Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i ELLE

We all fell in love with Daisy Edgar-Jones in Normal People, and the actress has carved out quite the career since then, with roles onscreen in summer blockbusters (Twisters) and literary adaptations (Where the Crawdads Sing), and most recently, onstage as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Photographed by Dan Martensen and styled by Clare Richardson in spring’s best bohemian-inflected looks, our cover star speaks with Douglas Greenwood about working with “basically all the internet’s boyfriends,” her role in the ’50s drama On Swift Horses, and taking on parts that challenge her. “It’s also an interesting thing, being a woman in your 20s, wanting to find characters who are not always ingenues,” Edgar-Jones says. “You want to find characters with agency.…I feel lucky that a lot of the…

One of Narciso Rodriguez’s prized possessions is a pair of Victorian gloves, made painstakingly by hand. It’s a reminder that, as he says, “Good things last, and they’re meaningful.” Creating those lasting, meaningful things is Rodriguez’s North Star right now. When he founded his namesake brand in 1997, he quickly became a boldface fashion name. At the outset of COVID, he shuttered his label, though he continued to design for private clients and run his thriving fragrance business with Shiseido. In the interim, he underwent what he calls “my personal reinvention,” redrawing the lines of his career. That meant carving out a smaller, more focused existence that allows him to stop work every day at 2:45 to pick up his seven-year-old twins from their school—conveniently located just around the corner…

A hot new bombshell is entering the villa. Attention-stealing and unexpected, the face massager from Chanel (Chanel N°1 de Chanel Massage Accessory, $70, chanel.com) is an exciting addition to your beauty routine. Start with a moisturizer or serum (Chanel N°1 de Chanel Cream, $120; or Chanel N°1 de Chanel Revitalizing Serum, $165, chanel.com), then practice sweeping, upward motions for a feel-good glow.…

You’re sitting in a doctor’s offce with numbing cream spread on your face like buttercream icing on a cake. You’re preparing to have a laser beam penetrate your skin at the same temperature that water boils. You’re bracing for your face to resemble tuna tartare for at least a week. Sounds scary? For a long time, this may have been the reality for anyone seeking a laser treatment to tighten or tone skin. Today’s lasers, however, are far less harsh, reducing pain and downtime for many patients—and might be even more effective for lifting and brightening. These next-gen options are also safer across skin tones. “A lot of [older lasers] readily absorb melanin, so [people with darker complexions] can get really significant burns,” says Michelle Henry, MD, a dermatologist in…

There are some, shall we say, eccentricities we have come to expect of a certain class of tech billionaire. Morning ice baths instead of coffee. Calorie restriction—or slaughtering their own meat—for lunch. Meetings on the beach, or barefoot in a conference room, or perhaps while in a rocket ship to space. Whether it’s ego, or masculine performance, or some sense of competition, chasing the extreme seems to be a way of life for these titans—when they’re not chasing immortality itself. How else do you explain wanting to upload your consciousness to the cloud? Melinda French Gates—philanthropist; billionaire; and former spouse to an original tech titan, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates—is, in the way we think about billionaires today, something of an anomaly. She is one of the richest women in the…

Clare Richardson recently experienced the closest thing a non-musician can get to being on tour. “We were in a different state every day,” she says of crisscrossing the country to celebrate the collaboration between Reluxe Fashion, her luxury resale platform, and Madewell. In cities from Austin to Washington, DC, Richardson brought her discerning eye—she has styled editorial shoots with Jennifer Aniston and Margot Robbie, along with this month’s ELLE cover story with Daisy Edgar-Jones—to the public, counseling women on how to pair her vintage finds with the brand’s denim styles. “It’s my happy place,” she says of the store’s dressing room. “I’m not very good at sitting still. I like to be styling.” Richardson has been a vintage devotee since her university days at Central Saint Martins, when she trawled…

On a Friday at 9 p.m., my calendar reminds me that I have a meeting with Diamond and Champagne. The two go together like popcorn and Nicole Kidman’s AMC ad, particularly in Beverly Hills, where the pair are from. They pop up on my Zoom screen, logging in after a full day’s work that started at the dark hour of 6 a.m. Given their names, it may be surprising that Jason Diamond and Jason Champagne are not a Vegas lounge act, but rather two of California’s busiest plastic surgeons. Together, they are responsible for a good portion of Hollywood’s best hairlines. Things of which there are only about 1,000 in the world: the rare mountain gorilla; the approximate number of shoes in the Sandy Liang x Salomon sneaker drop; and…

She glanced to her right from the podium’s highest perch and saw, on the silver medal spot, the most decorated gymnast in the world, Simone Biles. She searched for her teammates; they were crying on the sidelines of the springy carpet where she had just delivered a dazzling floor exercise routine at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The feeling of reaching a goal for which she had worked so hard—“I really wanted the gold,” Rebeca Andrade recalls—hadn’t yet sunk in when Biles and another American gymnast, Jordan Chiles, dropped to one knee and bowed to her. By then, Andrade, 25, had surpassed the sailors Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael to become the most decorated Olympic medal winner from Brazil, her home country. The moment’s significance transcends Andrade’s own achievement. “It’s…

In a dance studio somewhere in north London, Daisy Edgar-Jones is standing on her tiptoes. It’s been about five years—and a sudden rise to international fame—since she felt like her heels last touched the ground. In an effort to return to her roots, the actor decided to take up ballet lessons again. She hasn’t worn these shoes since she was seven. “My mum still has my grade one certificate,” Edgar-Jones says. Returning to ballet now, after her mind wandered from it as a child, feels like she’s recentering herself. Though it’s not lost on her that she is, despite being just 26, a little old to be studying for her grade two qualification. “My lovely ballet teacher told me that I could do a group exam or a solo one,…

For an artist used to working within the confines of an urban studio, Costa Rica’s Hotel Belmar is a revelation. Working days are broken up by hikes through the misty tropical forest or countryside horseback rides, and views out the window may include a gorgeous inlet of the Pacific. Artists are able to spend weeks living and working at the hotel, which can have a transformative impact on a career, and guests are able to witness them at work. While placing artists’ work on a hotel wall is commonplace, and might include a narrative connecting the work to the space, Hotel Belmar and an increasing number of other hotels are running residencies that establish a relationship between an artist and a property, broadening the guest experience. Hotel Belmar’s program began…

YOU CAN SMELL IT ON COLLARBONES and behind ears in the darkest, sexiest bars. It smells like your coolest friend who exclusively shops at the RealReal and has read every novel in the Neapolitan Quartet. It’s sandalwood, and you may know it best from smash-hit fragrances. Sandalwood “has this interesting milky creaminess,” says Frank Voelkl, the principal perfumer behind Le Labo’s Santal 33. “There’s something universally pleasant about it.” But its very mystique has brought the tree to near extinction. Sandalwood, with its oblong light-green leaves and twiggy branches, is a semi-parasitic plant that needs a host tree. It can take up to 30 years for it to be ready for perfume oil extraction. The modern perfume industry originally used sandalwood from India, but starting in 1974, unbridled and unsustainable…

Jacinda Ardern was just 37 years old when she captured the hearts of the globe. Elected prime minister of New Zealand in 2017, a race she won a mere seven weeks after entering the contest, she was the youngest female head of state, one of just 13 women premiers worldwide—a progressive who promised to combat climate change, support abortion rights, and make her country the best place in the world to be a child. They called it “Jacindamania.” It was the first time many in the U.S. had known the name of the person leading the small South Pacific nation, let alone followed her every history-making move. She won fans around the world and made headlines for having an equal number of women and men in her parliament; for being…