Innholdsfortegnelse for Mar-14 i Vogue

POP ART YouTube beauty queen Michelle Phan takes on the monumental task of re-creating Rihanna’s look. See the video, which details every step of Phan’s transformation on Vogue.com. CANDID CAMERA Photographer Phil Oh captures the best style from the streets of New York, London, Milan, and Paris. PLUS VOGUE’S VIEW Everyone sees what comes down the runway, but our photo portfolio catches all the unseen moments that make Fashion Week magic. FRONT-ROW FAVORITES Sometimes the audience’s style is just as important as what’s on the catwalk. With this in mind, we pick our favorite celebrities on the sidelines at the shows. BACKSTAGE BEAUTY Find out how to create the effortless look of flawless skin or the allure of a bold brow in our collections coverage. GUIDE → BEAUTY: POWER PRIMPING…

JOEL KINNAMAN As a polar vortex swept across much of the U.S. in early January, actor Joel Kinnaman was happy to be wearing just a T-shirt while speaking to Vogue from his backyard in Los Angeles. The Stockholm native, familiar to American audiences as shady homicide detective Stephen Holder on AMC’s The Killing, knows a thing or two about bad weather—most of his scenes in the Seattle-set crime drama were in the rain. Cloudiness of another kind often casts a shadow on Kinnaman’s roles, from his business student turned drug runner in 2010’s Easy Money (for which he won a Guldbagge, the Swedish equivalent of an Oscar) to a crime-fighting cyborg in José Padilha’s RoboCop reboot, in theaters on February 12. “I seem to gravitate toward characters who live in…

Anne-Sophie Pic doesn’t draw attention to herself. She is soft-spoken and thoughtful in conversation, greeting me with a pleasant, almost shy smile and offering to show me the kitchen at Maison Pic, her Michelin three-star restaurant and hotel in Valence, France, in the heart of the Rhône Valley. Dressed in immaculate chef’s whites, hair pulled neatly back, she moves with the agility of a bantamweight fighter, quickly stepping around her cooks so as not to interrupt their flow. The style of her cooking—intricate, modern, pretty, and somehow unmistakably French—demands that much of the final preparation be done à la minute, so that each dish is assembled at the pass, which requires a complex ballet of cooks moving from their stations to the plates already set on serving trays. The presentations…

I always enjoy going back to our family’s house in Rio. My mom is Brazilian, and my grandmother lives there—she traveled the world when my grandfather was a Brazilian ambassador, and she has the best style—so I visit at least three times a year. I’ve also spent many holidays on Ilha Grande, the “Big Island” of Angra dos Reis—an archipelago two hours outside the city. I love the luxuriant vegetation, tropical beaches, and rugged landscape. Taking in the sunset, going on hikes, swimming in waterfalls, one definitely feels closer to the essentials. Pedra da Gávea One of the nicest hikes in Rio. I often start my day exercising here. Prainha Beach, followed by lunch at Bira de Guaratiba Spend a day in the sand and then go to one of…

The office building at 523 West Sixth Street in downtown L.A. is largely occupied by professional types, mostly men, who arrive at work in a parade of neutrals. Peek into the third floor, however, and you’ll find 50,000 square feet of high-ceilinged open office space housing a fleet of 200 employees—mostly young women in ripped jeans, platform sandals, mod haircuts, and matte-red lipstick—keeping one of the country’s fastest-growing online retailers running. In 2012, Nasty Gal, the seven-year-old brainchild of 29-year-old Sophia Amoruso, netted more than $100 million in revenue. Last year, they added 100 new employees, published their second magazine, and continued to throw the lively parties they’ve become legendary for—much to the delight of the buttoned-down crowd with whom they share the elevator. The company’s story starts at the…

One of my favorite childhood movie memories is the scene in Sidney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express when the train’s passengers—key players in the murder mystery about to unfold—arrive on the platform of the Istanbul station to board. Through the steam and the chaos of luggage, porters, spivs, beggars, and an all-star cast (including Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, and Vanessa Redgrave), Michael York and Jacqueline Bisset appear as Count and Countess Andrenyi, flamboyantly costumed by Tony Walton in aristocratically impractical white. There might have been a borzoi or two in tow. To me (both then and now), the couple seemed the embodiment of absolute glamour. And so it was great fun to find myself at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, where…

Angelique Soave has never darkened the door of Maria, located in a former sixteenth-century monastery in downtown Dubrovnik. She has never lovingly fondled the extravagant merchandise, nor slipped into a sleek fitting room. But that doesn’t mean Soave is unfamiliar with its stylish stock. In fact, she shops there all the time, procuring such elusive treasures as her favorite near-impossible-to-find Lanvin trench. Soave, who lives in Los Angeles, found the concept store through Farfetch, a site that serves as a sort of chic clearinghouse for an international roster of high-end, multibrand boutiques in locales as disparate and unlikely as Andorra and Romania, handling troublesome details including shipping and translating when needed. Of course, she’s not the only American woman who is at this very minute dancing around the globe via…

neither Sol LeWitt nor Donald Judd wanted to be fenced in, so to speak: LeWitt called his three-dimensional works “structures” instead of sculptures, while Judd protested his easy association with the Minimalism movement of the sixties. So let’s not call Lee Savage—who has translated some of these artists’ concepts and techniques into a collection of clutches composed of perfect little boxes—a mere bag designer. Her pieces are functional, yes, but they’re more like collectible works of chic art. “What captured me most about these artists was their intense focus on austere geometric forms,” says the New York City–based Georgia native.” Savage’s debut collection of eight clutches, which has just launched for spring (you can find them at Barneys and Net-a-Porter, among other retailers), is very architectural, occasionally even a bit…

