Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022/January 2023 i Vanity Fair

“KINSHIP IS A sense of shared recognition and trust,” says Leslie Ureña, curator of photographs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. That word is also the title of the gallery’s winter show, comprising work by eight artists, including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Anna Tsouhlarakis, and Jess T. Dugan. “Though vastly different in terms of the topics they address, each of the artists visualizes how people relate to one another,” says Ureña, who curated the exhibit with her colleague in painting and sculpture, Dorothy Moss. Frazier’s Flint Is Family in Three Acts photographically chronicles Michigan residents affected by the water crisis—“a human record and testimony that indicts systems that violate our human rights,” as the artist says. Tsouhlarakis’s sculpture and performance piece, Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed], honors the communities of…

ACTORS CAN BE NEEDY, fragile creatures—they crave the spotlight, but often it just amplifies their insecurities, like a magnifying glass burning ants. When Judith Weston began working with directors, she was startled to discover how many were scared of their stars. “Directors come to me and say, ‘How do I keep control?’ ” says Weston, sitting in the idyllic back garden of her home near Venice Beach in LA. “If I tell them they don’t have to have control, it’s a relief to them.” Weston has been coaching directors for close to 35 years, instructing them, among other things, in the care and feeding of the actorly temperament. “I find it almost like seeing a directors’ therapist,” says Lucy Tcherniak, a director on the streaming series Station Eleven and forthcoming…

Margot Robbie wants to take me to New York. We’re on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles, and she’s giving me a walking tour of some places they shot Babylon, her upcoming movie about the vertiginous swirl that was Hollywood in the late 1920s. We’re about to enter the New York back lot—faux neighborhoods used as stand-ins for various cities—when a security guard stops us with an “Excuse me, where are you heading?” We try saying “that way” and walk like we own the place. The guard isn’t buying it. He asks what production we’re with. This is where I expect my tour guide to say, “I’m Margot Robbie.” Instead, she mumbles something about being with Babylon and “doing some post.” Then her voice trails off. The security guard clearly…

“GO FISHING,” CAMERON CROWE’S MOTHER, ALICE, SAID ON A SUNNY SEPTEMBER DAY IN 2019. Crowe, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, was reluctant to go fishing. A few days earlier, Alice, age 97, had fallen out of bed, and he wanted to be on hand in case she needed anything. But he had a day off from grueling rehearsals for a new musical he was about to open at the Old Globe Theatre in his hometown of San Diego, and he’d planned to take some colleagues out on a boat. “I’m going to be fine,” his mother insisted. “Have fun with your people. And this year—it’s going to be great. I’m so happy.” So he went fishing. There was no cell service out on the Pacific, but when the boat came…

ACT I: THE STAIRCASE She is alone in her seven-story East 64th Street town house, atop the steep, spiraling stairs that friends and family have warned could kill her. Tomorrow, July 15, 2022, she is scheduled to fly to St.-Tropez, her first flight since the isolation of COVID. No one knows when she takes her final step, but some will find comfort when her body is reportedly found in pajamas, with a coffiee cup, instead of a Champagne flute, nearby. They hope she fell in the early morning hours instead of the darkness of night. It’s been nine months since she buried her fourth husband, the handsome Italian playboy Rossano Rubicondi. Rossano might have been financially needy, and more than two decades her junior, but he made her feel young…

Mario SORRENTI “MARVELOUS MARGOT,” P. 68 “I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Margot Robbie again,” says Sorrenti. For the Italian-born, New York–based fashion photographer whose style has been impactful on the contemporary fashion-scape, “it was a dream shoot.” Rafael PAVAROTTI “SARGENT’S ORDERS,” P. 102 The vivid tones and bold compositions in Pavarotti’s photography evoke memories from his upbringing in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Key to his work is addressing the lack of Black representation in fashion and beyond, making him a perfect partner to capture curator Antwaun Sargent for this issue. Ruth OSSAI “THE VOICE,” P. 80 A Yorkshire, England–based portrait and studio photographer, Ossai brought her lens to VF to capture actor Naomi Ackie in an array of color—from a green Chanel suit to…

Wear your heart on your sleeve and your visual allegiance over your shoulder. (While secreting priceless artwork via tote is an inadvisable gifting solution, stashing an annual museum membership card or donation in the recipient’s name would do.)…

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HALLOWEEN, 2021. Naomi Ackie had fully nailed Whitney Houston’s look from the music video for “I Will Always Love You.” “The black suit, the coiffed hair, and the red lips—iconic,” she says. Ackie wasn’t going to a costume party. She was doing her millionth callback for the lead role in the Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. The British actor, who broke out in films like Lady Macbeth and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, had initially resisted pursuing the role. “I was like, ‘Absolutely not. That is too big.’ ” But her team talked her into it. So, there she was auditioning, wearing sleek Houstonian drag and belting The Voice’s signature ballad. Two months later, when Ackie was shooting the third season of Master of None, her agents…

POCKET PAINTING Kehinde Wiley’s A Portrait of a Young Gentleman (2021) cards make every game a classic, and support the Black Rock Sénégal residency, founded by Wiley. $30 (kehindewileyshop.com) WRITE THIS WAY This hand-stitched journal, featuring Three Faces of Mom by Toni Lane, benefits a gallery representing artists with disabilities. $45 (art-enables.org) VISUAL ELEMENT Jerry Saltz’s Art Is Life presents a survey of contemporary art in essays—Nan Goldin, Charlie Hebdo, Instagram, and more. $30 (penguinrandomhouse.com)…

IT WAS CLOSE to midnight on a warm night in June, and Kendrick “Perk” Perkins had a confession to make. He was recording an episode of The Old Man and the Three, the wildly popular podcast hosted by JJ Redick, the retired NBA player, and Tommy Alter, a TV producer. Perkins used to be a center for the Boston Celtics, and, at six feet ten and upwards of 300 pounds, he makes the six-feet-four Redick look petite. Perkins, Redick, and Alter (who, at five feet eleven, would look regular size, if not tall, in virtually any other context) are seated in Alter’s living room in Dumbo, sipping on glasses of a 2008 Chambertin grand cru that runs around $4,000 a bottle. After they finish recording the podcast, Redick, a wine…

“I THINK, BY NOW, YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAGNETIC FUSION AND INERTIAL FUSION,” Gabriela Hearst says to me as she toggles through images of industrial blueprints on her phone. It’s a question one might expect to hear in a course on plasma physics—or at least the physics pop quiz of this word person’s nightmares. But no, we’re in Hearst’s sunny New York design studio, settling in to discuss the spring-summer collection from Chloé, where she has held the role of creative director since 2020. Outside the glass door of her office, her team darts between mood boards and clothing racks and models draped in slinky black garments. Inside, wearing a navy silk shirt and a tweed baseball cap under which she has tucked her blond hair, Hearst is still…

IT WAS A WARM JUNE EVENING IN MONACO. Outside, yachts were plying the azure sea. Inside, flashbulbs were popping. Anthony Ritossa was in his element. Charming and cherubic, Ritossa was glad-handing in front of a step- and repeat backdrop at the Fairmont Monte Carlo. His perma-tan, sun-kissed hair, and tailored suit suggested a man of refined wealth and taste. An outsider might easily have mistaken the scene for a movie premiere in nearby Cannes. But that would have undersold the pomp and pomposity of the moment. Sir Anthony, as he likes to be called, was holding court, welcoming guests to his 19th Ritossa Family officece Investment Summit—a confab of royals, sheiks, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that he bills as “the most highly acclaimed gathering of global wealth of all time.” By…