Vogue February 2020

VERA WANG AND I FIRST MET in 1983. I was being interviewed to become Vogue’s Creative Director, and she was an editor at the magazine, having started in 1972 as an assistant to fashion editor Polly Mellen Polly was as renowned for her fierce discipline as she was for her breathily dramatic pronouncements on matters of style—including, legend has it, a brief soliloquy on how Vera presented herself for her first day on the job: in a white Yves Saint Laurent shirtdress, her long hair immaculately glossy and straight, nails painted scarlet red. Polly promptly sent her home to change, telling her, “We do a lot of work on our hands and knees here—not in Saint Laurent crepe de chine.” Vera came right back—in jeans, her hair tied back and…

In 2020, nothing is as it seems, and even your hair knows it. The future of hair color is holographic, a shade-shifting, prismatic anomaly that’s as versatile as it is phosphorescent. In this lustrous new world, L’Oréal Paris’s Preference, Féria, and Colorista rise to the occasion with an iridescent pearl, jewel-toned amethyst, and dreamy moonstone that change their glimmer at every angle. Influencers Jasmine Daniels, Ellen V Lora, and Genevieve Rokero show us it’s possible. Ellen V Lora “Holographic color makes me feel like I have an alter ego. Daring hair makes me feel bolder; it’s a statement in itself, something otherworldly, but I do come in peace.” Best for Brunettes From the L’Oréal Paris Experts: This multifaceted shimmering permanent hair color features a spectrum of deep, vibrant gemstone violets…

My mother wanted me to be born on May 4—China’s Youth Day—so that I would be “forever young.” But on that morning I still hadn’t arrived, so she started jumping. It worked—her water broke—and she labored until early the next morning, at which point she was too exhausted to pick a name. So my father chose: Jin Ge, from a poetic idiom meaning “golden ax, steel horse.” It was the spring of 1989, and democracy protests had erupted across China. My father’s heart was in Beijing, where the students of his alma mater were among those leading the movement occupying Tiananmen Square. Homebound in Shanghai with my mother and a newborn, he did the next best thing: He gave me a warrior’s name. But while Jin Ge is my legal…

There are many memorable moments in the video for “Even If It Hurts,” the lead single off Colombian-Canadian singer Tei Shi’s fall album, La Linda. But astute beauty observers likely took note about 45 seconds in, when Tei Shi, aka Valerie Teicher, appears onscreen in a volcanic high ponytail, her makeup completely natural save for a boldly overdrawn lip. “Sometimes I mess around with it,” the 30-year-old, who performed at Collina Strada’s spring show, says of L’Oréal lip liner in Truly Burgundy—a similar shade to the one she often stole from her mother as a child in the ’90s. This was no isolated incident. After years of being relegated to makeup-bag obsolescence, lip liner—that utilitarian barrier that can stop a beloved bullet of lipstick from going rogue—is back in the…

For better or worse, 2020 may be the year of the reboot, with Gossip Girl and Party of Five renditions in the works—and you could be forgiven for suspecting that Hulu’s High Fidelity would fall somewhere along the worse end of the spectrum. The John Cusack–starring 2000 film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel is justly beloved and may have ignited the era of deadpan, fourth wall–breaking asides. But the Zoë Kravitz–led version that premieres this month on Hulu stakes new territory, with Kravitz stepping into Cusack’s well-worn shoes as Rob, a record-store owner reeling from a massive breakup. Other relevant details are preserved: Rob’s musical taste still veers wildly, from Ann Peebles to Fleetwood Mac; she still works her way through her list of romantic entanglements to attempt to diagnose…

For a product that’s here today and gone tomorrow, flowers take a hefty environmental toll: the water used to bring the seeds to life, the energy required to pump the greenhouse full of heat, the fuel consumed by shipping. Only around 20 percent of the stems sold in the U.S. are grown domestically, with the remaining blooms imported from Colombia, Europe, and elsewhere. All this transpires before your bouquet is swaddled in nonrecyclable cellophane at the corner bodega. According to landscape architects Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy (aka the Land Gardeners), that’s just the beginning of the industry’s woeful practices. “If you are given a bunch of sweet peas,” says Elworthy, “the first thing you would do is plunge your nose in to give them a jolly good smell. But…