Swishing. Wafting. Floating. The way the fabric grazes your calves, flows as you walk; the whoosh as it settles itself over your knees as you sit; the way it suddenly focuses eyes on your ankles. I’m thinking about the pleasures of wearing a mid-length skirt and trying to count the many reasons that make it the sensation of the season. But don’t take my word for it: In an age of Instagram, fashion bloggers, street-style photographers, and instant video, the radicalizing influence of the mid-length skirt has been well documented. The sheer velocity of its ascendance was a spectacle of its own during the spring shows, beginning in New York, as multiple variants of this new length—anything from three inches below the knee to just above the anklebone, to be…

In Africa, textiles talk. They can imply status, highlight shifting social sands, or wax eloquent about the designer. Born of a Haitian mother and an Italian father and raised in Rome, Stella Jean embodies a kind of global existence. Brimming with wit and energy, her lush spring collection speaks of a rich tradition of African craftsmanship while forging a more mature sense of sartorial identity for the continent. The canvas for the former model’s preppy striped blazers, skirts, and crisp tunics—which can appear almost intrinsically English—is handwoven in Burkina Faso by local artisans in coordination with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, a joint enterprise by the World Trade Organization and the United Nations to nudge ancient, fast-disappearing crafts into the fashion chain. Jean’s motifs—vivid, wax-printed fabrics that look unmistakably African, offset…

At Proenza Schouler’s spring show in New York, a snapshot of the front row looked something like this: In one corner, Liv Tyler was talking with Juergen Teller and Amber Valletta; across the room, Tory Burch perched near Linda Evangelista and makeup artist Aaron de Mey, who was greeting Craig McDean and Karen Elson. Baz Luhrmann and Rashida Jones were en route to their seats, along with Moscow street-style star Miroslava Duma. Since they burst onto the scene more than a decade ago, designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have exerted a powerful sartorial pull on an insider fashion fan base, delivered with that unflappable sense of ease more commonly known as the Proenza X factor. Each season they give their girl a uniform for downtown cool (for spring, the…

One morning deep into my forty-third year, I woke up and discovered, to my utter surprise and semienchantment, that I had muscles. I remember it clearly: stumbling into the bathroom after the alarm went off, grabbing my toothbrush, and seeing something twitch out of the corner of my eye—a slight pop where my biceps was supposed to be. Roll your eyes if you want, but if, like me, you have gone through four decades of life without seeing a muscle unless you clench it with all you have, and even then elicit sarcastic asides about the effort/payoff equation, it’s a miraculous thing. Besides, I wasn’t the only one who noticed: A few months later, on a visit to my parents’, my children were busy doing Popeye poses when one of…

Wes Anderson’s work is nothing if not mannered—see SNL’s recent spoof—but he’s great at taking his trademark style in enjoyable new directions. He’s off to 1930s Mitteleuropa in The Grand Budapest Hotel, a historical and fanciful romp centered on the friendship of a young lobby boy, Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), and M. Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge who’s at once a stickler and a gigolo. The whole film is marvelously overstuffed, from gorgeous production design to countless high jinks (silly chases, goofy assassins) to a teeming, Woody Allen–ish cast: Tilda Swinton beneath an impasto of old-age makeup, Saoirse Ronan as Zero’s pastry-shop inamorata, Jude Law and F. Murray Abraham as narrators, and de rigueur appearances by Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson. Like all of Anderson’s…

Manhattanites know that when it comes to macarons—those refined cousins of the common cookie—the quickest way to Paris is through the front doors of Madison Avenue’s Ladurée. Now the famed patisserie has a new downtown address on West Broadway, where the old Barolo space has been painstakingly redecorated à la française, with velvet banquettes, a Rorschach marble floor, a sky-painted ceiling, and portraits of French novelists like Colette and George Sand lining the walls for good measure. In addition to its signature double-decker confections—including a red fruit–and–jasmine version specially made to celebrate the opening—the lavishly appointed salon will serve croissants and other viennoiseries, plus a full lunch and dinner featuring such savory standards as duck foie gras and cheese soufflé. Diners may choose from two dining rooms, one dedicated to…

On the day of a performance, whether in Verona, Amsterdam, or Beijing, soprano Olga Peretyatko (who, with her dark features and heart-shaped lips, looks as if she couldn’t have been born for any other vocation) walks around town, stopping to give to every street musician she sees. “Once in Berlin there were seven performers in the subway, and I gave them everything I had,” she says with a laugh. She certainly does the same onstage, and this spring sees her debut on two of the world’s biggest—Milan’s La Scala, where she’ll play Marfa in The Tsar’s Bride this month, and the Met, as Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani in April. Born in artists’ housing in St. Petersburg, where her father sang at the Mariinsky Theatre, Peretyatko began her own career…

