CULT100 2025 Ramy Youssef

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Michael Armitage

David Zwirner

Robert Ryman

David Zwirner

Huma Bhabha

David Zwirner

Joe Bradley David

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Portrait of Candida Alvarez by Bob (Robert Chase Heishman + Robert Salazar), and courtesy of Gray and Monique Meloche Gallery

Olga de Amaral, Cesta lunar 50B, 1991/2017. Photography courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

Models wearing the Tory Burch Spring/Summer 2025 collection. Photography courtesy of Tory Burch

Artwork by John Chamberlain. Photography by Jason Schmidt and courtesy of Robert Stilin

Vladimir Kanevsky’s porcelain floral arrangements installed in the Frick Collection’s Portico Gallery. Photography by Joseph Coscia Jr. courtesy of the Frick Collection

Ali Banisadr, Anima, 2025. Photography courtesy of the artist and Kasmin

Michelle Zauner shot by Léon Prost in Paris wearing a Valentino dress and earrings, Valentino Garavani fur stole, gloves, and Valet Du Roi Ballerinas.

Anne Imhof shot by Jeremy Liebman in New York at the Park Avenue Armory wearing a full look by Saint Laurent and shoes by Ferragamo.

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Michelle Williams shot by Norman Jean Roy in New York wearing a dress by Jacquemus and bracelet by Cartier.

Walton Goggins shot by Sinna Nasseri in Santa Monica wearing a full look by Celine.

Chloe Fineman shot by Heather Sten at the Guggenheim in New York wearing a full look by Ferragamo and jewelry by Tiffany & Co.

Kareem Rahma shot by Lucia Bell-Epstein at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

April/May 2025

What does it mean to shape culture in 2025? In these pages, we offer 100 different answers, each embodied by an individual featured in the magazine’s second-ever CULT100 list. This now-annual referendum on the state of our culture features change-makers from across generations and the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment.

You won’t recognize every name on this list or immediately see how they’re connected. That’s the point. The CULT100 represents the essence of who we are as a magazine: curious seekers who dive deep into a wide range of disciplines to find the people who puzzle us, make us laugh, and, more than anything, make us think and feel. This isn’t a power list—it’s a perseverance list.

The issue is one of the largest in the magazine’s history, with the most cover stars (11 in total). Julianne Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Michelle Williams have shaped how we view movies, and ourselves, for decades. Their newest projects see them unraveling new ways of being onscreen. Molly Gordon, Ramy Youssef, Chloe Fineman, and Walton Goggins might have been unfamiliar names a decade ago, but today, they’re carving out space for the narratives our culture deserves to see depicted. After almost a decade away from the novelistic form, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brought us a new book this spring that reflects the ever-shifting topography of womanhood. Michelle Zauner, for her part, offers a sonic rejoinder to our political mayhem with a new Japanese Breakfast album. Meanwhile, our Co-Chief Art Critic Johanna Fateman elucidates the practice of Anne Imhof, an artist who had all of New York abuzz this season. Last but definitely not least, we hear from Chase Strangio, who made history as the first openly trans lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court just a few months ago.

If there’s one thing this issue has in abundance—other than cover stars—it’s personality. To put it together, we leveraged the full strength of our networks, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to be challenged and inspired. At all hours of the day, our text threads buzzed with each newly confirmed CULT100 honoree, inching ever closer to our final group.

At a moment when the American cultural identity seems more unstable than ever, and the values and voices we hold dear are under fire, these people offer us a way forward. The good news is that their courage and determination are contagious.

Lucky Spring Long necklace

CASS BIRD Photographer

LÉON PROST

“MY JOB IS NOT TO JUST TAKE A PRETTY PICTURE. I DO WANT IT TO BE BEAUTIFUL, BUT MY PRIORITY IS THAT IT FEELS ENGAGED AND LIKE AN EXPERIENCE.”

—CASS BIRD

“SHOOTING IN ANALUISA’S STUDIO WITH PAULINE WAS A JOY—LIKE SHOOTING WITH TWO LONG-LOST SISTERS.” —KEITH OSHIRO

Cass Bird’s photography and film practice radiates joy and spontaneity. “The thing that comes naturally to me is the relationship,” she says of working with her subjects. “My job is not to just take a pretty picture. I do want it to be beautiful, but my priority is that it feels engaged and like an experience.” This distinctive approach has led the photographer to collaborations with Chanel, Thom Browne, T Magazine, and CULTURED, and her work is featured in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and more. For this issue, she photographed Julianne Moore, Molly Gordon, and her partner, Jenna Lyons.

DANIELLE JACKSON

Writer

“How might we consider Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as immigrant rights, free speech, and the inclusion of trans people are being challenged in America?” This is the question Danielle Jackson sought to answer when she sat down with the author to pen her cover story—bringing Jackson’s background as both a critic and researcher into full focus. Outside her writing practice, the 2024 Getty Museum guest scholar is the co-founder and former co-director of the Bronx Documentary Center, a photography gallery and educational space, and she teaches courses in photography and visual culture at Stanford in New York and New York University. In the pair’s back-and-forth, one particular through-line emerged: a curiosity that propelled the conversation deeper into the issues of our time, the communities the two find themselves embedded in, and the literature they hold dear.

In the images he lenses, French photographer Léon Prost strives to catch what goes unseen. When CULTURED called him to set for a cover shoot with Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner, he got to work figuring out a new way to capture the music and literary star. The resulting spread, shot in a decadent Paris abode, sees Zauner traipsing through the halls in soft focus. The intimate images fit perfectly in Prost’s body of work, which includes series for Nike, Chanel, and Vogue Ukraine, with Natalie Portman, Raye, and more. For this issue, he brought Valentino’s lace and sequins to life in one of the city’s most glamorous abodes.

KEITH OSHIRO

Photographer

For this issue’s edition of CULTURED ’s Artists on Artists series with ceramicist Analuisa Corrigan and actor Pauline Chalamet, native Angeleno Keith Oshiro was enlisted to capture the duo at Corrigan’s Los Angeles workspace, surrounded by her instantly recognizable creations. “Shooting in Analuisa’s studio with Pauline was a joy,” says Oshiro, “like shooting with two long-lost sisters. Surrounded by the warm light from Analuisa’s lamps, we shot in and around the space and embraced LA’s atypically cloudy skies and rainy weather [that day].” The photographer’s soft, organic style was a perfect match for the setting, a sensibility that has previously been featured in the likes of The New York Times, The Cut, and The Wall Street Journal.

Photographer

Clockwise from top left:

Photography by and courtesy of Cass Bird;

Photography by and courtesy of Léon Prost; Photography by Crystal Sasaki and courtesy of Keith Oshiro; Photography by Bianca Farrow and courtesy of Danielle Jackson

CONTRIBUTORS

DIONE DAVIS

Stylist

“Chimamanda is a prolific writer,” says stylist Dione Davis of her cover shoot with celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for this issue, “so [I chose] ensembles that accentuated her regal beauty and intellect through sculptural shapes—from Marc Jacobs and Issey Miyake—to complement the setting of Salon 94.” After eight years working in-house at Tibi, Davis has collaborated with the likes of Kallmeyer, Vogue Netherlands, and Proenza Schouler, outside of her contributions to CULTURED. She was also tapped for this issue’s cover shoots with actor Ramy Youssef and artist Anne Imhof. “For Anne, the contrast of buttoned-up suiting from Saint Laurent with structured leather pieces from Balenciaga displayed the duality of her origins in German nightlife,” says Davis. “Structure and fluidity gave her silhouettes to move in—if the mood struck.”

