Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Vanity Fair

Kimberly DREW “Upon a Star,” p. 78 “My favorite part of this process was when Lupita told me about her desire to guide her own narrative,” says Drew, the New York–based curator, writer, and activist who profiled Lupita Nyong’o for this month’s cover story. “I was impressed by how caring she is. She’s a strong-willed and wise person.” Aatish TASEER “A Rake’s Progress,” p. 116 In his profile of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, Taseer found a cautionary, if familiar, tale. “What fascinated me most was his inability to resolve the push and pull of East and West,” says Taseer, author of The Twice-Born. “I have dealt with that too. But to me, he is a symbol of how wrong the meeting of cultures can go.” Jul ian LUCAS “Dread’s…

Harris Dickinson speaks with V.F.’s Britt Hennemuth. Your first film was Beach Rats, a coming-out drama that was a breakout success at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. How were you discovered? I spent a lot of time in my mom’s bedroom making self-tape auditions because the light was good. I was working in a hotel in London when I got the script, and I Skyped [filmmaker] Eliza Hittman from my childhood home. I have her to thank for my launch because you can’t ask for more than what she gave on that film. She gets a text from me now and again with a little smiley face and an update. What are your memories from your first trip to Sundance, that all-American film festival? The three other, completely uninhibited…

Among the cherished memories of Parisians growing up after the Liberation is the wonderful experience of afternoons spent at the Royal Monceau for an aperitif. The architecture, the garden and the service were among the best in the city, a tradition of excellence that has continued into the 21st Century under Raffles Hotels. The Royal Monceau has redefined the traditional notions of palace hotels by reawakening its French allure and by accentuating a genuine appreciation of quality lifestyle. Upon entering the hotel, clients are immersed in the intemporal universe of the Grand Salon, an allegorical evocation of French concepts of modernity in the 20’s and 30’s. This elegantly sober space is nested in a cross-like plan which gives way to a stairway on the left, modelled after the Mirror Gallery…

Makeup is for the mercurial—the quick-change artists who swap their neon liner with every shift in weather or mood. But skin care stirs fidelity. At a time when optimized health is the greatest luxury, a radiant visage is the clearest indicator. Multistep routines and individual needs suggest there’s no single fix, but whispers still swirl among Reddit beauty diehards about this fabled cream or that. Indiana Jones had an easier time finding the Holy Grail. Even with a glut of competition, La Mer—that 1990s cause for devotion (and sticker shock)—still has its tribe. Now a new collaboration foretells next-gen fandom. Photographers Mario Sorrenti and his 18-year-old daughter, Gray—a rising phenom in the family trade—have created a salt-sprayed campaign for the cultish Crème de la Mer. In Spain and St. Barts,…

Many moons ago, in the early 2000s, my friends spent a weekend in Southampton with a distinctive young blond who resembled Lady Gaga if Gaga were British. She was about 22 and said she was an interior designer, or a jewelry designer, or a motivational coach—I can’t remember which, but in any case the job sounded semifake—and she lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side that her older boyfriend had given her, at least temporarily. He collected art, and they often attended auctions. He loved vegetarian food and playing unfamiliar concertos on his grand piano. As she strolled down Southampton’s tree-lined streets, she was struck by their beauty and said she’d have to discuss getting a home there with her boyfriend. His name was Jeffrey Epstein. Back then,…

On a cloudy March afternoon, I climbed a levee in Montz, Louisiana, with the artist Dread Scott. The wind was whipping, and muddy water streamed through an open dam into the Bonnet Carré Spillway. The area, once home to sprawling riverfront plantations, is now dedicated to wildlife and recreation. But the day we visited, its hiking trails, off-road-vehicle courses, and historic cemeteries were under water. The crowns of submerged cypresses swayed in the current; across the spillway, the sprawl of Shell’s Norco oil refinery floated like a mirage. A sign on the barbed wire fence read, “No Trespassing, U.S. Government Property.” Bonnet Carré hardly resembles the decorous greenswards of Gettysburg or Lexington. But this November, once its waters recede, Scott will lead some 500 costumed rebels over the spillway on…