They say that we become the stories we tell about ourselves. So what’s your story? From our cover girl, Rihanna (whose dynamic style has become a fashion force to reckon with), to model Fei Fei Sun (who has stepped into the spotlight as a global supermodel), the women in this issue have crafted their own scripts, embracing self-determination and self-creation with a vengeance—and with their wardrobes playing a crucial part. Today’s moment is one of extreme fashion eclecticism, which makes it the perfect time for you, too, to cast yourself as the star of your own adventure. What is chic all about right now? In a simple phrase: strength of character. Underscore yours with distinctive clothes, styled with bravado. Here are six plot points to consider for spring: 1 The…

a 46-year-old dynamo named Amy Cappellazzo was walking me through the main exhibition rooms at Christie’s New York headquarters one afternoon last year. Darkhaired and super-fit in a pair of burgundy Vince jeans and a white Malia Mills top, she kept pausing to exchange breaking news with colleagues and clients. Her comments were lively and hilarious, her smile all-conquering. We stopped in front of Bea Arthur Naked, a 1991 painting by John Currin. “Do you remember her, from the TV show Maude?” she asked. “This is an important picture, but not necessarily a commercial picture. Why? Because she’s naked and she has lopsided breasts, and she’s not what men idealize. When it comes to nudity or to anything with a flaccid penis, it’s often very hard to sell.” Lopsided breasts…

Pop songs traditionally rest on pronouns: you and me, the two of us together. One of the most startling things about Ella Yelich-O’Connor, the seventeen-year-old singer-songwriter who records as Lorde, is that although those words make the expected showings, their meaning, like a lot about her work, comes refreshed and entirely turned around. Since Lorde’s single “Royals” went to number one in the United States this past fall, making her the youngest artist to top the charts in more than 25 years, her unadorned, descriptively precise songs have defined a novel point of view in mainstream vocals. Lorde’s I is disembodied; her you is coyly attentive. (“You haven’t stopped smoking all night,” she sings in “A World Alone,” on her debut album, Pure Heroine.) The crucial pronoun in her lyrics,…

Sarah Jessica Parker’s line of accessories available exclusively at Nordstrom, SJP, harks back to an era when manners mattered and men and women dressed up for the theater. “It’s about taking the crosstown bus past the windows of Bonwit Teller and seeing the exquisitely made shoes in all the colors,” Parker explains. “Shoes now are just a lot more complicated.” Of course, Parker may have had something to do with the latest craze for all those ankle-endangering heels. Thankfully, the mother of three has long recognized that what worked for Carrie Bradshaw may not relate to real life. “I wanted to make shoes that appealed to different generations at a price that suited a wide variety of women,” she says. They also had to be the kinds of styles she’d…

Model Behavior JOAN SMALLS 1. Spring workout: trapeze 2. Signature scent: Tom Ford (FAR LEFT) 3. Home-goods haven: Todd Merrill Antiques in Manhattan 4. Wardrobe staple: leather shorts 5. Must-have bag: anything colorful! FEI FEI SUN 1. Spring workout: running in Central Park 2. Fantasy destination: Florence (LEFT) 3. Cultural can’tmiss: Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the New York City Ballet 4. Favorite artist: Elizabeth Peyton 5. Travel essentials: TSE cashmere sweater, iPod Touch DOUTZEN KROES 1. Wardrobe staple: Maison Martin Margiela jacket 2. Travel essentials: Moleskine notebook, L’Oréal sunscreen, Grey Ant Kennedy sunglasses 3. Warm-weather shoe: Soludos espadrilles (RIGHT) 4. Favorite artist: Johannes Vermeer 5. Cultural can’t-miss: cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden SASHA PIVOVAROVA 1. Favorite swimsuits: Eres 2. Warm-weather shoe: Lanvin flats (BELOW LEFT) 3.…

Everywhere we looked during the spring 2014 collections, we saw Rihanna. Not the record-breaking, social-media-ruling pop icon herself, but rather her look, her attitude, was replicated on so many of the season’s runways. It started in New York with Alexander Wang, continued on to London with Tom Ford, switched over to Pucci in Milan, and then arrived in Paris at Balmain. During the shows, Vogue’s editors started to call this phenomenon the RiRi ripple, though “tidal wave” might have been more accurate. How, then, could we not make this 26-year-old Bajan global superstar our March cover girl, given that this is our annual Power Issue, where we celebrate those who decisively inform and influence our world? That Rihanna is such an inspiration to designers this spring speaks volumes about the…

The snow was falling outside the eight windows of the shingled Cape house as I fed the baby, and even then the slow-blinking eyes of the girls came to me. I was walking on the shale rocks by a green summer sea and would see mothers gathered together on a porch in the African dusk waiting for the girls’ return. As credits rolled up on the screen after a movie, I would drift off in the dark and think of the girls in the shadow of a fig tree. I did not know these girls, but I knew their story. I had written about them a decade before, but they wouldn’t leave me. So one day I took my pen—a nib pen dipped in ink (old habit)—and spent the next…