ANNIE HAMILTON Writer

“Kareem and I knew each other from afar, peripherally, before we had our interview. I always thought he was talented, but was also aware that for zero reason at all, I had been bitchy to him when I saw him around,” writer Annie Hamilton—who has contributed to GQ, The New York Times, and CULTURED —shares about her relationship with comedian, actor, and SubwayTakes creator Kareem Rahma. The two met up in a Midtown hotel for a meandering conversation ahead of Rahma’s inclusion in the CULT100. “We hung out for a little afterward,” says Hamilton. “Kareem admitted he thought I hated him, which killed me, but was... understandable. I’ve been leaning in a little too hard into my late-in-life attitude problem. Turns out, I couldn’t adore him more.”

IAN MARKELL

Photographer

Noua Unu Studio was born in Los Angeles, the same setting where founder Ian Markell captured a confluence of youth culture and well-heeled prestige for this issue. The photographer has lent his eye to the likes of Calvin Klein, Balenciaga, and Vogue France, but for CULTURED, he turned his lens on Chanel’s latest Métiers d’Art collection. Markell dreamed up a fictional family reunion to sport the finery. “These photographs feel so much like an exquisite corpse of my childhood, family dynamics from my favorite films, and the everyday characters I see on the street,” he says. “I’d like to think it’s a well-informed caricature of an American family, flavored by love, competition, conflict, and generationally specific aesthetics that have been handed down. It’s a cinematic scandal in Bel Air. If the wood paneling in Dad’s study could talk…”

SINNA NASSERI

Photographer

What hasn’t Iranian-American photographer Sinna Nasseri shot? Besides the Oscars and Met Gala, there’s Burning Man, his own therapy sessions, airborne deer hunters, protests, and political conventions. Still, CULTURED managed to find him a new opportunity. “There I was, alone with a Speedo-clad Walton Goggins, high above the Pacific Ocean in a Ferris wheel,” he recalls. “Never have I shot through a roll of film faster.”

“THERE I WAS, ALONE WITH A SPEEDO-CLAD WALTON GOGGINS, HIGH ABOVE THE PACIFIC OCEAN IN A FERRIS WHEEL.” —SINNA NASSERI

Clockwise from top left:

Photography by Jamie Ellington and courtesy of Dione Davis; Photography courtesy of Noua Unu Studio; Photography by Kyle Myles and courtesy of Sinna Nasseri; Photography by Sinna Nasseri and courtesy of Annie Hamilton

JEREMY LIEBMAN

Jeremy Liebman has captured figures in the worlds of art, politics, and design, ranging from Bill Gates to Quincy Jones. The fruits of this labor have appeared in the Met Museum, Bottega Veneta campaigns, and the pages of The New Yorker, among other storied institutions and publications. For the CULT100 issue, the frequent CULTURED co-conspirator lensed five of the annual list’s talents—including three back-to-back in one day. “It was an incredible experience photographing these brilliant women in a single day,” he shares, “starting with artist Anne Imhof as she prepared for her performance at the Armory, then author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the galleries at Salon 94, and ending with curator Naomi Beckwith at the Guggenheim. Each shoot had its own tone—I wanted to bring a brooding intensity to Anne’s portrait, a playful graphic energy to Chimamanda’s, and a historical and architectural context to Naomi’s.”

KATE YOUNG Stylist

Kate Young’s reputation precedes her. The stylist has an enviable roster of clients that includes Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman, and Dakota Johnson, as well as campaigns with iconic fashion houses including Prada, Dior, and Chanel. For this issue, she lent her talents to cover shoots with the iconic Sarah Jessica Parker and frequent co-conspirator Michelle Williams. Both were lensed by fellow industry staple Norman Jean Roy. “I was so excited to work with both CULTURED and Norman,” says

Young. The resulting images draw on the stylist’s penchant for movement with floating veils and billowing skirts. “[Norman and I] hadn’t worked together in a long time, and I am a huge fan of his work and eye. I also loved hearing about his sourdough,” she shares.

“NORMAN JEAN ROY AND I HADN’T

WORKED TOGETHER IN A LONG TIME, AND I AM A HUGE FAN OF HIS WORK AND EYE. I ALSO LOVED HEARING ABOUT HIS SOURDOUGH.”

— KATE YOUNG

“Interviewing Sarah Jessica Parker was a dream,” says Emilia Petrarca, who penned the star’s cover story for this issue. The former senior fashion writer for The Cut has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, among other publications. “It’s always a little nerve-racking meeting a celebrity you’ve been dying to connect with for so long,” Petrarca admits, “but I have to say, SJP is a great celebrity. She just understands the assignment. She was so present and made me feel like it was a real conversation. This is embarrassing to say, but after hitting ‘end meeting for all,’ I burst into tears.”

“I HAVE

TO

SAY, SARAH JESSICA PARKER IS A GREAT CELEBRITY. SHE JUST UNDERSTANDS

THE ASSIGNMENT. SHE WAS SO PRESENT AND MADE ME FEEL LIKE IT WAS A REAL CONVERSATION. THIS IS EMBARRASSING TO SAY, BUT AFTER HITTING ‘END MEETING FOR ALL,’ I BURST INTO TEARS.”

— EMILIA PETRARCA

Photographer

EMILIA PETRARCA Writer

Clockwise from top left:

Photography by and courtesy of Jeremy Liebman; Photography courtesy of Emilia Petrarca; Photography by Inez & Vinoodh and courtesy of Kate Young

MARA VEITCH Executive Editor

JOHN VINCLER Co-Chief Art Critic and Consulting Editor

ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT Senior Editor

SOPHIA COHEN Arts Editor-at-Large

DELIA CAI Culture Writer

JACOBA URIST New York Arts Editor

KAREN WONG Contributing Architecture Editor

COLIN KING Design Editor-at-Large

ALEXANDRA CRONAN KATE FOLEY Fashion Directors-at-Large

GEORGINA COHEN European Contributor

KRISTIN CORPUZ Social Media Editor

JAMESON BALDWIN Production Coordinator

NICOLAIA RIPS

CAT DAWSON

DEVAN DÍAZ

ADAM ELI

ARTHUR LUBOW

HARMONY HOLIDAY

LAURA MAY TODD

EMMA LEIGH MACDONALD

LIANA SATENSTEIN Writers-at-Large

DOMINIQUE CLAYTON

JOHN ORTVED

YASHUA SIMMONS Contributing Editors

SARAH G. HARRELSON Founder, Editor-in-Chief

JULIA HALPERIN Editor-at-Large

JOHANNA FATEMAN Co-Chief Art Critic and Commissioning Editor

ALI PEW Fashion Editor-at-Large

EMILY DOUGHERTY Beauty Editor

TOM SEYMOUR London Correspondent

SAMAH DADA Culinary Columnist

JASON BOLDEN Style Editor-at-Large

SOPHIE LEE Associate Digital Editor

CRISTINA MACAYA Editorial Assistant

MINA STONE Food Editor

EMMELINE CLEIN Books Editor

SPECIAL PROJECTS Contributing Casting Directors

EVELINE CHAO Senior Copy Editor

ROXY SORKIN Lifestyle Columnist

SIMON RENGGLI

CHAD POWELL

ERIN KNUTSON Art Directors

HANNAH TACHER

Junior Art Director

CAROL SMITH

Strategic Advisor

CARL KIESEL

Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer

LORI WARRINER

Vice President of Sales, Art + Fashion

DESMOND SMALLEY Director of Brand Partnerships

HAILEY POWERS Marketing and Sales Associate

CARLO FIORUCCI Italian Representative, Design

ETHAN ELKINS

DADA GOLDBERG Public Relations

PRIYA NAT Sales Consultant, Home + Travel

AMANDA GILLENTINE Marketing and Partnerships Consultant

PETE JACATY & ASSOCIATES Prepress/Print Production

BERT MOO-YOUNG Senior Photo Retoucher

JOSÉ A. ALVARADO JR.

