Innholdsfortegnelse for Jul-15 i Vanity Fair

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ In her home, in Malibu, California, over the course of two days, Bruce— now Caitlyn—Jenner sat for Contributing Photographer Annie Leibovitz for a portfolio (“He Says Goodbye, She Says Hello,” on page 50). “There was no one else to do this but Annie,” says Features Editor Jane Sarkin. “She has photographed some of the most important and iconic moments for the magazine.” SARAH ELLISON With a distinct skill for reporting on media, Contributing Editor Sarah Ellison writes this month about upwardly mobile millennial couple Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge and Hughes’s controversial takeover of The New Republic (“Portrait of a Marriage,” on page 80). “They are precocious in their achievements and in their ability to attract outsize media attention,” says Ellison. “In person, they struck me as more…

The Way Things Were (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Aatish Taseer’s panoramic novel of modern India, takes its title from the literal meaning of the Sanskrit word for history, Itih¯asa. And it is, indeed, a novel where characters are “encircled by history.” When Toby, an exiled Sanskrit scholar, dies, it’s left to his son, Skanda, to return to India to immerse his ashes. Meanwhile, Skanda ponders not just his father’s intellectual disillusionment but also his parents’ failed marriage set against the violent flash points of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. “Our literature is crammed full of big events. Of riots, and partitions, and emergencies,” Skanda says. Taseer’s great gift is to locate the fault lines— of both individuals and a nation—in the midst of epic upheavals.…

MOORE WEARS A SUIT BY HERMÈS; SHIRT BY DIOR HOMME. Word spread quickly about Dope when it premiered at Sundance, last January, and its star, 20-year-old Atlanta native Shameik Moore, suddenly became a hot commodity. “My whole world lit up,” Moore says. “Everything really changed at that point.” Written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, and with songs by Pharrell, Dope features Moore as Malcolm, a 90s music- and style-obsessed nerd navigating his senior year of high school and his application to Harvard. Moore’s talent is standout in this comedic coming-of-age fable, in which he not only acts but dances and sings. “Music was always heavily involved with my spirit,” Moore says. “My entire family is Jamaican. It’s nothing but reggae music and those kinds of vibes.” Moore’s breakout is reminiscent…

Misty Copeland is making history. During American Ballet Theatre’s current season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Copeland will alight on that storied Lincoln Center stage, making her New York debut as the Swan Queen in the iconic masterpiece Swan Lake—a crowning achievement for any dancer, regardless of the color of her skin. But Copeland is not just any dancer, and she knows it: “To be the first African-American woman to dance this role with American Ballet Theatre is a huge step for the ballet world,” she says, “and I take on this opportunity with tremendous care and understanding of what it means for the growth of this art form.” At 32, she is the first crossover star the ballet world has seen in decades, with a guest-judge stint on Fox’s…

“AS IF” I had done a pilot with my friend Meredith Scott Lynn [an actress]. She was in New York when I was writing [Clueless], and we’d hang out and do stuff [with her gay best friend, Andrew]. I think a lot of [sayings] come from the gay community and then get spread to kids and then to the general public. DEFINITION: It’s the Cher Horowitz way of saying, “No way!” USE IT IN A CLUELESS SENTENCE: Cher, pushing away an amorous high-school boy that she would never date: “Ew, get off of me! Ugh—as if!” “AUDI” “Audi” … where did I hear that? That must have been from [students at] school. DEFINITION: The phrase also appears in U.C.L.A. Slang 2, the 1993 edition of the university’s slang dictionary. There…

In the spring of 2007, at the height of the bloody “surge” in Iraq, members of an American platoon drove in convoy to a wasteland on the edge of Baghdad. Night had fallen, and when the ramp of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle was lowered, a shaft of light shot through the darkness. A handful of Iraqi men, blindfolded and bound with flex-cuffs, were led down the incline and taken to the edge of a weedy canal. They had been captured earlier in the day and may or may not have been insurgents. The detainees were made to line up alongside the canal, and then one by one they were shot by First Sergeant John Hatley and two of his men. Hatley, according to one of his soldiers, later explained to…

Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment, writing as A. J. Rich, give life to their late friend Kathy Rich’s unfinished thriller in The Hand That Feeds You (Scribner)—an unnerving, elegant page-turner. Couples in a heartland town wilt under the heat of existential meltdown in Dean Bakopoulos’s Summerlong (Ecco). Anne Kreamer preaches a radical daily practice of Risk/Reward (Random House). The reclusive Harper Lee sets To Kill a Mockingbird fans a-twitter with a sequel of sorts, Go Set a Watchman (Harper). Jeff Gordinier and Marc Weingarten edit Here She Comes Now (Rare Bird), essays on women musicians. Eric Bennett’s deceitful Iraq-war memoirist tells A Big Enough Lie (TriQuarterly). Joshua Cohen plumbs the mysteries of human connection in Book of Numbers (Random House). Stephen Witt drops the needle on How Music Got Free…

LUXURY HIGH-END $$$ AMOREPACIFIC First Korean brand to enter the U.S. luxury market with an impact, in 2003. Available at us.amorepacific.com. Key ingredient: green tea. Price range: $35–$750. SULWHASOO Launched in the U.S. at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman in 2010. One of the fastest-growing brands from Seoul. Key ingredient: ginseng. Price range: $36–$420. MID-LUXURY $$ DAVI Currently available only at daviskin.com. Expansion coming soon. Key ingredients: grapes and fermented-wine extracts. Price range: $45–$185. AMARTE Created by dermatologist Dr. Craig Kraffert and available at amarteskincare.com. Key ingredient: retinol. Price range: $37–$102. MASS-MARKET $ LANEIGE Entered the mass market at Target last year. A runaway hit at an affordable price. Key ingredient: purified mineral water. Price range: $28–$50. DR. JART+ The cool, no-fuss brand debuted its BB cream to much fanfare at…