It was not until I came to live in New York in the mid-1960s that I learned anything about the other Elizabeth Hawes, the idiosyncratic designer and critic who was one of the founders of American fashion. I was 23 then, a reticent and dreamy Midwesterner who had recently returned from a year’s postgraduate fellowship in France to begin an editorial job at The New Yorker. It wasn’t that I met her or saw one of her imaginative dresses or read her best-selling 1938 autobiographical Fashion Is Spinach. It was just that she began to insinuate herself into my life. At cocktail parties I met people who professed to admire my work, although at the time I had published only one short poem. “Ah, yes,” they would say with a…

It’s not news that London’s East End is where it’s at. To most of my creative friends, in fact, East London is the only London—and Londoners, more than any others, define themselves by their postcode. (Changing postcodes is as drastic as moving cities.) Once the East bug bites, I’m told, you are irrevocably changed. But I’ve always lived West, so am I missing out on all the fun? Since my column is all about adventures and discoveries, I decide to give the East’s reputedly coolest spots, specifically the Dalston district of Hackney, a whirl. First up, a long-overdue date night with Erdem Moralioglu at his local Turkish, Mangal II—“the best Turkish food in town,” Erdem tells me, and also where the artists Gilbert & George eat most nights. I love…

Fashion is only fashion once a woman puts it on,” Oscar de la Renta says in his new book, and as you page through it, it’s easy to feel as if you’re in a fitting at the designer’s Paris atelier surrounded by a team of nimble seamstresses. Remembrances from his early days as a bullfighting enthusiast and art student in Spain (he brought his own beret) are also full of warmth, though of course the purest mode of storytelling in The Style, Inspiration, and Life of Oscar de la Renta (Assouline) is the clothes. The litany of magnificently embroidered ball skirts and florid explosions of grosgrain ribbon, velvet, and silk tulle make for a breathless page-turner populated by a half-century of Oscar women—from C. Z. Guest commanding society parties in…

I also stopped for the night in Paris to catch Robert Carsen’s triumphant My Fair Lady at the Théâtre du Châtelet (a coproduction with the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg), with costumes by the distinguished Anthony Powell, who began his career as an assistant to Cecil Beaton and went on to garner Academy Awards for his superb costuming of Travels with My Aunt, Death on the Nile, and Roman Polanski’s Tess. Powell was initially reluctant to take on the project, as Beaton’s iconic designs for both stage and screen versions of Lerner and Loewe’s beloved musical cast too powerful a shadow. But he then suggested shifting the action to 1930—“the last gasp of Edwardian society in manners and behavior,” as he puts it—and Carsen responded enthusiastically. Beaton had memorably dressed the…

To hear that buying a shoe from Francesco Russo’s new, self-titled collection requires an in-person visit to one of only two places on the planet is both glorious and maddening—glorious if, like Russo, you believe that a concept so antithetical to our e-glutted global marketplace could actually restore mystery and desire to fashion; maddening if you’re lusting after, say, the designer’s excruciatingly beautiful cognac ankle-strap sandal but are nowhere near either his new store in Paris or Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. “I’m democratic, and in general I like people to have access to everything,” Russo says, speaking in broad strokes. “But it’s that little sense of exclusivity that makes fashion fashion.” What Russo—who’s worked for houses including Miu Miu, Yves Saint Laurent, and most recently, Sergio Rossi—has set…

I’m not used to being me in a photo,” says Karlie Kloss, who, in spite of her protestations, seems perfectly comfortable doing exactly that. Naturally flashing her sly, alluring smile and leaning ever so effortlessly against her kitchen counter, she looks every inch the supermodel. Still, she’s on to something: Since the age of fifteen, Kloss has perfected the art of embodying someone else’s vision. But representing herself, in the first home she can call her own—a West Village town house purchased just last year? “It’s taking me out of my comfort zone,” she says with a laugh. Then she falls back on a familiar move: the trademark supermodel jump. “That jump paid for this house,” Kloss, now visibly more relaxed, says—and she’s only half-joking. Though few other 21-year-olds have…

In 1976, when, at the age of 26, Derek Ridgers began photographing London youth culture, he thought that he was far too old to participate in the scene. Despite his supposed dotage, though, he went on to spend the next decade haunting clubs with names like Billy’s and the Blitz, capturing the madly creative fashion wonderland blossoming after dark. “I was quietly studying it—just looking around,” Ridgers says modestly of his stunning life’s work. There is something poignant about the images collected in Ridgers’s new book, 78–87 (Damiani). With their tattered punk leathers and New Romantic frills, their extravagant headgear and ambitious maquillage, these Londoners wear expressions meant to convey how tough they are—until you look into their eyes. Among the clubgoers are personalities who would go on to be…

