Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i Vanity Fair

DONALD TRUMP’S SECOND State of the Union, delivered in January 2018, included the specter of immigrant gangs, the importance of saluting the flag, and the glory of his tax cuts, but that’s not what stuck with the viewing public. So many of us had by then grown inured to these monologues. Instead, that chilly Tuesday night is better remembered for his wife, first lady Melania Trump, who entered the room wearing a white pantsuit, shining among the sober Washington palette. The speculation began immediately. Was it some kind of dig at Hillary Clinton, who favored white pantsuits as a nod to suffragettes, or a comment about this being Melania’s first appearance since the Stormy Daniels scandal broke? Was it somehow about the #MeToo movement? According to Melania’s old friend Stephanie…

“THE TITLE OF THE COLLECTION, FOR ME, WAS ‘WHAT IF THE PAST COULD LOOK AT US?’” says Nicolas Ghesquière of the Louis Vuitton fall/winter 2020 ready-to-wear line, a powerful collection that weaves historical references into firmly contemporary designs. It’s a formidable question and one in which, amid a career marked by an obsession with time and space, the house’s creative director is increasingly interested. “Of course, we have books, we have history, but we don’t know,” Ghesquière says. “There is a huge mystery in what happened in the past that can look like what you fantasize about science fiction.” Even his reverence for Star Wars, so often perceived as futurism when it manifests in his designs, is really a nod to the past—a 1970s idea of an even longer time ago…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Is there such a thing? I guess, for me, it’s really about life’s special moments, large and small. What is your greatest fear? Pain. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Elizabeth I. She was a woman operating in a man’s world, and her very survival was always in play. Which living person do you most admire? Those who put others first. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The desire to please. It’s a losing battle. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Cruelty…no, maybe dishonesty or disingenuousness. All are equally deplorable. What is your favorite journey? A creative one. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Moderation. On what occasion do you lie? Too often,…

MONSTERLAND Hulu This anthology series, based on Nathan Ballingrud’s Lovecraftian story collection, North American Lake Monsters, opens with Kaitlyn Dever as a waitress and single mom, whisked off her feet by a stranger with a gory secret. THE WALKING DEAD: WORLD BEYOND AMC In a two-season spin-off, this coming-of-age story takes place a decade post-apocalypse, and sees two teenage girls grappling with growing up—and zombies! THE SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox “I have a winning temperament,” Trump bellowed on the 2016 presidential debate stage. This election cycle has the biggest monster running scared.…

Genetics has given Jenna Lyons precious few eyelashes. “I have maybe three on one side and five on the other,” she explains. “They’re so cute!” says makeup artist Troi Ollivierre, who spent years on set with Lyons during her reign as creative director of J.Crew. Loveseen, their new false-lash brand, expands the category beyond its over-the-top reputation, with 10 versatile styles that consider eye shape and ethnicity. (A densely fluffy set pops against dark skin; wispier ones with a clear base suit the fair-haired.) Plus, a sleek tool arriving this month aims to make application easy.…

NO ONE RIDES AROUND in a covered wagon, but the striving characters of Warrior give off major pioneer energy. The series, which kicks off its second season on Cinemax October 2, is not just an action-filled period piece about friendships and fortunes made and lost: In many ways, it is America’s origin story in miniature. Its struggle to get on the air, and stay there, is also an object lesson in how difficult it can be to get Hollywood to make good on its promises of inclusion. The show, which follows immigrants like Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) in 19th-century San Francisco, is a solid example of the vivid genre fare Cinemax churned out for a decade. “Warrior underscores a problem America has with its own…

ELLE FANNING HAS been acting since she was two. She’s 22 now, and there are estimates that she’s logged some 60 roles in her career, which would mean she’s already headed for Streep territory. During a Zoom call, I ask if this is true, or even logistically possible. She tilts her head. “Could that be?” she wonders. “You know what? I did write it down one time, and I think I still have it on my phone.” She whips out a pink phone emblazoned with a sticker of the cartoon juggernaut Strawberry Shortcake. Her fingers fly. “Thirty-six,” she announces finally. The former child star recently triumphed with what she refers to as her “first woman role” as Catherine the Great in The Great—Hulu’s raunchy, rollicking, and, at times, gleefully ahistorical…

“I rode the bike.” Ding. “I rode the bike.” Gabby Giffords smiles as her iPad chimes. Sentence formed. Way too easy. The smile is magnetic, if slightly crooked: Her dimples burrow a little deeper on the left side. Her left eyebrow is more expressive, while the right looks permanently arched. Gabby sits at her cozy breakfast table in an aquamarine sweatsuit and Ruth Bader Ginsburg socks that read “I DISSENT.” It’s hour two of speech therapy, and the iPad’s voice recognition helps journal her day. A summerlike day in Tucson, two weeks before Christmas, it began with the ride around her neighborhood on a customized recumbent trike. Gabby’s left leg provides most of the power and all the direction, teaching the left brain with each rotation. Nine years after the gunshot, she…

Hassan HAJJAJ “PATTERN PLAYER” P. 72 Before photographing model Imaan Hammam, Hajjaj was already a fan. The two had even been in touch via Instagram for two years trying to work together. “Meeting Imaan at last, I was surprised by a 24-year-old being so mature and a beautiful soul,” the photographer says. Brett LLOYD “LOVE, ACTUALLY” P. 44 While photographing The Crown’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the English countryside, Lloyd discovered a certain nostalgia. “It was a perfect summer day to capture Emma and Josh,” says the photographer. “You can imagine nearby was the real setting that Charles and Diana had their first dates back in the early ’80s.” Jancee DUNN “LONG MAY SHE REIGN” P. 32 Long interviews tend to deplete Dunn, but talking to Elle Fanning…

When Frédéric Malle created his perfume house 20 years ago, the industry was rife with cookie-cutter scents by hired hands. He wanted to give talented noses a platform, “showing that these people were more than ghostwriters. They were authors,” he says. Legacy aside (Malle’s grandfather founded Christian Dior Parfums; his father and uncle, Louis Malle, made films), the self-styled publisher broke norms and won fans, with instant icons like Maurice Roucel’s simmering Musc Ravageur. A new Rizzoli book, Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, brims with piquant details (a teenage Malle doused in Eau Sauvage) and illuminates what he calls perfumery’s “left-brain, right-brain type of dance,” with archival photos, text exchanges, and whimsical comic strips.…

SOMETIMES YOU JUST want to throw wine at your friends, fondle strangers, or set your hair on fire in public—at least if you’re a certain kind of reality TV star. In the COVID era, Bravolebrities (as Bravo calls the stars of its reality series) can no longer jet off to exotic locations, brawl in clubs, or get sloppily drunk together. Yet the network dipped a toe back into these murky waters this summer, when executives mistakenly assumed “the virus would be at its lowest point and it would be safest to come out and shoot,” says Bravo’s executive vice president of production, Shari Levine. Real Housewives of Orange County was one of several shows that resumed filming, as crews returned to capture the women preening and provoking in their glitzy…

RICHARD AVEDON AND his young wife, Doe, had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed to take a beach-house share in the summer of 1946 with his boss at Harper’s Bazaar, Lillian Bassman, and her husband, photographer Paul Himmel, in Cherry Grove, a community of bohemian intellectuals on Fire Island, 90 minutes outside of New York City. The slender barrier island, dotted with scrub and brush and dunes, was reachable only by public ferry or private boat (cars were not allowed). During the day, when the sun was out, the shimmering reflections on the ocean to the south and the glassy waters of the Great South Bay to the north created a unique and astonishing kind of light. That summer was a fertile one for Dick—as everyone…