It’s been just six years since Lupita Nyong’o appeared in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, and five and a half years since she won an Academy Award for her performance—her first role in a feature film. Since then, she has established herself as a lodestar in the firmament of contemporary cinema. She’s worked with Ryan Coogler in Black Panther, Jordan Peele in Us, and J.J. Abrams in the final Star Wars trilogy, the last installment of which comes out in December. This fall, Lupita makes another debut, this time as an author. She has written a children’s book, Sulwe, about a child “born the color of midnight.” The book is close to her heart, she tells Kimberly Drew in our cover story; she was moved to write it after…

TALK OF THE TOWN Calf’s liver. Jellied consommé. A martini with a “sidecar” of the second pour on ice. Musso & Frank Grill has earned a devoted dinership serving such holdover classics, and this month, Hollywood’s oldest restaurant marks its centennial—an achievement in a town of fickle fad dining. What’s the grill’s secret ingredient for success? Keith Richards might describe it best: “tradition.” The waiters’ red jackets match the leather booths at the family-owned institution, where legends past and present have sat: Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Garbo, and Tarantino, who featured Musso’s in his recent film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. And to ring in its 100th birthday, The Musso & Frank Grill book—part guest book, part cookbook—by V.F. contributing editor Michael Callahan, is out this month. —BRITT HENNEMUTH “I always go…

“That tension between high and low, pagan and Catholic—that’s the feeling that Roma wants to deliver,” Pierpaolo Piccioli says about his birthplace and that of Valentino, the nearly 60-year-old fashion house he has led since 2008 (he assumed sole creative control in 2016). The city’s roots in duality—wolf-weaned twins Romulus and Remus are its mythic founders—live on for the designer, whether he’s taking the train from seaside Nettuno while watching Fellini films on a laptop or putting forth Born in Roma, a his-and-hers scent fronted by models Anwar Hadid and Adut Akech. “She wears couture like it’s a T-shirt,” Piccioli says of Akech’s “effortless elegance,” which applies as handily to the man himself. “When you work in Rome, you can’t compete with Caravaggio or Bernini, so you do what you…

EVENT Hive Salon presented Dell Technologies This past July in New York City, Vanity Fair & Dell Technologies hosted a panel discussion on technology and sustainability in the workplace, moderated by Hive Senior Editor Claire Landsbaum. The panel featured female business leaders who have put sustainability at the forefront of their missions. Rent the Runway’s Anushka Salinas, LOLA’s Jordana Kier, and Sidewalk Labs’ Emily Kildow talked about the importance of balancing environmental aims with business realities. Afterward, guests joined reception where a selection of Dell’s latest products were on display. EVENT A Day in the French Countryside Automotive competition Chantilly Arts & Elegance returned to the Domaine de Chantilly outside of Paris last summer and attracted more than 18,000 visitors. Presented by Swiss watch manufacturer Richard Mille, the event united…

Victoire de Castellane doesn’t play favorites. Of the countless pieces she has designed as the creative director of Dior Fine Jewelry for more than 20 years, there isn’t a ring, earring, or necklace that she prefers over another. “I would love to have one of each color for each day of the week,” she says of the designs, many of which she wears in rotation, in a dazzling display of the art she’s been creating since she first arrived at Dior, in Paris, over two decades ago. “To me, making jewelry is a language,” she says. “It’s my way of expressing myself in the world.” Her vocabulary is one of playful imagination and vivid opulence, her designs an amalgam of organic textures reminiscent of sugar crystals, coral reefs, shards of…