“My eye is constantly seeking out the next beautiful thing to obsess over,” says Contributing Editor and Moda Operandi cofounder Lauren Santo Domingo. The Connecticut native, who got her start as a Fashion Assistant at Vogue (“It was a dream come true—one from which I still haven’t woken up!” she says), has therefore made it her mission to bring beauty into every facet of life, whether in the form of a Proenza Schouler razor-pleated metallic dress or the baskets of greenery with which she’s decorating her homes in New York City’s Gramercy Park and Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés come spring. Still, though there’s an element of tradition to her refinement, Santo Domingo is careful to add, with a note of defiance: “I’m not afraid of modernity.”…

For the young, adventuresome, bohemian, and fabulous, Marrakech was where you were headed in the late sixties and seventies. Mick and Bianca Jagger were frequent visitors to the exotic North African city; Andy Warhol was known to make an appearance. Talitha and John Paul Getty renovated an eighteenth-century Moorish palace whose balconied rooftop famously found everyone from John Lennon to Keith Richards flat on their backs, gazing deliriously up at the stars. When Yves Saint Laurent—who will be portrayed by actors Pierre Niney and Gaspard Ulliel in dueling, much-anticipated biopics this year—arrived in 1966, he snapped up dar el Hanch, an airy villa in the Medina to which he would retreat to entertain friends, seek creative inspiration, and design his collections. The traditional dress of the Berber people—from djellabas to…

Trapeze School New York One of the first to lift fitness classes off the ground, TSNY is now among the biggest and most established trapeze schools, with locations in L.A., Boston, D.C., Chicago, and, of course, New York. newyork.trapezeschool.com New England Center for Circus Arts NECCA was founded by a pair of acrobatic twin sisters who once toured with top circuses and now take both pros and novices to new heights. necenterforcircusarts.org School of Acrobatics & New Circus Arts Fly under the Space Needle at Seattle’s SANCA, a nonprofit known for empowering thrillseekers of all ages. sancaseattle.org España-Streb Trapeze Academy Led by artistic director Elizabeth Streb, who received a MacArthur genius award for her novel approach to movement, the academy attracts creative types looking for an offbeat release. streb.org Hollywood…

As the latest edition of the Whitney Biennial opens, art lovers can once again look forward to the expected array of performance art, experimental videos, and provocative sculptures, but the pleasant surprise about this year’s event (the last in its uptown space) is the depth and dynamism of a group of female abstractionists, ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s, who go all out as they daub, slash, pour, and layer paint. “They’re all feisty and stake out different positions,” says Michelle Grabner, an accomplished artist in her own right and one of the show’s three curators. Shape-shifter Dona Nelson imposes a windowpane grid on the two-sided Okie Dokie, but then lets loose with a spray of tangled lines. Savvy veteran Louise Fishman ravishes with bold, De Kooning–style…

In tune with the folkloric touches that popped up on the spring runways, Coral & Tusk’s lush embroidery—depicting crafty foxes, dancing bears, and bison-riding raccoons—expands its reach with a collection of beautiful linen lamp shades (also available as hanging pendants), as well as the company’s first-ever fabric line with Pollack. The new patterns include bright, geometric stripes; a circus-themed Toile de Jouy populated by rabbits and bulldogs (perfect for a child’s room); and a design of intricately wrought feathers. Clearly, Brooklyn-based founder Stephanie Housley finds the world of animals to be an enduring source of inspiration. “To watch them move about their surroundings, when you think about it, is hilarious,” she says. “What are they up to?”…

I wasn’t that clever, was I?” says Stella, the wayward heroine of Tessa Hadley’s irresistibly charming Clever Girl (Harper) who finds her aspirations thwarted when she ends up pregnant at sixteen. “I’d once read Beckett and Burroughs—now I imagined those authors as my enemies because I thought they’d have despised the things I had no choice but to spend my life on: washing, cooking, shopping, cleaning.” Literature is full of cautionary tales of bohemians seduced by their own ideals, but as we follow Stella from a stodgy postwar childhood in Bristol through single motherhood in a hippie commune and a transformative affair with a stolidly alluring, but married, businessman, we see that tasting from the tree of knowledge isn’t without its bittersweet pleasures. When Stella finally makes it to university…

On a wintry December afternoon the Alexander Wang SoHo store is temporarily closed, no customers allowed. A bodyguard is scoping the place out like a character from Homeland. He looks suspiciously from Wang, dressed in droopy black jersey, who is sitting next to me on a black leather couch scattered with black mink cushions, to the lush fox-fur hammock hanging in the center of the store, and back again. His eyes narrow as he scrutinizes the twelve-foot-high black teddy bear in the window for hazards. “I need to know where the nearest hospital is,” he whispers. A convenient hospital is quickly located. The guard is laden down with a heavy-looking backpack. “Can I take your bag?” offers the salesgirl kindly. “No, thank you,” says the guard. “I keep this. I…

