethiopia is a track-mad country—but it’s never seen anything like the Dibabas. Chloe Malle heads to Addis Ababa to meet the fastest family on the planet 264 TIPPING THE BALANCE Inspired by superstar gymnast Simone Biles, Ginny Graves explores the life-enhancing beneits of poise, posture, and agility 266 MONEY FOR NOTHING Claire Danes and John Krasinski star in the Public Theater’s Dry Powder—a vicious and hilarious drama skewering the people who skewer our global economy. By Adam Green 268 EASY DOES IT The anything-goes food scene in Los Angeles is unconventional, liberated, creative—and inluential as never before. Oliver Strand reports 270 MOMENT OF THE MONTH Amid our ongoing love afair with sports—and boasting new collaborations with Riccardo Tisci, Kim Jones, and Jun Takahashi— Nike steps up into fashion’s premiership. By Robert Sullivan 274 WHAT TO WEAR WHERE It’s the season of the bold, brilliant, and built-to- move supersatchel. FROM LEFT: EJEGAYEHU, GENZEBE, AND TIRUNESH DIBABA, AND THEIR COUSIN DERARTU TULU. PHOTOGRAPHED BY RON HAVIV. BORN TO RUN, P. 260 the Fantastic FOUR Gigi Hadid and Lily Aldridge take the brightest of the bunch on an energetic romp for spring index 284 DIVE IN! Get ready to plunge into the adventure and romance of freshwater swimming—the appeal, you’ll soon ind, is crystal clear 290 INTHISISSUE 292 LASTLOOK V O G U E . C O M COVERLOOK:SETDESIGN,BETTEADAMSFORMARYHOWARDSTUDIO.PHOTOGRAPHEDATTHEHOMEOFCARLTONANDDAVIDGEBBIA. 72 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 84. After a frigidwinter, it’s time to turn up the heat on your wardrobe—and what better way to shake off the cold than with a new look? From the prettiest sundresses to sandals in every style, here’s how to look hot and stay cool all season long. Game ONTo match the marvel of athleticism that the world will be watching during the Olympics, we highlight the best of Rio de Janeiro. Find under-the-radar restaurants, shopping destinations, and more in a tourist’s trove of ideas for an upcoming trip. Like all things swept up in a seasonal refresh, your trusty blues can get a boost this spring. Whether you like your jeans cropped, faded, or cuffed, our denim guide is full of wonderfully wearable Wranglers revamped. DENIM FOR DAYS AMANDA MURPHY, EMILY RATAJKOWSKI, BINX WALTON, LEXI BOLING, FERNANDA LY, AND GIGI HADID. DIRECTED BY OLIVER HADLEE PEARCH, VOGUE.COM, 2015. TEAM USA PHOTOGRAPHED BYTHOMAS PRIOR, VOGUE .COM, 2015. FRINGE BENEFITS ANNA EWERS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY KARIM SADLI, VOGUE, 2016. SPRINGForward Good JEANS
- 86. letterfromtheeditor T ome,totheeditorsof Vogue,andnodoubtto you, itfeels like the magazine has been chart- ing the inluence of sports clothes on fashion for at least the past decade. And you’ll ind plenty more such looks in this issue, whether the upgraded version of gym bags you can carryjustabouteverywhere(WhattoWearWhere,page274) or the futuristically inclined wardrobe depicted in “Tomor- rowland”(page 217). Yet as writer Robert Sullivan discusses in his piece on the brilliantly inno- vative Nike and its ventures into fashion (Moment of the Month, page 270), the real story is about much more than the stylistic ap- propriation of hoods, sneaker soles, and track pants. It is instead about where we are today—dressing for a world where there has never been a greater fusion of speed, technol- ogy, mobility, well-being, diversity, the democracy of the street, and, yes, looking good. That all of this is comingtogetherinanOlympicyear only makes it all the more timely. As I write this, we’ve just inished seeing the New York fall 2016 col- lections, where two labels fronted by music titans—this month’s cover star, Rihanna, with Fenty Puma, and Kanye West with Yeezy— stirred up the most headlines with shows that demonstrated exactly what so many of us are actively thinking about right now: connectivity, immediacy, and the involvement of a far greater constituency than those merely sitting in the audience watching. (They might also be responsible for the trend in New York for dark, raucous shows that felt more like nightclubs.) It’s certainly no sur- prise that musicians and not movie stars are fronting these labels, and the reason for that is far more than their inher- ent sense of style. Both Rihanna and Kanye, like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé (who launches MOTION GRAPHICS TRAVIS SCOTT IN NIKELAB X RT. PHOTOGRAPHED BY GREGORY HARRIS. Power PLAYERS QUEEN RIRI RIHANNA IN SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MERTALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOTT. ED ITO R ’S LE T T ER >9 0 V O G U E . C O M 80 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 RIHANNA:FASHIONEDITOR:TONNEGOODMAN.HAIR,YUSEF;MAKEUP,MARKCARRASQUILLO;SETDESIGN,BETTE ADAMSFORMARYHOWARDSTUDIO.PHOTOGRAPHEDATTHEHOMEOFCARLTONANDDAVIDGEBBIA.SCOTT:FASHION EDITOR:SARAMOONVES.PRODUCEDBYKATECOLLINGS-POSTFORNORTHSIX.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 96. letterfromtheeditor BEND IT LIKE BOWLES HAMISHWITH ALEX MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ. COLD SHOULDERS ELIZABETH DEBICKI AND TOM HIDDLESTON IN AMC’S THE NIGHT MANAGER. her own athletic collection, Ivy Park, this month for Topshop), have an incredible ability to reach out to their vast global fan bases with a speed that no one in Hol- lywood can match. Nor do Kanye and Rihanna shy away from im- buing their fashion careers with a certain political stance. As Ri- hanna tells writer Abby Aguirre (“Working It,”page 230), “Wom- en feel empowered when they can do the things that are supposed to be only for men, you know? It breaks boundaries and it’s lib- erating when you feel like, Well, I can do that too.” Another act of highly person- al empowerment takes place in Hamish Bowles’s amusing tale of how he got back on the soccer ield after his school years—when his idea of team colors was mus- ing on whether his fingernails should be Shocking Pink or Jungle Red, and his rudimentary grasp of the sport was summed up in the axiom “Avoid the ball at all costs.”This isn’t, of course, the irst time Hamish has gamely taken on something he’d much rather not—learning to drive or foraging for food in a particularly hardscrabble Oakland neighborhood springs to mind—but he was aided in overcoming his long-held aversion to the Glorious Game by the extremely impressive young U.S. champion Alex Morgan. You can read how Hamish fared in “Kick Of” (page 254), but I don’t think I’m giving away too much when I say that it’s not very likely he will be packing a soc- cer kit among his lilac tweeds when he readies himself for his summer travels. Lastly, another arena where speed and agility matters. I, like everyone else, have been enjoying the new golden age of television,withsomanywonderfulproductionshittingthe screens(whateverthosescreensareattachedto).Thelatestof these,whichIurgeyoualltowatch,isAMC’sTheNightMan- ager (People Are Talking About, page 213), an adaptation of a John le Carré novel starring Hugh Laurie, Olivia Col- man, Tom Hiddleston, and Elizabeth Debicki, all who turn in absolutely outstanding performances. That the medium producessomuchengagingentertainmentisn’tonlydownto the caliber of the actors or the increasingly high production values. Television just seems so much less encumbered than Hollywood. As the sports world is teaching us all right now, being fast and nimble always wins. C O N TIN U ED F RO M PAG E 8 0 V O G U E . C O M 90 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 THENIGHTMANAGER:MITCHJENKINS/AMC
- 102. V O GU E . C O M 94 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 ANNA WINTOUR Editor in Chief Design Director RAÚL MARTINEZ Fashion Director TONNE GOODMAN Features Director EVE MACSWEENEY Market Director, Fashion and Accessories VIRGINIA SMITH Executive Fashion Editor PHYLLIS POSNICK Style Director CAMILLA NICKERSON International Editor at Large HAMISH BOWLES Fashion News Director MARK HOLGATE Creative Digital Director SALLY SINGER Creative Director at Large GRACE CODDINGTON FA S H I O N /A C C E S S O R I E S Fashion News Editor EMMA ELWICK-BATES Bookings Director HELENA SURIC Accessories Director SELBY DRUMMOND Editors GRACE GIVENS, ALEXANDRA MICHLER, EMMA MORRISON, MAYA SASAKI Menswear Editor MICHAEL PHILOUZE Bookings Associate ERINA DIGBY Associate Market Editors SARA KLAUSING, WILLOW LINDLEY, FRANCESCA RAGAZZI Market Manager TAYLOR ANGINO Associates LAUREN BELLAMY, GABRIELLA KAREFA-JOHNSON Fashion Writer RACHEL WALDMAN Fashion Market Assistant MADELINE SWANSON Home Market Associate SAMANTHA REES B E A U T Y Beauty Director CELIA ELLENBERG Beauty Writer LAURA REGENSDORF Beauty Assistant ARDEN FANNING F E AT U R E S Culture Editor VALERIE STEIKER Senior Editors TAYLOR ANTRIM, LAUREN MECHLING, JOYCE RUBIN (Copy), COREY SEYMOUR Entertainment Editor JILLIAN DEMLING Social Editor CHLOE MALLE Style Editor at Large ELISABETH VON THURN UND TAXIS Food Critic JEFFREY STEINGARTEN Arts Editor MARK GUIDUCCI Assistant Editor KATE GUADAGNINO Assistant Entertainment Editor SAMANTHA LONDON Features Associates LILI GÖKSENIN, ELIZABETH INGLESE Features Assistants MADELEINE LUCKEL, LILAH RAMZI, LAUREN SANCHEZ A R T Deputy Design Director ALBERTO ORTA Art Director MARTIN HOOPS Associate Art Director NOBI KASHIWAGI Designer JENNIFER DONNELLY Executive Photography Director IVAN SHAW Photo Editor ALEX O’NEILL Photo Editor, Research MAUREEN SONGCO Photo Researcher TIM HERZOG Producers NIC BURDEKIN, JENNIFER GREIM Assistant Photo Editor LIANA BLUM Assistant to the Design Director ROSEMARY HANSEN V O G U E . C O M Site Director BEN BERENTSON Managing Editor ALEXANDRA MACON Senior Director of Product NEHA SINGH Director of Engineering KENTON JACOBSEN Fashion News Director CHIOMA NNADI Director, Vogue Runway NICOLE PHELPS Executive Fashion Editor JORDEN BICKHAM Beauty Director CATHERINE PIERCY Culture Editor ABBY AGUIRRE Photography Director ANDREW GOLD Art Director FERNANDO DIAS DE SOUZA Director of Visual Production and Development ALLISON BROWN Fashion News Editor ALESSANDRA CODINHA Style Editor EDWARD BARSAMIAN Senior Fashion Writer MARJON CARLOS Market Editors KELLY CONNOR, CHELSEA ZALOPANY Accessories Editor BROOKE DANIELSON Archive Editor LAIRD BORRELLI-PERSSON Fashion News Writers KRISTIN ANDERSON, JANELLE OKWODU, LIANA SATENSTEIN, STEFF YOTKA Fashion News Associate EMILY FARRA Beauty Editor MACKENZIE WAGONER Beauty Writer MONICA KIM Beauty Assistant JENNA RENNERT Deputy Culture Editor JESSIE HEYMAN Senior Culture Writer JULIA FELSENTHAL Culture Writer PATRICIA GARCIA Living Editor VIRGINIA VAN ZANTEN Living Writer BROOKE BOBB Senior Photo Editor SUZANNE SHAHEEN Photo Editor EMILY ROSSER Associate Photo Editor SAMANTHA ADLER Associate Director, Digital Operations ANDEE OLSON Assistant Managing Editor OLIVIA WEISS Senior Producer CHRISTINA LIAO Producer MARIA WARD Social Media Director ANNE JOHNSON Social Media Manager, Vogue Runway LUCIE ZHANG Associate Social Media Manager ZOE TAUBMAN New Media Editor BEAU SAM Photo Producer SOPHIA LI Copy Chief LANI MEYER Associate Director, Audience Development BERKELEY BETHUNE Senior Manager, Analytics RACHEL LESAGE Product Manager BEN SMIT Senior Developers JEROME COVINGTON, GREGORY KILIAN Developers JE SUIS ENCRATEIA, SIMONE HILL, BEN MILTON P R O D U C T I O N /C O P Y/ R E S E A R C H Deputy Managing Editor DAVID BYARS Digital Production Manager JASON ROE Production Designers COR HAZELAAR, SARA REDEN Deputy Copy Chief CAROLINE KIRK Senior Copy Editor LESLIE LIPTON Copy Editor DIEGO HADIS Research Director JENNIFER CONRAD Research Editors ALEXANDRA SANIDAD, COURTNEY MARCELLIN Fashion Credits Editor IVETTE MANNERS S P E C I A L P R OJ E C T S / E D I T O R I A L D E V E L O P M E N T/C O M M U N I C AT I O N S Director of Special Projects SYLVANA WARD DURRETT Senior Events Manager EADDY KIERNAN Editorial Business Director MIRA ILIE Manager, Editorial Operations XAVIER GONZALEZ Contracts Manager ALEXA ELAM Editorial Business Coordinator JESSECA JONES Special Events Associate LINDSAY STALL Executive Director of Communications HILDY KURYK Director of Brand Marketing NEGAR MOHAMMADI Communications and Marketing Manager DANIKA OWSLEY Executive Assistant to the Editor in Chief GRACE HUNT Assistants to the Editor in Chief LOUISA STELLE, REBECCA UNGER European Editor FIONA DARIN Fashion Associates CAMILA HENNESSY, ANTHONY KLEIN West Coast Director LISA LOVE West Coast Associates CARA SANDERS, WENDELL WINTON Managing Editor JON GLUCK Executive Director, Editorial and Special Projects CHRISTIANE MACK C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I T O R S ROSAMOND BERNIER, MIRANDA BROOKS, SARAH BROWN, ADAM GREEN, NATHAN HELLER, LAWREN HOWELL, CAROLINA IRVING, REBECCA JOHNSON, DODIE KAZANJIAN, SHIRLEY LORD, CATIE MARRON, SARA MOONVES, SARAH MOWER, MEGAN O’GRADY, JOHN POWERS, MARINA RUST, LAUREN SANTO DOMINGO, TABITHA SIMMONS, ROBERT SULLIVAN, PLUM SYKES, JONATHAN VAN METER, SHELLEY WANGER, JANE WITHERS, VICKI WOODS, LYNN YAEGER
- 114. V O GU E . C O M 106 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 SUSAN D. PLAGEMANN Chief Revenue Oicer and Publisher Associate Publisher, Marketing KIMBERLY FASTING BERG General Manager DAVID STUCKEY A D V E R T I S I N G Executive Director, Digital Advertising KRISTEN ELLIOTT Advertising Director, Digital ELIZABETH MARVIN Executive Director, International Fashion and Business Development SUSAN CAPPA Executive Retail Director GERALDINE RIZZO Executive Beauty Director LAUREN HULKOWER-BELNICK Fashion Director JAMIE TILSON ROSS Luxury Director ROY KIM Senior Director, American Fashion and Beauty MARIE LA FRANCE American Fashion Managers LENA JOHNSON Account Managers BLAIR CHEMIDLIN, LYNDSEY NATALE Executive Assistants to the Publisher ANNIE MAYBELL, JEENA MARIE PENA Advertising Coordinator NINA CAPACCHIONE Retail Coordinator ELIZABETH ODACHOWSKI International Fashion Coordinator WILLIAM PRIGGE Advertising Assistants LILY MUMMERT, ELEANOR PEERY, CASEY TAYLOR, GABRIELLE MIZRAHI Advertising Tel: 212 286 2860 Advertising Fax: 212 286 6921 B U S I N E S S Executive Director of Finance and Business Development SYLVIA W. 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- 120. WHATALEADER. FINALLY. TTS4T KINGOFTHESELFIES. 78LOGISTI 1# DOYOU FOLLOW VOGUE? 9.97M 8.9M 7.2M 314K VOGUE welcomes correspondencefrom its readers. Address all mail to Letters, VOGUE Magazine, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007, or via email to Talkingback@vogue.com. Please include your name, address, and a daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity and may be published or used in any medium. All submissions become the property of the publication and will not be returned. 70.7K OCanada!Turns out our neighbors to the north are strongly opinionated social-media users. From the moment it posted to Vogue.com, John Powers’s January-issue profile of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau (“North Star”) attracted chart-topping traffic, with Canadians wanting to cheer and boo Norman Jean Roy’s striking photographs— the portrait of Trudeau and his wife, Sophie, most of all. As The Globe and Mail put it, “Apparently we can’t stop . . . looking at it.” Miss2016 VIEWED STORY FORTWO MONTHS RUNNING Finding a new face for the cover of Vogue always feels like an event, and the time was right for ingenue turned superstar Alicia Vikander. Our January feature “All About Alicia,” photographed by David Sims, delighted commenters: “Oh my gosh! She’s stunning thank you!” wrote @kyla_christopher on Instagram. “So pretty,” added Fionn Sleeps on Facebook. And Rob Haskell’s intimate profile (complete with skydiving adventure) revealed Vikander as the Swede next door. “I love you, Alicia,” wrote one Vogue.com user. We do too. MYNEW FAVORITEGIRL @bagus_santoso SHEIS NEXT LEVEL!! @reyjeane SIMPLYTHEMOSTBEAUTIFUL WOMANONEARTH @artdan62 HOTTAWA THE FIRST COUPLE, PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE CANADIAN CAPITAL. V O G U E . C O M VIKANDER:DAVIDSIMS;TRUDEAUS:NORMANJEANROY. 114 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 talkingback
- 126. In a showfull of dastardly characters, Nikolaj Coster- Waldau’s Jaime Lannister emerged at the end of season five as Game of Thrones’s sympathetic dark horse—well, almost. “There is a lot that people connect to,” says Coster- Waldau of Jaime. “He’s in love with this woman, but she happens to be his sister. It’s a messed-up situation.” If he relates to some of the more likeable aspects of Jaime’s temperament, other parts—ruthlessness, megalomania, bloodthirstiness—are anathema to the 46-year-old father of two teenage girls. His “normal” life—when he’s not shooting GOT or the film projects he shoehorns into the show’s hiatus—is based in Denmark, where he lives with his wife and kids. “In a perfect world I would be with my family all the time,” says Coster-Waldau, “and every movie I’m in would shoot in Copenhagen.”—LILI GÖKSENIN NikolajCOSTER-WALDAU FANNING IN NYC, WEARING GANNI TOP AND PANTS“I was floored by how engaged Rihanna is with every little thing she does. One woman who works with her said that Rihanna even corrects her grammar in emails—which I love, of course!” THE VOGUE.COM CULTURE EDITOR AND WRITER OF “WORKING IT” (P. 230) ON OUR COVER SUBJECT ABBY Aguirre Arden FANNING “Flipping through magazines as a kid, I remember seeing crushed-up eye shadows and electric polish spills and thinking, Whatever job that is, I want a piece of it.” THE BEAUTY ASSISTANT ON THE ORIGINS OF HER CAREER ASPIRATIONS COSTER- WALDAU WITH HONDA’S HUMANOID ROBOT To furnish the futuristic setting of “Tomorrowland” (page 217), Fashion Director Tonne Goodman gathered tech’s most boundary-pushing gadgetry. At four feet three, Honda’s industry-leading humanoid robot stands tall beside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Joan Smalls. With sensitive fingertips and advanced agility, it mimics mankind’s most complex functioning. This new class of robotics—complete with CHiP, the adaptive-personality pet pup, and gesture-controlled dino MiPosaur— operates with unparalleled intelligence. But it’s the big toys that can really carry you away: Faraday Future FFZERO1, the electronic concept car, wowed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and Ehang 184, a fully autonomous passenger-carrying drone, seeks to do no less than revolutionize air travel.—ELIZABETH INGLESE SMART House AGUIRRE IN WOODSTOCK, NY V O G U E . C O M COSTER-WALDAU:JEFFPATCH.FANNING:LUCASVISSER.AGUIRRE:COURTESYOFWILLIAMHOLLOWAY. contributors
- 128. Love and GriefWhenshe met Andy—an aid worker like herself—he’d suffered an unimaginable tragedy. Falling in love, JESSICA ALEXANDER would discover, doesn’t mean letting go of the past. F or some couples, choosing names for a new- borncanbechallenging—ninemonthsof ne- gotiationandlistsuponlistsof combinations. Ourtwinboyswereaweekoldbythetimemy husband, Andy, and I finally made up our minds. It wasn’t because we hadn’t prepared; it was that Andy had a change of heart about their middle names once they arrived. “Those names belong to their brothers,” he said as our sons slept silently side by side. “And I never want these boys to think I want them to be anyone other than who they are.” I was introduced to Andy through Facebook. Not in the way that you’d expect; he’s not even on Facebook. It was mid-Januaryof 2010,andtheworstearthquakeinHaiti’shis- tory had befallen the small Caribbean country. I irst learned about him on that terrible day when a mutual friend linked to a Facebook message asking for information on three of the missing: Andy’s wife, Laurence, and his two sons, Evan, seven, and Baptiste, ive. For the past nine months Andy had upfront THE AFTERMATH HAITI, WHERE THE AUTHOR WAS POSTED FOLLOWING THE CATASTROPHIC 2010 EARTHQUAKE. beenlivingwithhisfamilyinPort-au-Prince,wherehewasthe head of the humanitarian coordination oice of the United Nations.Hewasshuttingdownhiscomputer,gettingreadyto leavetheoice,whentheshakingstarted.Hisapartmentbuild- ing, where the boys and Laurence were at the time, collapsed. SittinginmyapartmentinNewYork,Istaredattheirpho- tos on my computer screen: his wife, an attractive brunette; his elder son, all dimples and loppy brown hair; the younger, with a smile so huge and magniicent I could see every last baby tooth. Of course they had to be found, I thought— even though I knew the scale of the destruction. (More than 200,000peopleburied,I’dread.)Overthenextfewdays,mes- sagesonFacebookturnedfromonesof hopeandencourage- ment to announcements about where to send condolences. Anaidworkermyself,IwaspostedtoPort-au-Princeafew weeks later. I spent the next several months working for an NGOaspartof themassiverelief efort.Ididn’tforgetabout Andy,butmyattentionshiftedtothehundredsof thousands of Haitian survivors in need of help. Years U P F RO N T>1 24 V O G U E . C O M 122 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 MATTIAVELATI/LUZPHOTO/REDUX
- 130. enthusiastic and optimisticperson. He will bike miles out of hiswayupamountainjusttoseewhat’satthetop.Hegetsjoy from inding new recipes and sitting around the dinner table with bottles of wine, always wanting to prolong the evening, illing everyone’s glass one more time. Although I knew he thoughtabouthiswifeandsonsconstantly,Ineverwantedto disturbthegoodtimewewerehaving—perhapsamomentary break from his pain. I wanted him to ofer information when he was ready, if he was ever ready. OnChristmasthatsameyear,AndycamebacktotheU.S., and we visited his family’s house in northern Vermont. He told me that the day he left, he cried in his father’s arms, re- membering the last time he was in the house for the holidays: Evan reading a book on the couch, Laurence in the kitchen whipping up lunch, Andy helping Baptiste put together a train set on the floor under the tree. When Andy told me about it, I realized that he had never cried in front of me, or talked about his grief so directly. I asked if he was OK, if he needed anything from me. “I’m OK,”he said. “But you should know, it’s part of the package. I come with this.” Part of me wondered what I was doing getting involved with this man and his past. How would he be able to open himself back up to the world? I worried there would inevita- bly be a fall, an emotional crash, anger and hostility for all that he lost. Would he want to start again? Could he? B ut in another way, I did know what I was getting into.WhenIwas22,mymother,asuccessfulchild psychologist, died of cancer. She and my father had gotten engaged three weeks after they met, and even after 28 years together, my mom still referred to my dad as “her boyfriend.”After her death, tasks likecleaningoutMom’sclosetandgoingthroughboxesof her professional documents, scrawled with her familiar doodles, went on for years. We couldn’t bear to get rid of anything. During this time I’d imagine Dad coming home, turning on the lights one at a time as he entered each empty room. I couldn’t stand the thought of him making dinner for him- self and then slumping down on the couch in front of the television where he’d doze and wake up hours later, which is how he spent many nights. Work helped him rebuild. Dad wasn’tawidoweratwork—hewasarespecteddoctor,needed by others. At irst, I accompanied him to social gatherings, acting as his date to weddings, going with him to friends’art openings in the city, both of us relying on each other in ways weneverhadbefore.Butafterawhile,hebegantobravetravel and dinner parties alone, and eventually began dating. Andy’s healing was less straightforward. He left Haiti immediately after the earthquake and took ten months of, visiting friends and family around the world, never spending more than a couple of weeks in one place. He couldn’t bear the voices of children, or the sight of carousels, and inding outposts where he wouldn’t have to face such things wasn’t easy. In the end, he returned to the UN because, like my dad, he knew himself at work. He could have easily moved to a remote hardship post where he would be distracted by constant chaos. But he thought he’d end up an alcoholic emergencyjunkie,unrecognizabletohisformerself.Formost UN aid workers, the Geneva headquarters is a respite from the messiness and rigors of ield postings. later, I learned that Andy’s mother had also come to Port-au- Prince during those tense and chaotic months. She went to the boys’school and introduced herself to their teachers, one of whom still carried Evan’s notebook in her purse. Andy’s mother needed to come, she would tell me. She needed to be where it happened, to see the trees they had seen every day, to breathe the air they had breathed. On the two-year anniversary of the earthquake, I hap- pened to be in Geneva for a work trip. A friend invited me skiing with a few other people; one of them was Andy, who was now living and working for the UN there. He would come to refer to that period as a dark time. He was bufeted by memories, spent hours on a therapist’s couch, and more on the ski slopes, where he found peace in the solitude. When he first moved to Geneva, nine months after the earthquake, he would spend days driving aimlessly on the winding roads outside town, navigating this new and lonely and bewildering world. Long after, his therapist would tell him that each time he left her oice she worried whether it would be the last time she saw him. We barely made eye contact that weekend; meeting new people with their inevitable questions and sympathetic looks distressed him. It wasn’t until months had passed, when I was back in Geneva and we met again with the same mutual friends, that we began to get to know each other. Our irst date was in New York. This time, Andy was in townforworkand sentmeabrief emailaskingmetodinner. It was an ordinary date. We ate at a tapas restaurant, split a bottle of wine, held hands across the table, and casually lirted. I was taken aback at just how normal it was, at how normal he was. I don’t know what I expected—perhaps someone who seemed broken or angry. But I was the one who was on edge. After dinner we went to a crowded bar, where a man cut in front of us to get a drink, grimacing rudely at Andy. I wanted to smack the guy across the face, to yell, “Do you know what this person has been through? Do you have any idea?”To me, the world needed to protect Andy; he had exceeded his quota of bad events no matter how commonplace and trivial they might be. We didn’t mention the earthquake until much later in the night, when he scrolled through a folder on his phone labeled “My Loves,” swiftly swiping photos aside to show me another image of his sons emerging from the ocean, then one of him and his wife—he was holding her by the waist and resting his chin on her shoulder—and one of all of them together. They had gone to an island of the coast of Haiti for New Year’s vacation, and his last photos were of the four of them standing on the beach. After that night, Andy and I continued to see each other long distance, Skyping every day, visiting each other every three weeks. I asked few questions about his past, his family, their lives. Andy seemed to be doing well; he is a naturally upfront BeginningAgain U P F RO N T>1 26 Andy would wake up panicked without me next to him in bed. “I hate it when you do that,” he told me. “I don’t know where you are” V O G U E . C O M 124 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 132. For Andy, itwas a place without distractions, where on Sundays the whole city shut down and there was nothing for him to do but come to terms with the new reality of his life. He forced himself to grapple with it every silent evening, every still day, waking each morning asking himself, Which one do I mourn today? It was only by staring at the silence, the absence in his life, so uncompromisingly that he was able to come to some measure of acceptance. He believes that if he had buried his head in Afghanistan or Somalia he would have been lost forever. Andy never had the chance to clean out his wife’s closet, or the closets of his sons. He never had to go through their effects, confronting the memories in each object, because everythingwasdestroyed.Theabruptnessof thelosshaunted him for a long time. I’m a light sleeper, and often in the early days of our relationship I’d move in the middle of the night to the couch, where I could toss and turn without disturbing him. Andy would wake up panicked. “I hate it when you do that,”hetoldme.“Idon’tknowwhereyouare.Fromoneday to the next, Laurence was gone from our bed.” From then on, when I went to the couch, I’d leave something of mine on the pillow or on top of the covers: clothes arranged in the outline of my body, a photo of the two of us, the book I was reading—any signal to reassure him I was in the next room. F our years after the earthquake, Andy and I got married. Early in our marriage, people came to me to express their sorrow about Andy’s loss, peo- ple who had never even acknowledged it to him. “How is he doing?”they’d ask in hushed tones. “I can’t imagine what he went through. How does he go on?” Once, we visited a close friend of mine whose two-year-old son had gotten his hand stuck in the elevator earlier that day. He was ine, but my friend was clearly shaken. She relayed the story to us, and Andy immediately replied, “That sounds awful. You must have been terriied.”Later, my friend said to me with tears in her eyes, “I have no idea how he manages to be so empathetic to my little scare.” I also notice people’s insensitivity. Last April, after the earthquakeinNepal,Andywasinameetingcoordinatingthe humanitarianresponse.Acolleaguesittingnexttohimsaidto thegroup,“Youknow,afterHaitiwejokedthatif something happensintheKathmanduValleywe’dlookbackonHaitias sunny days.”As if what happened to Andy had happened in amovie,andhiswifeandsonswerejustcharactersinascript. Of course, disasters like Nepal bring Andy back to that time. At work he must attend meetings where search-and- rescue is planned, where the destruction is detailed, where death tolls are tallied. Sometimes he inds himself masochis- tically reading about children being pulled out of the rubble alive—his own fantasies never realized. Andy often thinks about who his boys would be now. He looks at his nephew, born the same year as Evan, and won- ders whether Evan would be that tall, starting to notice girls, and also be winning swim meets. The movie Boyhood, which tracks its main character from six years old—one year older than Baptiste when he died—unnerved him as he walked through their potential years together. Over time, he’s revealed more about all of them. He and Laurence were the unlikely couple that worked magically—a baseball-capped frat boy and an artist from Paris. He re- members coming home from work and inding her and his sons hiding in enchanted forts in the living room, furniture and sheets of cardboard and canvas arranged together like a huge art installation. Evan was a playful and calm boy, who could sit on flights coloring and entertaining himself for hours, who loved to hike, even though he was more cerebral than sporty. Baptiste was the dreamer, who loved Looney Tunes and mimicked Road Runner by winding up his legs and arms before racing out of a room. As time has passed, my sorrow about their loss has intensified. I find myself getting emotional as Andy, calm and smiling, tells me a story about Baptiste’s irst crush; or imitates Evan’s adorable mispronunciation of words; or remarks, while we’re paying bills, that Evan loved doing math problems just for fun. These were the memories he once had to ward of, because they were too raw. But they comfort him now. “I knew them better than anyone,”he says. “I’m a richer person because of theyearsweshared.Idothingsdiferently.Ispeakdiferently because of them. Parts of them are inside me.” There are times, of course, when I can’t help comparing myself to Laurence and wonder how he could love two such distinct people. I think back to something my father told me right after mom died, when he was at the height of his grief—your mother was the love of my life. Hearing that as a daughter, I felt comforted. As the wife of a widower, I felt that sentiment as a betrayal. But I’ve watched my fa- ther remarry, and because of that I know that it is possible to have more than one love. Sharing another person like this isn’t always easy. I once needed to get into Andy’s computer and asked for his pass- word to log on. He yelled it to me from the shower, a strange word he had to spell out and some numbers. “What’s that?” I asked. “It’s Laurence’s nickname and birthday.” A sharp pain spread through my chest upfront BeginningAgain As the ashes mingled with the water, turning the stones underneath a foggy gray, we knew that the future held life IN BLOOM JESSICA AND HER HUSBAND, ANDY, ON THEIR WEDDING DAY. V O G U E . C O M 126 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 CESARLECHOWICK C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 28 6