Liev Schreiber, the Lower East Side–raised stage-and-screen actor lauded for roles ranging from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Marvel’s Sabretooth, grew up fascinated by another distinctly handsome Tony Award winner known for his acting duality—Basil Rathbone, the stage actor and 14-time Sherlock Holmes of 30s and 40s cinema. But it wasn’t Rathbone’s defining detective role that entranced the future Yale School of Drama and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art–trained actor—it was his swashbuckling villains. “Everyone says villains are thankless parts, but those are really the best roles,” says Schreiber, who, at 47, has himself evolved into a Tony Award–winning actor and professional malefactor who can both swing a sword (he loves fencing) and carry a series. In anticipation of July’s third-season return of Showtime’s Ray Donovan, in which Schreiber stars as the…

On the morning of June 30, 2012, the line of black Suburbans outside the Mandarin Oriental hotel, on Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, was longer than usual. The drivers waited for their passengers: out-of-town guests heading to a wedding that was the capstone to the years-long transformation of two ambitious, hardworking, and lucky young men. Chris Hughes, the sandy-haired Facebook co-founder and an online organizer for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, had recently bought a majority stake in The New Republic, a century-old, Washington, D.C.–based magazine that had been founded in Theodore Roosevelt’s living room and had come to define a certain strain of modern liberalism. He was marrying his longtime boyfriend, a tanned and chiseled Sean Eldridge, who had worked as hard as anyone for this day as the political director…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Lying in one of two twin hammocks on an English lawn in June. A glass of something cool and vinous is balanced on my tummy. A speaker hanging above the tree plays Glenn Gould. A Wodehouse novel is spread-eagled on my chest. I will pick it up in a moment. Oh, the other hammock is occupied by my beloved husband. What is your greatest fear? Being found out. Which living person do you most admire? Probably Daniel Barenboim. His blend of insane talent, intellect, and profound humanitarianism is one that comes along very, very rarely. I would put Martina Navratilova and Stephen Sondheim in a tie for second. What is your greatest extravagance? My husband. I’m kidding, I’m kidding … books, pictures, and…

SAGE WEARS A DRESS BY PRADA. AGE: 22. PROVENANCE: Los Angeles. CLASS ACT: The blonde beauty, whose breakout role was in Nickelodeon’s 2012 How to Rock series, started acting professionally in high school. “I would be in science class studying lines for my audition later that day, which isn’t great, but it was way more fun.” RIDING HIGH: The actress is a champion equestrian. “It was the best thing I ever did for myself growing up. It taught me responsibility and gave me an athlete’s mentality—competitive but also appreciative of where hard work can get you. I carried that over into acting.” BACK TO SCHOOL: Sage plays Lacey Pemberton in next month’s Paper Towns—the film adaptation of John Green’s beloved coming-of-age novel, which stars Cara Delevingne. “I went to an…

Luca Dotti cooks with Hepburn in Audrey at Home (Harper Design). Rinker Buck travels The Oregon Trail (Simon & Schuster). Poet Nick Flynn exposes My Feelings (Graywolf). Jesse Browner asks, How Did I Get Here? (HarperWave). Clifford Thompson shines in Twin of Blackness (Autumn House). Milan Kundera revels in The Festival of Insignificance (Harper). Brenda Bowen escapes to Maine in Enchanted August (Pamela Dorman). Exiled sisters land on The Star Side of Bird Hill (Penguin), by Naomi Jackson. Fred Goodman spins Allen Klein (Eamon Dolan). Shaun Usher compiles Lists of Note (Chronicle). Al Hirschfeld illustrates The Hirschfeld Century (Knopf). Murder haunts Robin Kirman’s Bradstreet Gate (Crown). Kevin Kwan is back with China Rich Girlfriend (Doubleday). David Black spies a Fast Shuffle (Forge). Charles Kaiser tallies The Cost of Courage (Other…

AND, WAIT, THERE’S MORE ... Additional South Korean beauty brands are coming west, such as Belif (Korea’s answer to Kiehl’s), exclusively at Sephora. Other K-brands like Iope and Mamonde will come via Aritaum, which has opened stores in San Francisco and Canada. New York gets its first one this month. Think: mini Korean Sephora! And other Korean beauty emporiums such as Tonymoly and Holika Holika have just arrived in N.Y.C.…

Rose Byrne, whose impersonation of the laughing kookaburra bird of her native Australia on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon made her an instant YouTube hit, met me for lunch at Morandi, her local hangout in New York’s West Village. “Nice to meet you, John,” the actress said in her breezy Aussie accent. “Are you hungry?” I’ve yet to meet an Australian who revealed any snobbery or attitude, and the fun, refreshingly unstarry Rose Byrne didn’t let me down. In repose, she can sometimes appear on-camera like a melancholic porcelain beauty. But in her jeans and Kenzo Paris sweater that day, she was more her natural, disarming self. She lives nearby with Bobby Cannavale, who declared her “the love of my life” while accepting an Emmy Award for his gangster…

Governor Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, who is running for president, says he is personally opposed to gay marriage but takes the position that this is a matter for each of the 50 states to decide for itself. Nice try, Governor, but that train has pulled out of the station. The country has already accepted gay marriage, and it’s too late for half-measures. “Leave it to the states” is a hoary evasion for national politicians who want to duck a troublesome issue, but it’s not available to Walker, because governors of states can’t duck an issue by saying it should be decided by the states. Well, they can try, but they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. You are the governor, Governor. Man up (as Sarah Palin used to…