As a boy in South Orange, New Jersey, Zach Braff had two dreams—to star in a Broadway musical and to work with Woody Allen. These were instilled in him by his father, a trial attorney who was also a leading light of local community theater and an ardent fan of Allen’s films. (Braff made his stage debut at nine alongside his father in The Music Man.) Now, at 38, the actor (Scrubs) and writer-director (Garden State) is about to experience what he calls “the perfect storm”—and make his dad very, very happy—as he sets to star in Susan Stroman’s splashy musical version of Allen’s 1994 show-biz-andgangsters comedy, Bullets over Broadway, opening this month at the St. James Theatre. “This is pretty monumental for both of us,” Braff says. “To North…

In the familiar Belgian morning drizzle, Dries Van Noten is setting out to gather flowers and foliage for Ringenhof, his exquisite house set in a 55-acre park on the outskirts of the medieval town of Lier. Once his foraging is complete, he will arrange these trophies in his layered, atmospheric room sets with the same quirky sense of color harmonies, games of scale, and suave asymmetry that he brings to his fashion design. Just now, though, Dries is brandishing secateurs and a trug of woven wicker as large as a child’s canoe; his Airedale terrier, Harry, is bounding alongside him, and he has added the flourish of a dandified polka-dot navy silk scarf to his classically English ensemble of a Barbouresque coat of his own design and Wellington boots. Dries’s…

THE SUN ALSO RISES Model Lara Stone shares morning-after coffee with British actor Kit Harington (of Game of Thrones and Pompeii fame). Marchesa pale-blue bias-cut silk satin–and–lace dress with hand-painted tulle overlay; marchesa.com. Miriam Haskell earrings. Rochas jeweled flats. On Harington: Rag & Bone T-shirt. A.P.C. jeans. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons. BALCONY SCENE Vera Wang has given the romance of lace a contemporary interpretation, crafting a tumble of geometric forms from carefully detailed cutwork. Vera Wang Collection coralred silk-chiffon dress, $2,495; Vera Wang, NYC. Eugenia Kim headband. On Harington: Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane shirt and trousers. Dolce & Gabbana tie. NEEDLES AND PINS There’s a tension here—between the sweetness of the eyelet and the sharpness of the silhouette. CH Carolina Herrera collared white peplum…

THE ART OF THE MATTER The combination of Grace Coddington’s impeccable taste, Annie Leibovitz’s discerning eye, and Jessica Chastain’s striking looks makes “Work of Art” [by Tom Shone, December] a work of genius. The cover of Chastain as Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June is easily one of VOGUE’s best. Well done! Peter Stamelman New York, NY The images of Jessica Chastain were stunning. I commend your vision—the courage with which you march to the beat of your own drum. Thank you for reminding us that fashion is not only decorative and transient but that it’s also interwoven with many other disciplines and has been throughout history. Rosemary Muir Toronto, Ontario, Canada As an art historian, I was fascinated to see an interpretation of the enchanting Flaming June by Frederic Leighton on…

Kirsten Gillibrand dates her battle with the U.S. military brass to late 2012. That was when the junior senator from New York attended a screening of The Invisible War, writer-director Kirby Dick’s documentary about sexual assault in the military. Like most Americans, Gillibrand was then only vaguely familiar with the problem—and the numbers came as a shock. According to a 2012 government report, an estimated 26,000 men and women in uniform had been subject to “unwanted sexual contact” from fellow service members over the previous twelve months. And yet only 3,374 such cases were reported, with 238 resulting in convictions. Of that number, 176 perpetrators actually served time. Put another way, the documentary reported, one in five women in the military is sexually assaulted or harassed over the course of…

When Allison Williams arrived at the Golden Globes in a graphic, feathered Alexander McQueen dress, she seemed to have found a perfect balance of elegance and edge. “I couldn’t help myself—I just kept staring at it on the rack,” said the Girls actress a few days later from London’s Soho Hotel, where she was gearing up for the U.K. premiere of the show’s third season. “I thought it was incredibly striking while also being cool and understated.” Williams would wear McQueen again that night—another column dress with a structural neckline—continuing a recent run of outfits that merely confirms the fact that she’s hit upon a certain sartorial stride. “I feel more comfortable on a red carpet than I used to,” she said, “and because of that, I’ve been playing around…

Shopping for friends who have everything can be a particularly frustrating task. “While there are many wonderful stores for physical things, there really is no great store that sells experiences,” says Trevor Traina, who founded IfOnly.com to fill that gap. Through the Web site, customers can arrange a private dinner cooked by Alice Waters, a day in the boxing ring with Sugar Ray Leonard, or—for someone with a more modest budget—a signed guitar from Bruno Mars. In return, the “luminaries,” as they’re known, donate a portion of the proceeds to the charity of their choice (at last count, IfOnly supports 150 charities and causes). This spring, Traina will add fashion options to his list of experiences—the site now offers choices from the worlds of sports, music, and film, among other…

Misty Copeland, who spent her teen years watching and rewatching an old videotape of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland’s pas de deux from Don Quixote, tends to inspire a similar sort of wide-eyed reverence from her own admirers. There’s a collective gasp when, just before taking the stage one cold December night, the ABT soloist appears in a back room of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s opera house to meet her biggest fans from the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. As a face of Project Plié, which sends ABT-certified instructors to underrepresented communities and offers scholarships to promising dancers of color, Copeland is at ease with the students—she signs a pair of tattered pointe shoes, then asks the children to show her their moves. To her delight, a seventh…