Mackenzie Davis is absolutely worried about the rise of the machines. “Yes,” she says when I ask if, like her character, Grace, in the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate, she is stressed out about artificial intelligence imminently exterminating humankind. She is emphatic but incredulous, as if she can’t believe I had to ask. Davis had spent the day before voguing around Lower Manhattan in this season’s most desirable couture. It threatened to thunderstorm the whole time and finally did overnight—drenching the terrace where we’re sitting on a Tuesday morning. There’s a nip in the air, so Davis is wearing a hotel-provided bathrobe. (She brought one for me too.) She shows me her two necklaces—one from her sister that reads KEN, short for Mackenzie, and an 1880s $10 coin on a long…

The 19th-century boom of classics, from Verdi’s Otello to Puccini’s La Bohème, may be known as the art form’s golden age, but operas are having a modern moment. Hot off a summer that debuted Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), adapted from Charles Blow’s memoir about growing up in segregated Louisiana, and the queer epic Stonewall (New York City Opera), the upcoming season includes world premieres of Denis & Katya, based on the social-media-centric story of two Russian teen runaways (Opera Philadelphia), and The Lost Thing, featuring a cast with varying physical abilities (London’s Royal Opera). Of course, the classics still wield political relevance. The Marriage of Figaro is an opera buffa about overthrowing the upper classes. Verdi inspired rebellion. Beethoven’s Fidelio celebrates human rights.…

L.R.: You’re a native New Yorker. Why are you living in Los Angeles? K.P.: New York is tough. Growing up there and taking the subway, I feel like I got all my tough shit out. Now I’m living and enjoying the sun. What did you learn from being around your father’s studio? Ten years ago, not a lot of women were producing themselves. They’d record a whole album, then come back with the edits from the label, and re-record everything all over again. It was startling to watch music get mutilated. Is it true your great-great-grandfather Isidor Straus was a U.S. congressman who was considered a hero when he died on the Titanic? Yes, my great-great-grandparents were wealthy Jewish philanthropists who owned Macy’s, and they decided to take a luxury trip…

Lupita Nyong’o glides into the restaurant at our appointed time, the picture of cool in a blue charmeuse jumpsuit with a camel-colored rain jacket draped over her arm. If diners are aware a star is among us, they don’t betray it. After briefly casting about for a different table, then deciding the one we’ve got will do, she jumps directly, wholeheartedly, into the interview, clothes first. “The gesture of my style is definitely my mom. I always thought she was very elegant, and she was always present with the way she put herself together without being pressured,” says Nyong’o, citing her mother’s ritual home manicure every Sunday night while the family watched television together. But she also looked up to her Aunt Amondi, her mother’s sister, whose style tacked in…

One night the future first lady of Pakistan had a dream. Visions and prophecies were Bushra Maneka’s stock and trade, for she was a female pir, or living saint. Known as Pinky Peerni to her admirers, Maneka’s gift of clairvoyance had earned her a following well beyond her hometown of Pakpattan, a celebrated spiritual center 115 miles southwest of Lahore. In 2015, Maneka had added to her growing list of clients the man who was the object of her prophetic dream: Imran Khan, the legendary cricketer and most famous Pakistani alive. “Spiritual guides, or pirs,” Khan writes in his autobiography, “are quite common in Pakistan. Millions of people, particularly in rural areas of the country, follow them, consulting them on everything from religious matters to sickness and family problems.” Khan…

It was a Saturday night last March in Buffalo, and Dennis Scott was sitting at home. A stocky veteran with salt-and-pepper hair and a close-cropped beard, Scott had been laid off from Tesla’s factory in Buffalo two months earlier as part of a global reduction in the company’s workforce. Since then, he had taken to sending Elon Musk emails and pointblank tweets, describing the pain the layoffs were causing. Ten days after Scott was let go, Musk had tweeted a goofy picture of himself posing with what looked like a machine gun. Scott retweeted the image and called Musk a clown. “If I were CEO and someone told me my company wasn’t working right,” he explains, “I wouldn’t be clowning around. I’ve got people counting on me for their livelihood.”…