SEAN DAVIDSON

SOPHIE ELGORT

ADAM FRIEDLANDER

JULIE GOLDSTONE

WILLIAM JESS LAIRD

GILLIAN LAUB

JEREMY LIEBMAN

YOSHIHIRO MAKINO

LEE MARY MANNING

BJÖRN WALLANDER

BRAD TORCHIA Contributing Photographers

GIULIANA BRIDA

KATIE KERN

MAYA BODDIE

STEPHANIE WONG

MADISON COLLINS Interns

WALTON GOGGINS shot by Sinna Nasseri and styled by Rebecca Ramsey in Santa Monica. Walton wears a jacket by Zegna and swimsuit by Speedo. Jewelry is the actor’s own. Special thanks to Hotel Casa Del Mar.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER shot by Norman Jean Roy and styled by Kate Young in New York. Sarah Jessica wears a jacket by Balenciaga and earrings by Cartier. To get Sarah Jessica’s look, try Colorgraph Waterproof Gel Eyeliner Pencil in Brown Fondant and Spike Valentino Buttery Matte Lipstick in Spike A Pose. Both are Valentino Beauty.

JULIANNE MOORE shot by Cass Bird and styled by Studio& in New York. Julianne wears a coat and pants by Phoebe Philo, and earrings and ring by Cartier. Gloves and shoes are stylist’s own. To get Julianne’s look, try Eye2Cheek Blush and Eyeshadow in Roman Sky and Liquirosso 2 in 1 Lip & Blush Soft Matte Color in Catch Me If You Can. Both are Valentino Beauty.

RAMY YOUSSEF shot by Jeremy Liebman and styled by Dione Davis in New York. Ramy wears a jacket and T-shirt by Brunello Cucinelli, pants by Stoffa, and shoes by Auralee. Jewelry is actor’s own.

ANNE IMHOF shot by Jeremy Liebman and styled by Dione Davis at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Anne wears a full look by Saint Laurent. To get Anne’s look, try Valentino Beauty Eye2Cheek Eyeshadow & Blush in Roman Sky and Rosa Emozione.

MOLLY GORDON shot by Cass Bird and styled by Studio& in New York. Molly wears a coat by Marc Jacobs.  To get Molly’s look, try Magnificent Mascara in Ultra Nero and Brow Trio Eyebrow Liner in Brown. Both are Valentino Beauty.

CHLOE FINEMAN shot by Heather Sten and styled by Yael Quint in the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim. Chloe wears a full look by Valentino. To get Chloe’s look, try Magnificent Mascara in Ultra Nero, V-Lighter Dual Use Liquid Light Face Base & Top Coat in Ambra, and Puffer Gloss in Chilli Chérie. All are Valentino Beauty.

MICHELLE ZAUNER shot by Léon Prost and co-styled by Charlotte Roberts and Melodie Zagury in Paris. Michelle wears a full look by Valentino. To get Michelle’s look, try Go-Clutch On-The-Move Universal Bronzer, V-Lighter Dual Use Liquid Light Face Base & Top Coat in Rosa, and Puffer Gloss in Warm It Up. All are Valentino Beauty.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE shot by Jeremy Liebman and styled by Dione Davis at Salon 94 in New York. Chimamanda wears a full look by Marc Jacobs. To get Chimamanda’s look, try Diorshow 5 Couleurs Couture Eyeshadow Palette in #689 Mitzah, Diorshow Stylo in #091 Matte Black, Diorshow Mascara in #090 Black, and Rouge Dior Lipstick in #999 Velvet Finish. All are Dior.

MICHELLE WILLIAMS shot by Norman Jean Roy and styled by Kate Young in New York. Michelle wears a coat by Celine and shoes by Le Monde Béryl. To get Michelle’s look, try Les 4 Ombres Multi-Effect Quadra Eyeshadow in Modern Glamour, Exclusive Creation Les Beiges Healthy Golden Glow Powder in Éclat du Soir, and Rouge Coco Flash Hydrating Vibrant Shine Lip Colour in Easy. All are Chanel.

CHASE STRANGIO shot by Jeremy Liebman and styled by Heathermary Jackson in New York. Chase wears a jacket, top, and pants by Gucci. Shoes are the lawyer’s own.

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL NEW YORK ARTIST YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF

FIVE DECADES INTO HER CAREER, CANDIDA

ALVAREZ GETS HER DUE AT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO WITH A GENRE-SPANNING SURVEY.

By Julia Halperin

Candida Alvarez became an artist by looking out the window. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s, she spent long stretches gazing at the East River from her family’s 14th-floor apartment in the Farragut housing project. She watched as fog blurred the horizon line and sunbeams ricocheted off the surface of nearby buildings.

“There are moments you feel like you are left out. I was in the middle of everything.”

“When you look out that window, it’s not just one thing—it’s a space between, where both figuration and abstraction exist,” Alvarez says. Over her five-decade career, the artist has translated her attunement to color, texture, and shape into a relentlessly experimental body of work that spans painting, collage, embroidery, installation, sculpture, and video. Inspired by her vibrant, overlapping forms, the designer Rei Kawakubo tapped Alvarez to collaborate on a collection of shirts for Comme des Garçons in 2017.

El Museo del Barrio aims to capture the breadth of Alvarez’s creative output in her first large-scale museum survey. On view through Aug. 3, “Circle, Point, Hoop” represents a full-circle moment for the artist, who worked in the New York institution’s curatorial department in the late 1970s.

Although she moved to Chicago in 1998 to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Alvarez considers herself a product of New York’s creative community. David Hammons stored snowballs in her freezer ahead of his famous 1983 performance Bliz-aard Ball Sale, which was immortalized in photographs taken by her then-husband, Dawoud Bey. Alvarez also worked alongside other ascendant New York artists, including Ursula von Rydingsvard and Pedro Pietri, as part of the CETA Artists Project, a short-lived initiative inspired by the Works Progress Administration that employed 500 creatives to teach classes, organize workshops, and develop public art projects for the city.

“Having those rascals, as I call them, around me gave me more passion,” Alvarez says.

“I felt like I could do anything I wanted.”

The El Museo exhibition also spotlights later work, like Alvarez’s “Air Paintings,” a suite of latex ink and enamel paintings on PVC mesh that hang from an aluminum armature and can be viewed from the back and front. The series, which made a stir when it debuted at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago in 2020, came out of Alvarez’s anxiety following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. (Her parents are from the island and have a family home in Ponce.)

Alongside the El Museo survey, Alvarez will show brand-new work at Gray gallery in New York as part of a two-person show, opening April 30, that puts her paintings in dialogue with the late Bob Thompson, another maverick artist with a cult following.

Together, the two shows will serve as a crucial update to the historical record, which has not always included Alvarez. But she’s not one to brood. “There are moments you feel like you are left out,” Alvarez admits. “I was in the middle of everything.”

Photography by Bob (Robert Chase Heishman + Robert Salazar), and courtesy of Gray and Monique Meloche Gallery

THIS YEAR—AND EVERY YEAR FOR THE LAST FOUR DECADES—THE FILM INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS HAVE PAID HOMAGE TO THE CHALLENGES AND TRIUMPHS OF INDEPENDENT CINEMA. HOSTED FOR A SECOND TIME BY AIDY BRYANT, THIS YEAR’S AWARDS HONORED ZEITGEIST-GRABBING TITLES INCLUDING ANORA, A REAL PAIN, AND DÌDI.

