Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i ELLE

1 LENS CRAFTER Robert Mapplethorpe made his name with photography, but lesser known is the jewelry the artist created early in his career. Gaia Repossi, a longtime fan of his work (his 1981 photograph Puerto Rico hangs in her Paris studio and was her first art acquisition), was invited by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to create a collection inspired by the pieces, which were primarily made from beads and objets trouvés. Expect varying shades of gold that call to mind the contrasts of black-and-white photography. Rings, Repossi/Robert Mapplethorpe, Gagosian Shop, NYC. 2 LEGS FOR DAYS Shanel Campbell has created custom garments for Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, and Solange Knowles, and Bed on Water, her collection of ready-to-wear and accessories, is perfectly in tune with that Hollywood glamour. Amid stellar…

1 The BAG In artfully draped lavender velvet, Loewe’s Goya clutch is an aptly named, museum-worthy showpiece. 2 The SHOE With its slightly retro rounded toe, Christian Louboutin’s Betty slingback feels tailor-made for a modern-day bombshell. 3 The EARRING Louis Vuitton’s rainbow-hued high jewelry stunners are a colorful reminder that spring is just around the corner.…

The showstopping enamel hair accessories at Fendi’s spring 2022 disco-themed show were a stroke of (budding) genius. The ombré blooms, designed by Fendi’s artistic director of jewelry, Delfina Delettrez Fendi, recall artist Antonio Lopez’s 1977 photo of a model with red flamingo lilies in her hair. Lopez, whose artwork from the 1960s and 1970s influenced much of the new Fendi collection, was known for his glam, groovy aesthetic—as well as his friendship with former Fendi designer Karl Lagerfeld. To showcase Fendi’s artful lilies, like the one shown here ($1,750; fendi.com), hairstylist Guido Palau slid them into snug chignons—ensuring they’d stay vibrant until the last dance.…

WE ALL HAVE A UNIQUE SCENT—that natural cocktail made up of our body chemistry mixed with the products we routinely use on our skin, hair, laundry, and more. It’s the subtle but distinctively-you smell left behind on a T-shirt—or on your bed sheets. If you think of a traditional fragrance formula, worn overtly, then a personal scent is more like lingerie—detectable only during intimate contact. To catch a whiff, you must come close. Recognizing the potential appeal of bottling a scent so inherently sensual, beauty brands have begun experimenting with fragrances that either attempt to mimic the natural smell of human skin, or use ingredients that take your individual elixir and amplify it. The result: a burgeoning category of eau de parfums and toilettes referred to as skin scents. Not…

You know those bridesmaid-font T-shirts and mugs with slogans like, “Powered by coffee and wine?” If I were a merch person, I’d have to add one item to that list: Mirena. As a person with naturally hellish periods, I am so grateful for my hormone-releasing IUD—and the light, nearly pain-free menstruation that comes with it—that I shudder to think what my life would be like without it. Hormonal contraception and me: It’s love. But I know many women feel differently. Some users of hormonal contraceptives experience unpleasant side effects, like unwanted weight gain, pelvic pain, yeast infections, or bloating. And even in the absence of side effects, a recent cultural shift toward “natural” health and wellness practices has led some to question the safety of using hormonal birth control over…

It’s past closing time at Hemster, a buzzy tailoring start-up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and as the sun sets outside the industrial windows, tailors and patternmakers store spools of thread and put away irons. Inside a conference room, two women, heads bent over their laptops, are still working. One is Ann Lai, a venture capitalist who’s on Hemster’s board, and the other is its founder and CEO, Allison Lee. They talk at a rat-a-tat pace, so fast it’s like they’re getting graded on a decision-per-minute metric. The best layout for the new factory? That one. How to roll out Hemster at a big retail chain store? Like this. How can we segment customers? Here’s how. It all comes down to this: how to make something as touchy-feely, as individualistic, as tailoring…

