Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023/January 2024 i Vanity Fair

At the time of this writing, Hollywood’s actors are still on strike. The Writers Guild has ratified its new contract, having won some economic and employment protections after its nearly five-month-long walkout exposed vulnerabilities in a studio system that was far from perfect to begin with, and then got disrupted (Silicon Valley’s word!) by streaming services that brought tech’s “break shit” mantra down the coast. The industry will likely emerge from this fight with the bruises to show for it and, one fears, correspondingly fewer opportunities. And yet, despite the odds, it was a terrific year at the movies, largely thanks to our cover subject, Greta Gerwig. I went to a Barbie screening a couple of days before the film came out with my friend Stefanie from graduate school. Mattel…

*A portion of proceeds goes toward charitable causes.…

■ Style File DAILY UNIFORM: Jeans and a button-down. EVERYDAY ACCESSORY: A Foundrae bracelet (2). WORK BAG: Christian Dior Book tote. It’s strong enough to hold my computer, binder, and all my tear sheets of furniture pieces (3). FESTIVE FROCK: A dress by Emilia Wickstead. She makes elegant, understated pieces that leave something to the imagination (12). PARTY SHOE: Christian Louboutin (8). ■ On Beauty EYELINER: Pat McGrath Labs (13). WASH DAY: Monat (6). NAILS: French or baby doll pink. ■ At Home RECENT ADDITION: De Sede vintage sofa in orange leather—perfection! (5) LINENS: Beltrami bedding is spectacular to me (16). LIGHTING: By Gabriel Hendifar, the mastermind behind Apparatus. He’s created an entire world (1). ON THE WALL: Lorna Simpson (9). AROMA: Maison Margiela Replica candle, By the Fireplace (15). IN…

’TIS THE SEASON to pore over beauty. Nearly 80 multidisciplinary works from MoMA—a Lorna Simpson photograph, a Langston Hughes poem, a Mark Bradford painting, and more—appear in Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm (MoMA, New York), a compendium the London-based designer has described as “an archive of soulful expression” (1). New York City Ballet: Choreography and Couture (Rizzoli) celebrates the 75th anniversary of the company and the annual fall fashion gala, which has inspired such designer-choreographer collaborations as Anna Sui and Edwaard Liang, the late Virgil Abloh and Gianna Reisen, and Gareth Pugh and Matthew Neenan (3). Meanwhile, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (Delpire & Co.) transforms William Klein’s 1966 cult classic send-up of Paris haute couture into a collectible coffee-table tome—a fitting celebration of the film’s star, Brooklyn-born…

Krista SCHLUETER “MURPHY’S LAW,” P. 92 While trailing Senator Chris Murphy, the American culture photographer and native New Yorker joined him on Congress’s private subway, which proved to be a great backdrop. “It was organized chaos reminiscent of New York, yet a lot cleaner and always on time.” Akasha RABUT “THE ASCENDANT,” P. 108 The Filipino photographer who captured Jesmyn Ward divides her time between New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Kauai, Hawaii. Her work explores multicultural phenomena, and imagery from her book, Death Magick Abundance (Anthology), is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Brian STELTER “OUTFOXED,” P. 72 “We have to figure out how to be louder than the liars,” says the former CNN anchor—now the host of VF’s Inside the Hive podcast—whose new book,…

*A portion of proceeds goes toward charitable causes.…

*A portion of proceeds goes toward charitable causes.…

Even if they’ve never been to the Pebble Beach car show, any auto enthusiast would rev at the chance to own a 1938 Bugatti Type 57SC—albeit a pint-size one. This model car, a replica of one in Ralph Lauren’s expansive personal (full-size) collection, is as slick as it is architectural.…

WHEN FOX NEWS Media CEO Suzanne Scott called Tucker Carlson around 11:15 a.m. on Monday, April 24, and said, “We’re taking you off the air,” she didn’t give him a reason. To Carlson, cancellation was unthinkable. He was the highest-rated host across all of cable news—and he was suddenly sentenced to execution. It was like somebody canceling Taylor Swift mid-tour or removing Stranger Things from Netflix before anyone could stream the ending. It made no sense. Carlson wasn’t given a path to sign off and pretend that it was on his terms, but Scott did offer him one thing—the chance to include his own comment in the press release. For a moment, he thought about saying yes; maybe he did want the breakup to sound mutually beneficial. But he quickly…

THE HOUSEWIFE WOKE up in her own urine. She was still drunk from the night before, when she’d had three drinks at dinner, another three or four with her costars, then an indeterminate but debilitating amount of mescal after her castmates went to sleep. The house had been fully stocked when they arrived. She was too hungover to care that she’d wet the bed and so sick that she couldn’t film, she told production. But people on set kept telling her she was fine, it was just the Mexican water screwing up her stomach—the same thing had happened to them in Cartagena, Colombia, the year before. The van hired for the day trip pulled over so the Housewife could throw up. When the crew saw what was happening, they rushed…

*A portion of proceeds goes toward charitable causes.…

“IT WAS HORRENDOUS, and it was fast. The whole thing was over before I’d actually drawn a breath,” says makeup artist Lisa Eldridge, recounting a moment of stomach-dropping triumph: winning Audrey Hepburn’s lipstick case at Christie’s in 2017. (Auction records show a healthy five-figure tag, hence the 1950s relic “lives in a very big safe,” she adds.) The Cartier tube, made of 18-karat gold with a cabochon sapphire, hails from a time of everyday pageantry, before plastic upended cosmetics packaging. Now, amid a push for more fanfare and ideally less waste, lipstick is again an object of infatuation. What’s inside still counts—Eldridge gleefully discovered the actor’s shade of salmon pink, which may yet spark ideas for her own line—but glamour demands a package deal. A ceramic-clad lipstick in grisaille toile…

AS EXTRAORDINARY IDEAS often do, the one for Jesmyn Ward’s latest novel came to her in the most ordinary of ways. More than seven years ago, the prolific author was driving from her home in DeLisle, Mississippi—population 1,712—to New Orleans, where she’s a professor of English at Tulane University. “I was listening to the local NPR station, which is WWNO out of New Orleans, [and] they were doing a [series] celebrating New Orleans’s tricentennial, so 300 years of New Orleans history and New Orleans culture,” she says. Of all that Ward absorbed from the 64-episode series—which ran from 2015 to 2018 and expounded on everything from the legacy of gay Carnival to Germans introducing the city to gymnastics—she was most enthralled by a segment on the city’s role in the…

BETWEEN 1927 AND 1979, barely a year went by in which a member of the royal family was not the subject of Cecil Beaton’s enchanting lens. More concerned with his idea of the person than the person themself, the photographer transformed his subjects, and his romantic, reverential vision would help shape the image of the British monarchy in the mid-20th century. In the 1960s and ’70s, Beaton’s style evolved to reflect the changing mood of the time, and he adopted a more matter-of-fact and bold aesthetic. His presentation of motherhood, in particular, helped generate an emotional affinity between the royal family and the public. Yet he was still firmly associated with an opulence and artifice that spoke of an earlier era. Employed primarily at moments of celebration and ceremony, Beaton’s photographs…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? The very idea of perfect happiness. Who wouldn’t be happy about the proposition that happiness can be perfect? What is your current state of mind? Optimism and gratitude, so mixed up with nervousness, it’s hard to tell one from the others. What is your greatest fear? The fact that, until recently, “the end of the world” would have seemed pretentious and evasive, and now seems like the only possible answer. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? It’s a tie: subtlety and frugality. On what occasion do you lie? I do that for a living. What is your greatest regret? Only the things I didn’t do. There is, however, much to be said for staying alive. What is the trait you most…