IN HOLLYWOOD, A FILM FAMILY REUNION

“Your films are important to people,” comedian Aidy Bryant told the crowd gathered for the Film Independent Spirit Awards last February. “Somewhere out there, some young person is currently making your work their whole personality—and they’re being so annoying about it.”

For the past four decades, the beachfront Santa Monica celebration has given the increasingly hermetic film industry a rare chance to hold court for the best of independent filmmaking—the movies that dominate Letterboxd top-fours and film-school discourse each year. This season, however, the crossover with more orthodox

awards peddlers like the Oscars and BAFTAs was evident—a sign that the mainstream is looking to its indie brethren for a much-needed breath of fresh air. At the Spirit Awards, both Anora and A Real Pain made big showings—with the former taking home Best Feature, Director, and Lead Performance—while a few films that were overlooked elsewhere, like Sean Wang’s indelible directorial debut, Dìdi, received nods of their own. “When I started writing this movie, I remember googling ‘comingof-age movies,’ and there wasn’t a single [one] that had someone who looked like me,” said Wang as he accepted the Best First Feature award for his drama about a

13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy reckoning with adolescent angst and his Asian identity.

After the awards, attendees celebrated with an after-party at the Victorian, organized in partnership with CULTURED and IFC Films. Guests, including award-winner Nava Mau, Julia Fox, Bryant, Natasha Rothwell, and Adam Pearson, let loose, taking in drag performances channeling The Substance, I Saw the TV Glow, and Agatha All Along. The festivities stretched late into the night, a fitting acknowledgement of a community committed to bringing us the next best thing in film—on a shoestring.

Polaroid

INSIDE ILANA SAVDIE’S BODY POLITIC

THE COLOMBIAN-AMERICAN ARTIST’S SOLO SHOW AT WHITE CUBE IN NEW YORK EXPLORES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARTIFICE, PERFORMANCE, AND POWER.

By Annabel Keenan

“My process is very organic,” Ilana Savdie tells me from her studio. “It’s a constant, unceremonious thing.” The abstract artist, known for her kaleidoscopic paintings combining oil, acrylic, and beeswax—a material that allows her to build layers of texture—was in the midst of putting the final touches on the works that will make up her solo show at White Cube, on view this May in New York.

Surrounded by paint, brushes, and sheafs of source material (including scribbled Post-it notes, images of microorganisms, and other ephemera), Savdie’s studio is filled with a mélange of vibrant colors and shapes that relate to the body. Raised between Barranquilla, Colombia, and Miami, the painter pulls inspiration from near and far: poring over books on anatomy and the Baroque movement, studying the fleshy sculptures of contemporary

artist Paul Thek, and hanging screengrabs from horror films and old cartoons on her studio walls.

Each painting—not least those she’ll be including in the upcoming show—is filled with visual obscurities. “I’m interested in things that are slipping in and out of legibility,” the artist says. “I don’t want a finalized mode of representation in my work. I want it to be in a constant state of becoming.”

Rather than expressing fully articulated ideas, Savdie thinks of verbs when she works: peel, gestate, flop. Her paintings serve a purpose: to understand “ever-shifting environments that make up a tenor of collective consciousness,” as she puts it. “That’s the driver behind any new body of work— responding to something urgent, which may be a low-lying frequency I can’t quite name.” Savdie grew up immersed in the trappings of

Carnival—references to the celebration’s theatricality and rituals of performance appear often in her practice. With her latest body of work, Savdie explores performance of—and with—death, specifically how “playing dead or playing with dead things relates to tactics of survival and our relationship to artifice,” she explains. “I’m always thinking about where one derives power. How does power emerge from performativity, whether that’s through camouflage or exaggeration or stillness?”

“My paintings oscillate between many things—the sensual and the grotesque, pleasure and horror, desire and disgust.”

In the works she plans to show at White Cube next month, references to the body—animal, human, or both—abound. Take Revenge Fantasies, 2024, which bristles with organic forms: A red sack appears ripe with blood and a bone seems to fill a socket.

In the body, Savdie finds a heightened sense of tension. “My paintings oscillate between many things—the sensual and the grotesque, pleasure and horror, desire and disgust,” she says. “They’re always being pulled in one direction or another.”

Photography by Keenan MacWilliam and courtesy of Ilana Savdie

OLGA DE AMARAL’S GILDED AGE

A MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE AT THE ICA MIAMI EXPLORES THE PRACTICE OF AN ARTIST WHO HAS LIVED AND BREATHED TEXTILES SINCE THE 1950S.

By Julia Halperin

In the early 1970s, Olga de Amaral took a trip that changed her life. While visiting the United Kingdom with the World Crafts Council, the Colombian artist stopped by the studio of the ceramicist Lucie Rie. Amaral was struck by Rie’s interpretation of kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery by gluing shards together with golden lacquer. In the years to come, she embraced gold leaf in her increasingly ambitious textile installations, transforming humble thread into glittering monuments.

Amaral’s ingenious approach to fiber is on full display in a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, from May 1 through Oct. 12. The show, adapted from a well-reviewed exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain that opened in Paris last year, brings together more than 50 works spanning six decades. Over the course of her career, Amaral, 93, “has demonstrated the immense sculptural and abstract potential of textiles, elevating them beyond their historically decorative or purely functional associations,” says the show’s co-curator Marie Perennès.

Amaral is one of a group of artists, primarily women, who took textiles off the wall and into three-dimensional space during the 1960s and ’70s. Their innovations paved the way for a new generation of textile artists working today. Amaral’s oeuvre is distinguished not only by its use of gold leaf,

but also by her favorite subject: nature. By mixing linen, horsehair, and cotton fibers with gesso and acrylic paint, she creates sculptures reminiscent of leaves piling on the floor and wet rocks shimmering in the sun. The ICA Miami show will bring together nine examples from Amaral’s recent “Brumas” series, in which shimmering threads hang from the ceiling like richly colored mists.

The exhibition design, by the Franco-

Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, is also inspired by the natural world: It resembles a vertical forest. On the third floor of the ICA’s sleek Design District building, viewers can take in Amaral’s organic forms—notably, from both the front and the back sides—while looking out onto the palm tree canopy below.

Although Amaral started out studying architecture, it was a textile art class at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan that set her on a new path. “I began to work with fiber by coincidence—a sought coincidence—and have continued with it because it has never disappointed me,” she once said. “As I get to know it better, the better it knows me. In briefer words, it has never stopped arousing my curiosity.”

Olga de Amaral, Bruma T, 2014.

Photography courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

April 17-May 23, 2025

IN HER NEW BOOK, ANDREA LONG CHU ARGUES THAT ART—AND CRITICISM—MUST BE POLITICAL TO BE SUCCESSFUL.

By Emmeline Clein

Andrea Long Chu isn’t here for your roundabout small talk or polite debates. Since emerging onto the literary scene in the late 2010s, the writer has crystallized her call for “more judgment”—sharper takes that demand more from both their readers and writers and center the political instead of circling or avoiding it altogether. The Pulitzer Prize–winning critic’s latest book of essays, April’s Authority, is just the latest challenge in this quest against complacency.

“Our institutions are crumbling, our sense of civic duty is eroding, our temporal authorities believe they are above the law—so we are told, and with increasing panic, by the keepers of the liberal flame. What comes next?” Chu asks.

Perhaps the answer to that worrisome question is to let go of our paranoid addiction to authority entirely, stop arguing tactfully at dinner parties, and begin having uncomfortable conversations about things that enrage us— artistic and otherwise. Ahead of the release of Authority, I spoke with Chu about how we move in that direction and why the critic can help us get there.