BEFORE THEIR KIDS CAME ALONG, Reshma Saujani and her husband shared household duties. “He cooked dinner; he did the grocery shopping; he did so much,” she says. “And then we had children. I took leave, he didn’t, and our to-do tabs shifted.” For Saujani, the debate over paternity leave is personal. “When you’re leaning into the workplace, but you still can’t get it done because you’re doing 86 percent of the domestic and cognitive labor, it’s not your fault—it’s society’s fault.” As the mastermind behind the Marshall Plan for Moms, a movement to pay mothers for their labor, and the author of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (And Why It’s Different Than You Think) (out in March), Saujani aims to change that. She’s already made strides in…

It is clear even before Mary J. Blige appears for her cover shoot on a balmy Thursday morning in Brooklyn that the singer is her own weather event. A gust of nerves and angst passes through the airy salon. Not even 100 percent of the correct vibes—glowy mirrors, purple patent swivel chairs with the sheen of hard candy, and walls bedecked with fellow icons like Macy Gray and Lil’ Kim—can assuage the jittery crew. In the back of the salon, the singer’s go-to stylist, Jason Rembert, is reviewing a rack of clothing pulled for the photo shoot, caressing a yellow-and-black-printed puffer coat. The bustling ceases when Blige’s car pulls up to the front, everyone standing still in their spots as if Queen Elizabeth’s carriage were making its way down the…

WHEN OSCAR ISAAC KISSED his way up Jessica Chastain’s arm at the Venice Film Festival, he awakened a sea of starved onlookers. Those few seconds on the red carpet quenched the public’s thirst, and they suddenly knew what they’d been missing. The moment tapped into a larger conversation about the dearth of true sensuality in popular media: You’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything from the last few decades that resounds with a true sensual nature. There are not too many moments that could compare to the slow-burning fire in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, when Madame Olenska touches Newland Archer’s knee with her fan: “It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress,” Wharton writes. Or the high-octane pairing in Singin’ in the Rain,…

If you’ve indulged in a bit of online shopping over the past few years, you’ve surely come across the name Afterpay. The company, cofounded by Aussie Nick Molnar at only 24, has become one of the most popular payment-plan options, alongside competitors like Klarna and Affirm. At 30, Molnar was named Australia’s youngest self-made billionaire, and now he’s making it his mission to support the next generation of talent in the industry that helped build his fortune. This past season alone, Afterpay (aka Clearpay in the UK) was the primary sponsor of Australian Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, and London Fashion Week. During what has been a challenging time for the industry, that assistance was a game changer for both emerging and established talents—from Molnar’s countryman Jordan Dalah, known…

ESCENTRIC MOLECULES MOLECULE 01 Iso E Super, a subtly woody molecule and the only note in this blend, sticks close to the skin, magnifying its natural aroma. ETAT LIBRE D’ORANGE SECRETIONS MAGNIFIQUES An unapologetically sexual take on a skin scent, this erotic mix boasts musk, sandalwood, and salty, aquatic notes. GLOSSIER YOU EAU DE PARFUM An understated mix of pink pepper, soft iris, and a dash of warm amber, this scent complements your skin’s natural aroma. THE MAKER NAKED EAU DE PARFUM This clean-yet-sensual cocktail marries energizing tangerine with spicier pink pepper to impart a cozy scent that works well on any gender. BY ROSIE JANE ROSIE EAU DE PARFUM A quiet fragrance, described by the brand as like ”sleeping in your birthday suit,” this scent emits muskiness mixed with…

“WHAT I LIKE MOST is weaving storytelling into collections,” says Dior Maison artistic director Cordelia de Castellane, and she certainly has plenty of creative material to draw from. Born in Paris to a Greek interior designer mother and a Franco-Spanish father, she cites design and travel as early influences, along with fashion. An uncle, Gilles Dufour, was the longtime right hand to Karl Lagerfeld and sparked in de Castellane an early love of prints and textiles, leading to her first gig (at only 16) working under Emanuel Ungaro. It was also Ungaro whom de Castellane credits with her education in fearlessly playing with color: “He gave me a lot of confidence in my taste, and those 10 years were incredibly formative.” In 2007, de Castellane decided to take some time…