I was in the sea. It was very, very cold.” Simone Rocha is thinking herself back to Connemara last summer. There she was, floating in the Atlantic a little off the west coast of Ireland, watching sunlight glinting from waves as her friend’s wedding party carried on back on the shore. “There was a lot of music and dancing and oysters and laughing, and then rain—it’s always raining! I started thinking about union, and communion, and then wet lace and pearls.” The Irish wedding is all over Rocha’s spring collection: in the champagne bubbles captured in the gilded texture of the dress Saoirse Ronan is wearing on the previous page; in the grannyish pearl necklaces and girlish, pearl-trimmed knee socks; in her poufy-skirted dresses with the odd, wicked slit—perfect for…

In the space between you and fashion, there is the store buyer—a person you are not likely to meet or read about or see as the star of a reality-TV show. It is the buyer who is charged with translating the vast and often amorphous thing we call fashion into something you can touch, smell, or try on for size, and among buyers, Olivia Kim is a rock star. Since the very inception of Opening Ceremony, she was the brilliant field commander of Carol Lim and Humberto Leon’s avant-garde victories, but now—in a move that surprised even her—she has reinvented herself at Nordstrom, the department store with 261 branches in 35 states, opening a theme-changing boutique at selected Nordstrom locations (and online) every few weeks. “I like that grassroots approach,”…

The remarkable thing about montage is the way the process casts new light on familiar objects. Whether the medium is a pencil skirt or a magazine page, unanticipated pairings are often the mile markers (and sometimes, kaleidoscopes) of creative prowess. Just look at the late Robert Heinecken, an artist receiving his first, posthumous retrospective at MoMA this month, for proof: He ecstatically reimagined everything from Chanel advertisements to Time covers to Vogue images by the likes of Irving Penn and Wayne Maser. Heinecken’s approach feels especially relevant to fashion today, given spring’s dynamic mix of themes, fabrics, and techniques. Prabal Gurung’s outing—a wham-glam-thank-you-ma’am lineup of pastel-pop hues with gala panache—showed free-form floral sketches on rayon and reconfigured tweeds with a disintegrated rose-petal motif. It’s the sort of thinking that breathes…

We like cottons very crisp, very structured,” explains Trademark’s business director, Louisa Burch, 25, as I peruse the rack at the label’s small, sunny studio in west Chelsea. “They should look as good at the end of the day as at the beginning.” Early next month, the label will debut its elevated classics with a shop on SoHo’s Grand Street. “We put a lot of attention into fit and fabric and getting the silhouette perfect,” says Louisa’s sister Pookie, 29, the brand’s creative director, as I inspect a cerulean-blue shift in thick woven cotton, the color simultaneously saturated and faded in a way that evokes Nantucket. “Our mom, Susan, inspires the collection,” says Louisa of Trademark’s mix of modernism and nostalgia. “The classic, refined elements—I hate the word preppy, but…

Cocktail hour was winding down at the Met gala when reality struck—painfully. The instruments of my exquisite torture: silver strappy Alexander Wang sandals, nearly five inches tall and on my feet for as many hours. It was—unwisely, I admit—their maiden voyage, and the seas were rough indeed. All that kept me from careening into Donatella or Kanye at the museum’s sculpture-filled Petrie Court was a few deep breaths and a fellow guest’s stealthily proffered arm. Suffering in the name of fashion is a long-standing tradition. In sixteenth-century Venice, noblewomen braved the streets in platforms called chopines, which stretched up to a Gaga-esque 20 inches; a pair of servants ensured safe passage to the waiting gondola. A witty eighteenth-century couplet made light of the perils faced by women in well-heeled Paris:…

I am a dairy queen: My heart beats for salted-caramel gelato, aged Mimolette, and chocolate egg creams. I am also lactose intolerant—my body is unable to break down lactose, the primary sugar in milk—or so I suspect. All the telltale signs are there (gas, bloating, upset stomach), but dairy has been a joy which I refuse to sacrifice for intestinal well-being. The tipping point came after a particularly decadent order of truffle macaroni and cheese from the Waverly Inn—and the ensuing digestive dismay—at the end of a fall social season the most popular dress code for which seemed to be dairy-free. “If your body is a machine, this is not the oil that’s going to keep it going,” said Claire Distenfeld at a capsule-collection launch in her boutique, Fivestory, in…

It’s funny that I play so many emotionally twisted characters,” says Finn Wittrock, “because I think I’m pretty stable and down-to-earth. When we were doing Death of a Salesman, Mike Nichols even said to me, ‘You’re a happy actor. I’ve never met one of those before.’” These days, the 29-year-old Massachusetts native has reason to be sunnier than ever. Over the last three years, he’s gone from soap-opera stardom on All My Children to raves for his tormented Happy Loman on Broadway to countless offers from Hollywood. Not only does Witt rock possess chiseled good looks—TV powerhouse Ryan Murphy compares him to a dark-haired Robert Redford—but he has a mercurial quality that lets him slip easily into many guises. In 2014 alone, he plays the archangel Gabriel in Akiva Goldsman’s…

