Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i Vogue

IT’S NOT AS IF WE’VE NEVER HAD MEN on the cover of Vogue. They’ve simply played accompanying roles. Call them Vogue’s plus-ones: Richard Gere (with Cindy Crawford) in 1992, George Clooney (with Gisele) in 2000, Kanye (with Kim) in 2014, Justin (with Hailey) in 2019, to name a few. So Tyler Mitchell photographing the delightful Harry Styles going stag on our cover this month—in a dress, no less—is history in the making. But dwelling on history risks sounding old-fashioned—and do we care so much about gender rules anymore? Certainly the 26-year-old is unconcerned with barriers and boundaries of all kinds. In his life, in his wardrobe, and in his soaring career, he believes instead in the fundamentals of play. As a musician, Harry has moved effortlessly from the boy-pop of…

You can tell a lot about a person’s life from their fragrance history, and New York–based lawyer turned designer Batsheva Hay has already left quite a trail. Sweet orange blossom from Cacharel’s original eau de parfum scented much of her childhood growing up in Queens, and to this day, even a slight whiff of patchouli brings her back to Palo Alto, California, where she used to buy the earthy oil from a local farmers market as a Grateful Dead–loving undergrad at Stanford University. Now 39 and in full command of her eponymous four-year-old brand dedicated to frilly, one-off frocks torn from the pages of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hay is at something of an olfactory impasse. “I’m not afraid of a strong scent, but it’s been tricky for me to find…

Table of contents: 32: On Fall: Dress with gloves, $2,277; marineserre.com. Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello earring, $595 for pair; ysl.com. Lafalaise Dion headpiece, worn as necklace, $248; lfalaisedion.com. On Changkou: Top ($915) and skirt ($2,405); marineserre.com. Lafalaise Dion headpiece, $248; lafalaisedion.com. Lizzie Fortunato earring, $195 for pair; saksfifthavenue.com. Manicurist, Ama Quashie. Tailor, Della George. 36: Dress, $4,750; verawang.com. Headband, $275; jenniferbehr.com. Choker, $150,000; tiffany.com. Manicurist, Megumi Yamamoto. Tailor, Leah Huntsinger. Cover look: 36: Jacket ($4,500) and dress ($53,000); gucci.com. Manicurist, Jenny Longworth. Tailor, Nafisa Tosh. Editor’s letter:38:On Styles: Suit with ball gown skirt, $23,000; harrisreed.com. JW Anderson loafers, $640; jwanderson.com. Manicurist, Jenny Longworth. Tailor, Nafisa Tosh. Contributors: 44: On Akech: Duro Olowu dress, $4,405; ikram.com. Headwrap made of fabric from Rose African Fabrics, pinned by the hair team led…

Stefan Ruiz “I went to Washington, D.C., to photograph Dr. Anthony Fauci for Time magazine and I thought, Well, this is going to be the test for COVID-era photo shoots!” says Stefan Ruiz, who is, by now, fully versed in the art of socially distanced portraiture. More recently, he shot “The Next Chapter” (page 130) with the actress Rachel Zegler, the star on the rise in the postponed West Side Story remake from Steven Spielberg. Parts of the session were conducted en plein air—the rooftop photos are a reference to the musical’s famous “America” scene. “If you’d seen the film or if you knew the story, I wanted to have things that you could identify,” says the photographer, who also draws portraits at his Brooklyn studio, “but I didn’t want…

I am in mourning for my life, Chekhov’s Masha tells her unlucky suitor in The Seagull when he asks why she always wears black. For me, it’s a bare mouth that is most telling of my mental state. Among the more dire losses in our era of public masking and working from home is one that, though minor, I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling: the intimate tie between a woman and her lipstick. I’m not a big makeup wearer, but color and my lips have been going steady for decades. To be honest, it was never an exclusively monogamous relationship. I cheated on my go-to reds with afternoon nudes and even an occasional, unsatisfying fling with fuchsia. Then COVID-19 struck. At home in New York City, we hunkered down…