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TOWARD THE END OF 2020, Halima Aden quit modeling. The Somali-American Muslim broke new ground as the first hijab-wearing model to find mainstream success in fashion, appearing in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, on magazine covers, and walking the runway for brands like Yeezy. While designers accommodated her hijab, they often made adjustments to it that left Aden increasingly uncomfortable. She loved modeling, she says, “but it was also pulling me further away from family and my core values, and even the way that I viewed my hijab.” Almost a year later, she returned—on her own terms. She’s now a global brand ambassador for modest fashion brand Modanisa, and is partnering with Vita Coco to aid coconut-farming communities around the world. She’s also working on a children’s book based on…

"Good morning, Gorgeous. I love you. I got you. I need you.” That’s what Mary J. Blige says when looking in the mirror every morning, and it’s a ritual we all might want to adopt. Our cover star, who named her new album Good Morning Gorgeous after that mirror affirmation, wasn’t always that supremely confident. As she tells Beauty E-Commerce Editor Nerisha Penrose, “I didn’t feel beautiful—like for real for real…until about 2016.” But even as a young girl growing up in Yonkers, New York, Blige always recognized the power of beauty as a means of self-reinvention. Long before her albums went multiplatinum, she went platinum blonde, at a time when tired stereotypes about Black hair dominated the conversation. “I won’t say hair gave me strength. I’d say I give…

Directly below the Manhattan Bridge, on the mostly-vacant second floor of a Chinatown mall, there is a highly curated array of eveningwear at the vintage mecca James Veloria. When they were first released in the late ’90s and early aughts, many of these garments would have been displayed in gleaming department stores. But now, surrounded by tinsel and jewel-toned faux fur, these Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, and Todd Oldham gems have taken on new life—due in large part to TikTok’s ravenous appetite for Y2K-era fashion. This past summer, before the store moved into its new space down the hall from the original, lines wound through the empty mall’s corridors. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, we saw it on TikTok,’ ” says co-owner Brandon Veloria Giordano. “I feel like we maybe went viral,…

The jeweler Harry Winston was barred by his insurer from being photographed in public. In fact, it wasn’t until the New York Times ran Winston’s obituary in 1978 that the public finally got a glimpse of the man behind some of history’s most notable baubles, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s 40.42 carat white diamond engagement ring. It was just as well, as Winston preferred to let his stones speak for themselves. Now his namesake firm’s latest high jewelry collection, aptly named Marvelous Creations, does just that, channeling nature’s glory into one-of-a-kind designs. Among the pieces that pay tribute to land, water, and sky, two of the most spectacular are the Black Necked Crane brooch, which features a carved onyx body and diamond cluster wings seemingly captured midflight; and the articulated sapphire,…

WHEN I LOST ALL MY HAIR IN MY TWENTIES (thanks to cancer and chemo), I held out hope that it would grow back thick and curly, the way it had been before I’d gotten sick. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the new growth came in wavy, with a tendency to fall flat. Where had my dense curls gone? New York City stylist Nunzio Saviano says his clients often complain about texture changes, though the change typically happens over time, rather than all at once, like mine did. Chemo accelerated a process most experience incrementally and attribute to weather, the wrong hair care, or “a bad cut,” Saviano says. “But it’s really your hair that’s changed.” Melissa Piliang, MD, a dermatologist at the Cleveland Clinic, explains what’s happening: “Each hair…

IN OFFICE DEVICE: Lumenis Splendor X ($300–$400 per session, but price varies depending on location; lumenis.com) WHERE: Lemmon Avenue Plastic Surgery & Laser Center, Dallas. INNOVATION: With its two customizable pigment-targeting lasers, the Nd:YAG and the Alexandrite, the Splendor X can treat a wide range of skin tones and hair colors—which definitely appealed to me, as a Syrian American who’s prone to hyperpigmentation. In addition, the device’s square head may help reduce the risk of skin irritation because it doesn’t necessitate the Venn diagram–like overlap (and overtreatment) you can sometimes get with a round laser head. EXPERIENCE: Each session took less than five minutes, and because of a skin-cooling fan, I never experienced any burning sensation. At one point, I even told the tech to turn up the laser. After…