- 134. House of MirthWhenher young life started going sideways, MAXINE SWANN took the cure at her grandparents’ twelve-bedroom manor house out of a Wharton novel, where eccentricity was embraced. I waseighteen,inthethroesof anervousbreakdown, when I checked myself in to my grandparents’ house in the Berkshires. I had recently graduated with lying colors from Phillips Academy Ando- ver, but suddenly I was having trouble doing the simplest things: walking, talking, reading a menu, dialing a phone. The world appeared as if in a fog. I couldn’t see straight; I could barely hear. Other people loomed as shadowy igures through the mist, approaching or retreating, nearly always threatening. It started in the months after graduation. I had decided to take the year of before college and travel. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, and in my mind I was beginning my apprenticeship. I would read and write, explore the world, workatwhateverjobthatcamealong.FirstIwenttoJuneau, Alaska. I took a job in the oice of a theater company that flew around in little planes, performing their shows in re- mote locales. I found an apartment on the hillside in town overlooking the water, got a library card. The landscape was beautiful, even through the constant blur of rain. But I was spending more and more time alone, reading and writing, huddled in my apartment. One evening, as I was returning homefromwork,agroupof dogsambushedmeonthestreet. One bit me on the inner thigh, leaving deep teeth marks. I began to feel more and more afraid of going out. Next I went to London. Through a contact, I found a job in an upscale restaurant called the River Café. One day, I was waiting on a large table of businesspeople out to lunch. They all wanted steak, but each cooked a diferent way. My ears felt stuffed with cotton; I wasn’t nostalgia ONE STEP AT A TIME NATALIA VODIANOVA AT THE MOUNT, EDITH WHARTON’S HOME IN THE BERKSHIRES, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANNIE LEIBOVITZ FOR VOGUE, 2012. N OSTA LG IA >1 3 4 V O G U E . C O M 128 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 138. hearing well. Igot the orders all wrong and then, confused at my own mistake, dropped a plate, the warm bloody steak landing on my foot with a plop. The owners, two women, gently suggested I rest. I was feeling more and more jittery, but I didn’t want to go home, equivalent in my mind to admitting defeat. If I didn’t stick this out, I would never be a writer. “I just have to rest,” I told myself. “I just have to get somewhere where I can rest.” A man I’d been seeing on and of, whom I’ll call Paul, got in touch. He was on his way to France. Did I want to meet up? A friend had ofered him a house in the countryside in Bordeaux. On my way there to meet him, I pictured myself falling in front of moving cars on the street, out the doors of the speeding train. I clutched lampposts, guardrails. I even pictured myself falling when there was nowhere to fall, when I was simply sitting waiting on a bench. Paul was a writer himself, ten years older than me, and full of opinionsabouthowtodoeverything—howtopeelapear, wear your hair, clean your ears, keep a strict writing regimen, talktostrangersonthephone,wipeatileloor.Plunginginto a relationship in my state was overwhelming, and even more so with a man who intimidated me. I stumbled around the house, tried to force myself to speak, gave up and took to the bed, where I lay nearly catatonic, staring out at the vineyards in their pretty little rows, until Paul inally persuaded me to get on a plane and ly home. Nervous conditions run through the family bloodlines, along with more serious maladies like manic depression. My grandmother’sgreat-auntCloverHooperAdams,anaccom- plishedportraitphotographer,wasmarriedtoHenryAdams and written about by Henry James. (“Clover Hooper has it—intellectual grace—Minny Temple has it—moral sponta- neity,”Jameswroteof thetwowomen[Templewashiscousin] who served as models for his great American heroines, Daisy Miller and Isabel Archer.) For her part, Clover once quipped of James’sstyle:“Hechewsmorethanhebitesof.”Whenher father died, Clover, age 42 and deeply depressed, committed suicide by drinking developing luid; after spending time in variouspsychiatricinstitutions,Grandma’ssister,Bunny,was given a lobotomy—the only way, doctors assured the family, that she would be able to return home and take care of her two small children. But not all the stories were tragic. My great-great-grandfather Ned Hooper, who had a proclivity toward depression, lived a full life that included a successful marriage and ive childrenaswellasadistinguishedcareeras treasurer of Harvard University—before he checked himself into a psychiatric institute near the end of his life. Inowfollowedinhisfootsteps,thoughinmycasetheclinic was my grandparents’ turn-of-the-century twelve-bedroom manor house just down the road from the Mount, Edith Wharton’s grand home in Lenox, Massachusetts. At Cherry Hill, as the house was called, mental illness wasn’t shunned—there was no woman in the attic—but, rather, managed. I was one in a line of many refugees who showed up at the house in a fragile state and foundasafehaven.Decadesearlierthearrangementhadbeen formalized when the founder of the Austen Riggs Center, the tony psychiatric institution in neighboring Stockbridge, approachedmygrandparentswithaproposition.Theinstitu- tionwasexperimentingwithanewprograminwhichpatients who’d made progress would be sent to live in nearby homes. Aware of my grandparents’ acceptance, even valorization, of eccentricity, as well as of their need for money—they had suffered a great loss of wealth during the Depression and afterward, due to my grandfather’s spendthrift ways—Dr. Riggs asked if they’d be interested in housing Riggs’s outpa- tients during the latter stages of their treatment. The doctors at Riggs were enamored with Grandma, whose indirect methods and subtle ways they thought of as wonderfully creative. “They were all just so peculiar that you immediately felt that you were OK,” Sally Begley, a Riggs outpatient who became a lifelong family friend, says of the scene at Cherry Hill. As part of the curative process, Sally had been enrolled to take care of a baby—my uncle Nick, as it turned out—and took it upon herself to clean up the kitchen every night after dinner. Even after she’d returned to Radclife, she would rush back to the house on weekends to study; later, she and her new family settled in the cottage at the bottom of the drive. My own “cure”was difuse; it was multifaceted. A good partof itwasthat,whileprovidedmealsandshelter,Iwasleft tomyowndevices.Aschildren,wehadalwaysvisitedCherry Hill twice a year—in the summer to sail on the Stockbridge Bowl, in the winter to ski and celebrate Christmas—but until this visit, I had never been there on my own. At irst, I just stayedinmyroomandintheadjacentbathroom,takinglong baths.Then,tentatively,Ibegantowanderthroughthehouse, rediscovering childhood wonders. Grandma, who was from a family of hoarders, was a hoarder herself: Bare lightbulbs hung from the basement ceiling illuminated rows and rows of ear trumpets, sewing machines, irons, antiquated micro- scopes, while in the attic rested the entire estates of ances- torslonggone—JohnLaFarge nostalgia I began to wander through the house, rediscovering childhood wonders: John La Farge watercolors, Whistler paintings, little velvet boxes stuffed with human hair TO THE MANOR BORN THE AUTHOR’S GRANDMOTHER AT THE AGE OF FOUR. SafeHaven C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 28 6 V O G U E . C O M JOHNBRIGGSPOTTER/COURTESYOFMAXINESWANN 134 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 140. EDITOR: CHLOE MALLE FLASH I n 2004, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, and Lisa Marie’sdaughter,RileyKeough, thenfourteen,posed forthecoverof Vogue’sAgeIssue.Inballdresses,the threegenerationsstoodholdingoneanotherinaloose embrace,LisaMarieandRileystaringdownthecam- erawiththecheekboneandchinstructureimpossible todetachfromeveryiconicphotoof Elvis.“IthinkIwasone of the youngest people to be on the cover of Vogue,”recalls Keough,now26,of theshoot.“ButIwasgenerallyunfazedby things like that when I was a kid,”she adds. “In a good way.” Keoughwasraisedwiththeideathatbeingasprivateaspos- siblewithinthepubliceyewasparamount.Afterachildhood spent under the radar, though, she started modeling. “I had this urge to make money and be independent. Keough RAINBOW BRIGHT KEOUGH, IN A GUCCI DRESS, AT THE BAR AT MARVIN IN LOS ANGELES. ITGIRL Riley FL ASH>1 3 8 136 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 COLUMBINEGOLDSMITH.FASHIONEDITOR:DJUNABEL.HAIR,TERRIWALKER;MAKEUP,TSIPPORAHLIEBMAN.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE. V O G U E . C O M
- 142. FLASH ItGirl I sawa friend’s sister model and thought, That’s what I’ll do. I was twelve.”The plan was to use the money she earned in front of the camera to put herself through ilm school. At nineteen,withnoactingexperience,Keoughwentonanaudi- tion to play Marie, sister of Dakota Fanning’s Cherie Currie, in the Kristen Stewart–led The Runaways—and she booked it. “I had no idea what to do,”she confesses. “I’d never been on a ilm set. To me, acting was what I liked watching, which was people being human and not too over-the-top.” Last summer,sheappearedasoneof thewivesinMadMax:Fury Road—intheprocessmeetingastuntmannamedBenSmith- Petersen, who showed her around Australia, where the crew wasdoingreshoots.Lastyearthetwoweremarriedinfrontof 90guestsatCalifornia’sCalistogaRanch.ThebrideworeDel- phine Manivet and loved the party—but hated the attention. It’s Keough’s innate unassumingness that makes her per- formanceinthismonth’sTheGirlfriendExperienceevenmore compelling.Inthethirteen-episodeStarzseries,inspiredloose- lybyStevenSoderbergh’s2009ilmof thesametitle,Keough plays Christine—a law school student who starts working as anescortandbecomesenthralledwiththemoney,power,and adrenaline—withacontrol,subtlety,andracinessthatareelec- trifying. “We wanted to tell the story of this girl who doesn’t haveaterriblebackground,wasn’tabused,whoendsupdoing sexwork—whohappenstoalsobeinlawschool,whohappens to also be really smart.”––MOLLY CREEDEN Crispalabastertrousers—appearing atoncevoluminousandslender—leadus cheerfullyintospring. Wıde,WıdeWorld LIYA KEBEDE IN PROENZA SCHOULER. MING XI IN CÉLINE PANTS. KENDALL JENNER IN CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION. WITH BLAKE LIVELY, FRONT ROW AT MICHAEL KORS FALL 2016 SHOW IN NYC. IN COACH 1941. KARLIE KLOSS IN AMANDA WAKELEY PANTS. FL ASH>14 0 ITGIRL:KORS:DAVIDXPRUTTING/BFA/REXSHUTTERSTOCK.COACH1941:DANIELZUCHNIK/©GETTYIMAGES.JENNER:MICHAEL LOCCISANO/©GETTYIMAGES.KEBEDE:BENGABBE/©GETTYIMAGES.KLOSS:ACE/INFPHOTO.COM.XI:PHILOH. GO TO VOGUE.COM TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE LOOK IN OUR 10-BEST-DRESSED LIST, POSTED EVERY MONDAY
- 144. H ave you everwondered what the other side of the world looks like? I have—ever since I was a little girl in my nursery spinning a big illuminated globe. The farther the better, I thought: Easter Island, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand. What a pristine place New Zealand is! All tumbling green hills, and forests thicker than any I have seen. On a recent visit, I found my childhood fantasies matched again and again.MyfriendEva-MariaShumanandItookabumpyride inasingle-engineplaneoverMilfordSound—afjordframed bywaterfallsthatmadeusgaspinamazement.Wesawsnow- capped mountains like sugar-coated chunks of Toblerone, glaciers, and brilliant-green islands dotting the water. It was no wonder even a seasoned traveler like Rudyard Kipling is said to have called this place the eighth wonder of the world. FLASH For a comparatively small country at the end of the Earth, NewZealandwasilledtothebrimwithtreats.Aftertouching downinAuckland,aquaintcityfullof coollittlerestaurants, cold-press juiceries, and boutiques, we aimed to explore the famousbeachesalongtheNorthIsland.Despiteintelfromlo- cal friends, it was hard to choose where to begin: Rangiputa, Coopers Beach, Ninety Mile Beach, Bay of Islands? In the end we just hit the road and encountered one stretch of sand more beautiful than the last. One afternoon, the sky pouring down with rain, we drove to the Kawiti glow worm caves and took a tour by lashlight. We scrambled through stalagmites and past stalactites, and when the guide switched of his light, we saw thousands of sparkling glow worms above our heads. Easy to imagine a Maori princess snuggling up here for her nap. Next stop was Queenstown on the South Island. A gem of a town with an alpine vibe nestled on Lake Wakatipu. A friend of mine, Nina Flohr, who happened to be in the area with her Kiwi boyfriend, Ben Fisher, invited us camping at a cabininthemiddleof nowhere.Togettherewedrovealonga steep dirt track where I kept wondering how Ben was able to keepthecarfromspillingof themountain.Suddenly,tucked between green hills were beautiful Lake Luna and a simple log cabin—nothing else. Ben expertly barbecued a feast and we sat by the ire, watching the sun slowly disappear behind the mountain. Just to remind us that nature has a temper, a sharp gust of wind whipped up, then another. Eventually our entire barbecue was blown away—and torrential rains began, a storm raging so violently that the cabin rattled and I imagined the whole roof would ly away and then the whole little house. Where will you take us, Mr. Wind, I wondered . . . ? That adventure is for another time. ElisabethTNTgoestotheworld’send onlytodiscoverthatNewZealandiseven morespectacularthanshehadimagined. TABLE SETTING RIGHT: MY JOURNEYTO THE OTHER SIDE NECESSITATED CONSTANT REHYDRATION. BELOW: OUR DINNER TABLE WITH A VERDANT VIEW. WINDY CITY TAKING IN THE SUN ON A WALK ALONG LAKE WAKATIPU IN BEAUTIFUL QUEENSTOWN—ON A SURPRISINGLY CHILLY DAY. TNT FL ASH>14 2 WANT MORE OF THE UNEXPECTED? FOLLOW TNT’S ADVENTURES AT VOGUE.COM/TNT. BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE ALL-NEW 2016 CHEVROLET MALIBU. MEADOW:NINAFLOHR.ALLOTHERS:COURTESYOFTNT. 140 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 146. FLASH W estartedwith104,thenitgrewto150 . . . 180 . ..” The former model Noella Coursaris Musunka is explaining the origins of the Malaika School in Kale- buka,asmallvillageinthesoutheastern corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is cur- rently in the business of feeding and educating 231 girls—no small feat in a country where nearly half of school-age chil- dren are not attending school. Coursaris Musunka was once ayounggirlintheDRC,butwhenherfatherdied,hermother, unabletosupportherself andachild,senthertolivewithrela- tivesinEurope.“WhenIsawmymumafterthirteenyears,she was like a stranger to me,”she says. “But I’m thankful to her because she tried to give me a better chance.” Now Malaika, the foundation that Coursaris Musunka founded, aims to do the same thing for other girls. At irst they sponsored orphans, but she and her team quickly saw the need for something with more impact. “So we built a schoolfromscratch,”shesays.Whentheconstructionprocess unearthedthedireneedforwells(“Therewasalmostnoclean water in the village,” Coursaris Musunka says), they built ive of them; feeding on the momentum, FIFA sponsored a community center complete with its own soccer ield. Three years later the complex serves more than 7,000 people annu- ally,withclassesinFrenchandSwahiliandprogramstoteach leadership and entrepreneurship to both youth and adults. Coursaris Musunka’s career in modeling began when she moved to London to study English and was scouted on the street. She continues to live in the city now with her husband andyoungfamily,buthastransitionedfrommodelingtobeing amumandCEOfull-time.ShevisitsMalaikaregularly,often with her kids, JJ (ive) and Cara (almost two), in tow. (“I’ve been to the Congo thirteen times,” JJ proudly proclaims.) When she’s not on the ground, Coursaris Musunka Skypes daily with local staf or texts on WhatsApp. “All of our girls have a story,”she says. “Take Esther, who was knocked over by a motorbike and wasn’t coming to school.”It turned out that her parents couldn’t aford to take her to the hospital, so Malaika’s staf, after paying a visit to her home, did just that. “If we had gone there two days later, she would have died.” Malaika contributes almost 100 percent of donations di- rectly to the school itself. The result is an organization that is expanding at the swift pace of a Silicon Valley start-up. This past winter the school received 50 new computers, and in Februarytheyconvertedtosolarpower;alibrary,meanwhile, is currently under construction on the grounds. Coursaris Musunka sees her work in the Congo as one importantstepinaseriesof continentalimprovements.“A lot of people ask if we will open more schools,”she says. “For me,though,it’saboutonegood-qualityschool—it’sablessing just to have set it up. I love what I do.”—LILI GöKSENIN NoellaCoursaris Musunkaand herteamof volunteersare educating 231girls intheCongo— andthat’sjust thebeginning. World Class INNER CIRCLE ABOVE: DURING HER TRIPS TO KALEBUKA, COURSARIS MUSUNKA CATCHES UP WITH THE LOCALWOMEN AT ONE OF THE WELLS BUILT BY MALAIKA AND (LEFT) ASSISTS DURING CLASSES. SocialResponsibility V O G U E . C O M 142 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 COURTESYOFMALAIKA(2)
- 148. Pamela Golbin, whopromises “a chron- ological frieze of the evolution of men’s, children’s, and women’s fashion for the last 300 years”—all of it, including 70 newly conserved pieces never on view before, displayed for the first time not behind glass but in the museum’s high- ceilingednave.“Oneof thebiggestchalleng- eswe’vealwaysfacedpresentingfashioninamuseumenviron- ment is that clothes don’t move,”Golbin explained—so she has worked with the distinguished ballet choreographer (and director of An American in Paris on Broadway) Christopher Wheeldon, whohasarticulatedthemovementsof thespecial- lydesigned“corpsdeballetof mannequins,”ashedescribesit, and produced short movies featuring dancers from the Paris Opéra Ballet dressed in translucent copies of the collection’s clothes.The ilms also indicate the underpinnings that helped to shape the silhouettes, while suggesting the evolving body language that the clothes demanded. thehamishfiles I n Los Angeles for Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent show,ItooktheopportunitytoheadtotheLACMA archives for a behind-the-scenes peek at “Reigning Men” (April 10 through August 21) with the mu- seum’s senior costume curator, Sharon Takeda. Five years in the making, the exhibition celebrates the evolution of the peacock male from London’s macaronis of the1770stotheHanna-Barbera–coloredhip-hopof Jeremy Scott. It wouldn’t have been possible without LACMA’s acquisition, in 2008, of the 500-piece costume collection assembled by rival London- and Switzerland-based dealers Martin Kamer and Wolfgang Ruf—“I marveled at the amaz- ing cache of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century menswear,” Takeda said. Subsequent gifts and acquisitions, including a large1980sand1990sArmaniwardrobe,outrageouslywide- legged 1920s Oxford bags, and an original 1940s zoot suit, bring the collection—which will be showcased in an installa- tionbyL.A.–basedCommune—intothetwenty-irstcentury. In Paris, meanwhile, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs celebrates 30 years of its own costume department by fea- turing stars from the museum’s aston- ishing treasury in “Fashion Forward” (April 7 through August 14), curated by Exhibition DRESSING STYLE COUNCILS LEFT: MACARONIS AND DANDIES INTERMINGLE AT LACMA. STEP LIGHTLY NAOMI CAMPBELL AND CHRISTY TURLINGTON IN TODD OLDHAM, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ARTHUR ELGORT; VOGUE, 1992. EMPIRE BUILDER BELOW: PAUL POIRET’S TRADEMARK ROSE ADORNS HIS 1907 JOSÉPHINE DRESS, ON DISPLAY AT THE MUSÉE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS. HAMISH>1 5 3 144 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 LACMA:HAMISHBOWLES.POIRET:©MUSÉEDESARTSDÉCORATIFS,PARIS/PHOTO:JEANTHOLANCE.
- 157. “Ilikeextremes,”ToddOldham toldVoguein1992.“I can’t imagine beingin the middle of anything.” When I joined the magazine that year, Oldham was New York’s designer du jour, celebrated for his kaleidoscopic prints and playful embellishments for the retro-tastic Deee-Lite crowd. To celebrate a gift of his archive pieces to the Rhode Island School of Design, their museum is hosting “All of Every- thing: Todd Oldham Fashion” (April 8 through September 11), which Oldham himself is designing, in part,asaneye-popping lower garden. Finally, inding my- self in Orlando, Flor- ida, for the first time (to train with soccer supernova Alex Mor- gan—see “Kick Off,” page 254), I took the opportunity to visit the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, a jewel box of Arts and Crafts treasures with an emphasis on the hallucinogenically beautiful work of Louis Comfort Tifany. The collection was assembled by the Chicago heiress Jeannette Genius McKean and her hus- band, Hugh F. McKean, and includes masterworks salvaged When I was at the English equivalent of grammar school, my fellow schoolboys plastered their bedroom walls with images of a beaming Farrah Fawcett in a clinging red singlet or the gurning Bay City Rollers in high- waisted tartan trews, while I pinned up posters of illustrated Vogue covers by Helen Dryden and George Wolfe Plank from the First World War era. Inspired by the chic special-edition French magazines like Gazette du Bon Ton, Condé Nast himself had transformed Vogue by commissioning great illustrators to create these covers. Following the escapist visuals of the war years, Nast’s stable of artists reflected the jagged Art Deco of the Jazz Age (the first color photograph cover was Edward Steichen’s image of a girl in a swimsuit brandishing a beach ball, published in July 1932). Now you can be your own Vogue artist with Vogue Colors A to Z (Knopf), assembled by our magazine’s very own Valerie Steiker. Illustrator Cecilia Lehar has reduced the vivid works of artists including Eduardo Benito, Harriet Meserole, and Georges Lepape to elaborate outlines so that you can allow your own imagination to run amok—as in this “D is for Dragon” by yours truly.—H.B. TrueColors from Laurelton Hall, Tifany’s Long Island manse, after it was devastated by ire in 1957—including the breathtaking Byzantine chapel that the designer created for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which helped to establish the scion of the famous jeweler as the country’s great decorative-arts genius of the era.—HAMISH BOWLES ARTS AND CRAFTS LEFT: A SUBLIME STAINED-GLASS WINDOW TRANSPLANTED FROM THE BALLROOM OF TIFFANY’S MANHATTAN HOME AT THE MORSE MUSEUM. ABOVE: AN EVOCATION OF TIFFANY’S LIVING ROOM AT LAURELTON HALL. thehamishfiles V O G U E . C O M HAMISHBOWLES
- 159. ANNIE LEIBOVITZ Overfourandahalfdecades,AnnieLeibovitzhasrefinedtheartof portraitureinimagesthatareprofound,provocative,andrevelatoryofthe timeswelivein.HerphotographsforAmericanVogueandVanityFair, andforbooksandexhibitions,havebroughtusanextraordinaryrangeof subjectsfromthemostcelebratedtothemosthumble.In“Women,”an exhibitionthatopenedattheCorcoranGalleryofArtinWashington,D.C., sixteenyearsago,Leibovitz’slenscapturedfemaleSupremeCourtjustices, senators,artists,athletes,maids,mothers,businesswomen,comedians, actors,architects,andsoldiers. Amplifyingthatphenomenalbodyofwork,Leibovitz,withexclusive commissioning partnerUBS,presentsthe2016travelingexhibition “WOMEN:NewPortraits.”Tencities—London,Tokyo,SanFrancisco, Singapore,HongKong,MexicoCity,Istanbul,Frankfurt,NewYork,and Zurich—arehostingthephotographer’sresponsetochangesintheroles ofwomen,presentingimagesfromtheoriginalprojectalongsiderecent subjects,allofwhomtouchourlivestoday. “WOMEN:NewPortraits” ThePresidio’sCrissyField,649OldMasonStreet,SanFrancisco,CA94129 March25toApril17,2016 Monday–Sunday10:00A.M.–6:00P.M.,Fridayuntil8:00P.M. www.ubs.com/annieleibovitz #WOMENxUBSby#AnnieLeibovitz WOMEN:NEWPORTRAITS V O G U E . C O M V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 155
- 160. Misty Copeland, ballet dancer, NewYork City, 2015.
- 163.
- 164. Malala Yousafzai, spokesperson for theright of girls to an education, Birmingham, England, 2016.
- 166. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Oicerof Facebook, Menlo Park, California, 2015.
- 168. Gloria Steinem, writer, activist, NewYork City, 2015.