Set predominantly at a bustling London house party, director Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock takes its name from a subgenre of reggae popular in the 1970s. But the allusion is also a gesture of defiance. Though the feel of the film is joyful and sensuous, with a euphoric, pounding soundtrack, danger lurks: thugs who menace the protagonist, Martha (newcomer Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), when she steps outside; a predatory hustler skulking on the dance floor. The roughly hour-long film belongs to a five-part series, collectively titled Small Axe (the title is taken from a Bob Marley song), created and directed by McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Widows) about London’s West Indian community between the 1960s and 1980s. The films—which roll out on Amazon Prime this month—tackle topics ranging from racism within the…

When my husband and I tell friends that I’m pregnant, their first question after “Congratulations” is almost always “Do you know what you want?” We like to respond that we won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then. Everyone laughs at this. There is a truth to our line, though, one that hints at possibilities that are much more complex than whatever genitalia our child might be born with: the truth that we ultimately have no idea who—rather than what—is growing inside my belly. Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are? This is a wondrous and terrifying concept, one that renders us both helpless and…

No matter what they throw at us—pandemics, fraught elections, economic travails—some things will remain the same: You’ll probably be enjoying your first hot chocolate of the season soon (even if you are sipping it at an outdoor table under a heat lamp), and come the holidays, you will want to dress up. It may seem silly and frivolous and maybe even a little brain-dead to put on party clothes at the end of a year like this, amid a tragedy of almost biblical proportions. But there is nothing to be ashamed of. Regardless of circumstances, the human penchant for adornment, the impulse to decorate ourselves, is as old as civilization itself. The quest for beauty, the need to rage against the machine, is perhaps never stronger than when we are…

It’s 9:30 on a crisp morning in Hudson, New York, and after lowering my mask and tightening my scarf against the chill, I lift a glass, pantomime a clink, and take a gulp of vodka. The 80-proof liquor is sweeter than I expected, with pleasant undertones of dark fruit. This isn’t the most productive start to a workday—I have just dropped my son at preschool—but it’s the least I can do to save the planet. Sobriety is a small price to pay for carbon sequestration. How am I sequestering carbon by drinking vodka? My husband asks this question, too, when I stumble home after my tasting. It’s about which vodka I was drinking: Good Vodka from distiller and former GQ editor Mark Byrne. Good Vodka isn’t made from fermented potatoes…

When I was a kid in my Alabama hometown, every year brought the same parties in our Nigerian-American community: the Fourth of July cookout in the park; the Christmas throwdown in the hotel banquet hall, where my family and our friends wore our finest traditional clothing, a sea of blinding-bright textures and elaborate head ties, called geles, that stretched toward the ceiling. During those holiday parties, as Fela Kuti and King Sunny Adé played from the speakers, I inevitably ended up staring at my mother’s girlfriends, other married (but sometimes divorced or single) women, as they floated around the hall, eating, talking, laughing. Their hair and makeup were exquisitely done, with big curls and updos, red lipstick, and vivid eye shadow; their outfits, planned weeks in advance, melded glamour and…

Timelines tend to go askew for Rachel Zegler. “I remember sending an email to the head of admissions at Montclair State University saying, ‘I know this sounds like a lie, but this is what happened, and this is why I can’t attend.’ “What happened” was that the 19-year-old singer and actor, then a musical theater–obsessed high school student, was cast as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s revision of West Side Story. A year earlier, in January 2018, Zegler’s friend Makena Reynolds had shared a casting-call tweet along with a “Thank me when you’re famous” quip. That night, Zegler submitted a homemade video of “I Feel Pretty”—or, as Zegler expressed it, “Me Siento Bonita.” Within weeks she was auditioning. College has been put on hold, and so too has the film. The…

Cartier earrings The agave plant, a desert succulent, is, of course, the base ingredient for tequila, and, per Cartier’s high-jewelry design team, the inspiration for this pair of earrings as well. The creation features can’t-miss-me stones—a brilliant-cut diamond marks the post, followed by a cabochon-cut ruby; below, each earring features a quartet of verdelite tourmalines in the prettiest shade of chlorophyll-green. Much like the spirit incarnation of agave, they pack some potency—and they’re every bit as capable of lifting your mood.…