All but two of these essays were previously published as standalone pieces. You suggest that they might have been more intertwined than you’d intended. What do you think now?

I’ve become less interested in myself. When I look at the older critical work, it is stuck on thematic questions of desire and identity. I am

WRESTLING WITH AUTHORITY

still interested in those questions, but I’ve become more interested in the objects themselves. What a novel thinks it’s doing, what a TV show thinks it’s doing. I am trying to get outside of a kind of contemplative attitude and towards something more practical.

You define criticism as a “genre of assertive prose, one whose primary aim is to actually communicate actual ideas.’’ You insist that the critic should perform an archaeological excavation of art’s ideological content while also making her political position clear. The book opens with a reflection on criticism in light of the initial siege on Gaza; I’d love for you to speak a bit about the role of criticism in this moment.

I don’t have boundless optimism about the political potential of writing a couple of reviews a year, but ultimately, criticism is communicative. There are strong claims to be made that art does not have to communicate. It can express, present, or provoke. Art can be gestural, but I don’t think criticism has that luxury. If I do this right, I can communicate a complex, difficult, counterintuitive idea about this thing that exists in the same world as you do. In this political moment, it’s important to be oriented around a sense of justice—being willing to take a substantive stance on Gaza or trans rights or any of a barrage of issues. It’s also about the fact that [the administration] is trying to dismantle the academy, which is a reminder that writing, and speech in general, is a practical thing. It has effects in the world. We know that because they’re attacking it.

Your writing is hilarious, obviously, but unlike a lot of ostensibly comic criticism on the left today—which is either post-woke ironic cynicism or flustered, galaxy-brain lolcat malaise—your humor illuminates an argument. Tell me about your approach to comedy and how you see humor being used, or misused, today.

To some extent, humor is about establishing a set of shared references, and this is true for the lolcats and the centrists and the far right. You’re trying to show a certain kind of reader that you have membership in the same realms as they do. The sort of post-woke, ironic, cynical style is designed to make it feel like you never have to take anything literally, and you don’t have to be accountable for your speech. I would like to think that, in my case, the humor has a thwack of reality to it. It comes partly from trying to name something that is known but does not have a name.

One of my favorite lines in the book is, “That is the dark comedy of the desire we call feminism: we are ethically compelled not only never to get what we want but never to stop wanting it, either.” We seem to be in a moment where mainstream feminism has, to put it bluntly, fallen off. What do you think about the next act in the dark comedy of feminism?

In the current political climate, it does feel like [feminism] has reached a point of exhaustion, partly because it has been very loudly claimed by the TERFs. It’s interesting, the resurgence of all this trad culture. I get these TikToks— women making crazy shit from scratch. These influencers are inherent contradictions—we know they’re running their own businesses, so they don’t actually embody the spirit that they are promoting. The trad influencers and the feminist career women are in pursuit of some kind of freedom and also seem unable, at the emotional level or psychic level, to let go of men. It’s two sides of the same contradiction. The way feminism has gone in the 21st century, I think we’re in the gutter of the pinball machine at this point. When all roads lead to the same dead space, what comes after that? I don’t know.

Photography by Poupay Jutharat and courtesy of Andrea Long Chu

MEET THE ART WORLD’S STORYTELLERS

PACIFIC CO-FOUNDERS ELIZABETH KARP-EVANS AND ADAM TURNBULL RECOUNT THEIR JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE ART WORLD.

By Lee Carter

For Pacific co-founders Elizabeth Karp-Evans and Adam Turnbull, what started as a labor of love—crafting quality art books for friends like Toyin Ojih Odutola, Servane Mary, and Marina Adams—has morphed into one of New York’s buzziest cultural nerve centers.

On a blustery spring day in March, Turnbull recounts their brisk rise. “We started the independent imprint in 2016,” he recalls, “but things got crazy in early 2020. We were inundated with requests from clients and friends in the art world about how to deal with the closing of brick-and-mortar galleries.”

Picking up the thread, Karp-Evans muses, “We realized the full scope of what Pacific could be—a purpose-driven, community-oriented dialogue with our partners and their audiences. We’re a creative agency, but we think of ourselves as cultural storytellers.”

The project that cemented Pacific’s place in New York’s creative ecosystem was the development of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s new visual identity, ahead of the opening of its new building on 125th Street later this year. “We rebranded the whole institution,” Turnbull tells me of the 2023 project, “which allowed us to explore all the elements we’re interested in—not only branding and messaging, but also membership, campaigns, language, tone of voice, and typeface.” “The Studio Museum is singular,” notes Karp-Evans. “It’s a champion and safekeeper of Black art. Our work was about creating a visual toolkit that people would immediately understand—that is the place where Black art lives. That was our tagline.”

More recently, the agency was tasked with designing and art-directing the catalog for the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, inaugurated each May with the now-legendary Met Gala. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” charts Black dandyism from the 18th century all the way to modern-day wayfinders like Pharrell Williams, Virgil Abloh, and Grace Wales Bonner. “We took inspiration from tailoring, of course, and older volumes that predate

machine-binding techniques,” says Karp-Evans. “We wanted the book to feel like it has existed for a long time.”

The past 12 months have been particularly nonstop for Pacific. The team recently completed a rebrand of the avant-garde New York institution The Kitchen, poring over 50 years of archival material; embarked on a similar project for the Drawing Center; finished a collaboration with Matthew Barney on the artist’s Secondary publication and video installation at the Fondation Cartier in Paris; and an initiative Julie Mehretu to build a collective of filmmakers on the African continent and produce an anthology film to premiere at Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA in 2026.

Perhaps the most unexpected hat tip came in 2022, when the MoMA Library requested to acquire Pacific’s complete collection of titles. “We set out to make books for artists who we really believe in, without the expectation of acknowledgment from an institution like MoMA,” reasons Karp-Evans. “[A large] percent of the artists in MoMA’s collection are men and many are white. They become history. Our catalog represents quite a different demographic. We’re really proud to have collaborated with these artists, and to have others recognize how much their stories matter.”

“WE’RE A CREATIVE AGENCY, BUT WE THINK OF OURSELVES AS CULTURAL STORYTELLERS.”

Portrait by David Schulze and all photography courtesy of Pacific

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LAURA OWENS’S MANY LAYERS

By John Vincler

As an artist, Laura Owens can’t help but see through the veil of our reality. The Los Angeles staple absorbs and reflects a vast expanse of visual culture—from the digitality of our screens to the intimate sensory experience of touch and texture—back at us. In the gladiatorial world of big canvases, she wrestles with the history of the Western oil painting while also slyly smuggling in elements of craft and pattern from design and decor, like the color combination of a plaid textile or the repeated motif of vintage wallpaper.

I first experienced the paintings of Laura Owens at her 2017 mid-career Whitney Museum survey, an exhibition crowded with people and her capacious output. Two early paintings help me understand Owens’s experimental treatment of space and her lively engagement with the possibilities of looking. Take, for example, her 8-by-10-foot painting Untitled, inspired by a 1958 photograph of the painter Barnett Newman studying his expansive 1951 work Cathedra in two panels. In the photograph, Newman appears nearly nose-to-the-canvas. Owens

THE LA ARTIST TOOK NEW YORK BY STORM THIS SPRING WITH HER FIRST SHOW IN THE CITY IN A DECADE. OUR CO-CHIEF ART CRITIC, JOHN VINCLER, EXCAVATES HER HUMOR-INFUSED PRACTICE.

always loved the photo and created her 1995 work with this proximity in mind—when her audience gets close to its surface, the bands of color at its margins come into view in their peripheral vision.