- 170. R onald van derKemp is living proof that you can buck the fashion system andwin.TheAmsterdam- based designer doesn’t do runwayshows.Henegates the idea of seasons, instead calling what he does a wardrobe, with all that implies: pieces resonant with personal choice; con- tradictory impulses somehow all making sense together. He very rarely buys fabrics, relying instead on the found, the sourced, the discovered (he was recently gifted a trove stashed away in the archive of the late Dutch couturier Frans Molenaar). And yet. . . . “I hate the word sustainabil- ity,”says van der Kemp, 51, one slate-gray afternoon in late January in Paris, where he is showing his newest garderobe during the haute couture, “but there A STAR EARNS HIS STRIPES THE DESIGNER TURNS THE AMERICAN FLAG INTO A COOL FASHION STATEMENT. ON MODEL SOPHIAAHRENS: RVDK/RONALD VAN DER KEMP LEATHER-TRIMMED TOP ($2,755) AND COTTON- TWILL PANTS ($1,325). NET-A-PORTER.COM. DETAILS, SEE IN THIS ISSUE. EDITOR: MARK HOLGATE Master Dutch DESIGNERRONALDVANDERKEMP’S FREESPIRITISJUSTWHATFASHION NEEDSRIGHTNOW. VIE W>16 8 V O G U E . C O M SEBASTIANKIM.FASHIONEDITOR:KARENKAISER.HAIR,TINAOUTEN;MAKEUP,BENJAMINPUCKEY. 166 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 172. is something aboutbeing ethical that is very good. I want to do something on my own terms.” Inotherwords,heispoliticallycorrectinhispoliticalincor- rectness. This isn’t the latter-day equivalent of sackcloth and ashes.VanderKempcollaborateswithlocalartisans—tailors, theatrical costumers, even furniture makers—to conjure up clothes loaded with beauty, whimsy, irony, glamour, playful- ness, and a sense of being lifted out of the ordinary. “I want to make pieces where you can see that someone has really touched them,”he says. “I know when clothes aren’t made with love.” Currently on ofer are gleaming leather-and-python zip- pered jackets, a ball skirt in a furnishing fabric that could be Frans Hals–era but isn’t, and a loor-length NewAmsterdam HOUSE OF HOLLAND RONALD VAN DER KEMP (RIGHT, IN A SANDRO SWEATER AND PANTS) DREW ON PIECES DESIGNED BY FRIENDS— THE STAIRCASE, A WOODEN TABLE—ENHANCED BY ARTWORK FROM GERMAN PHOTOGRAPHER REINHARD GÖRNER. CANAL STREET RIGHT: VAN DER KEMP’S COLLECTION OF ORNAMENTAL BIRDS. LEFT: HIS HOME OVERLOOKS A HISTORIC 15TH-CENTURY WATERWAY. VIE W>170 V O G U E . C O M KASIAGATKOWSKA.SITTINGSEDITOR:SONNYGROO.GROOMING,FEDDEHOEKSTRAFORELLESFAAS.ARTWORK:REINHARDGÖRNER,BERLIN,REINHARDGORNER.DE.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 174. NewAmsterdam button-front evening dresswith sharp- ly sculpted shoulders and a whip-thin belted waist. If you’ve trawled In- stagram recently, you’ll likely have spotted girls in van der Kemp’s Jas- per Johns–esque Stars and Stripes– appliquédtopsorhisjeansemblazoned with Old Glory and then accessorized with an up-cycled fox-fur jacket. Even if the fabrics are vintage, the look, the attitude, isn’t. So no lack of joy or fun, then, in all of this—and for someone who says he never had a plan, his label has seemed to be going according to, well, plan since its launch in January 2015. (Net- a-Porter has recently started to get behind it in a big way as well.) What van der Kemp creates comes out of an instinct for the way things should be these days: not disposable, not seasonal, not ubiquitous. And he can do it because his three-decade-long résumé, which includes Bill Blass (“the American Saint Laurent”), Guy Laroche, and Michael Kors–era Céline, gives him not only technical expertise but the life experience of coming up through a system he be- lieves needs changing. After nine years in New York, van derKempmovedpermanentlybackto the Netherlands in 2014, inding that his homeland’s relative slowness suited him perfectly—and when one consid- erswhatinformshiswork,it’shardnot to draw parallels with Amsterdam’s incredible duality of noble history combined with a blunt stance that re- lects no niceties. Even his apartment on the historic ifteenth-century Singel canal, with its three-plus-centuries-old exterior contrasted with a very twenty- irst-century living space, gives a pretty clear perspective on how the now and the then can happily coexist. There is a gleaming gold-trimmed staircase designed by gallerist Jasper Bode and furniture crafted by a friend, Bart Gorter, who is responsible not only for the monumental wooden dining table and bookshelves but also for weaving fabrics for van der Kemp. The space is dotted with his collection of orna- mental birds, and he’s quick to point out, with a wry laugh, the subtext. “They’re free to ly,”says the designer, who refuses to be grounded by rules. —MARK HOLGATE VIE W>172 ROCKS OFF FROM TOP: ANTHONYVACCARELLO CROCODILE-SKIN BAG; JUST ONE EYE, L.A.ALTUZARRA BAG, $2,495; BARNEYS NEWYORK, NYC. As summer-festival season begins to stir, designers across fashion’s stage have suggested a downright rocking way of accessorizing: the guitar-strap handbag. It started in New York, where, for spring, Marc Jacobs sent forth woven straps studded with bric-a-brac. Joseph Altuzarra has them for fall, with whipstitched edges and Axl Rose–esque paisley-bandanna tie-ons. (Rose reunites with the original Guns n’ Roses lineup at Coachella later this month.) European houses are holding their lighters high for the trend as well: Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino propose a turquoise and metal–studded leash with a ruglike woven treatment. Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel collection has straps winking to Jack White’s famous White Stripes–era Airline guitar. And at Tod’s, Alessandra Facchinetti’s bags are perforated or adorned with antiqued-silver grommets. “I was thinking about Florence Welch, actually,” says Facchinetti. “She captures different souls: a little bit retro, romantic, and definitely rock-’n’-roll.” The designs of Anthony Vaccarello, who debuts handbags for spring, might be the most electrifying of the bunch. Vaccarello admits to a love of Janis Joplin’s “Summertime” (you can almost visualize Joplin’s wail in the hardscrabble flourishes of one particularly ornate strap, which curls off in croc and calf tendrils). “I like the way of a woman when she’s wearing a guitar,” he says. “She’s a true free spirit.”—NICK REMSEN Strike aChord 170 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 FOR FASHION NEWS AND FEATURES, GO TO VOGUE.COM GORMANSTUDIO. DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 176. WINNING STREAKS FROM TOP:MODEL LILYALDRIDGE IN A SHIRT ($195), DRESS ($500),AND SWEATER ($150) FROM LA LIGNE; ALLAT LALIGNENYC.COM. W hen you are tired of stripes, you are tired of life!” declares Valerie Boster, cofounder of the new fashion brand La Ligne, paraphrasing Samuel John- son. That august gentleman was talk- ing about London, and Boster about fabric, but the sentiment is the same: Wonderful things are eternal. Boster and her coconspirators, Meredith Melling and Molly How- ard, may have given a French name to their direct-to-consumer fashion company, but to my mind their proj- ect is distinctly American: a line—a ligne!—of clothing with nothing over $550,everythingmadeof theinestma- terialsandwithaferociousattentionto detail, and all of it available only from its own Web site or Net-a-Porter. The inaugural 50-piece collection includes an irresistible light suit; a phalanx of work-to-weekend trousers, shirts, and shirtdresses; even a basket embellished with a wide white bar. “Youknowthosesixpiecesyouhave in your closet that are pretty much the onlythingsyouwear?”Bostersays.“We wanttobeoneof thosesixthings——” Melling cuts her off: “We want to be all six!” Though she and Boster have been obsessed with stripes for years, La Ligne has a rather looser interpretation—sometimes the stripes are full-on, as in a faithful homage to the French marinière (the pullover beloved of Jean Genet and Jean Paul Gaultier); other times Fine LINESHOWYOURSTRIPESINLALIGNE, ANEWCHIC-ESSENTIALSLABEL. VIE W>174 MATTHEWSPROUT(3) 172 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 178. CRAFT Work The Spanish houseof Loewe may be built on exquisite leather craftsmanship, but it is creative director Jonathan Anderson’s obsession with the Bloomsbury Group that has given his latest endeavor—a splashy seven-piece furniture project showcasing during this month’s Salone del Mobile in Milan—its particular verve. “There’s such a sense of realness to it,” says Anderson, who hand-selected the antiques, now enlivened with bright leather marquetry landscapes and wildlife, and oversaw the design of other new pieces. “It’s made by real people, not machines.” Carp swim across wooden Japanese screens, and an imposing pine-green wardrobe (an original from the storied British furniture shop Heal’s) is emblazoned with a collaged sixties scarf print from the Loewe archive. “I wanted genuinely positive symbols—things that simply feel light and pleasant,” Anderson says. Two M. H. Baillie Scott–style chairs are given Pop Art presence with graphic stripes (Anderson has five of the original chairs in his East London house). And though these witty objets will undoubtedly find good homes, a vibrant capsule of notebooks and pouches will be available in-store. “Craft is something engineered by silent hands,” says Anderson, who is also launching a Loewe Foundation prize for craft this month. “It’s about both newness and tradition.”—EMMA ELWICK-BATES DECORATIVE ARTS RIOTOUS COLOR COMBINES WITH JOLLY INTARSIATO SAY,“WELCOME HOME.” RIGHT: THE DESIGNER, PHOTOGRAPHED BY COLIN DODGSON. VOGUE, 2015. they turn up as subtle white lines encir- cling the neckline of a perfect sweater or dancing down the seam of a trouser. In a world where more and more women want to buy what they see when they see it, endeavors like La Ligne are on the cutting edge of fashion’s future. The site will show the clothes on profes- sional beauties and other professionals, including Joan Smalls, Lily Aldridge, and Dianna Agron, while sharing their candid backstories (shoppers are invited to share their stories, too—a resolutely informal approach with an eye toward building a community beyond mere commerce). There are also practical ad- vantages to running your business like this: If, say, a particular pant is a big hit, the company can keep making it in dif- ferent colors and materials—as long as people are still interested in a product, well, then, so is La Ligne! Boster and Melling were both Vogue editorsuntiltheystruckoutontheirown two years ago with La Marque, a styling and fashion-consulting venture. (How- ard was an investment banker and an executive at Rag & Bone before joining La Ligne as CFO.) Despite the dream that all your clothes—everyday!—willsportLaLigne labels, the three know that in truth you willpairtheseitemswithyourownjeans, your own leather jacket, your favorite Stan Smiths. And though they will be happy to share info on where to procure these iconic non–La Ligne items, they are not fools. “You won’t be able to click out of our site,”Boster says, laughing. Melling says that they are determined to inject a bit of insouciance—“a cer- tain irreverent human touch.” So, for example, traditional monograms are slashed with a diagonal line to echo the way you’re friendly with your personal stationery. “Soullessness doesn’t do very well these days,”Boster avers, summing up La Ligne’s credo. Or, as another Brit- ish author, E. M. Forster, put it: “Only connect.”—LYNN YAEGER Keeping It Real INAWORLDWHERE SHOPPINGISCHANGING EVERYDAY,LALIGNEIS ONTHECUTTINGEDGE OFFASHION’SFUTURE V O G U E . C O M STILLLIFES:COURTESYOFLOEWE.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE. 174 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 185. OVER THE COURSEOF THE LAST CENTURY, HAIR’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS HAVE HAD THEIR ROOTS IN VOGUE. 1 A MODEL WEARING A ROLLED COIF, PHOTOGRAPHED BY EDWARD STEICHEN, 1936. 2 RENE RUSSO, PHOTOGRAPHED BY FRANCESCO SCAVULLO, 1975. 3 KARLIE KLOSS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2014. 4 COCO ROCHA, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2009. 5 VERUSCHKA, PHOTOGRAPHED BY FRANCO RUBARTELLI, 1968. 6 A MODEL IN A VELVET BOW, PHOTOGRAPHED BY KAREN RADKAI, 1957. H I S TO R Y O F 1 2 3 4 5 6
- 186.
- 187. 1 A MODELIN PIN CURLS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHN RAWLINGS, 1938. 2 PIXIE- HAIRED MODELS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ARTHUR ELGORT, 1993. 3 MURIEL MAXWELL, PHOTOGRAPHED BY HORST P. HORST, 1939. 4 MODELS IN COILED UPDOS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHN RAWLINGS, 1945. 5 DOUTZEN KROES, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2013. 6 A MODEL IN AN ASYMMETRICAL BOB, PHOTOGRAPHED BY BERT STERN, 1966. 7 MODELS IN CANDY-COLORED WIGS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY BERT STERN, 1969. As social and political changesweptthenation,a modern woman emerged in the twenties. The Nine- teenth Amendment inspired the embrace of newfound freedoms, and liberated sufragettes lopped of the long hair that deined their Vic- torian sensibilities. With closely cropped Vogue style stars like Coco Chanel and Louise Brooks leading the charge, short styles like THE BOB came into focus. The Jazz Age gave way to the Great Depression, and MARCEL WAVES relaxed into carefully rolledcurlsasAmericanssoughttoescapereality throughradio,swingmusic,andthesilverscreen. Hairstyles remained sleek at the crown and outwardly voluminous, making PIN CURLS swept into tailored updos a coiing ixture. The world would go to war at the end of the decade, but Vogue encouraged continued dedication to time-honored beauty rituals. “Women don’t stop being women even in war-time,” declared theVogue’s-EyeViewsectioninNovember1939. With World War II chiely defining the early forties and Rosie the Riveter inspiring women to join the workforce, hairstyles remained tailored but utilitarian. VICTORY ROLLS ofered a practi- cal solution to manicured manual labor. Come 1946, Vogue would declare that it was all about “hair worn faceward,”adding an appealing de- tail to shoulder-sweeping hair, which became the length of the moment. Enter the era of the ULTRAFEMI- NINE COIF. The rise of on-screen starlets like Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor upped the attainable glamour quotient, with DEFINED SETS inding their foil in more youthful PONYTAILS—both of which provided the perfect canvas for omnipresent headgear. Vogue enforced hats and hair accesso- ries as the must-have accoutrements of the day, while updated styling products hit the market. Social and politi- cal change mani- fested themselves inthehairstylesof the sixties. SLEEK AND STRAIGHT became the sought-after look for many, with mod crops inspired by Twiggy and Barbra Strei- sand gaining traction across the country. Wom- en also began experimenting with exaggerated height and volume for the irst time in decades, as styles like the BEEHIVE and the backcombed HAIR FLIP came into fashion. Amid the dawn of the celebrity hairstylist, new techniques and avant-garde shapes pushed the boundaries of styling,depictedbyFrancoRubartelli’s1967and 1968imagesof Veruschkainthepagesof Vogue. ’20s ’40s ’60s ’30s ’50s 4 5 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 187
- 190. 1 A MODELWITH FEATHERED HAIR, PHOTOGRAPHED BY GIANNI PENATI, 1971. 2 REDHEAD KATE DILLON AND A GAMINE JAIME RISHAR, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ARTHUR ELGORT, 1993. 3 KELLY EMBERG, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ARTHUR ELGORT, 1980. 4 SASHA PIVOVAROVA, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2010. 5 KARLIE KLOSS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY DAVID SIMS, 2013. The rebellious nature of the seventies inspired a new way of thinking. Women began let- ting their hair down, quite literally. Cue the embrace of natural textures and center-parted, impossible lengths—or FREE-MOVING HAIR, as Vogue called it in 1977, when wispier SHAG styles also abounded. The era’s beauty icons, like Jane Birkin, Lauren Hutton, and Farrah Fawcett, gave women license to pull back from high-maintenance, professionally coifed looks and embrace their unique hair qualities instead. Even the decade’s popular rock stars opted for hair with softness and simplicity. In the eighties, the brows were big and the hair was bigger, fostering such styles as FEATHERED BANGS and NEW-WAVE PERMS. A fresh crop of supermodels also introduced a new generation to hair-hero worship. When Brooke Shields graced the cover of Vogue in 1980, her steely gaze set for- ward from a barrage of HIGH-VOLUME HAIR inspired endless imitation. And for women who disliked the decade’s full silhouette, there was the PUNK PIXIE popularized by musical muses like Madonna and Annie Lennox. Linda Evangelista picked up the torch for the gender-bending TOMBOY CROP in the nineties, when an obsession with an- drogyny emerged alongside more unkempt grunge styles. Linda wasn’t the only one-name wonder with inluence. The decade belonged to the dream team made famous by Vogue: Cindy, Naomi, Claudia, Christy, and Kate, whose chameleon-like prowess reigned alongside cultural phe- nomena like Jennifer Aniston. Named after her character on Friends, Aniston’s layered look THE RACHEL was a hit at salons nationwide. TV and film sirens continued to dictate trends into the aughts as actresses like San- dra Bullock, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Reese Witherspoon won Vogue covers and beauty obsessives’ hearts. Their collective preference for efortlessly undone yet perfectly polished strands inspired the SLEEK BLOWOUT, which enjoyed decade-long favor. ’70s ’90s ’00s’80s 2 3 1 4 5 V O G U E . C O M 190 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 192. Today, women are moreindividualistic than ever, and hair has become a major form of self-expres- sion. With social- media stars driving beauty trends, the pagesof Voguearein- creasingly illed with PERSONALIZED CUTS and NATURAL TEXTURE, whichoferwomenawaytotakeownershipof theirhairdes- tiny. There is also a growing focus on lexibility with length as women go longer or shorter, quicker. What’s new is now in the hands of the people. What’s now continues to be in Vogue. 1 IMAAN HAMMAM, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ANGELO PENNETTA, 2014. 2 GRACE HARTZEL, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2015. 3 LINEISY MONTERO, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2015. 4 MODELS WITH VARIED HAIR COLORS, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2015. 5 MAARTJE VERHOEF (LEFT) AND LUCKY BLUE SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER, 2015. 1 2 4 3 5 New& Next V O G U E . C O M
- 194. Flash L ast May, PatMcGrath found herself in an unusual predicament: She was running out of gold. The supply of theatrical gold pig- ment she had sourced in bulk two decades earlierduringaninternationalexploitasone of the world’s most-wanted makeup artists was dwindling. “I started to panic,”she ad- mits, growing momentarily wistful about the precious fairy dust that is one of her many calling cards. But a fortuitous triptoalaboratoryinanundisclosedlocationwouldeaseher anxiety. “I’d never seen anything so beautiful ever in the his- toryof makingmakeup,”McGrathsays.Thegildeddiscovery would become Gold 001, the molten metallic liquid-powder mixture heard round the Internet that she Drive GLISTEN UP CAMERON RUSSELL IN A CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION DRESS AND TIFFANY & CO. EARRINGS. PHOTOGRAPHED BY JASON KIBBLER. SITTINGS EDITOR: EMILIE KAREH. PatMcGrath, theforce behindsome offashion’s mostdirectional beautylooks, ischarting anothercourse— offtherunway andintoyour makeupbag. B E AU T Y>1 9 6 BeautyEDITOR: CELIA ELLENBERG V O G U E . C O M HAIR,JORDANMFORBUMBLEANDBUMBLE;MAKEUP,PATMCGRATH.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE. 194 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 196. London, she vividlyremembers customizing products with hermother,whohadahardtimeindingmakeupshadesthat worked well on black skin. “She would quiz me on diferent eyeshadows,standinginfrontof thetelevisionwiththreekids screamingather,refusingtomoveuntilwetoldherwhatnew productshewaswearing,”saysMcGrath.Theseearlyexperi- encestrainedhertothinkoutsidethebeautybox,anditisthis inclinationtowardinventionthatirstbroughthertothe attention of the rule-breaking British magazines of theeightiesandnineties(TheFace,Blitz,and i-D)andthateventuallyearnedherworldwide name recognition. Those who know McGrath’s work well know that fresh, dewy skin is as much her signature as Swarovski crystal–encrusted lipstick or feather-fringed eyelashes. She calls this incandescent complexion quality Aliengelic:anotherworldly,ethereallookyou canachieveonlybylayeringhighlighters,rath- er than relying on one, “strobing”-friendly light relector. Start with the creamy il- luminating end of the dual-ended stick in her new Skin Fetish 003 kit, she instructs; then blend with thenutrient-richbalmontheother side, using your ingers. “The real secret is the system,”she says. The componentsof thekitcanbeused together or alone. It also includes a Buffer brush and a gel-hybrid pigment,availableintwoshades— Iridescent Pink 003 (a prismatic ivory) and Fine Gold 003 (a pale champagne)—that, when swept on top of cheekbones, along clavicles, or onto eyes, imparts a high-impact shine. “It’s a fun new waytoshowwomen—andmen— how to use shimmer.” With her sights set on a full- brand launch in 2017, McGrath is not just making products. For the irsttimeinherstoriedcareer,she’s engagedinadialoguewiththecus- tomers who have long sought to emulate her techniques. The re- lationship is mutually beneficial. “The feedback I am hearing is really rewarding,”says McGrath, who sees beauty through “movement and life and energy,” ratherthansomethingmoreone-dimensional.Andif thisnew discourseinspiresprofessionalsandamateurstointerprether madcappigmentsintheirownuniqueways?“That,”shesays, “inspires me.”—CELIA ELLENBERG BeautyMakeup teased on lips at Prada’s spring show before revealing it to the public in a flash InstaMeet at the Tuileries in Paris in September. Released in a quantity of 1,000 on her Web site a month later, Gold 001 was the beginning of a social-media phenomenon that would become Pat McGrath Labs. “To be able to do something like that, to make a product, putitout,andalmosttalkdirectlytothepublicisreallyexcit- ing,”McGrath says, turning the conversation toward Phantom 002, another limited run of highly satu- rated, handmade jewel-tone pigments, which was similarly shrouded in mystery when it launchedinDecember—andgonealmostas soonasitarrived.(Thefour-colorPhantom 002 kit is currently fetching close to $350 oneBay.)It’sallpartof anunconventional launch strategy for “Labs”—as she calls her irst-ever solo venture following more than three decades in the industry—which is not dependent on seasonal calendars. In- stead, McGrath relies on Instagram teaser vid- eos, #swatchporn product demos, and fan art to “see if people will be as obsessed with a product”as sheis.Andtheyhavebeen.“When I’vecreatedsomethingthatIknow people can get excited about and really want,”she says, “that is the right time to put it out.” The opportunity to act on that foresight is a recent develop- ment.“Before,wheneveranybody spoke to me about doing my own beauty line, it had to be this way, and you had to start in this store, and then you had to wait so many years, and then you would slowly roll out to here. It just felt . . . pre- dictable,”says McGrath, who has been global creative design direc- tor of P&G Beauty since 2004 (in addition to innumerable stints developing successful color col- lections for brands like Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, and Gucci). She began to see a difer- ent path with the proliferation of platformslikeYouTubeandInsta- gram,whichhavebeenfanningthe lamesof ourcollectivefascination with makeup and its creative application. “There’s a whole new world out there now,”she says. “No one wants predict- able”—least of all major retailers, who are as smitten with LabsasMcGrath’slegionsof followers.Nextmonth,shewill launch her irst to-scale product at Sephora and on her Web site, releasing 25,000 kits of a three-part highlighting system called Skin Fetish 003 after test-running it at the fall shows. The backstage guru—who is rarely out of her all-black uniform, accessorized with a thick black headband—is a borninnovator.RaisedinNorthampton,afewhoursoutside VISUAL EFFECTS FROMTOP:THE SKIN FETISH 003 KITBYPATMCGRATH LABS SHIMMER PIGMENTIN IRIDESCENTPINK 003,AND SHINYSTICK HIGHLIGHTER + BALM DUO IN GOLDEN.ALUMINOUS GEMMA WARD,COURTESYOFMCGRATH’S DEFTHAND.PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN MEISEL,VOGUE,2006. B E AU T Y>1 9 8 V O G U E . C O M 196 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 STILLLIFES:LUCASVISSER
- 198. Beauty A steady rain fallsoutside the shoji-paper slid- ingdoorsof adimlylitroomontheoutskirts of Kyoto.Theafternoon’skimono-cladhost is kneeling on a tatami mat and demonstrat- ing a series of precise movements passed down for generations. In serene silence, she pours hot water over a scoop of matcha powder and whisks the mixture into a froth. Then, readying her hishaku, a bamboo ladle, she ills a steaming cup of a creamy, bitter beverage for me to sip while I reflect on the tradition-soaked simplicity of the experience. The painstaking preparation of a Jap- anese tea ceremony is enough to make your to-go cup of morning coffee feel Philistine. But it’s the elevated ingredi- entsattheheartof theseancientritesthat inspire the most enduring fascination. While all teas come from the same Ca- mellia sinensis plant, I learn, not all of them warrant an hours-long ritual—let alonetheirveryownperfumelinefromJo MaloneLondon.TheU.K.-basedbrand’sfragrancedirector, Céline Roux, participated in a number of similar ceremo- nies while workshopping Rare Teas, the company’s newest stand-alonecollectionof scents.Althoughthesixvariations (basedonDarjeeling,SilverNeedle,senchaJadeLeaf green, Oolong, Midnight Black, and Golden Needle teas) have beenconceivedof independentlyfromthecompany’sBritish heritage–inspired eaux, the idea isn’t too much of a depar- ture: “Tea is so English,”says Roux, who has, in the past, spun Anglicized strains of Assam and Earl Grey into per- fumestingedwithfamiliaressencesof milk,lemon,ormint. Roux’s deepening appreciation for tea eventually led her down back alleys in China and up isolated village tracks in the Himalayas as she searched for hard-to-ind leaves. Often hand-harvested once a year at pre- cipitous elevations and carefully dried in the sun, they can fetch more money per ounce than gold. To preserve the ephem- eral flavors of these rare varietals, they are brewed in alcohol—yes, brewed—in an industry-first infusion process em- ployed by perfumer Serge Majoullier, rather than re-created with synthesized accords. “There wouldn’t be as much of an art in that,” says Majoullier, who complemented the individual elixirs with harmonious secondary notes: jasmine, freesia, and apricot to bring out Darjeel- ing’s floral sweetness; sandalwood and resinousleatherstohighlightGoldenNeedle’smellowspice. The prolonged immersion also imparts a touch of color to the range’s oversize clear-glass bottles, yielding watercolor hues in shades like peach, celadon, and tourmaline. If you can’t seem to settle on just one, the kaleidoscopic effect makes owning a full set an entirely enticing proposition. —CELIA ELLENBERG JoMaloneLondon’sdeliciouslyrefinednewfragrancelineissteepedintraditionsofsensualsipping. TEATIME SOURCE MATERIAL EACH SCENT IS INFUSED WITH A RARE TEA VARIETAL. FROM LEFT, MIDNIGHT BLACK, JADE LEAF, AND SILVER NEEDLE. Fragrance B E AU T Y>20 0 GRANTCORNETT.PROPSTYLIST,JOJOLI.STILLLIFE:LUCASVISSER.