By the time he was 29, Adrian Lester had already established himself as one of England’s most exciting young actors with consecutive Olivier nods for Sweeney Todd, As You Like It, and Company (he won for the third). It was 1997, and he was all set to play Othello under the direction of Sam Mendes at the National Theatre, but then Mike Nichols offered him a role in his film adaptation of Primary Colors, and Lester seized the moment. “It’s not the sort of dilemma that will get you much sympathy,” he says with a laugh. “But I always hoped I’d get another chance at the part.” That he has, and then some. Last year, Lester not only won an Evening Standard award for his titanic portrayal of Othello in…

Specializing in tailor-made trips to destinations ranging from Belize to the islands dotting the Indian Ocean, the bespoke British travel company cazenove+loyd has started catering to American travelers. Small U.S.-based groups may now depart on one of an exciting batch of “Inspired Journeys” that feature spectacular sights, chic accommodations, and guest experts able to open doors often closed to tourists. On one expedition, George Plumptre, chairman of England’s National Gardens Scheme, will lead a garden tour consisting of a two-day stay at Sir Christopher Wren–designed Newby Hall in North Yorkshire, followed by a visit to Renishaw, the 400-year-old estate of the illustrious Sitwell family. What better way to experience Downton Abbey– style country life firsthand? For intrepid foodies, there’s a ten-day culinary excursion to South India, over which Michelin-starred chef…

Balletomanes will delight in Nancy Buirski’s captivating Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, which recounts the story of the Paris-born prima ballerina who, at 27 and the height of her career, was stricken with paralytic polio. Described as a “stretched-out path to heaven,” the willowy Le Clercq first caught George Balanchine’s eye while studying at his School of American Ballet in the 1940s. Her blend of French grace and American athleticism became the prototype for the modern dancer, while her beauty and wit led the choreographer to take the ingenue as his fourth wife. With filmed performances, candid snapshots, and reminiscences from Le Clercq’s inner circle, Buirski resurrects the postwar decade in which Tanny, as she was known, dominated the stage in roles as varied as a saucy saloon…

Seth Meyers’s life is moving down the hall. You can measure it in steps. It’s, like, 35 steps. Did you see his zippy new commercial? It takes Meyers a brisk 20 seconds to stroll from Studio 8H, the home of Saturday Night Live, to his new home, Studio 8G, where, if things go according to plan, he will spend many bountiful years at 12:35 a.m. as the beloved, quickwitted host of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers. This is not an interim gig. It is not a launchpad to martial-arts movies. Late night is a profession that, when it works, turns the host into a mononym like Johnny or Dave or Jay, and can have the permanence of a Supreme Court appointment. As the man who hired Meyers, SNL creator…

When the Chanel Army comes to town, nothing stands in its way. With Karl Lagerfeld poised to take Dallas, his staff officers set up the forward operating base in a ground-floor salon of the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek. (What’s the first thing any invading army does throughout history? Commandeer the ritziest building in the city to house the general’s staff.) Long before his airplane even lands, these special forces begin the final preparations for Chanel’s latest Métiers d’Art show, held here in the heart of Texas. Dallas is in a frenzy of anticipation. The weather is freezing—freezing— when the London flight lands at Dallas/Fort Worth on a hard December night. There will be more airplanes incoming (commercial and private) from Paris, Milan, and farther east, bringing models, makeup artists,…

Every so often, a fresh cohort of models arrives and announces a new moment. One of the happiest sights of fashion in 2014: Grace Mahary, Imaan Hammam, and Cindy Bruna (pictured here). With their multinational, multiethnic backgrounds—not to mention their cheekbones, upswept eyes, and long, beautiful limbs—they’re leading the sort of epochal shift that makes editors fight, designers throw money, and agents scramble. At long last, the “white-out” years that have chilled the heart of the industry appear to be on the way out. Models of color—from Pat Cleveland and Beverly Johnson to Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Joan Smalls, and Jourdan Dunn, among others—have had a place in fashion since the sixties, of course. But progress in diversifying runways has been slow and at times has even run backward. Now…

NATURAL SELECTION Gucci’s mod-meets-modern arrangements, equal parts nostalgic and new, are especially beguiling when shown on slouchy separates—an eye-catching look for a spin around New York’s SCOPE Art Show. Anna Ewers wears a Gucci silk-jacquard jacket ($4,200) and pants ($2,100); select Gucci boutiques. Christopher Kane peep-toe heels. Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons. BLUSH BOUQUET A saturation kick this bold can bring you from day into evening. Take your pick for the gala at the Four Seasons Restaurant benefiting Love Heals, the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education. Sam Rollinson in a Giorgio Armani silk-jacquard dress, $4,295; select Giorgio Armani boutiques. Erickson Beamon necklace. Xiao Wen Ju in an Oscar de la Renta silk-faille dress, $2,990; oscardelarenta.com. Details, see In This Issue. GRAY GARDENS Balenciaga’s typically smart floral work has been rendered,…