Two years later, in what remains one of her most iconic canvases, she updated the cool optical conceptualism of the previous painting. Call it comic minimalism. In Untitled, 1997, she oriented the colored bands at the bottom of the canvas—a narrow strip of gray atop one twice as thick of blue atop a band twice as thick as that in navy—to create a barebones seascape. The sky blue occupying most of the painting is inhabited by two birds—single gull-like strokes of black—that cast drop shadows on the azure background, in a playful sort of video game spatial logic.

I remembered these two early paintings during the artist’s recent exhibition in the similarly packed Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, where Owens decentered her paintings by making two separate in-the-round, mural-like environments, where the border between painting and wallpaper, silkscreen printing and brushed handwork, was blurred,

layered, and blended to mesmerizing effect.

In one of the two room-works, the walls, alive with visual detail, toggled between a wallpapered domestic interior and an exterior suggested by a latticework wood fencing before an enormous hedge, as if the viewer stood with an enclosed garden. High on the wall, a silver cloud floated across, casting a slight drop shadow, below which a small tree, thick with impasto, brushy detail, stood.

I could see Owens’s comic minimalism, like a footnote set among the almost baroque array of clustered and patterned visual elements, accumulating across these two rooms in layers that also suggested—and seemed to reference—the compositional layers of a Photoshop or InDesign file.

The digital exists in the paintings of Laura Owens because it exists in the world, informing how we see it. In her work, it’s a tool among many others. And shouldn’t our relationship with the digital always be this simple?

“Laura Owens” (Installation View), Matthew Marks Gallery, 2025.

Laura Owens, Untitled, 1997.

Clockwise from top left: Photography by Annik Wetter and courtesy of the artist; Photography courtesy of the artist; Photography by Annik Wetter, and courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery

Laura Owens, Untitled, 1995.

Jeffrey Gibson, Treat Me Right, 2024. Glass beads, nylon fringe, tin jingles, vintage pinback buttons, metal bells, plastic bone pipe beads, cold-rolled mild steel, nylon thread, acrylic felt, steel plate, marble base.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio and Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, NY. Photo by Jeffrey Schenck

Exhibition title: ©Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (2017), courtesy of Graywolf Press

A RHAPSODY

IN CASHMERE

ONE HUNDRED YEARS IN, ITALIAN FASHION HOUSE LORO PIANA ELUCIDATES ITS INTRICATE CRAFTSMANSHIP AT THE MUSEUM OF ART PUDONG IN SHANGHAI.

By Katie Kern

A thistle, with its prickly spines, is not often synonymous with luxury. But the unassuming flower has had pride of place in Loro Piana’s coat of arms since 1951. Last month, it became the central motif of the brand’s centennial exhibition at Shanghai’s Museum of Art Pudong.

Judith Clark, curator and co-founder of the Centre for Fashion Curation, assembled “If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence,” the inaugural showing by a luxury house at MAP, and Loro Piana’s first anywhere. The exhibition, on view in the Ateliers Jean Nouvel–designed monument

through May 5, not only celebrates Loro Piana’s six-generation backstory; it also meticulously unspools the brand’s crafted vocabulary, inviting visitors to walk through the garment-making process themselves. The show spans 15 rooms within the institution, beginning with a trek through Loro Piana’s archive and art collection, before offering a peek at a cashmere lab and cocooning room coated floor-to-ceiling in the lush textile. Guests then arrive at the thistle showcase, where one of Loro Piana’s original thistle machines, used to brush the surface of precious materials, was shipped from Italy to Shanghai for the occasion. It’s surrounded by master carver Jim Patrick’s thistle-coated tiles, bricks, and dome, beneath which one of

the exhibition’s 33 specially made looks is showcased.

The final section, Restaging Valsesia, transports Shanghai viewers back to Loro Piana’s Italian home with an immersive film. Chinese artistic director Guo Wenjing, composer Liu Hao, bamboo flautist Tang Junqiao, and pianist Tim Zhang came together to build a soundscape for the room that melds Eastern and Western musical traditions—leaning into the confluence of cultures. The show is tailor-made for a discerning—and patient—viewer, someone who prizes process alongside product and knows that the best things, in life and craft, take time.

“If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence” (Installation View), Museum of Art Pudong, 2025.

Photography courtesy of Loro

Piana

DAY IN, DAY OUT

FRANK BOWLING’S DRIVE BROUGHT HIM FROM GUYANA TO LONDON AND NEW YORK AND BACK AGAIN. HIS FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN FRANCE, STAGED WITH HAUSER & WIRTH, EXTENDS HIS INFLUENCE STILL FURTHER.

By Tom Seymour

When I enter his South London studio on an unusually bright March afternoon, Frank Bowling is smiling at a still-wet canvas. “She’s cooking,” he says.

Soon, the painting will be transported across the channel to Paris, where it will make its debut at Hauser & Wirth in the 91-year-old artist’s first solo exhibition in France: “Collage.” For now though, it’s tucked away in Peacock Yard, which once contained dozens of workshops for blacksmiths, carpenters, joiners, tanners, printers, and wheelwrights. The Victorian enclave is a sanctuary for one of Britain’s most intrepid artists, the place where he gets on with the task of “loosening up what feels too tight.”

“FRANK PAINTS EVERY SINGLE DAY. CHRISTMAS DAY, HIS BIRTHDAY—ALWAYS.”

— Ben Bowling

Bowling has worked out of the same studio for over 40 years, yet a single painting hangs on the wall these days. Created between 1960 and 1962, it depicts his mother’s variety store in Guyana—both an early marker of the artist’s shift from figurative painting to abstract expressionism and a memento of the world he left behind at 19, when he moved across the Atlantic Ocean. His first foray into the art world was as a life model at London’s Royal College of Art, where he eventually enrolled, developing a portfolio in between blue-collar jobs and repeated rejections before an RCA professor spotted his unorthodox talent.

Bowling quickly lost sight of the British art scene. “We were not looking for the same thing,” he says, recalling an artist peer telling him, “Blacks can sing and they can dance, but they don’t understand the wall and the floor.”

A move to New York in 1966, where the American Civil Rights Movement was in full

swing, transformed his practice and put him on the art-world map. In his SoHo loft, Bowling experimented with the physicality of paint—pouring, staining, and layering color with an audacity that would one day become his signature.

In the decades since, Bowling’s practice has never stalled, from the abstracted landscapes of the early ’80s (following his return to London) to the color-drenched, mixed-media canvases cooking in his studio today. Recognition has come late—he was knighted as an octogenarian—but few now doubt Bowling’s impact on contemporary art. The Hauser & Wirth show, on view through May

24, is just the latest testament to a legacy still being defined in real time. The exhibition excavates the artist’s magpie sensibility—he has been known to incorporate what others might see as detritus into his canvases—and near-architectural approach to composition.

At the heart of this inspired body of work is the quotidian. “Frank paints every single day. Christmas Day, his birthday—always,” his son Ben says. “He has never thrown anything away.” Today, Bowling’s Peacock Yard studio contains more than 10,000 such experiments, including letters, diaries, photographs, and sketches. Alone, they’re just clues, but as a whole they amount to a life in art.

Photography by Alastair Levy, and courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

CULT CLASSIC: THE REVA REVIVAL

TORY BURCH’S REVA RESURGENCE—A Y2K STAPLE TURNED MODERN ESSENTIAL—PROVES THAT ICONS NEVER FALL OUT OF STYLE.

Some shoes capture a moment in time. Others transcend it. In its heyday circa 2006, the Tory Burch Reva flat was everywhere—a shopping mall “It” item just “fashion” enough to blow up. Now, as the ballet flat waltzes

back into the zeitgeist, the Reva is making its triumphant return. For its Spring/Summer 2025 collection, the brand reintroduced the Reva with a modern twist: a higher vamp, a larger sculptural silver coin with contoured

edges, and buttery, breathable leather. Updates aside, the shoe remains a study in timeless style for those who are always in motion and ahead of the moment.