- 200. BeautyHealth L ast summer, whilevacationing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I emerged from the cool, pristine lake to stretch out on the dock. As I lay back, dripping wet, on thesun-heatedboards,Icaughtaglimpseof the slight ruling of the skin on my thighs that, along with many other signs of aging, intensiied with every passing year. I glanced over at my sun- bathing summer neighbor, a tanned and toned competitive athlete around my age. She rose from the dock, sleekly lean, almost all muscle in her racing-back maillot. As she dove into the water, I saw that she, too, had orange-peel skin. I had been watching her with detached envy, but now I felt perversely relieved. According to Jeremy Green, M.D., a Miami dermatologist, more than 90 percent of women havecellulite.It’scausedbygenet- ics, hormones, and skin structure. “Cellulite can start any time after puberty,”Amy Wechsler, M.D., a NewYorkdermatologist,tellsme. “I see it often in 20-year-olds.” Celluliteisfrequentlymistakenfor a lumpy, puckered expression of body fat. But the dimples are ac- tuallycausedbyibrousstrandsof connectivetissuecompressingthe subcutaneous layer of fat, which tends to concentrate in the thighs and buttocks of even the most slender women. Green likens the efect to a tufted sofa. Sincemyownindentationsirst surfaced, around fifteen years ago, I’ve resigned myself to their permanence. Treatments such as caffeine creams, scrubs, wraps, myofascial massages, and vitamin injections can pro- vide a temporary improvement in appearance, but none of them confers any long-term solution. Losing weight reduces the fat but, alas, not the dimples, which are caused by the ishnet-stocking-like structure of the connective tissue itself. Stayinginshapedoesn’tpreventorbanishcellulite;mycondi- tion had persisted, despite my twice-weekly Pilates practice and conscientiously nutritious diet. Every spring, I admire the gazelles I see stepping out of taxis in their abbreviated skirts and dresses, their skin “as luminous as the inest of seashells,”in the words of the great sensualist Anaïs Nin. I recall with nostalgic appreciation the days I’d stride the city streets in summertime, taking backward glances for granted. At 53, I’ve long retired my short,frothyskirts,evenonthehottestdays.Inaboutiquelast summer,IwastemptedbyaLisaMarieFernandezone-piece bathing suit with a zip front, cut daringly high on the thighs, but reluctantly bought a less revealing one. Acceptance recently gave way to hope, however, when I heard about a new technique called Cellina, FDA-approved since 2014. The first of its kind, using a tiny blade to per- manently sever the bands of connective tissue, it promised to address the underlying cause of cellulite, not simply its appearance. In a clinical study, 55 patients underwent a single treatment. Two years later, independent physician evaluators declared improvement in the ap- pearanceof cellulitein98 percent of those treated. “It’s the first thing that’s worked,” says Daniel R. Foitl, M.D., a Manhattan dermatolo- gist.Thedownside,headds,isthat theprocedure,whichcostsaround $5,000, doesn’t remove any fat. “I sometimes tell patients they need liposuction or CoolSculpt- ing,” he says. Wechsler sounds another note of caution: “Cell- ina is painful and causes swelling and bruising,”she says. “It is not a ‘lunchtime’treatment.” To learn more, I make an ap- pointment with dermatologist Michael S. Kaminer, M.D., who was one of a team of three doc- tors who developed the proce- dure; he regularly performs it at his Boston area practice. In a well-lit consultation room, Kaminer examines my skin. “You have between ten and 20 dimplesperside,”hetellsme,“andveryfewripples.Thatmakes youaperfectcandidate.”Ismile,oddlypleased;I’veneverimag- ined I’d ind myself happy to have the “right”kind of cellulite. As Kaminer explains, “With a lot of dimples, over 50 per side maybe, there is a point beyond which it really just isn’t worth it. It doesn’t fix skin laxity. And it doesn’t work on longer horizontal lines, only shorter ripples and discrete dimples.” Cellina originated as a less-invasive iteration of a com- mon treatment for pitted acne scars. Kaminer describes its elegant simplicity: On numbed skin, an iPhone-size suction cup lifts and stretches each dimple, and then a tiny blade per- forms a subcision to release the connective bands. The bands fall apart, and the skin floats up again, A LEG UP THE PROCEDURE DOESN’T REMOVE FAT BUT INSTEAD DESTROYS THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE THAT CAUSES PUCKERING. RippleEffect KateChristensentakestheplungewitharadicalnewtreatmentforcellulite. B E AU T Y>20 6 BILLBRANDT©BILLBRANDTARCHIVE 200 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 FOR BEAUT Y NEWS AND FEATURES, GO TO VOGUE.COM
- 204. BeautyHealth S hashi Batra wasan early apostle for natural beauty. As part of the landmark team that imported Sephora to the U.S. in the late nineties, he wanted to push organic moisturizers and serums into the mainstream—a challenging task at the time. “No one was coming in looking for that,” he confesses. Flash forward 20 years, and the demand for natural products has ballooned: A study published in 2015 estimates sales at $33 billion. Encouraged, Batra began preaching the green gospel again. Last winter, he launched Credo (Latin for “I believe”), an e-commerce site devoted entirely to so-called clean personal-care brands. When he opened a brick-and-mortar store in San Francisco a few months later, people paid attention. “It’s genius,” says eco-chic trailblazer Tata Harper, who installed her first mini-spa in the Fillmore Street flagship. Located on a veritable beauty row where Aesop, MAC, Kiehl’s, Le Labo, and Benefit all have outposts, Credo stands out as much for its teal facade as for its revolutionary retail experience: Each staff member is both a licensed aesthetician and a makeup artist, trained to speak intelligently on a curated inventory of more than 100 brands. Online, customers can peruse an extensive “dirty list”—toxic ingredients to ditch—and use a clean-swap tool that compiles conventional mainstays and proposes green alternatives, like EVOLVh hair care, designed to mimic a high-performing salon line, and Suntegrity’s SPF products, which dispel the notion that natural sunscreen can’t be effective. Harder-to- find organic cosmetics lines with real pigment payoff, like makeup artist Rose-Marie Swift’s popular RMS Beauty (Miranda Kerr is a fan), have, according to Batra, made color a fast-growing category. If Credo has earned the lofty description of being “the Sephora for natural beauty,” Batra is quick to play down the comparison. “We are not trying to be a supermarket,” he says of his niche intentions. But with a steady influx of new products and a Nolita franchise set to open in New York in May, the ayahuasca hair oil–loving mind does wander.—FIORELLA VALDESOLO Forceof NATURE SanFrancisco’sCredoboutiqueischangingperceptions—and complexions—withitsclean-beautyconcept. smooth. “Within a month, you’ll look better. In six months, you’ll really see it, and after a year, you should be very, very happy,”the doctor tells me. Best of all, I would likely have to do it only once. “Most women seem to have all the dimples they are going to get by their mid-40s,” Kaminer says. Al- though the technology is still too young for claims that the results are permanent, dimple-causing bands do not grow back once they are destroyed. After my initial appointment, I call one of Kaminer’s former patients, Paola Pacella, a 46-year-old personal trainer who had Cellina performed ive years ago as part of the clini- cal trial that resulted in the FDA clearance. “No matter how lean I got, even down to 13 percent body fat,” she tells me, “I still had cellulite.” She tried topical lotions, scrubs, professional wraps. Nothing worked. And then she heard about the new treatment. “Five years out, my cellulite is still gone,”she says. Two weeks later, I lie facedown on a table in the surgery room while Kaminer’s team of technicians—four funny, chatty women—sticks me a few times per side with anes- thetic needles. Within ten minutes, I am completely numb, and Kaminer warns me, “The noise might be the worst part of this whole thing.” The machine did indeed whine and gurgle as Kaminer began placing the suction cup over my dimples, one by one, and releasing the villainous ibers. I am no fan of needles, yet I felt nothing but anticipatory happiness. I wouldn’t feel sore until two days later. Back at home, I followed Kaminer’s instructions and wore Spanx, took showers instead of baths, and didn’t engage in any strenuous exercise for four days. As the doctor had promised, there were plum-colored bruises, but they faded as fast as the pinpricks healed. By day ive, I felt nothing. A week after the procedure came the unveil- ing:Istoodindaylightinfrontof myboyfriend afterashower.Hepronouncedmyderrierebeautiful,smooth. In the days that followed, I found myself running my hand over my newly released lesh, which felt satiny and taut, as if it had been lat-ironed. In a few months, it will be time to put on a bathing suit again. I look forward to buying a new one, with a zip front, cut high on the thighs. Trend Iamnofan ofneedles,yet Ifeltnothingbut anticipatory happinessatthe doctor’soffice PETAL POWER AS GREEN BEAUTY BOOMS, CREDO IS GIVING NATURAL BRANDS A BROADER PLATFORM TO THRIVE. V O G U E . C O M FLOWERS:GLOWIMAGES/©GETTYIMAGES.MAKEUP:ALEXCAO/©GETTYIMAGES.
- 207. f youareinthemarketfor revelatory—and pulse- quickening—productions ofplays that you thought you knew all too well, then the Belgian director IvovanHoveisyourman. On the heels of his devastating stagingof ArthurMiller’sAView fromtheBridge,vanHovereturns to Broadway this month with his take on The Crucible, Miller’s thinly veiled allegory about the 1950s Communist witch hunts, setagainsttheactual1690sSalem witch hunts, featuring music by Philip Glass and an A-plus cast led by Ben Whishaw and, mak- ing her professional stage debut, Saoirse Ronan. After an early Crucible re- hearsal, I catch up with Whishaw and Ronan. Perhaps best known for his role in the BBC’s ifties-set newsroom show The Hour, the 35-year-old British actor had an action-packed fall, with roles in Spectre, The Danish Girl, and the television series London Spy. But like a lot of British actors of his generation, Whishaw got his startonthestage,withabreakout performance as Hamlet in Trevor Nunn’s 2004 production at the Old Vic, and most recently ap- pearedintheWestEnd’sPeterand Alice,oppositeDameJudiDench. Asithappens,heirsttookonthe roleof thelawedbutmorallycou- rageous John Proctor in a school production when he was ifteen. “It’saplaythatschoolchildrenun- derstand, somehow, because it’s about a microcosm, isn’t it?”says Whishaw,sportingaploughman’s beard for the role. “And people ganging up and bullying and hys- teria.”Although he went against physical type in casting the slight Whishaw—Broadway’s last John Proctor was Liam Neeson—van Hove was more interested in the actor’s ability to bring many dimensions to thecharacter:“Youfeelthatthere’sasecretworldinhismind, in his body, and you never know where he will go.” As Abigail Williams, a vindictive seventeen-year-old who destroys lives with her false accusations, Ronan is revisiting territory she explored in her Oscar-nominated EDITOR: VALERIE STEIKER aboutpeoplearetalking PATA >2 10 Totellthe TRUTHBen Whishaw and Saoirse Ronan play foes and former lovers in Ivo van Hove’s Broadway revival of The Crucible. i theaterDOWN THE GARDEN PATH WHISHAW IN A GUCCI COAT AND RONAN IN A CAROLINA HERRERA DRESS. V O G U E . C O M MELBLES.SITTINGSEDITOR:SONNYGROO.HAIR,TEIJIUTSUMI;MAKEUP,FLORRIEWHITE.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE. V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 209
- 208. good-humored portrait ofcollege life in eighties Texas, Rich- ard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some stars Blake Jenner (Glee) as Jake, a freshman baseball pitcher who must carve outhisplaceamonghisteammates—afreewheelingcrewthatincludes agarrulouslady-killer(wittyGlennPowell)andaphilosophicalstoner (KateHudson’shalf-brotherWyattRussell)—whilepursuingaspunky theater major (Zoey Deutch). As festive and breezy as Boyhood was low-key and deep, the movie shows of Linklater’s sharp eye for the rituals that deine young manhood—the cocky banter, the silliness around women, and especially the peacocking; whether heading to the disco, the country bar, or the campus theater party, Jake and his buddies dress to strut their stuf. Businesssuitsencountersheiks’robesinTomTykwer’supbeatadap- tationof AHologramfortheKing,DaveEggers’sdreamlikenovelabout the end of the American Era. In a nifty piece of casting, Tom Hanks playsAlanClay,adivorcedBostonbusinessmanwho,tosavehiscareer, goes to Saudi Arabia to sell the king some expensive IT. But when his majestyprovesashardtomeetasGodot,Clayendsupkillingtimewith zany drivers, slippery princes, and two attractive women (Homeland’s Sarita Choudhury and Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen) who help this confused American get his groove back.—JOHN POWERS amovies breakthrough in Atonement as Bri- ony, a vindictive thirteen-year-old who destroys lives with her false ac- cusations. Coming of her nuanced (and also Oscar-nominated) por- trayal of an Irish immigrant torn between two suitors in Brooklyn, the 21-year-old Ronan is looking forward to “the commitment and the stamina” required by the stage. When we irst meet Abigail, it’s been seven months since she was thrown out of Proctor’s house, where she had been a servant, because his wife, Elizabeth (Sophie Okonedo), discov- ered that they’d been having an af- fair. “He’d taught her everything she knows about the world, made her feel for the irst time important for who she was,” Ronan says. “And I think she wants to feel powerful and needed the way she did with him.” Adultery, sorcery, mob hysteria: van Hove, who has a gift for making plays feel both timeless and uncanni- ly of the moment, believes that audi- ences will ind all kinds of ways into Miller’s material: “I think this play perhapsworksevenbetternowthatit can be liberated from the McCarthy era—it speaks more about ourselves these days than perhaps we’d like to admit.”—ADAM GREEN TheBEATgoesON theater art GAMES PEOPLE PLAY TEAM NEWBIE (BLAKE JENNER) GETS THE GIRL (ZOEY DEUTCH). people aboutaretalking C O N TIN U ED FRO M PAG E 20 9 Tom Wesselmann loved Matisse most of all, but, determined to go his own way, created splashy, adlike takes on traditional subjects that made him a reluctant star of the Pop Art movement. Yet while Warhol and Lichtenstein have had their due, an upcoming survey of Wesselmann’s paintings at Mitchell- Innes & Nash will be the first of its kind in New York since the artist’s death in 2004. “The hope is to reintroduce his work to a new generation,” says Lucy Mitchell-Innes—and, she adds, to pave the way for a major museum retrospective. The show focuses on large-scale, mixed-media still lifes and figure paintings from the 1960s on, including two from the Cincinnati-born artist’s famous Great American Nude series. Wesselmann often incorporated postcards and magazine pages in his work, as well as functional objects—a phone that really rang, a clock that really ticked. Eventually he’d make his “paintings” more fully 3-D with molded plastic and laser-cut metal. No matter the medium, he maintained a keen interest in color, and in the female form.—KATE GUADAGNINO PATA >2 1 2 Body OF Work FINE LINES WESSELMANN’S SUNSET NUDE WITH BIG PALM TREE, 2004. V O G U E . C O M ART:TOMWESSELMANN.SUNSETNUDEWITHBIGPALMTREE,2004.OILONCANVAS,105”X128”.©ESTATEOFTOMWESSELMANN/VAGA,NEWYORK, COURTESYOFMITCHELL-INNES&NASH,NEWYORK.MOVIES:VANREDIN/©2015PARAMOUNTPICTURES.ALLRIGHTSRESERVED. 210 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 210. people aboutaretalkingupnext SchoolofROCKDirector JohnCarney (Once) discovered the power of music somewhere in the early eighties. His new film, Sing Street, which he calls “a fantastical version of my teenage years,” is set in his hometown of Dublin, at a moment when the Irish economy was sliding and music videos were on the rise. Sixteen-year-old newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo stars as Conor, who starts a band to impress an aspiring model with the mesmerizing name Raphina (Lucy Boynton). The makeshift group, called Sing Street after its members’ parochial school, becomes a paragon of New Romanticism, replete with Flock of Seagulls hair, guyliner, and chintzy music videos. Walsh-Peelo was cast for his proficiency on the guitar but felt a connection to more than the music. “My granddad, my father, and my uncles all went to Synge Street school [the film’s namesake and shoot location], and it’s hardly changed—the hallways, the uniforms,” he says. Born in 1999, he was less familiar with the musical era, and so he immersed himself. “I’d never come across that stuff before, but I’m a whiz now,” he says. Walsh-Peelo particularly got into Hall & Oates and now describes M’s song “Pop Muzik” as “seminal.” And while Walsh-Peelo is already auditioning for new roles—Sing Street premiered at Sundance and will be released by Weinstein this month—Carney might be pleased to know that the film’s actors still regularly get together in Dublin to jam.—MARK GUIDUCCI NOTEWORTHYStep into spring with Adrienne Wong’s whimsical hand-bound journals in seasonal shades of rose, daffodil, and aqua. The New York–based Wong was a graphic designer before getting into decor and stylishly updating the notebook—with cover illustrations of soft graphics and organic shapes that play off traditional gilded edges.—SAMANTHA REES design BY THE BOOK JOURNALS AVAILABLE AT ADRIENNEWONG.COM. KISS ON MY LIST THE ACTOR PLAYS A SINGER WHO WOOS LUCY BOYNTON’S CHARACTER. V O G U E . C O M 212 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 UPNEXT:COURTESYOFTHEWEINSTEINCOMPANY. DESIGN:LUCASVISSER.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 211. PATA >2 14 DOorDIE Athrilling adaptation of The Night Manager has Tom Hiddleston as an unlikely spy. DEEP WATERS HIDDLESTON’S JONATHAN PINE FINDS ELIZABETH DEBICKI’S JED HARD TO READ. security man, Corcoran (a delectably poisonous Tom Hollander), you keep wondering when Pine will give himself away. The closest le Carré ever came to a James Bond thriller, The Night Manager is the best adaptation of his work in either movies or TV since the BBC did Smiley’s People in the early 1980s. Working from a taut script by playwright David Farr, Danish director Susanne Bier knows that the key to making such a glamorously implausible tale suspenseful is getting us to believe in its characters. Even as she sleekly rockets us from Egyptian streets to posh alpine lodges, she anchors the film in vivid work from all her actors, be it the lanky Debicki as Jed, whose carefully concealed sense of entrapment evokes a Hitchcock heroine, or Homeland’s David Harewood as a CIA operative who seems almost too straightforward to be trustworthy. There’s no question of ever trusting Roper, who’s as ruthless as he is connected. He’s played with chilling malevolence by Laurie, whose modulated performance forever answers the question “How would Dr. House have behaved if he’d been pure evil?” Of course, this being le Carré, a writer not afraid of unhappy endings, we can’t be sure that the heroic Pine has what it takes to stop the entitled Roper. But we do know that this is an almost- perfect role for Hiddleston, whose aura of likable, good-humored decency nearly always masks something darker. (That same quality comes in handy in his winning performance as the brilliant and self-destructive Hank Williams in I Saw the Light, a biopic of the country singer opening late March.) This superb actor has never felt more like a star than he does as Pine, a man who discovers that to take down a monster you have to unleash the monster in yourself.—J.P. elling a lie is one thing, living it another. Just ask the hero of The Night Manager, AMC’s sensationally good six-part thriller based on the best seller by John le Carré. Tom Hiddleston stars as Jonathan Pine, an honorable, romantic-souled ex-soldier who works as the night manager at a luxury hotel in Cairo. But when someone is murdered there, he’s recruited by an intelligence agent (Olivia Colman, excellent as ever) to infiltrate the inner circle of “the worst man in the world”—Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie), a billionaire arms dealer with disturbingly close ties to the British government. If that isn’t tricky enough, Pine starts developing feelings for Roper’s mistress, Jed (The Great Gatsby’s Elizabeth Debicki), who, like virtually all le Carré heroines, is in dire need of rescue. Given that his every move is monitored by Roper’s paranoid t television V O G U E . C O M V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 213 MITCHJENKINS/AMC
- 212. FRESH PERSPECTIVE LA LANCHAOFFERS SWIMMING, CANOEING, AND TUBING. In northern Guatemala, where a lush rain forest gives way to the clear waters of Lake Petén Itzá, you’ll find the rustic-chic La Lancha. Part of the Francis Ford Coppola portfolio, the resort has just undergone a renovation that expanded the dock and doubled the size of the suites, newly outfitted with white mahogany antiques and brightly colored woven textiles. Guests can climb the nearby Mayan ruins of Tikal, then return for a swim or a meal of fresh bay snook fish at the open-air restaurant. “I find it’s one of my favorite properties. I love the simplicity,” says Coppola, “and the howler monkeys.” thefamilycoppolaresorts.com.—K.G. TheLakeHOUSE travel books BRIGHT YoungThings S he knew if she waited long enough it would happen. The big bang, the cos- mic crash, the delightful disturbance that would determine her true city fate,” thinks Lucy, the Idaho naïf turned art-world muse in Tuesday Nights in 1980 (Scout), Molly Prentiss’s love letter to a vanished New York. Innocence can be a kind of currency, one easily stolen, or so inds the young Midwestern wait- ress in Stephanie Danler’s memoir-like Sweet- bitter (Knopf), whose tutelage by a jaded older couple gives way to Dangerous Liaisons–style lessons in oysters and betrayal. Don’t quit your day job: That’s the takeaway of Lisa Owens’s ruefully funny NotWorking (Dial Press), featur- ing a Generation Y Bridget Jones, whose red wine–and–TED talk–fueled pursuit of a higher purpose in life leads to hard truths and hang- overs. A trip to Sri Lanka provides no easy re- demption for the wayward heroine of Hannah Tennant-Moore’s Wreck and Order (Hogarth), who speaks to 20-something motivations— “lust, rage, lust, rage”—with bracing honesty. But perhaps the most unrepentant of all is the social-climbing auction-house assistant in L. S. Hilton’s jubilantly mordant Maestra (Putnam). Already optioned for the big screen by Amy Pascal, it’s the story of a twenty-irst-century femme fatale as lethal as Tom Ripley and as seductive as Bacall.—MEGAN O’GRADY Springnovelsfeaturelost girlsinthebigcity. people aboutaretalking LOAVES AND FISHES MAIRA KALMAN’S PAINTINGS HANG IN UNION SQUARE CAFE’S WINDOWS DURING RENOVATION. Second SERVINGS W hen a rent hike forced Union Square Cafe to shutter, New Yorkersheavedacollectivesighof dismay.Butthencamethe good news that the New American favorite would rise again nearby.TheDavidRockwell–designedspacewillberoomier,withdouble- heightceilingsandanupstairsbar,whileretainingabustlingfeel.Thedish- es, too, shouldbeamixof oldandnew, withsomesurprises. “Idon’tplay favoriteswiththemenu,butChef Quagliatahasaprettymagicalwaywith pasta,”saysDannyMeyer.Farthernorth,DanielHummandWillGuida- ra are at work remaking their high-end seasonal fare for the fast-casual trend: Made Nice will ofer classic pairings (chicken and lemon; salmon anddill)atapricepointideallysuitedforgrabbingaquickbite.“Itwillbe toNoMadasNoMadistoElevenMadisonPark,”saysGuidara—“faster, less expensive, but just as delicious and just as gracious.”—LILI GÖKSENIN scene V O G U E . C O M TRAVEL:JOSÉRODRIGUES/©GETTYIMAGES.SCENE:MAIRAKALMAN. 214 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 215. EX MACHINA “Unfussy”isn’tanewideal,butithasgreatcurrency.Weallwanttobe,finally,liberatedfromphysicallyconstrictingclothes—and sartorialfoolishness.That’swhyaloosetopandlounge-y,laid-backpantsaretheshapeofthingstocome.ModelJoanSmallswearsaVetements shirtdress,$1,180;matchesfashion.com.Bosspants,$375;selectHugoBossstores.Hondahumanoidrobot.Details,seeInThisIssue. Fashion Editor:Tonne Goodman. April 2016 T O M O R R O W L A N D Howwillthefuturefamilyliveanddress?Ourprognosticationsinclude androidaupairs,saladsfromairbornepods,virtual-realityvacationson demand—andplentyofclean-lined,cool,andultracomfortabledaychic. PhotographedbyMertAlasandMarcusPiggott.
- 216. GAME CHANGER Robot forthe win! (And, on Mom, minimalism’swinningest color combination.) Ralph Lauren Collection silk-jersey cropped sweater, $890; select Ralph Lauren stores. Calvin Klein Collection pants, $950; Calvin Klein Collection, NYC. Cartier watch. On Abraham: Vineyard Vines shirt. Bonpoint shorts. On Ava: Oscar de la Renta dress. On actor Nikolaj Coster- Waldau: ATM Anthony Thomas Melillo T-shirt. Linde Werdelin watch. Details, see In This Issue.
- 218. ETERNAL SUNSHINE A newera calls for a new kind of cover-up—like a matching jacket, say, instead of a pareo or kurta. Dolce & Gabbana jacket ($2,745) and swimsuit ($575); select Dolce & Gabbana boutiques. On Ava: Lands’ End jumper, shirt, and shoes. On Coster-Waldau: Solid & Striped swim trunks.
- 219. GOOD SHAPE The interesting silhouetteswe’re seeing are essentially geometric—witness this creative spin on the old high-low with an apron skirt–over– trousers combination. Marni top ($770) and skirt ($1,500). Top at select Neiman Marcus stores. Skirt at Marni boutiques. Jil Sander trousers, $870; Jil Sander, NYC. Bulgari ring. Fendi sandals. Details, see In This Issue.
- 220. MOTHERBOARD Most of theprints here are feminine but abstract, only hinting at florals or other organic forms. These squiggles could remind you of coral— or maybe wiring and circuitry configurations. J.W.Anderson top, $1,095; j-w-anderson .com. Annelise Michelson earrings. Asobu Glass Water Bottle with Fruit Iceball Maker. Details, see In This Issue.
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- 223. VIRTUALLY DISTINGUISHABLE Do we dressfor a big night when we’re traveling to the fabulous fete via VR headsets? Yes, we do—this isn’t Y2K gaming in sweats on the couch; it’s society networking via immersive tech. Proenza Schouler top, $890; Proenza Schouler, NYC. Delpozo skirt, $1,750; bergdorfgoodman .com. Alyssa Norton cuff. Michael Kors Collection belt. On Coster-Waldau: Brooks Brothers polo shirt. Burberry trousers. PlayStation VR. Double Robotics Double 2 Telepresence Robot. Details, see In This Issue.
- 224. NEW TRICKS Robotic dogs:They’re cute, friendly—and they don’t shed on your pristine Space Age digs. Sailor pants are also cute and friendly; pair them with an extra-lanky sweater and you’ve created a newsy A-line silhouette. Sportmax sweater, $695; Sportmax, NYC. J.Crew pants, $138; jcrew.com. WowWee CHiP robot dog and MiPosaur robot dinosaur. 226
- 225. ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Loungewear—or post-postmodernformalwear? Either way, we’re loving the look of outlines and contrast piping. J.W.Anderson shirt ($745) and pants ($695); Maryam Nassir Zadeh, NYC. Sophie Buhai ring. On Coster-Waldau: Rag & Bone jeans. Boskke Sky Planters. Samsung Family Hub refrigerator. Details, see In This Issue.
- 227. FUTURE PERFECT A newutopia: the relaxation of pajama dressing—with all the panache of McQueen. McQ Alexander McQueen jacket ($995), shirt ($485), and trousers ($550); mcq.com. Jennifer Fisher choker. Hermès bag. Stella McCartney shoes. On Abraham: Lands’ End shirt and pants. On Coster-Waldau: J.Crew sweater. ATM Anthony Thomas Melillo T-shirt. Faraday Future FFZER01 concept car. Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle. In this story: hair, Garren at Garren New York for R+Co.; makeup, Mark Carrasquillo. Menswear Editor: Michael Philouze. Set design, Bette Adams for Mary Howard Studio. Architect, Mike Rostami for Unicon Builders, Inc. Photographed at a Mulholland Realty property. Details, see In This Issue.
- 229. Rihannahasrevealedanewsound,launched anagency,designedadebutfashionline,andis embarkingona63-cityworldtour.Canglobal dominationbefarbehind?ByAbbyAguirre. PhotographedbyMertAlasandMarcusPiggott. A LEAGUE OFHER OWN “Icanonlydome,”thesingersays.RalphLaurenCollectiondress. AnitaKoearcuffs.Details,seeInThisIssue. FashionEditor:TonneGoodman. I t’s Super Bowl Sunday, and I am in the large Mediterraneanhomeof RealHousewifeCarlton GebbiainBeverlyHills,thesettingforRihanna’s Vogue shoot. The 28-year-old singer appears in the doorway, fresh off a plane from Toronto, where the night before she and Drake wrapped thevideofortheirhitsingle“Work.”Sheiswear- ing a vintage Guess leather biker jacket, a gray Star Wars T-shirt, and green Vetements sweat- pants, her sleek black hair chopped into a blunt nineties bob. Even such a Netlix-and-chill look cannot conceal the singularproportionsof herbody.Shehugsmehelloandthen loats upstairs, where hair and makeup stylists await. I settle into a chair outside and pass the time by—what else?—checking my phone. Thanks to the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, every Instagram post by a pop star has become a source of intrigue, every teased video clip fodder for frenzied speculation. On this particular afternoon, the RiRi chatter, robust on any day, is reaching peak hysteria. Ten days earlier, Rihanna dropped Anti, her irst album since 2012. For seven years, she had released a new pop confection every year, like clockwork. Then, suddenly, noth- ing. It wasn’t just the timing. Anti immediately announced itself as something diferent. A deiant, idiosyncratic mix of dance hall, doo-wop, and soul, it did not deliver her Working
- 230. UNAPOLOGETIC Her friend Cara Delevingnedescribes Rihanna’s mode as “go with your instinct and go with your gut.” Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci dress. Details, see In This Issue.
