Vogue May 2020

I’M WRITING TO YOU in the middle of March, as our issue goes to press—which may seem like ancient history by the time you read this. Such is the new reality brought by COVID-19, where no one knows quite what hurtling developments each day will bring. Through it all, one fact, however, remains stubbornly unchanged: President Trump. These weeks have been a reminder—as if we needed a reminder—that America must choose a new president. And it is my belief that we should choose Joe Biden. I have been impressed with the wider field of Democratic candidates this primary season—many of whom we have profiled in Vogue—but after Biden’s decisive victories on Super Tuesday, I, like so many Americans, made up my mind to rally behind him. He is unmistakably a…

Call your brother. Something’s happening.” Lisa, my oldest friend from the small town in Connecticut where we both grew up, has phoned as I’m heading out from my office in New York City’s Flatiron District to pick up lunch. “A caseworker from the Department of Children and Families turned up at his apartment, and the landlord just called me,” Lisa says. “I think she’s there to take your niece.” I hang up and quickly dial my brother, who answers in a state of confusion and duress. In the background I can hear his girlfriend, my niece’s mother, but cannot make out what she’s saying, only that she’s upset. My brother tells me the caseworker is there and abruptly hands the phone to her. She tells me that someone made an…

FASHION Some fashions are hopelessly mired in a specific time and place—the disco-distended shoulders of a spandex tunic; a macramé vest so redolent of Woodstock you can almost smell the patchouli—but other styles manage to transcend the years and dazzle for decades. The eternal summer dress—sometimes full-skirted, sometimes slim as a shirtwaist—has seduced wearers for almost a century with an allure so powerful you often can’t bear to put a favorite one aside (even when it’s far too cold to venture out in a “sundress”). Maybe it’s because these frocks are singularly flattering. With the current conversation so focused on diversity and inclusion, these dresses glide over all manner of shapes and maintain their charm whatever their price point: A stellar Carolina Herrera has its virtues, to be sure, but…

BEAUTY When Los Angeles–based skin-care brand Nécessaire launched in 2018 with a simple tagline—“Treat your body like your face”—it was a novel approach in an industry that has long prioritized the skin above the neck. “For so many brands, it was an afterthought,” says Nécessaire cofounder and CEO Randi Christiansen, who has made it her personal mission to popularize facial-grade body products. Two years later, the idea is starting to catch on. “We want every inch of our skin to be rejuvenated,” says Jennifer Levine, M.D., a New York–based plastic surgeon who has been slathering the same peptide-rich Neocutis face cream on her knees, elbows, and chest for years to avoid what she calls the “bobblehead” effect—“when your face looks like it belongs in one decade and your body in…

ART Tschabalala Self arrives nearly a half hour late for our appointment at her New Haven, Connecticut, studio, sipping a concoction of fresh lime slices and honey from a mason jar. “I didn’t have any tea bags, so lime was my tea bag for today,” she says. She’s a compact beauty in a black watch cap, red sweater, navy pants, and hiking boots, her superlong fingernails painted lavender. To enter the studio, which is located in a converted factory building on the outskirts of the Yale campus, I have to sidestep a huge, unstretched canvas. A work in progress inspired by Matisse’s 1908 sculpture Two Negresses, Self ’s creation is titled Two Girls and features entwined figures made up of a collage of stitched-together fabrics. Laundry baskets filled with scraps,…

MAKEUP When Sam Visser was just 12 years old, he spotted David Hernandez—a longtime makeup artist of Courtney Love and Lindsay Lohan—inside a Make Up For Ever boutique on L.A.’s Robertson Boulevard. Visser recognized Hernandez from the makeup tutorial for Britney Spears’s “Hold It Against Me” music video and marched right up to him. Hernandez, noting his enthusiasm, invited Visser to join him on the set of a David LaChapelle shoot a few days later. Visser begged his parents to let him go, and his father relented, driving him from their home near the sleepy surf town of Ventura to Los Angeles (a two-hour trip with traffic). “It was true Hollywood magic,” recalls Visser, who later began assisting professional makeup artists. “It was the moment that my career started,” he…