Photography courtesy of Tory Burch

Analuisa Corrigan wears a cropped wool and silk jacket, cotton and silk wide-leg pant, and peep toe pumps by Tory Burch. Pauline Chalamet wears a cotton wrap dress and peep toe pumps by Tory Burch.

IT’S ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE

FOR ANALUISA CORRIGAN AND PAULINE CHALAMET, ART-MAKING IS AN ALL-CONSUMING PURSUIT—BUT IT’S ALSO AN EXERCISE IN MAINTAINING PERSPECTIVE. FOR CULTURED’S ARTISTS ON ARTISTS SERIES, THE PAIR, DECKED OUT IN TORY BURCH’S SPRING/SUMMER 2025 COLLECTION, SIT DOWN FOR A WIDE-RANGING CONVERSATION ABOUT CREATIVE FULFILLMENT AND CRITICAL DISTANCE.

An artist’s creative respite can take any number of forms—an experience on the other side of the camera, say, or the chance to dabble in a new material. Ultimately, that shift in perspective is often the very spark needed to reconsider one’s first calling with fresh eyes.

Regardless of the shape they take, these moments of remove—or what the Soviet literary critic Viktor Shklovsky dubbed

“ostranenie”—are crucial to protecting the delicate flame at the core of a creative practice. For Analuisa Corrigan, a Los Angeles–based ceramicist and lighting designer raised by a clan of die-hard stagehands and designers, it’s the painstaking and often invisible trappings of film and TV, brought to life by an ecosystem of artisans, that enliven her work. For the actor Pauline Chalamet, who made her feature debut in Judd Apatow’s The King of

Photography by Keith Oshiro

Staten Island before starring in the Mindy Kaling–helmed comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls, escape comes in the form of a more solitary pursuit—writing.

For both artists, the goal is to remain in touch with their material on a fundamental level— whether that means making sure a character feels deeply grounded or ensuring that one’s designs accomplish the singular task of influencing the mood of a space. Chalamet sums it up best: “We are constantly living in the context of something. I want to make sure my work shows that.”

For CULTURED, the pair met at Corrigan’s Los Angeles studio for a little break from routine, courtesy of Tory Burch.

Pauline Chalamet: How did we first meet?

Analuisa Corrigan: My first memory of you was at a friend’s house on a chilly night. You ran out of the house in a bathing suit and jumped in the pool—no one else was willing to get in. I was like, “Oh wow, she really doesn’t give a shit about what everyone else is doing.”

“I TELL MYSELF THAT THE SCRIPT MIGHT SAY I HATE OR LOVE SOMETHING, BUT NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. THIS IS A REAL PERSON.”

— Pauline Chalamet

Chalamet: I remember that. As we’ve spent more time together, I’ve really appreciated being around a creative person who’s so generous. You’re generous with your time and your personality, and that’s rare.

Corrigan: I think we’re very similar in that way. How did you realize that you wanted to become an actor?

Chalamet: I had a really roundabout path to solidifying this idea of myself as an actor. I was a ballet dancer for a lot of my childhood, then I went to this performing arts high school in New York called LaGuardia, where I majored in drama. I studied political science and theater at Bard. Then I moved to Paris, where I was working in bars and didn’t really know what I wanted. I finally just auditioned and got accepted to a national acting school. I was like, Okay, this is what I want to do

Corrigan: It feels similar for me. As a kid, I was always attracted to material practices. I grew up oil painting and just gravitated towards working with my hands, but I didn’t home in on those things until I went to art school. Everyone in my family is a theater stagehand—we’re a big IATSE family. I was surrounded by craftspeople, lighting designers, and costume designers. Having a very intimate relationship with those crafts is really what motivated me to go in this direction.

Analuisa wears a jacquard coat, jersey bodysuit, and Reva mules by Tory Burch. Pauline wears a suede bomber jacket, faux crinkle leather skirt, and Reva mules by Tory Burch.

Pauline wears a viscose polo by Tory Burch.

Hair by Ashlee Rose at Forward Artists

Makeup by Yasuko Shapiro for the Wall Group and Tom Ford Beauty

Photography Assistance by Michael Camacho

Chalamet: Is there something you’re working on at the moment that’s really exciting you?

Corrigan: For the past eight months, I’ve been developing some new pieces out of aluminum. I’m working with a fabricator and also playing with the material on my own. I’ve also been collaborating with this furniture design company—we’re designing a mirror frame out of aluminum as well. I am really in love with the tactile side of my job, but it has been nice to take a step back from that and focus on fleshing out pure design. What’s the last project you worked on that kept you up at night?

Chalamet: I’m writing two different things right now. I hear from writers that the more you do it, the easier it gets, but it’s never just easy. Hemingway has that famous quote that I’ll butcher. It’s like, “Writing is easy. You just sit at your typewriter and wait for your eyes to bleed.” That resonates with me. It doesn’t ever feel finished—there’s always more that could be done, and I’m always scared of making a wrong choice, or putting something out there that might not be “exactly right.” It takes a lot of vulnerability. Do you have any of that fear in your work?

Corrigan: I try not to put so much pressure on myself because, ultimately, everything has been designed before. Especially in lighting design or objects for the home—both are so deeply embedded in human experience. So, all I’m really doing is taking preexisting objects and adding my own artistic language to them. I guess I remind myself that ultimately, it’s not really that deep.

Chalamet: I would like you to be a little voice in my head saying, “Everything has already been written, Pauline! Just put your spin on it.”

“ALL I’M REALLY DOING IS TAKING PREEXISTING OBJECTS AND ADDING MY OWN ARTISTIC LANGUAGE TO THEM. I GUESS I REMIND MYSELF THAT ULTIMATELY, IT’S NOT REALLY THAT DEEP.”

— Analuisa Corrigan

Corrigan: Even so, I’ll still make things all the time where I’ll sketch it and make a maquette [scale model], and I’m loving it. Then, when I make it to scale, I hate it. My trusted individuals will be like, “Yeah, this isn’t working.”

Chalamet: In writing and acting, you often hear the note “Put yourself in the character, infuse your experiences into the work.” Is there an equivalent note for you?

Corrigan: The whole conversation around personal style in the design world can be a

little confusing and exhausting to me. I don’t even really know what it means. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to make work that I think will influence a space and that pleases me visually. Recently, I’ve been finding that satisfaction by leaning more into exploring textiles and fabric while keeping the ceramic side a bit more simple. So I do play with those things.

Chalamet: I’m so envious of the fact that you have a craft that involves using your hands. It’s so sexy, and it must require a lot of patience. I’m very envious of that.

Corrigan: It’s also very solitary. I’ve spent some time on film sets just visiting Logan [Lerman, Corrigan’s fiancé], and I’m always so envious of how collaborative it is. I have a studio assistant, but on a set, there’s a really specific collective energy. Everyone is championing each other and working together to actualize a vision.

Chalamet: It’s true—everyone is so important. Like, how many cinematographers or production designers can you name? Fewer than you can directors or actors—yet they are so profoundly important. Take Polly Platt—she did the production design for

many of Peter Bogdanovich’s movies. She’s said to have discovered Wes Anderson. Not enough people celebrate those types of talent.

Corrigan: Some movies I watch only for the production design. Would you ever see yourself working behind the camera?

Chalamet: I’ve directed a few short films, but I really think directing is a calling. It’s like, you want to be captain of the ship, but there’s got to be this pull, this reason why you want to be captain of that ship. I haven’t had that calling yet. I still love working with directors, and I want to work with many directors. Outside of ceramics, is there a completely different art form that calls to you?