- 231. year to justdo whatever I want artistically, creatively,” she says. “I lasted a week.” The paparazzi got a picture of her going into the studio, “and my fans were like, ‘Oh, yes! We’s droppin’ a single.’ ”From that moment, she says, the Navy was expecting an album. It would be another two years. Turns out it takes a while to reinvent your sound. As Delevingne says, “Anti’s got its own genre, and that genre is her.”Had Rihanna gotten bored with the pop formula? “Very much,”the singer says. “I just gravitated toward the songs that were honest to where I’m at right now.”From the irst song, “Consideration,” a trip-hop collaboration with SZA, the message is clear. The chorus has Rihanna singing, “I got to do things my own way, darling.”It’s “like a PSA,” she tells me. She recognizes the risks: “It might not be some automatic record that will be Top 40. But I felt like I earned the right to do that now.” Avoidingthebravadoandeasyhooksof pasthits,another song, “Higher,”reveals a woman who’s been burned by love. Rihanna compares it to “a drunk voice mail.”She explains, “You know he’s wrong, and then you get drunk and you’re like, ‘I could forgive him. I could call him. I could make up with him.’ Just, desperate.” The candor is heightened by a husky, soul-inlected warmth. “We just said, ‘You know what? Let’s just drink some whiskey and record this song.’” Then there’s “Work,” on which she repeats the word work until it is no longer recognizable, a lourish one critic called “post-language.”While it evokes a technofuture, it’s actually a nod to her home culture in Barbados. (Though Rihanna now splits her time between New York and L.A., her ties to the island remain strong. She is close with her mother, Monica Braithwaite, who owns a clothing boutique there, and with her mater- nal grandfather, Lionel Braithwaite, a frequent star of her Instagram feed.) “You get what I’m saying, but it’s not all the way perfect,” she says. “Because that’s how we speak in the Caribbean.” In the accompanying video she made with Drake—“Everything he does is so amazing”—Rihanna grinds and jerks in a knitted Rasta-colored Tommy Hiliger dress at a raucous dance-hall party, the kind “we would go to in the Caribbean and just dance and drink and smoke and lirt,” with her real-life best friends, Melissa Forde and Jennifer Rosales. There have been a few singles dropped along the way, including “FourFiveSeconds,” an acoustic collaboration with Kanye West and Paul McCartney. “It’s almost like no one ever told him about his success,”Rihanna says of Mc- Cartney, whom she found to be endearingly humble. “It’s like, Aren’t you busy being a Beatle?”Last spring brought “Bitch Better Have My Money,” an over-the-top revenge fantasy whose video walked the line between empowerment and misogyny. “It’s just a way to describe a situation,”she says. “It’s a way to be in charge, to let people know that you’re all about your business.” Over the past two years, Rihanna has deinitely been all about her business. After fulilling her contract with Def Jam, she created her own imprint, Westbury Road Enter- tainment, on Universal’s Roc Nation label. In a bold move, she then acquired the masters of all her previous albums and made a reported $25 million promotional deal with “Itmightnotbe someautomaticrecord thatwillbeTop40,” shesays.“ButIfelt likeIearnedtheright todothatnow” usual instantly gratifying, reliable pop formula. Stoking the ire were rumors that Anti was leaked through Tidal, the streaming service run by Jay Z and co-owned by Rihanna. Next were the reports of impossibly low sales igures. Then, the day before, out of nowhere, came the surprise release of Beyoncé’s pointedly political video for “Formation.” The Internet is ablaze: Did Bey just try to steal RiRi’s thunder? And, most breathlessly: Is Rihanna going to make a surprise appearance at the Super Bowl?! Rihanna,meanwhile,isrecliningonachaiseonaveranda in the sun, taking pulls from a joint and sending wisps of smoke into the cloudless California sky. She’s listening to a remix of Sia’s “Chandelier,”occasionally belting out a lyric in that inimitable Bajan tone: “I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist! Like it doesn’t exist!” W e are living in a golden age of pop divas. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Adele: Rarely have the top ranks been so ruled by women. We feel vulner- able with Adele, empowered by Taylor. We want to watch Beyoncé. Watch her dance, watch her dominate the mar- ketplace, watch her slay. In this gloriously crowded arena, Rihanna transmits something unique. Not afraid to show us her flaws, Rihanna inspires us to, as her friend Cara Delevingne puts it, “go with your instinct and go with your gut, and if people don’t like you, fuck ’em.” This take-it-or-leave-it realness is what draws young women into the ranks of Rihanna’s iercely loyal fan base, known as her Navy, after a lyric from her song “G4L.” And in 2016, the Navy is going to get a lot of Rihanna. Over the next few weeks alone, her planistolytoNewYorktodebutacol- lection she designed for Puma at New York Fashion Week; return to L.A. for the Grammys; then head to London to perform at the Brit Awards (she will grind with Drake in white-hot fringed pants); and, two days after that, go back to California to begin a 63-city world tour. Her looks on tour are “inspired by neutral earth tones,”she says, “and evolve from one extreme to the other as the show progresses.”Joining her will be Big Sean and the Weeknd in Europe, as well as Travis Scott, whom she’s been seen out with in the last few months. “I like to bring people who can get the crowd excited,”she says. “I probably am going to have like four days of tour rehearsal in total, which is Freaking. Me. Out,” Rihanna says. It’s after 9:00 p.m., the shoot is over, and we’re sitting cross-legged in red leather recliners in the home theater of the Beverly Hills house, sipping Pinot Grigio from Dixie cups. “My schedule is so crazy right now.” It’s why, she says, she’s single: “It’s deinitely going to be a challenge when I do decide to pursue a relationship . . . but I have hope!”Exercise is also hard to ind time for. “I don’t work out as much as I’d like to,”she says, “but my trainer Jamie is a beast and she makes me pay for it.” After her last tour, in 2013, for Unapologetic, Rihanna vowed to take a break from recording. “I wanted to have a 233
- 232. what many onRihanna’s team have said. “There isn’t an image, a font, a piece of clothing that she does not approve,” her longtime manager, Jay Brown, says.) It’s a natural move: Rihanna loves fashion, and fashion designers love her. Tom Ford describes her style as “daring, fearless, and constantly evolving.”(Rihanna, in turn, says of Ford admiringly that he “knows how to make a woman a bad bitch.”) Olivier Rousteing of Balmain likens her to Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and Prince: “Whether masculine or feminine, she makes it sexy. She has this strength and modernity.” She seems very comfortable in the role. Just consider the dress she wore to accept the Fashion Icon Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2014, a sheer, Swarovski-encrusted ishnet number by Adam Sel- man that left little to the imagination. “I just liked it better without the lines un- derneath. Could you imagine the CFDA dress with a bra? I would slice my throat. I already wanted to, for wearing a thong that wasn’t bedazzled. That’s the only regret I have in my life.”Wearing a thong that wasn’t bedazzled is your greatest re- gret in life? “To the CFDA awards. Yes.” Nearly a year later, on the Met gala’s 2015 red carpet, so-called naked dresses were rocked by Jennifer Lopez (Atelier Versace),KimKardashianWest(Roberto Cavalli), and Beyoncé (Givenchy Haute CouturebyRiccardoTisci).Andwhatwas Rihannain?Amagniicentlyregalnearlyten-foot,55-pound canary-yellow cape that took the Chinese couturier Guo Pei twoyearstomake,andwhichRihannasourcedherself,onthe Internet.“Shereallylovestoexperimentwithsilhouettesand textureandstyles,butwhensomethingworks,sheisreadyto run in the other direction,”says her head stylist, Mel Otten- berg, who appears in many of the photographs of Rihanna that night, carrying the cape’s massive embroidered train. “My tux was covered in yellow feathers,”he says. Back on Wall Street, Rihanna’s mom, Monica, told a re- porter that her daughter has long been a chameleon. “You never knew what she would want,”said Braithwaite, herself sporting a short platinum chop. “One time she wanted to have pants, another time she wanted to have a lot of frills. Always changing. Always switching it up. She’s always been like that.” Braithwaite is sitting with Rihanna’s younger brothers, Rajad and Rorrey, and her grandfather, who is wearing a Roc Nation hoodie and hat. The room darkens. Models appear through a haze of smoke and bound down the runway, through an “arctic urban forest,” as hairstylist Yusef Williams describes it, in gothic streetwear with samurai flourishes. Luxe and futuristic, the collection references Hood by Air as well as Rihanna’s own nonchalantly glamorous, globe-trotting life- style. “Like if the Addams Family was wearing gymwear,” she’ll tell me later. The inal piece, a black oversize faux-fur hoodie,iswornbyGigiHadid,whoclosestheshowasagor- geous frostbitten witch, with matte black lips and streaks of white paint in her hair. Not one for understatement, Kanye, whose own new album and fashion show were presented the day before at Madison Square Garden, will review the show on Twitter: “Wow Samsung. Robyn Rihanna Fenty, the island girl plucked from obscurity at sixteen by a posse of music moguls, is becoming one herself. It’s because she’s so attuned to the seismic changes in her industry that she also bought a share of Tidal. “Streaming counts now,”she says. Like any savvy businesswoman, Rihanna knows it’s important to diversify. Last fall, she announced a new venture, Fr8me, an agency representing stylists and hair and makeup artists. She has a passionate interest in beauty and often scouts her own talent on Instagram. In the midst of all this, she somehow found time to take a role in Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets, a ilm based on a French comic series. Directed by Luc Besson, it costars Dane DeHaan and Delevingne and is due out in 2017. Speaking by phone, Besson is reluctant to give too much away about her character, except tosaythatherpersonalitychanges“every fifteen seconds.” “As you can imagine, becauseshe’snumberoneinherbusiness, she has a protection, like a crocodile,”the director says of Rihanna. “But she really let herself go. I was so touched by her.” Earlier at the house, two men in suits arrived from the Recording Industry As- sociationof AmericatopresentRihanna with two plaques: one certifying Anti’s platinum status, the other commemorat- ing a benchmark she reached last July, whenshebecametheirstartistinhistory toreach100milliondownloadsonline.(In another sign of the turbulent state of the music industry, re- portswilllatercastdoubtonAnti’splatinumstatus,pointing out that the RIAA took into account one million giveaways that were part of the Samsung deal.) Rihanna seems genu- inely surprised by the accolades. “In lats and sweats!”she says, stretching out a leg. “If only I knew they were coming, I would’ve at least put on a cute little thing.” With the sudden release of “Formation” during Anti’s weekof ascendanceupthecharts,it’snowondertheInternet ispittingBeyoncéandRihannaagainsteachother.Butthat’s not how Rihanna thinks. “Here’s the deal,”she says. “They just get so excited to feast on something that’s negative. Something that’s competitive. Something that’s, you know, arivalry.Andthat’sjustnotwhatIwakeupto.BecauseIcan only do me. And nobody else is going to be able to do that.” O n an icy February night in New York, a line gathers outside 23 Wall Street, once the headquarters of J.P. Morgan’s bank- ing empire and tonight the venue for the Fashion Week debut of Fenty, the new Puma collection by Rihanna, who was named women’s creative director of the sportswear company in late 2014. Inside, Naomi Campbell, Chris Rock, and the rapper Wale are inding their seats. Rihanna isn’t the irst music celebrity to try her hand at fashion design. But how involved was she in the process? “Very dedicated,” the CEO of Puma, Björn Gulden, says backstage.“Shepickedeverysinglefabric,”saysMelissaBat- tifarano,thedesigndirectorbehindthecollection,motioning to a table of high-end do-rags, nineties chokers (a signature Rihanna accessory), and faux-fur fanny packs. (This echoes “Ialwayswanted todowhatmy brothersweredoing. Ialwayswantedto playthegamesthey playedandplay roughandwearpants andgooutside” C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 287 234 PHOTOGRAPHEDATTHEHOMEOFCARLTONANDDAVIDGEBBIA
- 233. SUCCESS STORY While recording Anti, Rihannaalso found time to create her own imprint, acquire the masters of her previous albums, and strike a one- of-a-kind deal with Samsung. Marchesa bralette. In this story: hair, Yusef; makeup, Mark Carrasquillo; set design, Bette Adams for Mary Howard Studio. Details, see In This Issue.
- 234. CLOUD ATLAS Like theclothes, the art-sanctuary terrain of Las Pozas— both man-made and not—is worlds away from the ordinary. Model Grace Hartzel wears a Gucci koi- pond embroidered dress complete with fish and lily pads; select Gucci boutiques. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Camilla Nickerson.
- 235. W E LC O M E T O T H E J U N G L E A LUSH, SCULPTURE-STREWN GARDEN OF EDEN IN THE MOUNTAINS OF CENTRAL MEXICO MAKES A TORRID SETTING FOR THE SEASON’S MOST SULTRY (AND, SOMETIMES, SURREAL) FLOWERS–BY–FRIDA KAHLO LOOKS. PHOTOGRAPHED BY MIKAEL JANSSON.
- 236. THE REAL MACAW Many ofthese looks brilliantly channel both the elegance and the fearless quirk of Schiaparelli c. 1934. Lanvin jersey dress, $4,590; select Saks Fifth Avenue stores. Earrings by Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci and Lulu Frost. Brooches by Sonia Rykiel, Miriam Haskell, and Lulu Frost. Gaspar gloves.
- 237. POWER FLOWER Can therebe a bloom of the moment? We think yes—and right now, it’s the poppy (stronger than a hothouse orchid, more wayward than a rose). Dolce & Gabbana swimsuit, $545; select Dolce & Gabbana boutiques. Chanel cuffs. Details, see In This Issue. BEAUTY NOTE A bold lip adds an edge to spring’s prettiest florals. The Estée Edit by Estée Lauder’s mulberry-hued Barest Lipcolor in Nude Scene blends flower waxes for a natural sheen. 239
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- 239. JUNGLE RED Harking backto the cinematic drama of the 1940s, wicked-woman scarlet is the essential statement color for the passionate and the artistically inclined. Marc Jacobs patent leather skirt ($4,800) and silk blouse ($1,800); select Marc Jacobs stores. Dries Van Noten embroidered bra, $590; Barneys New York, NYC. Chanel belt. Tom Ford ankle-strap heels. Details, see In This Issue.
- 240. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH MONKEY The folkloricaccent here isn’t just in the blunt Aztec-inspired haircut but in the peasant sleeves as well. Céline cotton poplin top ($1,800) and skirt ($2,600); Céline,NYC.Alexander McQueen cuffs.
- 241. SOCIAL BUTTERFLY When-Dalí-met- couture motifs— the disembodied hands,the kiss print—are witty, wonderfully chic, and not too weird. Bally silk blouse, $1,195; Bally, NYC. Sonia Rykiel earring. Fallon pearl earring and nose ring. Details, see In This Issue. 243
- 242. FEMME FATALE Initsconstruction, thiscorsetdress— withava-voom bandeauatthe chest—isaclassic hourglass. The addition ofan exposed bra raises the temperature to scorching. Oscar de la Renta silk-cady dress, $3,290; select Oscar de la Renta boutiques. Dawnamatrix gloves. Details, see In This Issue.
- 244. SIGN LANGUAGE Hands and gloves (withor without sequin “fingernails”) were among Schiaparelli’s trademarks. Here, slightly kinky latex iterations signal an emphatic independent streak. Chanel dress; select Chanel boutiques. Dawnamatrix gloves. Miu Miu platform shoes. 246
- 245. ADULT SWIM Corseted structures madea return on many runways. Maison Margiela uses shirring, underwiring, and a low hip line on a black-and- white lily one-piece (available at Maison Margiela, NYC) for a supersophisticated alternative to skin, skin, skin. Details, see In This Issue.
- 246. WINGED VICTORY Hummingbirds and flamingos arethe natural companions of all these tropical flowers. And they’re to be found, in rainbow array, on Alexander McQueen’s embroidered dress (available at Alexander McQueen, NYC). In this story: hair, Shay Ashual; makeup, Hannah Murray. Photographed at Las Pozas, Xilitla, with Fundación Pedro y Elena Hernández, A.C. Details, see In This Issue.
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- 248. POOL SHARK As theRio games approach, swimming sensation Ledecky trains up to 30 hours per week. “She doesn’t have a lot of time on land,” her father says. Hair, Braydon Nelson; makeup, Asami Taguchi. Sittings Editor: Phyllis Posnick. ne of the reasons it isdiiculttoseepreciselywhatmakesKatieLedeckyperhaps the greatest athlete in America, and maybe the planet, is that when she comes out of her house it is dark, as in very dark, as in 4:25 in the morning. Naturally, conversation at this hour is limited: The swimmer is under the hood of her parka and savoring those last few moments before the 5:00 a.m.plunge,while herfather,DavidLedecky,whoisferrying her to practice, is DJ-ing a little classic rock, as fathers driv- ing their nineteen-year-old daughters anywhere typically do. Ninety minutes and thousands of strokes later, at the pool at Georgetown Prep, in Bethesda, Maryland, where Ledecky trains six days a week, it’s easy to spot the swim- mer who has broken her own world record in the 800-meter Nineteen-year-oldKatieLedeckyhas emergedasaonce-in-a-lifetime phenomenon,breakingmultipleworld recordsinracesshortandlong. What’shersecret?asksRobertSullivan. PhotographedbyAnnieLeibovitz. S t y l e F r e e 250
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- 250. freestyle an astoundingfour times since 2013. She is the six- foot-tall woman powering through her laps alongside the men, a few lanes away from the rest of the women. Seated in the stands is the swimmer’s mother, Mary Gen (short for Mary Genevieve), who doesn’t get into the particulars of her daughter’s technique. “You should ask Katie,”she says. “I wonder what she’ll say. We try to stay out of strategies. We just try to make sure she’s happy.” To that end, Mary Gen Ledecky sprints from the pool before practice is over, places an order on her phone, and drives to the Ledeckys’favorite deli, Ize’s, to pick up break- fast. Does the Olympian order special açaipowdersorproteinshakesthatwere originally tested by NASA? Does she favor anything that gives a clue as to how a person can win only gold medals since her 2012 Olympic debut as a if- teen-year-old? Or how, given her subse- quentgoldsinthe200-,400-,800-,and 1,500-meterfreestyleracesattheFINA World Championships in Russia last August, she pulled off a first-time-in- history coup that, by the way, set world records in the 800 and 1,500, when people had thought that maybe she was good only at short distances? (“I don’t know if she has any weaknesses,” Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin said recently. “If she does, we haven’t seen them yet.”) Sportswriters are pulling muscles trying to explain the signiicance of this four-event sweep by Ledecky, which is akin to a runner’s taking the gold in the 100-yard dash and then doing the same for the marathon. “Katie wants an om- elet,”sayshermom.“Shedoesn’treallyeatanythingspecial.” L edecky seemed to swim from nowhere to win a gold at the London Olympics four years ago, and her trail of gold medals and broken world records since is like nothing seen before. Even though you might search for that one specialthing—aseveryonesurelywillif she takes as many medals in Rio as an- ticipated(andbreakssomemoreworld records)—Ledecky’s trick will likely remain elusive. Her coach, Bruce Gemmell, irst met her at the 2012 Olympics; his son, Andrew, was on the 2012 Olympic team and now trains with Ledecky. “Her strength is not in any physical at- tribute,”says Gemmell. “It’s not even in any particular tech- nique. It’s in her overwhelming desire to do what she needs to do to get better.” Sure, she does the little things, makes the technical changes—working hard on her tempo and her stroke count, along with adjusting her kick—and she does hershareof traininginthegymandmeetswithanutritionist to supplement her Ize’s habit. “As far as I’m concerned, the bigger story is that she’s a better person than she is a swim- mer,”Gemmell continues. “We all know she’s a pretty good swimmer, but she’s just a better person.” Whatismostevidentatswimmeets,infact,isexactlywhat is not happening, Ledecky’s Zen-like way of avoiding stress. She is not about to be so rude as to ignore the question that is asked of her over and over, but in her of time—in the car on the way home from morning practice, anyway—Ledecky seems perplexed. “People always ask, ‘Don’t you feel the pressure?’ ” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, long- limbed and friendly in person, with nut-brown hair and a widesmile.“AndIreallydon’tfeelit.I’vejustalwayssetgoals. When I was a kid, I would write them down, and I would work toward them, and that’s still pretty much what I do. In 2013,Isatdownwithmycoach,andmygoalsaresetthrough 2016, though since then a few things have been added.” “You used to put them up in your room,”her mom says from the driver’s seat. “They’re just not in my room now,”Ledecky says. “I have a reminder somewhere, but I am not going to tell where.” Her fans (and they are legion, and they are swimming in high school pools the world over) see her as the poster woman for optimistic self-discipline, with 20 to 25 hours per week in the pool and about five hours of work in the gym. An example of this work ethic: In 2014, she tells me, achieving her world- record-setting mile speed was not only not easy but painful—she drove her- self very hard to win. “That hurt,” she says. She kept pushing herself, though. “Now my speed from 2014 becomes my easy speed.” This is the extent of her secret weaponry: a devotion to practice, to superhuman goals achieved with a low-key, family-supported routine, one that involves watching CNN after dinner and maybe a little on-demand SNL while doing all the big reading for school on the weekend, so she can get to bed by nine-thirty. “She’s extraordinarily ordinary in some respects,”says her older brother, Michael, 21, a senior at Harvard and an editor for the Crimson. “I mean, the way she carries herself, the way she goes about things—there’s no drama or anything like that. She’s just always very dialed-in and doesn’t let the extraneous things, whether it’s expectations or anything else, get in her way.” Katie credits the dozens of Stratego games she played against Michael in London before her swims with preparing her mentally for her Olympic gold, and cites his diligence as her inspiration. “I’ve always looked up to my brother, for how hard he works,”she says. “I started swim- ming with him, and we had a lot of fun.” Her poolside rep is that of the teammate who sticks around for other people’s races; even a little before 7:00 a.m., she is impressively upbeat. On the quick drive home to the Ledeckys’ cozy Colonial in Bethesda, there’s only time to discuss the barest of the day’s logistics because when her motherpullsintothedriveway,Katieisupthestairsandinto bed, to sleep for an hour before her classes at Georgetown University. Her father, an attorney, is in the kitchen. “She doesn’t have a lot of time on land,”he says. While the Olympian sleeps, her parents recount Katie’s history in the pool. Mary Gen, who had herself been a championship swimmer in college, was looking for a place for the family to swim in the D.C. area, where, it turns out, competitive swimming has deep roots. (The irst pool she tried had a seven-year waiting list.) When Mary Gen inally landed a membership at a club, she realized her kids knew none of the other children there, and so out of parental desperation an Olympic hopeful was born. “Hey,” Mary Gen said, “do you guys want to join the swim team?”Two big road-to-the-Olympics moments: an early race in which “Idon’tknowifshehas anyweaknesses,” Olympicgoldmedalist MissyFranklinsaid. “Ifshedoes,wehaven’t seenthemyet” 252
- 251. 800-meter in Austinin January, another swimmer was overheard saying, “Channel the SEAL, Katie!” Post-nap, Katie goes to lunch in Georgetown, at the Tombs, one of the family’s favorite restaurants. As she works through a chicken salad, she happily talks about old races, remembering, eventually, the world-record- breaker in Russia last year that happened in a preliminary 1,500-meter freestyle, accidentally! She’s laughing and looking a little amazed herself, still, as she remembers how it went. “My coach told me to swim the first 900 meters easy, and then to build over the next 300, and then the inal 300 was going to be my call,” she says. “And then word started getting around that I was just going easy. That be- came the joke. ‘Hey, Katie, let’s see what your easy is!’ ” Somehow, as she remembers it, the teasing did some- thing: It put her at ease going into the race and then opened a pathway to full-on power. In the last stretches, she re- members, she could see the American swimmers’ families, including her own. The stadium was nearly empty since it was a mere preliminary race. Her mother was chatting with a friend, then turned her attention to Michael, who was watching his sister. “It looks like she might do something special here,”he said. And then Katie could hear the crowd roar, and as she looked out of the water on each breath, she focused on the father of another swimmer who was furiously waving her on. Katie smiles about it. “The joke is that he’s still icing his shoulder,”she says. six-year-old Katie grabs on to the lane lines for support (an extremely cute home video conirms this), and great disappointment on Katie’s part that same year when an ear infection nearly prevented her from reaching her irst in a long line of goals, to race all the way across the pool without stopping. (Her doctor suggested earplugs.) Today, it’s all Rio, all the time. “I don’t know how she does it. I mean, it’s a grind,”says her mother. “I don’t either,”says her father. “We’re biased, but she’s a great kid.” Katie’s scholarship to Stanford begins this fall; she de- ferred for a year to train for the Olympics. Last fall, when I visited, she was enrolled in two classes at Georgetown: Chinese history and politics. “They keep me mentally en- gaged,”she says. As Rio approaches, she’d like to hang out with friends from home, many of them former swim-team mates from the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, her Catholic high school alma mater, but given all the de- mands of her training, there’s not a lot of time for social- izing or dating. Katie loves dressing up for the occasional swimming-awards event: She leans toward tailored dresses in a nautical palette of black, navy, and cream. Katie just barely had time to sneak in a book recently, Living with a SEAL, in which the author trains with a Navy SEAL. “It’s got a lot of bad language, but it’s a great book,” she says. Just before Katie broke her own world record in the CALM WATERS The champion is known for maintaining preternatural tranquillity under extreme pressure. 253
- 253. Sincetheirelectrifyingwinatlastyear’s WorldCup,theU.S.women’steamhasignited soccermania.ReluctantstrikerHamish BowlestrainswithstarscorerAlexMorgan. PhotographedbyAnnieLeibovitz. MASTER CLASS Bowles enduredsprint drills and sliding tackles at the knee of an American great. He and Morgan wear Official U.S. Soccer gear by Nike. Details, see In This Issue. Sittings Editor: Karen Kaiser. I was the ultimate tomboy,”says women’s-soccer supernovaAlexMorgan,rememberingherchild- hood self. “I’m supercompetitive. I wanted to beat the boys at everything, I wanted to be faster; I wanted to be stronger.” I, on the other hand, was the ultimate sissy. “He’s got footballer’s knees!”exulted my father at the very moment of my first appearance in this world. Unfortunately for him, I showed no interestwhatsoeverintheBeautifulGame.Idon’t remember anyone ever teaching me how to play; in England it was simply assumed that every boy would understand the rudiments of the sport. (Girls weren’t part of the equation at that time: They had netball, rounders, and hockey to keep them occupied.) In a doomed attempt to hook me in, Dad took me, aged ten, to watch his beloved local team, Hendon, play in the Amateur Cup semiinal. I vividly recall my father’s disquieting transformation from mild-mannered accountant to Tasmanian Devil, hurling invective, forbidden swear words, and spittle at the hapless play- ers below. Not long after, Dad had to bribe me to attend a white hot–ticket Liverpool vs. Chelsea match with the promise of a trip to the antiques market of Portobello Road the following morning. In 1999, when Morgan was ten, the U.S. Women’s National soccer team, led by Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Michelle Akers, won the FIFA Women’s World Cup, 5–4, against China. From 255
