Vogue August 2017

We’re now reaching a watershed on many things that have remained unchanged and unchallenged for years—a sure indication that while events around us can sometimes make it seem otherwise, we’re actually moving in the direction of progress. It’s especially true of gender, and how so many express and represent that to the world today. This August’s cover stars, Gigi Hadid and her boyfriend, Zayn Malik (“No Limits,” page 106), are ample proof of that. Zayn might talk about how he and Gigi shop each other’s closets—a funny, lighthearted quip that nods to their intimacy and comfort with each other—yet it also speaks to how !uid gender has become, especially and particularly among the younger generation: How they see themselves is all that really matters when it comes to de"ning their…

On the sultry Monday morning in early May when I launched my congressional campaign, I woke up with a terrible cold. I stayed under the covers, unable to move, until I reminded myself that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, 30 years my senior, had powered through an entire 9/11 ceremony with a full-blown case of pneumonia. Trudging down to the kitchen to heat some water for Theraflu, I realized that I had no voice. In roughly eight hours I was scheduled to deliver a ten-minute speech to a large room of mostly strangers, enumerating all the reasons I was a better choice for the Texas Seventh District than the sixteen-year Republican incumbent. In the name of populism and “letting Texans run Texas,” Congressman John Culberson had voted to take health insurance…

EDITORS: MARK HOLGATE & MARK GUIDUCCI ALL EYES ON “I’M CURRENTLY ON MY bed, and I’m lying on my James Baldwin pillow,” Yara Shahidi says with a huge sigh of relief. It’s been three days since the seventeen-year-old Black-ish star completed high school, and she’s celebrating her newfound freedom by doing nothing of note in the Los Angeles home she shares with her parents and two younger siblings. After four years of juggling acting, studies, and activism, Shahidi is taking a gap year during which she will shoot the spin-off series College-ish before enrolling at Harvard, where she plans to concentrate on African- American studies and social studies, which is known for being one of the university’s toughest majors. “I’m trying to do my best to help support and prepare…

Don’t even think about wearing your diamanté earrings, chokers, and bracelets out after dark. Instead, pull a page from the playbooks of designers like Isabel Marant, Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, and Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent, who took crystals once reserved for late-night clubbing into new territory, pairing them with everything from ladylike frocks to oversize fisherman’s knits and jeans. “I’ve always loved contrasts,” says Marant. “Diamanté earrings can dress up the slouchiest sweatshirt.” The effect is at once effortlessly eccentric and oddly appropriate. Just think of it as a little disco to light up the day.— Pick a Color This summer, live life through rose- (or blue- or yellow-) tinted glasses.…

EX-MODEL SUSIE CAVE HAS SET OUT TO ACHIEVE something both elementary and beguiling: adding romanticism to the simplest dress. Cave’s vintage-inspired label, The Vampire’s Wife—she herself is the wife of musician Nick Cave—launched two years ago and is growing at a lightning pace. “The name’s quite dark,” she says over jasmine tea in her Georgian-style Brighton seafront home, “but the clothes are fun, optimistic, and very practical.” Her signature? Easy-to-wear mid-length dresses in metallic !oral "l coupé and celluloid-siren shifts in silk jacquards. It’s the sort of cult label that has quietly bewitched a collective of modern heroines, from actors (Cate Blanchett, Ruth Negga, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson) and models (Kate Moss, Karen Elson) to singers (Florence Welch). “I#don’t think I could imagine dresses I’d like more,” says Welch. “It’s…

WHEN MARCO ZANINI WAS LOOKING TO REENTER the fashion world after a break in his 20-year career, he knew exactly what would bring him back into the fold—and it wasn’t a job that would require him to pirouette in the glare of the spotlight. “Standing on the outside,” he says, “made me desire to do something smaller—a project where I could perform with less pressure and more time.” Fate soon played its hand: He met Giuseppe Santoni, scion of Santoni shoes, and after a lunch, an afternoon meeting, and another lunch, Zanini was satiated in more ways than one. Zanini was invited to create Santoni Edited by Marco Zanini, a collection of women’s and men’s shoes and—a _rst for the label—sweaters, coats, and jackets because, says Santoni simply, the designer…