Vogue October 2018

ONE OF OUR FAVORITE THINGS to do at Vogue is revisit women we’ve featured over the years, checking in to see how they and their lives have changed. And who exemplifies the fascinating process of self-renewal and reinvention better than cover star Lady Gaga? Ever since we first photographed her back in 2009, as the witch in Annie Leibovitz’s retelling of the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” Gaga has always pushed herself to fantastical extremes: She has been pictured in our pages as everything from a pink-bobbed Weimar vamp to a Gibson girl—if Gibson girls wore enormous ostrich-and-marabou-plumed hats and precious little else, that is. Her latest incarnation is very different. For her shoot with Inez and Vinoodh, Gaga chose to strip away the theatricality of old for the relatively…

When I was a child, my sister and I played a game in which we’d take turns describing our fantasy house. Sometimes it was a rambling estate in Oxfordshire, complete with greenhouses and stables, dovecotes and roses. Sometimes it was a strawberry-pink town house in Chelsea or a modernist apartment in Highgate, with a James Bond–style swimming pool on the roof. We had no idea about property prices; we just wanted somewhere beautiful and messy, full of animals, a cluttered space in which we could be completely at home. I’m sure this fantasy, which went on for years, was triggered by our own housing situation. Our parents were divorced, and we seemed to move roughly once every three years. Twice we actually had to run away. The first time was…

Since time immemorial, people have adored fur—the most natural of fibers, renowned for its innate elegance, its warmth, and its grandeur. Now, in the 21st century, there is another vitally important reason that a younger generation is returning to the embrace of fur: a growing alarm about the earth we all share. The rising concern regarding the impact of plastics on our oceans and land, and the toll that pollution is taking on our environment, makes our decisions about what we wear, how we consume, and how we live more important than ever. In an era of fast fashion, when chemical-based fake fur products glut the market and languish in our landfills, a fur coat is the ultimate refutation of the buy-it-and-toss-it ethos. A beloved fur is often handed down…

OLIVIA COOKE SPEAKS WITH a thick Mancunian twang, which may come as some surprise if you’re familiar with the litany of American characters she’s portrayed on-screen. Cooke has a talent for accents—genteel British ones, she reports, are tougher than American ones—and a knack for disappearing into each role. Those run the gamut. Only 24, the actress has distinguished herself in indies and blockbusters alike, excelling at playing a particular breed of sardonic, prickly antiheroine: from the deadpan teenage cancer patient in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl to the high school Wednesday Addams type in Thoroughbreds and the disaffected outcast flailing toward love in this month’s epic, multigenerational weepy Life Itself. “I’ve always found that these roles can be incredibly two-dimensional on paper,” she observes. “I want to punch…

Between finishing up edits on her directorial debut, Booksmart, and relocating her two children from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Olivia Wilde had a busy summer. “I was multitasking more than ever before,” the actress says, crediting a tiny fanny pack with keeping her organized during long days on set. Inside, among other daily essentials, was a prototype of True Botanicals’ new Stress Relief aromatherapy oil, laced with mood-stabilizing frankincense and tensionreducing tarragon. Formulated in partnership with Kurt Schnaubelt, Ph.D., a chemist and the founder of the Pacific Institute of Aromatherapy, it’s part of a new functional fragrance trio, which includes an immune booster with bay laurel and a clary sage blend to soothe aches and pains. As aromatherapy edges ever closer to the mainstream, it can still be a hard…

WHEN SILVIA VENTURINI FENDI was in London recently with her two daughters, she had a simple request: Could they please stop for a coffee? If only it were so easy. “I said, ‘Let’s go to this place,’ and my daughter said, ‘No! They don’t have organic coffee! We want to go to another place—they buy directly from Ecuador.’ So we walked and walked,” she recalls, observing that her kids, like her younger consumers, are demanding transparency and quality in what they buy. The whole notion of luxury, she says, now encompasses something as basic as a coffee break. Venturini Fendi is the daughter of one of the five famous Fendi sisters, daughters of the house’s founders, and is the creative director for its accessories and menswear. Today, ensconced in her…