- 254. Westartoffwitha“Turkishget-up,”which,sadly,isnotsomefabuloussable-trimmed robetoprancearoundTopkapiPalacein,butagruelingwarm-upexercise that point on,she was hooked. At sixteen, already a star on her Diamond Bar, California, high school soccer team, she felt that her childhood dream of making it as a professional player was an achievable goal. My achievable soccer goal, meanwhile, was to continue avoiding the ball at all costs. In my irst term at high school I was inexplicably picked for the irst eleven—the elite soc- cer team—presumably because I could run fast. I briely served as goalkeeper, a role in which I displayed astonishing thespian, if not athletic, skills as I pretended to miss the ball by inches as it pelted toward me at breakneck speed. Mostly, though, I just loitered about on the outskirts of the ield with my best friend, gossiping away and admiring our imaginary nail varnish as the ball and the rest of the players went whizzing past. Never, then, in my wildest teen dreams did I expect that one day I would be gossiping away and having my nails done alongside one of the most admired and lauded soccer players in America. Morgan is understandably dumbfounded by the pitiful trajectory of my soccer odyssey, with its pattern of resis- tance to the sexist norm. “It’s almost the complete opposite for women soccer players,”the 26-year-old explains. “We’re dying to play and people are telling us, ‘You can’t play.’ I almost wish I’d been forced into it, instead of my having to ight for it!” I conide in Morgan that I am being forced into the sport again now, for the irst time since those early teenage morti- ications. The assignment would be tolerable were it not for the childhood traumas keeping me awake at night. But if England’s Sir Stanley Matthews, a mid-century star revered by Dad for his dribbling skills, was still playing at 50, the least I could do was give it a go. MyfriendSimonDoonanwasabletoprovidefurtherreas- surance:Heiscurrentlywritingabookaboutsoccerthrough the lens of fashion and style, a project that I am at least half- interested in. “There’s nothing I don’t know about George Best’s cleats,”Doonan told me over our pep-talk lunch. “It’s a stat-mad world, so I’m looking for correlations where fashion-obsessed players score more goals!” He supports his thesis by citing style-crazed players including A.C. Milan’s Mario Balotelli (and his camoulage-wrapped Bentley Continental GT); Paris Saint Germain’s Zlatan Ibrahimovi´c (who favors Rick Owens and a man bun); and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who arrives for training carrying a Gucci wash bag tucked under his arm like a minaudière. The ultimate football fashionisto, of course, is David Beckham, who practically minted the concept of the me- trosexual male with his unquestioning embrace of fashion. “I like nice clothes, whether they’re dodgy or not,” Beck- ham has said, and who can forget his brave experiments with faux-hawks and sarongs? As it happens, I recently found myself at an intimate Manhattan dinner party with Victoria Beckham and her husband, and I thought that I would seize the day and ask the glamorous soccer legend (impeccable that night in Savile Row tweeds and elaborate tattoos) what advice he might have for me. David is a man of few words, but they are usually well chosen. “Listen to the girls,”he counseled. “They’re the most driven athletes I’ve ever known, and their success is showing it. They know better than most of the guys. Listen to them—and run fast!” H eeding his advice, I begin my odyssey by lying to Los Angeles to work with DawnScott,thereveredtrainerrespon- sibleforkeepingtheU.S.women’steam in fighting and winning form. In the spirit of that person who does a spring clean before the housekeeper arrives, I book in for some pre-training sessions beforehand. I meet my fetching Brazilian-Swedish trainer, Daniel Söderström, in the prettily landscaped gardens surround- ing the La Brea Tar Pits on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has set up a loor ladder, cones, and a series of nets and goal posts under the shade of a spreading maple tree next to a pit in which a prehistoric sloth was once trapped, an ominous metaphor for my own speed if ever there was one. Söderström and I work on my “cognitive skills,” which are sadly, if not surprisingly, wanting: I can’t quite connect my foot to the ball. When I inally make contact, I kick it so wide of any of the goals that it hits the maple tree’s trunk with a force that sends half a dozen squirrels hurtling from its sheltering limbs. Two days later, I meet Scott in the StubHub Center in balmy Carson, where she is putting Morgan’s teammate Christen Press through her paces. Growing up, Press tells me, she thought, “Soccer’s so fun because you have all your friends. You come to practice and you talk about everything and you’re running and gossiping. It’s like social hour!” If only I had looked at it that way myself. Scott,whowearsherine,laxenhairpulledbacksensibly, hails from the no-nonsense north of England, where she “grewupplayingonthestreetswiththeboys.”Shefondlyre- members her father taking her to the local Newcastle games during the era of the charismatic Kevin “Mighty Mouse” Keegan,famedforhisBarbraStreisand–in–Evergreenperm. Scott’s training programs are customized to each play- er, taking into account age and injury history. The ath- letes, based all around the country with their local teams when they are not training for the U.S., contribute their information—including diet and all-important sleep recovery—to a central online database so that Scott and head coach Jill Ellis can download it at the end of the day and monitor the GPS and the heart rate of all the players, along with their speed, agility, and itness levels, and adjust the routines accordingly. “It’s a daily ongoing process,”says Scott. “You’re dealing with 25 diferent personalities. You can’t expect they’re all going to be the same.” Now it’s my turn to become intimately acquainted with Scott’s all-star program. I start with forward-bend walks “to 256
- 255. Morganhasbarelytwoandahalfweekswithouttrainingevery year. “Itgoesbyincrediblyfast—fasterthanyouwouldeverwantittogo!”shesays switch onthe glutes and core,”according to Scott, who then introduces me to something iendish called a “Turkish get- up,”which, sadly, is not some fabulous sable-trimmed robe toprancearoundTopkapiPalacein,butagruelingwarm-up exercise. Press does the movements with sleek balletic grace and a ifteen-pound weight held aloft as though it were a dandelion clock. Scott coolly assesses my form and hands me a shoe to work with instead. We follow up with trap-bar work, power cleans, dead lifts, squats, kettle bells, Bulgarian splits, down slides, mountain climbers, and box jumps. “This takes months, years to learn the technique,” Scott says reassuringly. “I don’t want you to feel fatigued too soon.” Frankly, I am already wiped out. “Let’s do two diferent exercises,” she adds cheerily, “and then we will go out to the ield.”Gawd, I’d almost forgotten that bit. A typical field session begins with a good warm-up and might include some speed work, then high-intensity interval training. “You run 90 yards, which should take you ifteen seconds, and you rest for ifteen seconds. You do twelve of those,” Scott says. I am trying to take this alarming information on board, but I am also soaking up the beauty of the ield, fringed with eucalyptus and palm trees and blissfully unlike any of the frigid muddy pitches I remember from childhood. Afterfourruns,myheartrateisatapounding194.“Train- ing like this is really, really hard,” Press tells me. “Training until you’re about to throw up every single day—it’s kind of miserable,actually.Butthatmakesitsomuchmorefunwhen you come back together as a team.” T womonthslater,Scott’sgoodworkundone by holiday dining and indolence, I am in Orlando, Florida, having my nails done alongside Alex Morgan, a player so starry that her new team, the Orlando Pride, was essentially created around her in 2015. Her husband, midielder Servando Carrasco (they met almost a decade ago, when they were both playing soccer at University of California, Berkeley), had recently transferredtoOrlandoCity.Servandohasbeenmovingthem intotheirnewhouse,ashiswifeonlyreturnedyesterdayafter three months on the road. “It looks so pretty,”Morgan says of their home, “but I had never actually been to the house or the neighborhood, so it was kind of a weird experience.” (She worked with a realtor and FaceTime.) “My husband got traded to Houston, and then here, and each time he had to ind a place within 48 hours. The life of professional ath- letes—you have to live your life on the go!”Morgan shrugs. “But I’m living with him for the irst time since college, so I don’t really care where we are—we will make it work!” Morganmayjusthavecomefromherhour-and-45-minute morning workout, but she is looking prom-queen perfect, as beits this poster girl for women’s soccer. She wears orchid purple leggings that showcase her legendarily toned and muscular legs, her favorite Nike trainers in tangerine, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and a practical Marc Jacobs purse in navy and putty. Morgan has been thrice to the New York fashion shows and shops at Veronica Beard, Rag & Bone, andAllSaints.“Alotof fashionisnowveryathletic-looking, so that’s cool for me,”she says. “When I am traveling, I need my basics with something that makes my outit stand out. It needs to be packable and interchangeable.” Morgan proselytizes for her sport not only through her astonishing performances on the ield (she is famed for her late heroics—like scoring the winning goal against Canada inthe2012 OlympicssemiinalgameinLondoninthe123rd minute) but also via her motivational autobiography, Break- away:BeyondtheGoal,andherpopularseriesof soccernov- els aimed at middle school kids. In addition to playing and writing,sheisaforcefullobbyistforequalityinasportwhere sexism is still shockingly rampant, if not institutionalized. Late last year Morgan and her teammates Shannon Boxx and Julie Johnston were invited to join a roundtable at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, where they discussed the inequality in the game. The $265,000 salary cap for women’s national-league soccer players, for instance, is less than one tenth that for men’s major-league soccer players. (International male supernovas Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, take home around $1,000,000 a week.) After the U.S. women’s thrilling 2015 World Cup victory, it was revealed that they were awarded $2 million; the German men’s team received $35 million after winning the 2014 cup. “I think players need to get paid for what they’re worth, for what they put up on the ield,” Morgan told the summit. At 21, Morgan was the youngest player on the team for the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and was subsequently named U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year in 2012 and placed third in the FIFA Ballon d’Or—essentially the world soccer MVP—that same year. At the ceremony, FIFA’s absurd and controversial president Sepp Blatter, who had earlier suggested that women players should wear “tighter shorts”to improve the game’s popularity, failed to recognize Morgan. (A sense of Schadenfreude might have washed over the women’s locker rooms when Blatter was forced to step down from his position at FIFA earlier this year after proceedingswereiledagainsthimfor“criminalmismanage- ment . . . and misappropriation”by the Swiss authorities.) There seems to be sexism afoot, too, in the fact that the seven U.S. women’s World Cup matches in Canada were played on artiicial rubber and plastic turf, even though most of the players had spent their careers playing on grass. Turf is exponentially harder on the body and can lead to impact injuries, and it discourages daring moves like slid- ing tackles. There is no hooliganism in women’s soccer, however, and homophobia is a non-starter. “Gone are the days that you need to come out of a closet,” said Abby Wambach (star of four World Cup tournaments and two Olympic Games), who was surprised at the media scrutiny when she married her long-term partner, Sarah Hufman, in 2013. “I never felt like I was in a closet.” 257
- 256. FIGHTING FORM With theOlympics in August, Morgan’s punishing training schedule typically brings her to the field twice a day. Morgan in Nike. In this story: hair, Peter Gray; makeup, Benjamin Puckey. Production design, Mary Howard. Details, see In This Issue.
- 257. W hen Morgan andher team- matestrouncedJapan5–2last summer,morethan25million people tuned in—the highest rating ever for any American soccer match, male or female. Since then, the U.S. team has played to crowds that average 24,000—the biggest for women’ssportsanywhereintheworld.“Theywanttowatch something fun on the ield, and I think other cultures are so opposed to that, they won’t even give it a chance,”says Mor- gan. “If they did, I think they would enjoy it.” If Morgan collegially wants the other international teams to improve their game, however, she clearly has no inten- tion of letting her own go slack, and with the Olympics in August, the schedule is punishing. Morgan has barely two and a half weeks without training every year. “It goes by incredibly fast—faster than you would ever want it to go!” she says. She spends the downtime doing yoga, practicing meditation, and playing beach volleyball. These days she is watching her diet as never before. “As I havegottenalittleolder,younoticethatwhatyouputinyour bodyactuallyafectsyourenergy,”shesays.“Iknowweneed carbs to burn of energy to play, but I eat more proteins and grains like couscous and quinoa, and I will do rice, but I try to limit the bread and the unnecessary stuf. I used to eat red meatallthetime,butnowItrytoeatitonlyonceaweek;itis reallyhardtodigestcomparedwithchickenandish.”Isense one small area of commonality. Morgan praises her trainer, Scott, with whom she has worked for six years. “She just knows her stuff so well and she works you hard, but you feel you’re getting some- thing out of it.” After my own exertions in Los Angeles, I certainly got an acute sense of Scott’s much-vaunted insistence on sleep recovery. The Orlando soccer ield Morgan and I go to for our training session the following day is framed with palmetto palms and trees dripping with Spanish moss. In fact, ev- erything is dripping: It’s pouring with rain. “This is so Portland right now,”says Morgan with a laugh (she played with the Portland Thorns for two years before her transfer to Orlando). Undaunted, she does twelve sprints the length of the ield and back before working on her dribbling and goal-kicking skills. As the Olympics close in, Morgan and her teammates will practice in the morning, then go to the gym, rest, and train again. Exhausted as Morgan is after all this, she attempts to teach me the rudiments of a sliding tackle (luckily it’s a real grass pitch). I throw myself backward, then forward, to Morgan’s evident bemusement. Although she trains children at her Los Angeles soccer camp, she has never seen “form”like this. Roomforimprovement,certainly,butfortheirsttimeina half-century I can begin to see a glimmer of the ire that has smoldered within my father for all these years. The next time I run into David Beckham, it is ringside with his beautifully dressed children at his wife’s fall 2016 fashion show in Manhattan. He chuckles at the idea that I’ve been training. “How’s those knees?” he asks me, with a twinkle in his eye. 259
- 258. B o rn Ethiopiaisarunning-madcountry—butit’sneverseenanything liketheDibabas.ChloeMalleheadstoAddisAbabatomeetthefastest familyontheplanet.PhotographedbyRonHaviv.
- 259. CATCH THEM IFYOU CAN FROM LEFT: Sisters Ejegayehu, Genzebe, and Tirunesh Dibaba, all wearing Nike, and their cousin Derartu Tulu, in Adidas. Genzebe is expected to win gold in Rio, while the other three are already Olympic medalists. t o R u n
- 260. T he only soundat the top of the Entoto Mountains is the thwack of a cowherd’s staf against the tree trunks as he leads his small herd of oxen home. I am doing my best to keep pace with Tirunesh Dibaba, 30, and heryoungersister,Genzebe, 25, two wisplike Ethiopi- ans with wide smiles and a iercelyclosebondwhomay be the most formidable fe- maletrackstarsintheworld.Inthelate-afternoonlighthigh above central Addis Ababa, we zigzag between the majestic eucalyptus trees, paying heed to the uneven ground below andstayingalertforthenot-uncommonhyenasighting—no problem,thesistersassureme,aslongasyouclaploudlyand throw a rock in the animal’s direction. The Dibabas’dominance in the ield of distance running has captivated the track-and-ield community. “There are a few running families, but not like the Dibabas,” says the Ethiopian track legend Haile Gebrselassie. These are the only siblings in recorded history to hold concurrent world records, and they are as charm- ingly unassuming in person as they are fearsome on the track. The sisters were raised three hours south of here, in a tukul, or round mud hut, without electricity—their parents sub- sistence farmers growing teff, barley,andwheat.Theirmother, Gutu,creditsherdaughters’suc- cess to a loving environment as well as a steady supply of milk from the family cows. In fact there are seven Dibaba siblings, and all of them run.“WhattheDibabashaveiswhatSerenaandVenushave, except there are more of them,” says Ato Boldon, NBC’s track analyst. “It’s not a stretch to say they are the world’s fastest family.” Tirunesh is the most decorated, with three Olympic gold medals; Genzebe is tipped to win her first in Rio. Their older sister, Ejegayehu, 34, is an Olympian, too, with a silver from Athens, and their cousin Derartu Tulu was the irst black African woman to win an Olympic gold, in the 1992 games. “World records, Olympic medals, world championships—the Dibabas’accomplishments are unprecedented in this sport,”says Boldon. WithRioonthehorizon,thefocusissquarelyonTirunesh and Genzebe. This is Tirunesh’s comeback season after tak- ing a year of to raise her now one-year-old son, Nathan; meanwhile, Genzebe had a record-breaking summer, deci- mating the competition in August’s world championships and winning IAAF’s Athlete of the Year award, a crowning glory in the sport. “Last year Genzebe was head and shoul- dersthebestathleteintheworld,”saysracecoordinatorMatt Turnbull, who has worked with the Dibabas for almost a decade.“AndwithTirubeingoutforsolongnow,peopleare excitedtoseewhatwillhappen.They’reaiercelycompetitive family, and they really dictate the landscape.” Asmodest(andpetite)astheDibabasarefacetoface,they are outsize celebrities on the chaotic, construction-clogged streets of Addis Ababa, where they travel by car to avoid being mobbed. Their arrival at their favorite restaurant, Yod Abyssinia, is greeted with hushed whispers (“Dee-ba-ba, Dee-ba-ba”) and reverential stares. The sisters duck under the restaurant’s theatrical thatched straw canopies and take a table against the wall, smiling patiently as a young man approaches and asks for a photo. Afterward Tirunesh takes outheriPhone6 Plus—oneof thefewinthecountry,bought in Europe—her cerise-lacquered nails clacking against the screen as she swipes past the photo of chubby Nathan. For a night out, she’s neatly coordinated in skinny red jeans, a black blazer with white piping, and similarly duo-toned wedge sandals. She admits that she loves to shop when she is competingabroad,particularlyonNewburyStreetinBoston and at any Michael Kors store. Genzebe, who prefers Zara, compensates for her timidity with a sweet attentiveness. Her feet look tiny in black ballerina slippers with grosgrain bows over the toe box. She has replaced her Garmin GPS training watchwithagoldonewhosepavédiamond–ringedfacetakes up the entire width of her narrow wrist. Both women have braids in their thick hair and giggle while conirming that theyshareahairdresser.Theirrespectandafectionareobvi- ous: Genzebe lives with Tirunesh, sharing a bedroom with her baby nephew, and when she becomes lustered follow- ing a question about her love life, Tirunesh protectively steers the conversation elsewhere. (For the record,Genzebehasaboyfriend, but he is not a runner, and she doesn’t want to talk about him.) When Tirunesh’s husband, fellow track-and-field Olympic medalist Sileshi Sihine, appears, cool and handsome in tailored jeansandashawlcollarcardigan, another frisson of excitement ripples through the room. His andTirunesh’s2008 weddingceremonywasanationallytele- vised event, drawing half a million people to the city’s main square, where Olympic races are broadcast to huge crowds. The bride wore a lace-embroidered bustier top and a mille- feuilletulleballskirt;thegroom,aniridescentgraypin-striped morning suit—all purchased on a trip to Milan. They don’t remember the name of the clothier, “but one of the best,” Sihine says authoritatively. “We know people.”Restaurant patrons lock their eyes on us as Sihine slips onto the low woodenstoolnexttohiswife,squeezingherkneeingreeting. As the string notes of the krar ill the room and dancers take the stage to perform an Ethiopian eskista dance— a shoulder-snapping feat of timing and rhythm—I ask Tirunesh what music she likes to listen to. “Michael Jack- son,”sheanswerswithaslysmile.“Heismyfavorite,”thelast word pronounced in three crisp syllables. At this Genzebe, breaking her shell of shyness, speaks up: “For me, Beyoncé.” Their status—and status symbols—marks a stark con- trastbetweentheDibabasandmostothersinthisstillhighly impoverished country. Yet Ethiopia has the fastest-growing economy in sub-Saharan Africa, and Addis, with its ubiq- uitous eucalyptus-pole scaffolding and ragged blue con- struction tarps, is a riot of development. Like many of the nation’s successful track stars, the Dibabas and their in-laws have invested their fortunes back into their city; they are burgeoning real estate tycoons, owning multiple buildings “Worldrecords,Olympic medals,worldchampionships— theDibabas’accomplishments areunprecedentedinthissport,” saysNBC’sAtoBoldon 262
- 261. in the capital—includingthe ive-star Tirunesh Hotel, slated to open this fall on Bole Road, the Fifth Avenue of Addis. Along with Kenya, Ethiopia is a powerhouse for turning out elite runners. According to David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athlet- ic Performance, much of the two countries lies in an altitude “sweet spot”—around 6,000 to 9,000 feet. “High enough to cause physiological changes but not so high that the air is too thin for hard training,”Epstein says. As NBC’s Boldon explains, “When the Dibabas come down to sea level—I’m not going to say it’s like Superman coming from Krypton, but it is a version of that.”There’s also the Ethiopian diet, with its reliance on the iron- and calcium-rich grain tef, and the typical Ethiopian body type, petite and narrow, which is idealforthesport:Tiruneshisivefeetthreeand110 pounds; Genzebe is ive feet ive and 115 pounds. “They have a lot of fight in a very small lightweight frame,” says Boldon. “If youcomparedthemtoacar,theywouldbeaFordFocus with a Ferrari engine.” Genzebe’s Ferrari engine is in top gear at Addis’s only track stadium for an 8:00 a.m. workout. The sun is already high overhead, and she is warming up with her nineteen- year-old sister Anna. They move at a focused, steady clip, their legs in sync, so that from across the track they look like one person, Anna’s smaller frame blending into Genzebe’s. As they speed up, moving seamlessly into sprints on the straightaways,Genzebe’sstridesareprecise,astricteconomy of energy and movement. The two inish the warm-up and plop down on the tartan track to shimmy out of their Nike leggings, casual in their cotton underwear as they pull on micro shorts, the pink swoosh on Genzebe’s matching her fuchsia Dri-Fit T-shirt. The ensuing workout is a series of 20 400-meter sprints, timed by a national team coach, who jots down intervals in red ballpoint on his palm. Genzebe shaves of seconds with each rep, her muscles taut as bowstrings as she catapults her- self acrosstheinishline.Afterwardit’sbacktoTiruneshand Sihine’s impressive home, a two-story stuccoed mansion in one of Addis’s gated communities. Inside, framed photos of familymembersonvictorypodiumstakeprideof place,and a lat-screen TV plays yesterday’s Africa Cup soccer match, butTiruneshexplainsthatshedoesn’tparticularlylikewatch- ing sports. She and her sisters prefer Amharic ilms. What Americanilmsdoesshelike?“AnythingwithAngelinaJolie.” A large breakfast—traditional Ethiopian irir and eggs—is followed by a nap, lunch, and then it’s of to the gym. They are on two workouts a day until Rio. TheairinEntoto,unliketheexhaust-chokedstreetsof Ad- dis, is crisp and clean—and also thin at 10,000 feet above sea level. When we gather for our late-afternoon run, the Diba- bas’cousinTuluarrivesonthemountaintop,nowretiredand lookingmoresoccermomthanOlympian.Thesistersciteher astheirinspiration,andherliltingvoiceboomerangsthrough the trees as they jog together into a cattle clearing. Tulu, who won the New York City marathon in 2009 at the age of 37, is a gregarious and outgoing foil to the soft-spoken Dibabas. Whenaskedwhomshewillcheerforif TiruneshandGenzebe competeagainsteachotherinRiointhe5,000or10,000,Tulu doesnothesitateandsqueezesTirunesh’sshoulder.“She!She is my favorite!”then looks lovingly across at Genzebe: “I am sorry!”Genzeberemainsdiplomatic,sayingonly,“Thestron- gest will win,”while Tirunesh explains that they likely won’t beinthesameheatandthenlooksintothesun,whichisdip- pingbehindthecrestof themountain.“Butwecometowin, so. . . . ”She shrugs; the end of the sentence is unnecessary. There’s an intimacy up here as we jog among the dappled eucalyptus, the Ethiopians slowing their pace to a relative shule while I wheeze from the efort and altitude. “We are always together,”says Tirunesh. “Maybe one day a week we aren’t together.”For all of their bashfulness, the sisters share a mischievous humor that they sometimes let loose on inter- loperslikemyself.Attheendof ourruninEntoto,Tirunesh, joggingbehindme,yells,“Hyena!”withauthoritativeurgency. Ishriek,whippingmyheadaround.WhenIlookbackatthe girls,theyaredoubledoverlaughing,theonlyanimalinsight a weary pack mule trudging slowly across the horizon. IT’S ALL RELATIVE LEFT: Framed pictures fill the Dibaba family home in Addis Ababa. ABOVE: Genzebe, in red, with Tirunesh and her husband, Sileshi Sihine—also an Olympic runner—and their son, Nathan. 263
- 262. T I PP I N G t h e B A L A N C E InspiredbysuperstargymnastSimoneBiles,GinnyGravesexploresthelife-enhancing benefitsofpoise,posture,andagility.PhotographedbyNormanJeanRoy.
- 263. STEADY NOW Biles, ina GK Elite Sportswear leotard, credits her surefootedness to her powers of concentration—and 30 minutes of core work every day. Hair, Jawara; makeup, Yumi Lee. Details, see In This Issue. Sittings Editor: Phyllis Posnick. ’m trying to improve my balance,” I tell a friend when she phones and asks what I’m up to. “Aren’t we all?”She sighs. “I feel like I’m con- stantly racing around and never accomplishing anything.”But I’m nottalkingabouttheeternal questforwork-lifeequilibrium. I’m actually standing (ine, wobbling) on my left leg, doing biceps curls with my right arm, atop a BOSU ball. Inspiring me is the nineteen-year-old gymnastics star Simone Biles, whom I watched at the recent world cham- pionships in Glasgow spinning 900 degrees on one foot on the balance beam. The most dominant woman in the sport today,thefour-foot-eightpowerhousestartedrackingupna- tionalwinsatagethirteen.Bynowshehasarecord-breaking ten world-championship gold medals and is the overwhelm- ingfavoritetobringhomethegoldinRio.Withherirrepress- iblegrinandwarmsenseof humor—shetweetsjokilyseveral times a day—she’s also an overwhelming favorite, full stop. So how does Biles pirouette, leap, and lip on a four inch– wide beam with such apparent ease? “It helps that I started when I was six,”she says, recalling the day her class took a ield trip to Bannon’s Gymnastix in Houston. She began imitating the students’ cartwheels and lips; her grandpar- ents, who have raised Biles since she was three (her mother struggled with addiction), thought the sport would be a good outlet for their granddaughter. “Simone was super- hyper and not afraid to try anything,” recalls her grand- mother Nellie Biles (whom Simone calls Mom). “From the time she got out of bed in the morning she was jumping and lipping on the furniture.” That tremendous energy, Biles believes, is what allows her to throw jaw-dropping vaults with two-and-a-half twists and perform a double layout with a half twist in her loor routine—a feat that is now oicially known as “the Biles.” The best in her game, she’s beating her nearest competitors by full integers in a sport where medals are decided by frac- tionsof apoint.Judgestakeroutines’diicultyintoaccount; hersaresoambitiousthatevenwhenshemakesmistakes,she earnsenoughpointstocomeoutontop.LastOctober,atthe world championships, she overrotated on a front lip on the beam,andinanastoundingsavegrabbedtheapparatuswith her hands and righted herself. Despite the error, she brought home the gold. “On the beam, C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 287 I 265 SETDESIGN,DEARY’SGYMNASTICSSUPPLY
- 264. T he catastrophic resultsof inancial reckless- ness can be found everywhere these days—in headlines, on movie screens (The Big Short). Nowthehumancostof ruthlessgreediscom- ing to the Public Theater in Dry Powder, the 33-year-old Sarah Burgess’s scathingly funny, remarkably assured play about the battle for the soul of a private equity irm, starring Claire Danes and—making his professional stage debut—John Krasinski. Directing is the brilliant Thomas Kail, coming of the triumphs of Ham- ilton and the live-network-TV broadcast of Grease to helm ClaireDanes andJohnKrasinski starinthe PublicTheater’s Dry Powder— aviciousand hilariousdrama skewering thepeoplewho skewerour globaleconomy. ByAdamGreen. Photographed byStevenKlein. M o n e y f o r N o t h i n g a chamber piece, albeit one that goes for the jugular. “I had such a strong reaction to the conidence and muscularity and precision of Sarah’s writing,”says Kail, who is staging theplayintheround.“Iwantedtogetallof usasclosetothe actionaspossible,tocreateamini-colosseumwherewecould watch these characters crash into each other.” Hank Azaria plays Rick, the president of KMM Capital Management, which is reeling from a public-relations night- mare(massivelayofsatacompanyheacquiredtakingplace onthesamedayhethrewhimself anextravagantengagement party featuring a live elephant). Krasinski is Seth, one of 266
- 265. Claire Danes wearsan Altuzarra coat. John Krasinski wears a Dior Homme suit and a Paul Smith tie. Menswear Editor: Michael Philouze. Hair, Bryce Scarlett; makeup, Matin. Set design, Mary Howard Studio. Details, see In This Issue. Sittings Editor: Phyllis Posnick. Rick’s founding partners, a self-proclaimed good guy who wants to make things right by acquiring a luggage company and growing it; Danes is Jenny, a inancial Terminator who wants to strip the company for its parts. “Seth is this great epitomeof thehumancondition,”saysKrasinski,forwhom theplayhasechoesof GlengarryGlenRoss.“He’sgotamoral compass,butatthesametimehethinks,You’reallsoluckyto havesomeonewithmyintegrityinsidetheinancialsystem— rather than realizing he’s actually a part of that system.” Danes is thrilled to be returning to the New York stage for the irst time since her 2007 turn in Pygmalion. She’s also excited to ind her way into a new character after ive years of playing Carrie Mathison on Homeland, though she does admit that Jenny and Carrie share some quirks. “They’re both incredibly myopic,” she says. “And they’re both dii- cult and not immediately afable, but impassioned. Neither of them is encumbered by a life or the messiness of human relationships—that’s their advantage. I do like that Jenny’s not such an open wound, because Carrie is, and that’s pretty exhausting.IindJennyverycharming—howcansomebody have such awful values and say things that are so cutting and still be strangely adorable?”
