Vogue May 2018

One of the many conversations we’ve been having at Vogue lately is about who exactly should be gracing our covers given the radically changed world we now live in. We’ve always taken the position that the women we feature should have substance to them, something that has only taken on greater urgency in the last year or so. That’s why I’m delighted that Amal Clooney, a force to be reckoned with in the realms of international law and human rights, agreed to appear on our May cover. Amal needs no introduction, of course—yet for someone who’s in the spotlight so much, she rarely engages with her fame. It’s as if she has negotiated a life for herself that can somehow happily accommodate being married to a very famous movie star…

I grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia, a town of winding mountain roads, beautiful national forests, the cold New River for lazy tubing on warm summer days. My dad was a professor at the university there, Virginia Tech, and every summer when the students left and the town emptied out, the quiet streets filled with ghostly echoes and I loved it. I felt like I owned the place. When the call came about gunshots at Virginia Tech, I was a graduate student in St. Louis, grinding away at my Ph.D. in immunology. My housemate was on the line, his voice shaking, telling me to turn on the news and was my dad OK? I dialed my father’s cell phone, and he answered immediately and cheerfully, perplexed by my call. He was…

Fashion Culture Beauty TWO YEARS AGO, WHILE DONALD GLOVER was at a friend’s house watching audition tapes for the character Van—the actor and director’s on-again, off-again love interest—in FX’s Atlanta, his friend’s girlfriend walked by the television and stopped, transfixed. It wasn’t the first time Glover had witnessed a visceral reaction to Zazie Beetz. She has, he says, “an amazing ability to lure people to her with a natural honesty.” And then there’s her hair. Worn in an Afro that frames her heart-shaped face and caramel skin, her natural texture was a tipping point for Glover, who cast Beetz in the role. “Zazie’s hair isn’t straightened, and I wanted her to relate to Van as much as possible,” he says of the feisty character, whose development has benefited from Beetz’s…

Colville—a new collaboration from Marni alumnae Molly Molloy and Kristin Forss (they designed the women’s and men’s collections, respectively) and Lucinda Chambers (she styled, sprinkling the fairy dust)—arrives in the middle of May with a capsule collection on matchesfashion.com. It’s the perfect combination of coolness (off-kilter pleated print dresses begging to be layered with sweaters), classicism (roomy coats, tailored pants, babouche slippers), and the quirky (asymmetric sculptural jewelry or a black hat that’s part Renaissance portraiture, part The Handmaid’s Tale, the former done in collaboration with Vicki Sarge, the latter with Stephen Jones). The label’s name comes from a West London street that was very much part of the city’s David Hockney 1970s, yet it is resolutely of today in its internationalist spirit—Chambers and Molloy are British, Forss Swedish, and…

Has there ever been a more improbable icon than Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Famously quiet and devoutly serious (her kids actually kept a book in which they recorded each time their mother laughed), the spectacularly bespectacled 85-year-old Supreme Court justice is one of the architects of modern American life. How she achieved this is the subject of the new celebratory documentary RBG by filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West. (The justice seems to be having a movie moment: Later this year, she will be portrayed by Felicity Jones in the biopic On the Basis of Sex.) The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ginsburg shone at both Harvard and Columbia law schools, yet not a single New York firm would hire her—simply because she was a woman. Luckily, her husband, Martin Ginsburg,…

In the era of #MeToo and Time’s Up, messages of female empowerment are reverberating across the cultural landscape, from hiring practices to red-carpet dress codes. But can a slab of soap also have an impact? A Parisian brand is making a convincing case. “The idea was to celebrate striking personalities in new materials,” says Alexandra Benenati, co–creative director, with Sonia Durand, of Vilaines Filles Mauvais Garçons. Named after a 1963 Serge Gainsbourg track (“Bad Girls, Bad Boys” en anglais), the six-piece collection features the sculpted busts of pioneering women such as the novelist Colette and the cyclist Annie Londonderry. Just as thoughtfully conceived is the cold-processed blend of shea butter, argan oil, and soothing eucalyptus; the one-of-a-kind pieces are produced in four weeks. “It takes a long time, but we…