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE MUSÉE RODIN Le Baiser (“The Kiss”) by Auguste Rodin has long been a source of inspiration for de Castellane. See it up close at the sculptor’s eponymous museum (and be sure to visit the Musée national Picasso-Paris as well, de Castellane’s favorite museum in the city). musee-rodin.fr. TREASURE-HUNT IN SAINT-OUEN Blend in with the locals in Dior’s toile de Jouy shirtdress or its tote in a similar pattern, perfect for carrying finds from one of Saint-Ouen’s many flea markets, which de Castellane frequents and considers among the city’s most underrated spots. The area is also filled with fantastic small brasseries. Dress, $4,700, Book tote, $3,100, Poème flats, $1,150, Dior, at Dior boutiques nationwide. PERUSE A HISTORIC BOOKSTORE “I’m a fan of Charles Baudelaire,” de Castellane says.…

No one would guess their value. A recipe scribbled in pencil. A cow-shaped potholder. A blue-glazed ceramic pie plate. Seemingly innocuous items from the kitchens of my mother and stepmother. My two mothers. The women who took turns raising me in different periods of my childhood in their blended households. My mothers’ upbringings could not have been more different, though sometimes they seemed similar in the telling. Small-town Jamaica versus small-city New England. Parents lost, dreams given up, some wishes fulfilled. Both formed families with men from other cultures. Both are gone now, but they live on, in part, through the workaday keepsakes whose value no one would guess. The ceramic plate makes me think of fruit pies, and summer barbecues, and autumn leaf-raking parties amid the burnished red of…

Grace Elizabeth has her mother to thank for her modeling career. With her encouragement, the Lake City, Florida, native began with childhood pageants and graduated to modeling prom dresses in mall runway shows. Before long, the two of them were shouting with glee at seeing her face on a Sunset Boulevard billboard. They became a duo, traveling the world, staying in tiny hotel rooms. Things shifted into high gear when superstylist Katie Grand picked Grace Elizabeth for a Miu Miu show, which led to a V Magazine cover, Chanel campaigns, and a thriving runway career. Now 24, the model recently became a mother herself, welcoming her son Noah this past February. Fashion’s pandemic slowdown allowed her a longer-than-usual maternity leave. “I got to take a break and reevaluate, as a…

COVERS MARY J. BLIGE Faux-fur coat by Burberry, $4,390, burberry.com. Tights by Versace, $350, versace.com. Earrings by Sister Love, sisterlovemjb.com. GRACE ELIZABETH Dress by Loewe, loewe.com. ACCESSORIES PAGE 51: Jacket by Prada, $7,700, similar styles at modaoperandi.com. SHOP PAGE 63: Watch by Hublot, $8,800, Hublot boutiques nationwide. BACK FROM THE BLACKLIST PAGE 81: Dress by Gabriela Hearst, gabrielahearst. com. Elsa Peretti earrings by Tiffany & Co., tiffany.com. PAGE 84: Turtleneck by Khaite, khaite.com. MODERN HEROINES PAGE 88: Cape gown by Aliétte, alietteny.com. Earrings by Marie-Hélène de Taillac, $12,000, mariehelenedetaillac-us.com. Ring by Tiffany & Co., $15,000, tiffany.com. PAGE 89: Dress by Carolina Herrera, carolinaherrera.com. Bracelets by Foundrae, foundrae.com. Platforms by Giuseppe Zanotti, giuseppezanotti.com. CENTER STAGE PAGE 91: Hooded dress by Alaïa, available upon couture appointment at Alaïa flagship stores. PAGE 93:…