- 266. Theanything-goesfoodsceneinLosAngelesisunconventional,liberated,creative— andinfluentialasneverbefore.OliverStrandreports.PhotographedbyEricBoman. A t one time,a classic dish was a prisoner of geography. If you wanted to eat a true margherita pizza, you had to travel to Naples because the purists would tell you even the version you could ind in Rome wasn’t quite right; by the time you got to Milan, it was just a cheese pizza. But the borders that separate culinary cultures don’t mean that much anymore. Now you can get a margherita at Roberta’s in Brooklyn that would make a grown Italian weep salty tears of joy, or a plate of tacos at Hija de Sanchez in Copenhagen that could stand up to the stalls in Mexico City where the taxis patiently wait. Which is why I wasn’t entirely surprised by the croque madame at Gjusta in Venice Beach. It wasn’t a SoCal play ontheFrenchstandard,afusionof LeftCoastlavors.Itwas textbook croque: toasted bread with Mornay sauce (which is béchamel thickened with cheese), thinly sliced ham, and a sprinklingof Comté,allbrownedunderabroilerandtopped by a fried egg with a thick and oozy yolk. And yet it was easily the best I had ever tasted, every lavor delivered with ringing clarity. Rediscovering the familiar can be chastising (because you realize you’ve had it wrong) and thrilling: This is an egg, this is ham, this is bread. Rather, this is what egg, ham, and bread can taste like when a kitchen brimming with skill and conidence decides to transform a mundane if reliably satisfying dish into something so perfect you will measure all others against it. It wasn’t the only standout at Gjusta. What started of as a bakery when it opened in 2014 has evolved into a sun- illedcommissarythatcuressalmonandfermentshotsauces and roasts large cuts of beef. Marble counters, rough wood loors, skylights cut into the ceiling: It feels less like a kitchen than an atelier. The food comes across as healthy, but it’s morewholesomethandietetic.Youcangetasaladoragrain bowl or granola with nut milk; you can also get a croissant or a porchetta melt or a beef-brisket banh mi on bread still warmfromtheoven.TravisLett,whoownsbothGjustaand Gjelina, a more traditional restaurant a short drive away, told me that Gjusta is like a Jewish deli and an Italian deli under one roof, but he’s underselling the experience. It’s as if you took the best shops from your favorite market streets in London, Paris, San Francisco, and Beirut, and packed them into a whitewashed warehouse so close to the beach you can smell the salt air. Los Angeles has a knack for taking the ignored, the commonplace, and turning it into something stylish and graceful—thisisthecityof FrankGehryandJohnBaldessari and Rodarte, artists and craftspeople who made their names transforming the overlooked and everyday into high art. Outsiders have a hard time reading the city where I grew up. Atirsttheydon’ttakeitseriously—theplaceseemstooobvi- ous,eventrashy.Butif youtuneouttheskeptics,partsof this seeminglysimple-mindedmegalopolisemergeasbeingsochic and perfect that the rest of the world scrambles to keep up. Still, the restaurant scene here rarely gets the credit it de- serves. The one in the Bay Area is more legendary, the one in New York more polished. But a new crop of Los Angeles establishments has been exerting a tangible inluence, with a mix of gimmick-free food and airy design that is surfacing elsewhere:atDimesinNewYork,atLaRecyclerieinParis,at the London Plane in Seattle. Gjusta is now on the must-visit list of chefs, bakers, and professional eaters. “Gjustakindof blowsmeawaybecausetherearesomany moving parts, and seeing it executed in such a manner is so impressive. It’s smart, simple, well-made food,”says Ignacio Mattos, the chef of Estela and the newly opened Café Altro Paradiso,bothinNewYork.“Ihadthebestorangejuicethat I’veeverhadthere.Istillrememberit.It’soneof thosethings. How many do you drink in your life? I’m 36, and I wonder, How did I never have an orange juice like this?” AccordingtoLizPrueitt,whostartedTartineinSanFran- cisco with her husband, Chad Robertson, the food in Los Angeles “hits that sweet spot of what’s creative and what’s unexpected, and it’s inspiring a lot of other chefs, whether or not they cook that kind of cuisine. They’re utilizing in- gredients that are familiar in unfamiliar ways, and it feels so healthy and delicious.”During a recent trip to Los Angeles, PrueittandRobertsonwenttoGjustanearlyeveryday.“You get the feeling that there’s somebody making food you want to eat, and when they pull something out of the case they’re going to replace it with something that’s just as delicious.” It’snotaseasyasitlooks.“Simpleisthehardestthingyou can do,” Lett told me. “There is a lot you can accomplish with plating or presentation in a restaurant that you just can’t do here. You can’t hide L.A. STORY Dishes once seen only in the morning are now free to show up whenever they please. It’s as if brunch has taken over the entire day. Pictured here: the classic omelet from Petit Trois. C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 28 9 E A S Y D O E S I T268
- 268. M O ME N T O F T H E M O N T H C H A M P I O N S PUTTING ON AIR After releasing a couple of attention- grabbing mix tapes, Houston-born rapper Travis Scott debuted his acclaimed album Rodeo late last year. Scott wears a NikeLab x RT jacket ($225), T-shirt ($75), and shorts ($120); nike.com/ nikelab. Nike tights and sneakers. Model Joan Smalls wears a NikeLab x RT crop top ($110) and 2-in-1 shorts ($210); nike.com/nikelab. Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci earrings and shoes. Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci bangles. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Sara Moonves.
- 269. L E AG U E
- 270. n the beginning,sports and fashion were two worlds, separately created by separate gods. In 1964, when Bill Bow- erman shook hands with Phil Knightandsetoutontheroad to designing Nike’s now iconic shoes with a waffle iron in a kitchen in Oregon (all func- tion, very little form), Yves Saint Laurent was on the verge of debuting a Mondrian A-line dress that was, conversely, designed not for speed or stretching or any kind of performance aside from, say, a Merce Cunningham premiere. Sprint forward to today, when we are all faster, stronger, more flexible in terms of how we move, what we do, and when we do it. Which means that fashion and sports (and the streets that sports live on) have become one world, with crossover gods. Today, a young designer like Shayne Oliver starts his career not at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture,SaintLaurent’salmamater,butbymakingT-shirts andsweatshirtsforfriends.AlexanderWangisshowingneo- prene sweats. Rihanna is working with Puma, Kanye with Adidas. And now the paradigm shift as Nike, the world’s top-seeded maker of clothing designed to help break world records,stepsintoplayintheworldof ready-to-wear.Nike’s designershaven’tjustbeenhangingoutinlockerrooms.“We go to a lot of shows,”one of them told me. Movement and speed and ease and functionality are now intrinsic to so much that we wear, whether on the ield or in an Uber. Thus we have NikeLab, the place where Nike designers work out with that fashion world. Up to now, the results have been on the gorgeous side: In her fall/holiday pieces for NikeLab (she did a spring/summer collection, too), Sacai’s Chitose Abe took company staples like Wind- runners and Tech Fleece and added sheer trapeze pleats and proportions that made the pieces seem to ly. Now we have three NikeLab collections (Summer of Sport, they’re calling it) set to leave the gate to celebrate the Rio Olym- pics—in collaboration with Kim Jones, Jun Takahashi, and Riccardo Tisci. These days, everybody wants to work out with a fashion designer. As Apple picked up people from Burberry, Saint Laurent, and Gap prior to launching its watch, so Nike Women—the largest women’s athletic brand in the world, currently weighing in at a valuation of $5.7 billion—is part- neringwiththe fashionworldwiththegoalof gainingabout $5 billion in sales by 2020. And then there are the athletes, who, in a crossover world, are rock stars. “Look,”says Tisci, “in the seventies and eighties, sporty people could wear only sportswear, and artists had to look only dirty and under- dressed. Today the world has changed, and these kids who are heroes of sport want to look good—they want to bring their own personality to the playground!” To investigate the practicalities of Nike’s fashion partner- ships, I took a trip out to the company’s world headquarters in Beaverton, a place where people work with sensor-draped athletesontreadmillsinsimulatedBrazilianclimates.(When I was in the Nike Sport Research Lab, the sprinter Ryan Baileywasrunningatwhatseemedclosetothespeedof light while images of his body were being examined in a room that looked as if it were supporting the power grid for L.A.) It struck me that Nike designers were drastically more open abouttheirinterestinfashionthanonmyvisitsinyearspast. “DowegeekoutonGivenchy?”adesignerwhoworkedwith Tisci asked. “Yes.”But they still stress performance as their core.“If therewereaphotoinishbetweenperformanceand style,performancewouldwin,butthetwogohandinhand,” said Martin Lotti, Nike’s global creative director. And yet fashion’s beneit to performance remains rel- atively undocumented. “I remember talking to Maria Sharapova, and she was telling me that she will play better if she looks better—that is deinitely a common thread with athletes we work with,”said Lotti. (When I spoke with the Olympic-champion decathlete Ashton Eaton recently, he seconded: “Feel is connected with physical. I very strongly believe that if something in your mind feels lighter and faster and makes you feel stronger, that placebo is not a negative thing; it’s a thing that works.”) One way to lure designers is with vintage Nikes. Jar- rett Reynolds, senior design director of NikeLab, talked about fashion’s forever interest in shoes like the Air Force 1, which Tisci redid (his new-old model, the Dunk Lux High, came out in February). That shoe’s icon status, Nike argues, came second. “We made a real-deal performance product and the culture adopted it and made it an icon,” Reynolds said. Working on Air Force 1 was a dream for Tisci, afectionately referred to at Nike as a “sneakerhead.” “If somebody asked you to work on the Sistine Chapel in Rome, you wouldn’t change it completely—you would just modernize it, because it’s so beautiful,”he said. For the new Summer of Sport collection, Nike flew to Paris, Tisci to Beaverton, where, in the gorgeous gym, he momentarily relived his childhood basketball career, even if the shots he took did not relect his prowess as a designer (“I hadn’t played in a long time,”he stressed). He got pushed into performance aspects of the design. “We made Riccardo uncomfortable,” Reynolds said. The end result: shorts morphed with tights, kaleidoscopic color prints that no Nike apparel designer would have dared suggest, and botanical nods not only to Brazil but to his own upbringing in the south of Italy—all engineered into Nike’s best-selling sports bra. I GAME CHANGERS With a self-titled debut album that went straight to number one and the honor of being the only artist to have his first four singles simultaneously in the top ten, Fetty Wap has made himself a force to be reckoned with. Fetty wears a NikeLab x Kim Jones jacket ($275), T-shirt ($175), and pants ($225); nike.com/nikelab. Nike zip-up sweater, $65; nike.com. Model Cameron Russell wears a NikeLab x Kim Jones top, $175; nike.com/nikelab. Louis Vuitton Bermuda shorts; select Louis Vuitton boutiques. In this story: hair, Didier Malige; makeup, Gucci Westman. Details, see In This Issue. AMID OUR ONGOING LOVE AFFAIR WITH SPORTS —AND BOASTING NEW COLLABORATIONS WITH RICCARDO TISCI, KIM JONES, AND JUN TAKAHASHI—NIKE STEPS UP INTO FASHION’S PREMIERSHIP. BY ROBERT SULLIVAN. PHOTOGRAPHED BY GREGORY HARRIS. C O N TIN U ED O N PAG E 28 8 272
- 271. M O ME N T O F T H E M O N T H PRODUCEDBYKATECOLLINGS- POSTFORNORTHSIX
- 272. TWO SHAKES Run, don’twalk, to the Rihanna: Anti World Tour, stopping at the Prudential Center in Newark on April 2. On Lily Aldridge (NEAR RIGHT): Tory Sport shag backpack, $425; torysport.com. Ralph Lauren Collection jumpsuit, $2,990; select Ralph Lauren stores. Alix bikini top. Bulova watch. On Gigi Hadid: Chanel nylon-and-mesh backpack, $2,600; select Chanel boutiques. 3.1 Phillip Lim tank top, $275; 3.1 Phillip Lim, NYC. Sportmax pants, $595; Sportmax, NYC. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons. WhattoWearWhere
- 273. L eade rs of t h e It’stheseason ofthebold, brilliant,and built-to-move supersatchel. GigiHadidand LilyAldridge takethe brightestofthe bunchonan energeticromp forspring. Photographed byPatrick Demarchelier. Pack
- 274. CASING THE PLACE Power-lunch invivid white and crisp primary colors at Covina, James Beard Award winner Tim Cushman’s new restaurant, opening this month in Manhattan’s Park South Hotel. Dior bag, $3,700; select Dior boutiques. Lacoste dress, $295; lacoste.com. Bulgari watch. BEAUTY NOTE Makeup mishaps shouldn’t slow you down. Prevent melting and fading with a light, translucent mist of Maybelline New York’s Face Studio Master Fix Setting Spray. WhattoWearWhere 276
- 275. CROSSING THE LINES This refreshing combinationof polo plus plaid is the ultimate preppy mix for the finals at the Miami Open tennis tourney in Key Biscayne. Stella McCartney striped wicker bag ($1,750), check knit bag, polo shirt ($675), and skirt ($1,595); Stella McCartney, NYC. Details, see In This Issue.
- 276. BUCKET LIST Silky comfortis the name of the game here—floaty skirt, fuss-free top, holdall bag. It’s a throw-on-and-go ensemble perfect for a double feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. Sportmax suede bag, $795; Sportmax, NYC. Victoria Beckham tank top ($1,150) and skirt ($2,190); victoriabeckham .com. Shinola watch. AGL sneakers. WhattoWearWhere 278
- 277. DANCING ON AIR Reinvigoratethe shirtwaist look with oversize sleeves and contemporary fiery accents—then grab a wild cayenne–colored tote and head out to NYC’s Joyce Theater to catch the visiting Miami City Ballet. Michael Kors Collection drawstring bag, $2,990; select Michael Kors stores. Public School jacket ($575) and shorts ($380). Jacket at (212) 302-1108. Shorts at select Nordstrom stores. Roger Vivier sneakers. Details, see In This Issue.
- 278. WhattoWearWhere CIRCLE UP Grommets and pocketsand chains, oh my—this bag has it all! Sling it over your shoulder to take in the Steve McQueen exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Versace suede backpack ($2,995) and jersey dress ($2,375); select Versace boutiques. Caeden bracelet. 280
- 279. ZIP CODES The wonderfully utilitarianfanny pack gets a stylish makeover in molten metallics and heavy hardware. Pair it with a graphic tee and short shorts for a visit to fitness-cult-favorite the Class at Taryn Toomey’s new studio in Tribeca. Jimmy Choo belted bag, $1,450; select Saks Fifth Avenue stores. Fendi backpack ($2,700) and backpack charm; select Fendi boutiques. Longchamp top ($340) and shorts ($195); select Longchamp boutiques. Bulgari watch. Details, see In This Issue.
- 280. LINE ’EM UP Thejagged stripes on this carryall pouch (and the bloodred track pants) fit the mood for the Broadway premiere of American Psycho, starring Benjamin Walker. Kenzo snakeskin-print leather tote bag, $710; kenzo.com. Chloé halter top ($950) and pants ($1,295); select Neiman Marcus stores. Vince shoes. WhattoWearWhere
- 281. FASHION FORWARD You’ll want tostay conveniently hands-free to salute the imminently retiring Kobe Bryant when the Lakers play the Clippers at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on April 6. Louis Vuitton backpack; select Louis Vuitton boutiques. Proenza Schouler cropped crewneck top, $890; Proenza Schouler, NYC. BCBG Max Azria shorts, $298; bcbg.com. Shinola watch. In this story: hair, Duffy; makeup, Tom Pecheux. Details, see In This Issue.
- 282. IndexEDITOR: EMMA ELWICK-BATES IN! Dive Getreadytotaketheplungeinto theadventureandromanceof freshwaterswimming—theappeal, you’llsoonfind,iscrystalclear. CoolOffHit“refresh”inthese winning lakeside locations. Lake Placid, NEWYORK Nestled in the woodlands of the Adirondacks is an aquatic oasis for swimming,kayaking,waterskiing, and the like. WHERE TO STAY:Lake Placid Lodge Lake Tahoe, CALIFORNIA The best views of this paradise on the California-Nevada border are from the cobalt-blue water. WHERE TO STAY:Basecamp Hotel Lake Champlain,VERMONT Paddle out to one of Lake Champlain’s approximately 80 islands for a sun-soaked day of fun. WHERE TO STAY:Basin Harbor Club Echo Lake, MAINE Don’t be fooled by its northern exposure: Echo Lake Beach’s shallow depths mean warm swimming well into the evening. WHERE TO STAY: The Claremont Lake Powell, UTAH Hike,camp,and climb the red rocks in southern Utah’s canyons, ending with a dip in Lake Powell— think dramatic desert without the dryness. WHERE TO STAY: Amangiri 6 3 2 1 4 5 1:COURTESYOFNIKE.2:COURTESYOFBARNEYSNEWYORK.3:COURTESYOFCHRISTOPHE ROBIN.4:COURTESYOFTYRSPORT.5:COURTESYOFCHLOÉ.6:COURTESYOF1STDIBS.COM. TEPEE:NICOLEBOUCHER.BREATHEINN,LANESVILLE,NY.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 283. 7 8 9 13 11 12 10 1. Nike swimcap, $14; academy.com. 2. Flagpole Swim rash-guard swimsuit, $450; Barneys New York, NYC. 3. Christophe Robin Cleansing Purifying Scrub with Sea Salt, $52; sephora.com. 4. TYR Sport goggles, $20; tyr.com. 5. Chloé sandal, $865; Just One Eye, L.A. 6. Robert Mallet-Stevens folding chairs; 1stdibs.com. 7. Hermès beach throw, $540; hermes.com. 8. Bottega Veneta bag; (800) 845-6790. 9. Prism sunglasses, $408; prismlondon.com. 10. Sanborn Canoe Co. paddles, $180 each; domesticdomestic.com. 11. Zeus+Dione swimsuit, $179; zeusndione.com. 12. Crate & Barrel picnic cooler, $70; crateandbarrel.com. 13. AGLsandal, $397; agl.com. CHECK OUT VOGUE.COM FOR MORE SHOPPABLE LOOKS 7:COURTESYOFHERMÈS.8:COURTESYOFBOTTEGAVENETA.9:COURTESYOF PRISM.10:COURTESYOFSANBORNCANOECO.11:COURTESYOFZEUS+DIONE. 12:COURTESYOFCRATE&BARREL.13:GORMANSTUDIO.CLIFF:CARTERSMITH. PRESLEYANDKAIAGERBER,VOGUE,2015.DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE.
- 284. LOVE AND GRIEF CONTINUEDFROM PAGE 126 and stung my throat. But I left it alone. It’s still his password. After our wedding, I moved to Ge- neva to live with Andy. Throughout our apartment, framed photos of Laurence, Evan, and Baptiste mingle with others of us. Their names come up in regular conversation. His past is always there, but it doesn’t get in the way of our future. We were cautious leading up to the five-year anniversary of the earth- quake. Andy still hadn’t done any- thing with his family’s ashes, wanting to include Laurence’s parents and sister in any decision he ultimately made, but he felt an obligation and a desire to commemorate the day. And so together we took the three big urns down from the shelf, scooped out a handful of ashes from each, placed them into separate containers, and carried them to the Arve River. The mundanity of the act—we used small plasticIkeabins,whichIlaterwashed in the dishwasher next to our dirty plates and forks—was surpassed by its quiet signiicance. Andy took the containers out of his pocket one by one, emptied them slowly, and we watchedtherivertaketheashesaway. Two days earlier we had found out that I was pregnant. As the ashes mingled with the water, turning the stones underneath a foggy gray, we knew that the future held life. I used to feel that my friends with children could identify with Andy’s loss in a way I couldn’t. I never knew what it was like to have children, to lovesomething thatmuch andthento imagine it taken from me. Now that I was pregnant, already beginning to feel my own protective instincts, I’d find myself staring at him, my hus- band, amazed all over again by what he has lived through. About a week after we found out I was pregnant, Andy held my hand at our irst checkup. As the Swiss doc- tor examined me, he paused. “Oh,” he said. I flinched—was something wrong? “Twins,” he said. “You are having two.” We stared at the black-and-white screen in front of us, at the two little blobs with barely recognizable heads. “I’m going to have two children again,” Andy said, tearing up and laughing at once. Weeks later we found out that the twins were boys. For a long time, Andy vowed that he would never remarry, certainly never have children—the vulnerabil- ity that kind of attachment brings terrified him. Today, he wonders at the contradictions in a world that can include both an earthquake and the improbable conception of twin boys. Andy says he has reconciled his powerlessness, his lack of control, not only over history and calamity, but also over loving again. Andy’s family has said that there was a time they didn’t know whether the old Andy would ever reappear. Butthesedayshe’llstophimselfwhen we’re on a walk, or while we’re feed- ing the boys on the couch, surprised by joy—by the happiness he thought he’d never experience again. “I think about how much I lost,” he said to me recently, with something close to awe in his voice. “But I also think about how much I have.” HOUSE OF MIRTH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 134 watercolors, Whistler paintings, Vic- torian lamps and Oriental screens, little velvet boxes stufed with human hair. I spent hours up there picking through clothes—wool skirts, velvet- and-brocade dresses, hunting jackets, ballgowns—andsneakingdowntomy room to try them on. At the beginning, I dreaded meals—but when I realized that no one seemed to think it strange that I wasn’t speaking, or that I was clutching my chair so I wouldn’t fall, I gradually began to look forward to them. Except for formal dinners, we ate in the kitchen. The walls were painted eggshell blue, the ceiling covered with silver wrapping paper. Grandma, who wore her dark hair in a bob—in her youth, she had been known as a beauty—sat at one end of the table and Papa, my grandfa- ther,attheother.Eachofthemworea daily uniform, Papa black pants and a white button-down shirt, Grandma a denim skirt and a lavender or blue blouse that functioned as her garden clothes. While something delicious had always been prepared—roast lamb with mint sauce and wild rice, a slabofsalmon,cornmealpancakes— everyone was also free to eat what they pleased. Grandma’s meal of choice was a large piece of cow liver topped with raw bean sprouts, while Papa’s was grape-juice concentrate from the can. Besides my aunt’s col- lege roommate, Carol, who’d come for a visit 20 years ago and never left, there were always other people around—my two uncles who still lived and worked on the property and their girlfriends or children, the vari- ous inhabitants of the tenant houses, the young men helping to construct the fish pond or rice paddy, family friends like the art appraiser up from Boston or the tiny Austrian spy. The table was piled high with food; when the door was left open, the chickens wandered in. (In 2001, when the family could no longer aford to keep it, Cherry Hill was sold to a wealthy young banker, who uses it as his summer residence today. Needless to say, it has been substantially cleared out and re- modeled. I have yet to see it in this state—though the new owner is ame- nable to giving tours for our family members—yet what it’s lost in ec- centricity it has apparently retained in allure. My nine-year-old nephew recently returned from one of these tours, bug-eyed, and constructed a Minecraft version of what he called “the mansion,” which he eagerly walked me through.) Little by little, my shakiness dwin- dled. The house ofered much, yet it also requested things. Like Sally, I took it upon myself to clean up the kitchen nightly; I weededthe clayten- nis court. I recovered my former ath- letic prowess by learning to ride my uncle Nick’s unicycle back and forth down the hallway from the kitchen to the library. Gradually I even began to talk, little by little, to Grandma in the kitchen. Having relaunched my ap- prenticeship, I was reading The Por- trait of a Lady, and she told me about reading Henry James aloud to her 100-year-old mother and how, when they got to his late style, “the sentenc- es so impossibly complicated,” she feared that her mother would believe that she had inally and deinitively lost her mind. She recounted scenes from her childhood abroad—her father was a well-respected artist who traveled Europe collecting works for Boston’s V O G U E . C O M 286 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 285. Museum of FineArts—and her honeymoon out West with Papa; she talked of her gardening plans, her home-improvement projects (“I’ve decided that my closet needs to be cleared out every 45 years, and that’s now”). We made pilgrimages outside to see the things she’d planted—the katsura at the wood’s edge, the pink dogwoodoutbythecurveinthedrive that “seemed to have died in despair” because of the drought (“They have shallow roots,” Grandma said) but that, thanks to bucket after bucket of water, was now reviving. One eve- ning, in the latter part of my stay, GrandmatookmetoseeShakespeare & Company’s outdoor performance ofAMidsummerNight’sDreamatthe Mount. We sat on the grass, a picnic between us, and watched as the band of fairies came creeping toward us through the trees. Several months passed. I could easily have lingered, as had so many others, but it felt like the right time to be going on my way. But not before hearing, as I came down the stairs, Grandma sitting at her writing desk murmuringsomethingintothephone to my mother. (The two had been in closetouchoverthecourseofmystay.) “She seems all right to me,” she said. It was just what I needed as a benediction. WORKING IT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 234 the paradigm has shifted. . . . Lil Sis kiiiiiiiilled this shit!!!!!!!” Backstage, Rihanna and her team—a tight-knit group with whom she travels everywhere, including Forde, Rosales, and Ciarra Pardo, her creative director of ten years and the head of her production company, also called Fenty—are celebrating. Rihanna leaps from a couch and envelops me in a warm hug. Cham- pagne is flowing. Pardo crosses the room to embrace Rihanna. “You killed it!” she says. “Didn’t they kill it?” Rihanna says, delecting credit to the models. “How do you feel?” I ask. “I feel like I’m loating right now,” she says. “I feel elated.” I ask her about her inspirations for the show, which include Japanese street culture (“Every time I go to Ja- pan, it’s like, ‘Wow’ ”) and nineties music and fashion. “All my favorite artists and fashion icons and models are from the nineties,” she says, citing fellow glamazons Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, as well as Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim, Gwen Stefani, Jean Paul Gaultier, and John Galliano. “Everybody was just so fearless.” The room grows loud, and Rihanna shushes a group that happens to in- clude Campbell. (Who else can shush Naomi Campbell?) Puma has already seen its fourth- quarter sales rise from Rihanna’s involvement with the brand, which bodes well for her other collabora- tions, including one with Christian Dior on a line of sunglasses this spring. Last year, Rihanna also be- came the first black face of Dior, a distinction that was initially lost on her, so caught up was she with “the Dior aspect.” “I was already proud to be a Dior woman, but to be a black Dior woman and the first: It did something else for me.” In her quest for world domination, Rihannawillnodoubtkeepupending outdatednorms.It’snotacoincidence that so many of her Puma designs are unisex. “I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing,” she says. “I always wanted to play the games they playedandplayroughandwearpants and go outside.” She still wants to. “Women feel empowered when they candothethingsthataresupposedto be only for men, you know?” she says. “It breaks boundaries, it’s liberating, and it’s empowering when you feel like, Well, I can do that, too.” TIPPING THE BALANCE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 265 you have to be precise in every move- ment,” she says. “It requires intense concentration and focus. I’ve learned to trust my balance. But I work at it.” The pursuit of better balance is one that has taken hold of the itness world as well, from Miami Beach health club Anatomy at 1220’s new steel-mace weight-training classes to the increasingly popular nimble combat sports like Muay Thai and boxing. “Workouts that have you moving dynamically through dif- ferent planes will help with stabil- ity—and that’s the new frontier,” says Lisa Giannone, rehabilitation and conditioning specialist for the San Francisco Ballet and founder of the Garage itness studio, whose fast- paced Hammer and Gravity classes, filled with sprints, squatting, and single-leg jumps, have a cultlike fol- lowing among Bay Area ballet danc- ers and boxers. “Balance is ground zero for all movement,” adds Randy Humola, manager of Gotham Gym in New York. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine re- ported several years ago that nearly 20 percent of people in their 40s can’t stand completely still on a lat foam surface with their eyes closed for 30 seconds—a classic test of balance. Much of the blame lies in our ainity for the chair, seat of a multitude of modern woes. “When you’re sitting, you’re not engaging your core, and those muscles, along with the ones in your ankles and lower legs, are what keep you upright and stable,” says Helen Bronte-Stewart, M.D., a neurologist and former dancer, who directs the Stanford Human Motor Control and Balance Laboratory at the School of Medicine. Balance begins deteriorating in your 30s, even among many fitness devotees; for instance, running—my daily cardio—does little to bolster the muscles that confer steadiness. As your balance declines, so, too, do yourinesse, grace,andcoordination. Research shows that balance train- ing can prevent injuries, especially among those who, like me, grapple with recurring ankle-ligament prob- lems. It also tones muscles (espe- cially the core), keeps us agile, and improves posture. My own concerns began last fall in Barneys’ shoe department. I spotted a pair of suede Isabel Marant booties with a sculpted four-inch heel, per- fect for a spate of upcoming events on my calendar. But when I zipped the boots and stood, I felt unsteady— like a sixteen-year-old in her irst pair of stilettos. It’s been a while. You’ve been living in your Marsèll oxfords, I told myself. You’re just out of the heels habit. I took a few careful steps, and even then my left ankle nearly collapsed outward, a close call that brought to mind a series of sooner- forgotten incidents: stumbling and spilling Cabernet (my first glass, I swear) on a friend’s new upholstery. Reaching for the wall to steady my- self while pulling on a pair of skinny pants.Whathadhappenedtomybal- ance? I CONTINUED ON PAGE 28 8 V O G U E . C O M V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 287
- 286. was raised ongymnastics and ballet. I ski, I surf. I would not be laid low by a pair of party shoes! First things irst: I needed to know how of-kilter I really was. For that, I visited Aaron Sparks, a biomecha- nist at the University of California SanFrancisco’sHumanPerformance Center, and a balance fanatic who can stand for full minutes on a stabil- ity ball without wavering. He put me through a standard physical-therapy screening tool, the Y balance test: Whilestandingonmyleftleg,armsat my side, I slid my right foot along the ground as far as I could to the front, sideandbehindme,thenrepeatedthe process on the left side. Sparks pro- nounced me “average, maybe slightly above” and sent me on my way with this advice: “Strengthen your core with planks and side planks and re- place your desk chair with a stability ball.” To stabilize the muscles around my knees and ankles, he suggested single-leg squats. Seeking reassurance (average is a tough adjective to swallow), I called Daniel Merfeld, Ph.D., professor of otology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Jenks Vestibular Physiology Laboratory, and asked him to elucidate the challenge of balance. “It’s like setting the tip of a broom handle on the palm of your open hand and trying to keep it up- right,” he said. The human body, he explained, is actually like six of those unstable witch’s brooms (our weighty heads balance on slender necks, our hips and thighs teeter atop narrow knees, et cetera)—all stacked on a single pair of feet. Small wonder ex- perts drive home the importance of a strong core. So how does Biles work on hers? “I do 30 minutes of abs every day,” she says. Her favorite technique: rolling across the floor from back to front and front to back with her arms and legs off the ground at all times. “It strengthens your back muscles, and people often neglect that part of their core,” says her longtime coach, Ai- mee Boorman. “Simone trains hard, but she also has uncanny air aware- ness. She can judge where she is in re- lation to the ground, even when she’s upside down. Some things you just can’t teach.” Biles, according to Harvard’s Merfeld, has been blessed with an unusually keen vestibular system, the labyrinthine arrangement in the inner ear that monitors the position and movement of your head—and plays a critical role in balance. Hold- ing oneself steady requires a complex coordination among the vestibular system and two other factors: pro- prioceptors, which are the GPS-like sensors in your muscles, joints and tendons that send the brain up-to- the-millisecond information about your body’s relative position (they’re the reason you know your ankle is starting to roll, even though you’re not looking at your feet), and vision, which plays a surprisingly important role, as any yogini who tries to close her eyes in tree pose knows. Balance, like most motor skills, is about 50 percent genetic, so I can partly blame my parents for my me- diocre ability. “But almost every- one can improve significantly with practice,” says Daniel Ferris, Ph.D., director of the Human Neurome- chanics Laboratory at the Univer- sity of Michigan. “From the time you start losing your balance,” he says, “you have up to one second to catch yourself.” He knows this because he has covered study subjects’ scalps with electrodes and had them walk on balance beams mounted to tread- mills to see what happens when we begin to fall. Healthy young adults, he learned, typically react in about 400 milliseconds; older people may take an additional 150 milliseconds more—a micro-lag that can mean the difference between getting on with your day and winding up in the ER. In other words, balance isn’t just about strength; I need to be quick, too. The most effective way to keep one’s reaction time sharp, says Ferris: Do activities that throw the body of balance, and force it to recover, over and over again. Thus, the BOSU ball, the precari- ous perch on which I now strength train. I began by standing on it with two feet for a few minutes at a time, then the next day added arm exer- cises. After several weeks, I have upped the ante by doing upper-body strength training on one foot—far more diicult. I bolster all the work I’m doing by sprinkling balance chal- lenges throughout my day—standing on one leg and closing my eyes while I brush my teeth, for instance. By the time I’m sitting in Bronte- Stewart’s office at Stanford, where I’ve come for a reassessment, I’ve been maxing out on tree poses and holding planks for up to two minutes for nearly three months. It’s been weeks since I’ve slipped, stumbled, or bumped into a doorway. During the half-hour analysis (Stanford em- ploys a more sophisticated system than the Y balance test), I stand on a movable metal plate that measures the slightest shift of my feet or sway of my body, while the lab assistant puts me through a series of tests— standing on the plate while it moves forward and backward and side to side, sometimes with my eyes closed, sometimes open. I feel stable—and I am. Overall I score higher than peo- ple with normal balance. The next day in yoga, while twist- ing into eagle pose, I totter and have to put my foot down. Really? I think with a spike of irritation. Then I re- member something Biles told me: “A loss of balance is really a loss of focus. When you’re doing something that requires lots of balance, you have to concentrate. I can be clumsy outside the gym, too.” MOMENT OF THE MONTH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 272 “He pushed us to a place where we wouldn’t have had the conidence to go on our own,” Reynolds said. Tisci also pushed them to a place where gender lines were blurry, where male and female pieces are interchangeable—something you see a lot of when sportswear is on the street. “The walls between him and her were less important,” said Reynolds. The designer Jun Takahashi runs close to 20 miles a week dressed, he says, “head to toe” in the pieces he’s been collaborating on with NikeLab since 2010, a highly technical and sharply cut layered collection called Gyakusou (translation: “running in reverse”). “We usually start by say- ing, ‘OK, Jun, what’s been happen- ing with your running?’ ” explained Reynolds. If you replaced the terms art and beauty in the definition of couture with design that gorgeously frames and assists the performance of the body, then Gyakusou would be couture. Takahashi’s own ready- to-wear collection, Undercover, V O G U E . C O M 288 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 287. has always includedfunctional ele- ments, raising the question, What is the difference between sportswear and ready-to-wear out in the ield? “I think we’re seeing very little differ- ence between the two on the streets,” he says. When I finally caught up with Kim Jones, the Vuitton men’s style director, he had just taken a plane to a plane to another plane, each one smaller, until it let him out in a southern coastal forest in Vietnam, track-suited and trainered-up. (The NikeLab team had pegged him years before as a sneakerhead.) “He knows tech, and he’s been part of street cul- ture forever, so he spoke the language of Nike culture,” said Reynolds. For his collaborations, Jones was shown the Windrunner, a 1978 Nike piece that quickly crossed over from mar- athoning to New York City break- dancers in the eighties. Jones was also shown technical data—along the lines of charts by Nike’s research lab that indicated where a runner is hot, where not. “It’s no use to outcool them,” Reynolds said. “You have to outnerd them.” Jones approached athlete perfor- mance from the vantage of travel—a silver in South America one day, a gold in Europe the next—something he knows in his bones as the son of a globe-traveling geologist. In the end, Jones collaborated on jackets that are,amongotherthings,nearlyseam- less engineering marvels of packing performance, perfect to work out in, perfect to pack, perfect to run in—and vaguely secret agent–like. “It really gets down to almost zero when you fold it in your bag,” he says. (When we spoke he was headed out to see his irst extremely endangered black-shanked douc langur in the Ninh Thuan province. “There’s only about600ofthemleftinVietnam,and they are called the painted monkey— and they are the most beautiful mon- key in the world,” said Jones.) All the designers sounded ready to burst out of the gates to fashion new sport—and vice versa. Tisci, for one, thinks his fashion idols would approve. Though he never met Coco Chanel, he inds her a simpa- tico spirit when it comes to break- ing down the differences between events and categories. “She was one of the first people to bring women from Victorian-looking dresses to a male look when she deconstructed the jacket,” he said. “What I’m doing today, she did already in her time. I think she would be like, ‘Go, Riccar- do, go!’ I think she would be a sup- porter.” EASY DOES IT CONTINUED FROM PAGE 268 behind the facade of ine dining.”Lett is 37, but he seems ten years younger: Bearded, with a tangle of sun-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail, he has the calm manner and messy charm of a professional skateboarder or a successful designer or the handsome barista behind the counter. Still, he’s as driven and focused as the chef of a ine-dining restaurant. His food is café fare treated with a near-religious rever- ence and served on a battered pewter plate you can take over to one of the lea-market tables on the back patio. Gjusta’s croque madame is on the breakfast menu, which is something of a feint, given that the breakfast menu is offered all day long. This is the other thing happening in Los Angeles: The categories that most Americans use to sort out which dish goes where—breakfast, lunch, dinner—are disappearing. Restau- rants that were once in the business of delaying gratiication will now fulill your desires right away. If you want steak for breakfast, you can go, at eight o’clock in the morning, to the counter at Eggslut in the revitalized 99-year-old Grand Central Market in Downtown, and order a seared wagyu–and–egg sandwich with chi- michurri; you can also get a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich for a late lunch. You can get char siu pork roti with wilted bok choy for breakfast at the Paramount Cofee Project in the Fairfax District, or cashew-nut yo- gurt with fresh fruit and house-made granola for dinner. It’s as if brunch took over the entire day, and dishes once seen only at nine at night are now free to show up at nine in the morning or four in the afternoon or whenever the creative class that gives Los Angeles its edge feels like it’s time to eat. This approach to dining isn’t en- tirely new. As in many other cities, a number of all-night L.A. diners opened in the irst half of the twenti- eth century. In the 1960s and 1970s, a number of them became social hubs for the counterculture: You went to Ben Frank’s on the Sunset Strip or to Ships in Westwood or to Canter’s in the Fairfax District, a Jewish deli that Frank Zappa once called “the TopFreakoWateringHoleandSocial HQ.”BenFrank’swassold,andShips was razed, but the freakos still go to Canter’s to feed their appetites with a burger and fries for breakfast. Trois Familia, the latest venture from Ludo Lefebvre (of Trois Mec) and Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook (of Animal), has taken that idea and turned it into a founding principle. There’s only one menu all day long (right now, Trois Familia closes at 3:00 p.m., although you can book the restaurant for a private party at night), and it’s a counterintuitive mash-up of Mexican food and clas- sic French cooking that sounds like a stoner’s wish list but can be daz- zling on the plate. Buckwheat crepe with chorizo and avocado crema; tres leches cake that looks like a sad supermarket confection you eat in spite of yourself but that’s actually as elegant and light as a baba au rhum. Ever since Trois Familia opened in a dumpy strip mall in Silver Lake last October, the wait to get a seat at one oftheglossywhitepicnictablesinside has been measured in hours. It’s time well spent if you order the duck confit, which is as traditional as you will find, served in a shallow bowlwithmintandcilantroandleche de tigre (the citric marinade you use for ceviche)—a weird and wonder- ful companion. Every bite is a play between the rich, meaty duck and the sharp, sweet, ginger-tinged broth. Or if you get the beet tartare tostada, which is a play on one of the great dishes at l’Arpège, the gastronomic temple in Paris where Lefebvre once worked.“Thebeetsarecookedinsalt, andthenit’saclassicmayonnaisewith oliveoil,eggyolk,andatouchofmus- tard, then some dried chile and lime,” Lefebvre said, explaining why a dish that doesn’t look like much—a salad piled on a crisp tortilla—has such depth and complexity. Essentially, it’s haute cuisine with the windows open and the top down and the stereo turned way up. “Really this is French food and technique with ingredients and lavors from Mexico,” Lefebvre said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 290 V O G U E . C O M V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 289
- 288. Contents64:Top,$990; ByGeorge,Austin,TX. Skirt,$990;(312)587- 1000forinformation. Shoes,priceuponrequest; selectPradaboutiques. Coverlook72:Dress, priceuponrequest;Tom Ford,NYC.Editor’sletter 80:OnRihanna:Dress, priceuponrequest;Saint Laurent,NYC,(212) 980-2970.Contributors 120:OnFanning:Top ($300)andpants($325); needsupply.com.Flash 136:Dress,$8,500; gucci.com.AlexisBittar ring,$275;AlexisBittar boutiques.View166: CharlotteChesnaisring, $570;DoverStreetMarket NewYork.MaisonMargiela Line12FineJewellery Collection18K-goldtwo- ingerring($1,300)and 18K–whitegoldtwo-inger ring($1,400);Maison Margielaboutiques. IsabelMarantsandals, $585;IsabelMarant,San Francisco.168:Onvander Kemp:Sweaterandpants (priceduponrequest); sandro-paris.com. GivenchybyRiccardo Tiscisneakers,$495; neimanmarcus.com. Görner:PaintingGallery, Berlin.Paintings:Right: TheCapitularsfrom Utrecht,1544,Anthonis Mor.Left:Portraitofan Apostle,1618,Antonvan Dyck.Background:Saint Sebastian,1618,PeterPaul Rubens.170:Crocodile- skinbag,$11,600. 174:LoeweMarquetry wardrobeandchair (priceduponrequest), andnotebook($323); Loewe,Miami.Beauty 194:Dress,$3,695;Calvin KleinCollection,NYC.Pearl earrings,$375;tifany .com.Repossi18K-gold ring,$3,500;Barneys NewYork,NYC.Manicure, JinSoonChoiforJINsoon. PATA209:OnWhishaw: Coat,$3,300;selectGucci boutiques.Amisweater, $270;mrporter .com.RafSimonspants, $542;rafsimons.com.On Ronan:Dress,$2,490; carolinaherrera.com. Tacoriearrings($420)and ring($640);tacori.com. PaulaCademartoriboots, $1,375;10corsocomo .com.212:Journals,$55 each;adriennewong.com. TOMORROWLAND 217: StellaMcCartney sandals,$845;Stella McCartney,NYC,(212) 255-1556.218–219: Watch,$6,550;Cartier boutiques.OnAbraham: Shirt,$45;vineyardvines .com.Shorts,$145; Bonpoint,NYC,(212) 879-0900.OnAva:Dress, $245;oscardelarenta .com.OnCoster-Waldau: T-shirt,$80;BarneysNew York,NYC.220: OnAva: Jumper($32),shirt($22), socks($13forthree),and shoes($39);landsend .com.OnCoster-Waldau: Swimtrunks,$130: solidandstriped .com.221:Ring,$2,200; Bulgariboutiques. Sandals,$795;Fendi, NYC,(212)897-2244. 222–223: Earrings,$475; annelisemichelson.com. GlassWaterBottlewith FruitIceballMaker,$26; amazon.com.224–225: Cuf,$350;alyssanorton .com.Belt,$495;select MichaelKorsstores. OnCoster-Waldau: Poloshirt,$90;Brooks Brothersstores.Trousers, $435;burberry.com. PlayStationVR; playstation.com.Double RoboticsDouble2 TelepresenceRobot, $3,000;doublerobotics .com.226: WowWee CHiProbotdog($199) andMiPosaurrobot dinosaur($99).Robot dogatchipk9.com.Robot dinosauratwowwee .com.227: Ring,$550; sophiebuhai.com.On Coster-Waldau:Jeans, $210;rag-bone.com. J.Crewbelt,$68;jcrew .com.Skyplanters, $59each;boskke.com. SamsungFamilyHub refrigerator;samsung .com.228–229: Choker,$2,045; jenniferisherjewelry.com. Bag,$15,500;Hermès boutiques.Shoes,$995; StellaMcCartney,NYC, (212)255-1556.On Abraham:Shirt($22)and pants($32);landsend .com.Umishoes,$70; umishoes.com.On Coster-Waldau:Sweater, $78;jcrew.com.T-shirt, $80;BarneysNewYork, NYC.Havaianaslip-lops, $18;havaianas.com. Ehang184Autonomous AerialVehicle;priceupon request;ehang.com. Inthisstory,manicure, AlexandraJachno. WORKING IT 230–231: Dress, $10,000;selectRalph Laurenstores.Single-row diamondearcuf($1,025) anddouble-rowdiamond earcuf($2,050);anitako .com.232: Dress,price uponrequest;givenchy .com.235: Bralette,price uponrequest;marchesa .com.Inthisstory, manicure,MariaSalandra. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE 236–237: Dress, $19,000;selectGucci boutiques.MarcJacobs shoes,$7,100;select MarcJacobsstores.238: Postearrings,priceupon request;givenchy.com. Dropearring($225)and glass-crystaldressclip ($295);LuluFrost,NYC. “I’m not going to make the perfect mole—I’m not going to compete with the Mexican restaurants. But I can take the duck and make it more color- ful, more California.” Lefebvre could have been talking about himself. Tanned, handsome, tattooed, the 44-year-old is a TV per- sonality, one of the stars of ABC’s re- cent cooking competition The Taste. He followed a traditional path at irst and started cooking at fourteen in his native Burgundy before earning posi- tions in the Michelin-starred kitchens ofPierreGagnaireandAlainPassard. Inasenseheisapartofthetraditionof culturedEuropeanswhosetupshopin SouthernCalifornia—ThomasMann had a house in Paciic Palisades; Igor Stravinsky lived in the Hollywood Hills—and found the messy, sun- streaked sprawl to be liberating. You ind that freedom only if you embrace not only what is alluring about Los Angeles, such as produce so consistent and excellent that it’s almost unfair, but also what is vul- gar, such as the strip mall, a cheap and unimaginative building type that ages poorly and that, like it or not, is one of the deining examples of local vernacular architecture. “I love a strip mall,” said Lefebvre. “A restaurant is a business. I really want to be accessible to people, and a strip mall can have the best location and not be too expensive.” In fact, all three of his restaurants are in strip malls, including the bistro Petit Trois, where the omelet is so delicate and custard-like that it only just holds together (the French term is baveuse, which means “drooling”—the eggs should be moist but irm, on the cusp of wet). “You have strip malls every- where, and all the amazing Japanese restaurants with the best chefs are in the strip malls,” Lefebvre continued. “Besides, it’s easy to park. I go, I have my parking place, and I have my cleaner and I get my chef’s jacket; I have my doughnut store. For me it’s fantastic. For me it’s L.A.” The current moment in Los An- geles food can be traced back to October 2012, when Jessica Koslow opened Sqirl on an unfashionable stretch of North Virgil Avenue in East Hollywood. Other like-minded restaurants were already scattered around the city, but it was as if the kombucha-fueled conversations the cooks and tastemakers were holding at the time—that you should build a menu around what you want to eat instead of hewing to convention— solidified into an ideology when Koslow posted her first breakfast menu, which had only a few items. One was toasted brioche with a fried egg, tomatillo puree, and hot sauce; anotherwasbrownriceporridgewith inthisissue V O G U E . C O M 290 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6
- 289. Hand-shapedbrooch, $410;SoniaRykiel,NYC. Bird-shapedpin,$270; miriamhaskell.com. Gloves,$320; gaspargloves.com. 239:Cufs,$2,050each; selectChanelboutiques. 240–241:Belt,$1,775; selectChanelboutiques. Heels,$1,290;Tom Ford,NYC.242:Cufs, $1,695each;Alexander McQueen,NYC.243: Dropearring,$410;Sonia Rykiel,NYC.Pearlearring ($250)andnosering ($100);fallonjewelry.com. 244–245:Gloves,$50; dawnamatrix.com.246: Dress,$16,450;select Chanelboutiques.Gloves, $50;dawnamatrix.com. Shoes,$1,350;select MiuMiuboutiques.247: Swimsuit,priceupon request.248–249:Dress, priceuponrequest. Inthisstory,LasPozas, XilitlawithFundación PedroyElenaHernández, A.C.;laspozasxilitla.com. mx,pedroyelena.org. KICKOFF 254–255:OnBowles: NikeU.S.Women’s NationalTeamhome soccerjerseyandshorts. Nikesocks($20),soccer shinguards($22),and soccercleats($200);nike .com.OnMorgan:NikeU.S. Women’sNationalTeam squadtrainingtop($55), shorts($65),socks($18), soccershinguards($22), andsoccercleats($275); nike.com.258–259: Niketop($65),shorts ($55),andsocks($18); nike.com. TIPPING THE BALANCE 264–265:Leotard; similar styles at gkelite.com. MONEY FOR NOTHING 266–267: On Danes: Alligator-skin coat, $95,000; altuzarra .com.On Krasinski: Suit, $3,400; Dior Homme stores.Brooks Brothers shirt,$120; Brooks Brothers stores.Tie, $145; paulsmith.co.uk.In this story,manicure,Jin Soon Choi forJINsoon. MOMENT OF THE MONTH 270–271: On Scott: Tights ($45) and sneakers ($75); nike .com.On Smalls: Earrings ($720) and shoes (price upon request).Earrings at Givenchy,NYC. Shoes at givenchy.com. Bangles,priced upon request; givenchy.com. 273: Shorts,price upon request; select Louis Vuitton boutiques. RoxanneAssoulin x Baja East bracelets,$90 each; amazon.com/bajaeast. In this story,manicure, AliciaTorello. WHAT TO WEAR WHERE 274–275: OnAldridge: Bikini top,$125; Mohawk General Store,LA. Watch,$299; similar styles at Macy’s stores. 276: Watch,$3,900; Bulgari boutiques. 277: Knit bag,price upon request.278: Watch,$875; shinola .com.Sneakers,$325; agl.com. 279: Sneakers, $1,325; RogerVivier, NYC. 280: Bracelet, $199; caeden.com. 281: Backpack charm, $1,400.Watch,$9,200; Bulgari boutiques. 282: Sneakers,$295; neimanmarcus.com. 283: Backpack,price upon request.Watch, $875; shinola.com. In this story,manicure, MegumiYamamoto. INDEX 284–285: 6.Folding chairs,$1,920 for set of three.8.Bag,$2,600. LAST LOOK 292: Heels; select Miu Miu boutiques. ALLPRICES APPROXIMATE. VOGUE ISAREGISTEREDTRADEMARKOFADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC.COPYRIGHT© 2016 CONDÉ NAST. ALLRIGHTS RESERVED.PRINTED INTHE U.S.A.VOLUME206,NO.4.VOGUE(ISSN0042- 8000)ispublishedmonthlybyCondéNast,whichisadivisionofAdvanceMagazinePublishersInc.PRINCIPALOFFICE:1WorldTradeCenter,NewYork,NY10007.S.I.Newhouse,Jr.,ChairmanEmeritus;CharlesH.Townsend, Chairman;RobertA.Sauerberg,Jr.,President&ChiefExecutiveOicer;DavidE.Geithner,ChiefFinancialOicer;JillBright,ChiefAdministrativeOicer.PeriodicalspostagepaidatNewYork,NY,andatadditionalmailingoices. CanadianGoodsandServicesTaxRegistrationNo.123242885-RT0001.POSTMASTER: Send all UAAto CFS (see DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTALAND MILITARYFACILITIES: Send address corrections toVOGUE,P.O. 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TosubscribetootherCondéNastmagazinesontheWorldWideWeb,visitwww.condenastdigital.com.Occasionally,wemakeoursubscriberlistavailabletocarefullyscreenedcompaniesthatoferproductsandservicesthat webelievewouldinterestourreaders.Ifyoudonotwanttoreceivetheseofersand/orinformation,pleaseadviseusatP.O.Box37720,Boone,IA50037-0720,orcall800-234-2347. VOGUEISNOTRESPONSIBLEFORTHERETURNORLOSSOF,ORFORDAMAGEORANYOTHERINJURYTO,UNSOLICITEDMANUSCRIPTS,UNSOLICITEDARTWORK(INCLUDING,BUTNOTLIMITEDTO,DRAWINGS,PHOTO- GRAPHS,ANDTRANSPARENCIES),ORANYOTHERUNSOLICITEDMATERIALS.THOSESUBMITTINGMANUSCRIPTS,PHOTOGRAPHS,ARTWORK,OROTHERMATERIALSFORCONSIDERATIONSHOULDNOT SENDORIGI- NALS,UNLESSSPECIFICALLYREQUESTEDTODOSOBYVOGUEINWRITING.MANUSCRIPTS,PHOTOGRAPHS,ANDOTHERMATERIALSSUBMITTEDMUSTBEACCOMPANIEDBYASELF-ADDRESSEDSTAMPEDENVELOPE. sorrel pesto, preserved lemon, blis- tered tomatoes, and a poached egg. The menu sent a message. If you wanted eggs Benedict or French toast, you were free to go to any of the hundreds of establishments that would take your money. But if you were craving something savory and illing and a little weird, you now had ahomewiththegastronomicfreakos. Since then the menu has grown— to 50 or so items, including the baked goods—as have the crowds, which mob the restaurant every morning during the week. “It’s so satisfying to know that I’m not screaming into the wind,” Koslow told me. “I opened a place that’s misspelled, that’s a hole in the wall in the middle of Vir- gil Avenue, and that has a kind of food that’s definable and undefin- able, that’s familiar and unfamiliar.” Koslow grew up in Long Beach, Cali- fornia, where she was a competitive ice skater—her mother, a derma- tologist, was determined to keep her out of the sun. She still has her fair skin. Now she’s either on the line and running her kitchen or making the jams that irst gave her a reputation at Sqirl Away, the take-out spot she’s planning to open next door. Sqirl doesn’t have customers as much as a clientele, a devoted group that wants to be challenged. They go back for their favorites, but they also go back to see what’s new. Fried egg with creamed spinach and on- ion jam; whiteish and crispy trout skin with crème fraîche and pureed acorn squash on toast: The dishes are so strange that they come close to satire, but the lavors are so engag- ing that they make other breakfasts seem as original as a box of Eggos. “I’m not afraid of change and think- ing that there’s something better,” Koslow said, explaining that when she knew she had to have a pancake, she decided to make it out of buck- wheat and cactus flour and bake it in a cast-iron skillet so that it would be grainy, tart, and lufy. (It’s also gluten-free, which is always appreci- ated in Los Angeles.) It is exhausting to work this hard. Gjusta, Trois Familia, and Sqirl could get by with half as many dishes, made with ingredients half as com- plicated. These and other establish- ments are bursting with ideas that the chefsandlinecooksaroundtheworld are aching to develop, reine, and get on the menu. Restaurants are busi- nesses and need to make money, but the new breed of Los Angeles restau- rant seems to be driven by a creative impulse so strong that it comes close to being an art project. “Do I have the energy to pull this of?”Koslowaskedrhetorically.“The answer is, right now I do.” V O G U E . C O M V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 291 AWORDABOUTDISCOUNTERSWHILEVOGUETHOROUGHLYRESEARCHESTHECOMPANIESMENTIONEDINITSPAGES,WECANNOT GUARANTEETHEAUTHENTICITYOFMERCHANDISESOLDBYDISCOUNTERS.ASISALWAYSTHECASEINPURCHASINGANITEMFROM ANYWHEREOTHERTHANTHEAUTHORIZEDSTORE,THEBUYERTAKESARISKANDSHOULDUSECAUTIONWHENDOINGSO.
- 290. MiuMiuheel,$1,290 Behold the ultimatemidnight mule—entirely handcrafted and teetering in at 120 millimeters. But look closely: It’s also a cleverly deconstructed Mary Jane bejeweled to resemble a starry, crystalline sky—and, while studded to resemble a brogue, its romantic evocation of the boudoir style of old Hollywood mimics that of a bedroom slipper. Though Miuccia Prada, eccentric as ever, paired the shoe with mustard stockings and a leather cape, we’d like to think there are no rules whatsoever for this remarkable, celestial shoe. Well, perhaps one: Wear exceptionally. P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y E R I C B O M A N EDITOR: VIRGINIA SMITH LastLook 292 V O G U E A P R I L 2 0 1 6 DETAILS,SEEINTHISISSUE