Corrigan: I have always been really excited by set design. My whole life, I was conditioned by my family to be a stagehand, or a stage manager, and work in theater. It would be cool one day to build a world in that way, but I’m not dying to do it. Some days, though, I’m like, How long can I keep this up and make people want lamps?

Chalamet: I want to ask you—how do you keep your work feeling fresh?

Corrigan: Inspiration comes and goes. If I have a big creative block, I try to give my brain a break from my own medium and try to find interest in other ones. I watch old movies or poke around different archives. I’m big into trawling the Met and New York Public Library digital archives—that always sparks something for me. What about you?

Chalamet: When I’m working, I try to just keep zooming out. I tell myself that the script might say I hate or love something, but nothing is absolute. This is a real person—nothing about them is black and white. It helps to reread scripts. I always want context—if only just to throw it away. We are constantly living in the context of something, and I want to make sure my work shows that.

‘LIVE WITH YOUR ART!’

BY COLIN KING

A new book from Assouline offers an intimate portrait of John Chamberlain’s legacy through the eyes of collectors and aficionados like Rick Owens, Vera Wang, and Robert Stilin.

John Chamberlain’s works have always defied stasis—his crushed metal sculptures, electric in form and color, seem to be perpetually in motion, bending and folding under the weight of time.

Living with Chamberlain, a new book published by Assouline, reveals how the artist’s material legacy has suffused the homes of his collectors, offering a poignant examination of its reach beyond museum or gallery walls. Featuring a foreword by Rick Owens and conversations with creative visionaries like Vera Wang and Solange, the tome showcases unseen images of Chamberlain’s work installed in private collections, alongside exclusive archival photography charting his creative evolution over decades.

Among the luminaries featured is interior designer and arts patron Robert Stilin, who sat down with CULTURED ’s Design Editor-at-Large Colin King to discuss his personal connection to Chamberlain’s practice.

Their conversation spans Stilin’s decades-long love affair with the late artist’s work—from his earliest introduction to Chamberlain’s lesserknown Widelux photographic inquiries to his commitment to fostering a true communion with, rather than reverence for, works of art.

Colin King: Tell me about how you first came across John Chamberlain’s work. What was it that grabbed your attention?

Robert Stilin: It was at least 25 years ago—either at a gallery or an auction house. I was attracted to the scale, the texture, the color, the fact that it’s something that’s been recreated into something else—but [you] can’t quite tell what that is. The work is humble, but it’s elegant at the same time. It feels very organic to me, very personal.

King: There’s an irreverence to it—a non-hierarchical quality. Has his art impacted your own creative practice?

Stilin: It’s definitely inspiring to me. Any parallels with my own work would be in the repurposing and layering of things to create depth. I did meet him a couple of times. He was kind of crotchety, although he [was also] the sweetest, most lovely man. My impression was that he wasn’t too precious. It’s like, “Put the sculpture up, move it around. It’s already dented, it already has scratches, it’s already peeling. What’s the big deal? It’s gonna be beautiful, no matter what you do with it.”

King: You have prints from Chamberlain’s Widelux era? It’s not that widely known. What can you tell us about this body of work?

“People make art feel so precious—you can’t touch it, it’s got to be hermetically sealed—and that feels silly.

Stilin: I discovered my first one at a Phillips auction and was immediately attracted to it because I collect photography. I didn’t know that particular body of work. It felt like nobody was paying attention to them. I bid on that first one and got it. Then another one came up, and I bid on that one too. I ended up with two beautiful, lesser-known works by John that have been in my life now for at least 10 years. They’ve always had a prominent position in the places I’ve lived.

King: How have you chosen to display them?

Stilin: Centered over the tub in my new apartment in Brooklyn are two photographs [by other artists]. One looks like a painting—it’s of the sky—and it’s next to a portrait. On the opposite wall, there’s a beautiful textural ceramic wall sculpture that Peter Lane did, and on a bigger wall nearby is one of the Chamberlain photographs. The juxtapositions among those pieces evoke something that feels very John Chamberlain: down to earth, no bullshit. But I didn’t think about that when I put them together. I’m sure you do the same thing when you work. It all happens very fast and it’s not necessarily too thought-out—although it is intentional. The other one is hung in my living room, which is a big loft-like space. It’s flanking a very large canvas painting by Leonardo Nemi, an Adam Fuss—one of his negative photographs that’s very abstract—and a Herb Ritts photo from his “Africa” series.

King: How would you describe Chamberlain’s legacy and his impact on you?

Stilin: I was raised in a small town with old-fashioned values around hard work, so I don’t think it’s a shock that I’m drawn to the workers, or a man like him. I knew characters in my life that might not have been artists, but made other things. I find that kind of person intriguing—and appealing.

Someone like him, working a studio with all kinds of things going on, they don’t treat their work preciously. People make art feel so precious—you can’t touch it, it’s got to be hermetically sealed—and that feels silly. Live with your art. Make it a part of your life. Put it on your coffee table next to your glass of wine. It’s all good.

This conversation has been excerpted and condensed from Living with Chamberlain .

AT THE FRICK, FLOWER POWER

AFTER A FIVE-YEAR RENOVATION, THE NEW YORK STAPLE IS BACK—WITH NEWLY COMMISSIONED PORCELAIN FLORA THAT ECHO A LITTLE-KNOWN DETAIL OF ITS FIRST UNVEILING.

When the Frick Collection first opened to the public in 1935, the founder’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick, ensured that fresh flowers were on display in the most important galleries. There were Talisman roses in the library and lilies of the valley in the Fragonard Room. Beneath Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Hat was a bowl of red anthuriums to match.

Nine decades later, the jewel box of a museum reopened in April after a more than five-year closure. The expansion and renovation by Selldorf Architects allows visitors to explore the museum’s second floor, where the Frick family once lived, for the first time in the beloved institution’s history. And just like for its original unveiling, there were flowers—just not fresh ones.

Although the Frick’s chief curator Xavier F. Salomon was determined to infuse the space with florals, today’s conservation standards would never permit him to install fresh flowers next to the art. So he commissioned the Ukraine-born sculptor Vladimir Kanevsky to create custom blooms out of porcelain instead.

Kanevsky, who recalls visiting the Frick soon after immigrating to the U.S. 36 years ago, draws on his background in both architecture and sculpture to create enchanting floral installations. At the Frick, some are arranged in pots on side tables; others are placed along the floor. Perhaps the most poignant moment comes on the newly accessible second floor, in Henry Clay Frick’s former bedroom, where the great collector died in 1919. There, Kanevsky has installed black poppies in his memory.

To mark the reopening, Salomon and Kanevsky reflected on the process of dressing up the museum to welcome back the public.

Xavier F. Salomon: Flowers celebrate key moments in people’s lives, so the idea of celebrating the opening with them came quite naturally. And because of our relationship as a museum to porcelain, we thought that Vladimir’s work would be particularly appropriate.

“FOR THIS SECOND REOPENING, WE WENT FOR A MUCH GRANDER LOOK.”

— Xavier F. Salomon

Vladimir Kanevsky: When we first met, I initially thought about placing a couple of small pieces somewhere in the Frick. Then Xavier said, “Why don’t we make it big?” This meant that flowers would be several times larger than what I had done before. When placed on the floor, they needed to be at least human size.

Salomon: It was difficult because at the beginning, we had to do it through virtual tours of the collection. Then, as you kept coming into the building, more ideas came through.

Kanevsky: I remembered the Frick because I was a frequent visitor. I came to this country 36 years ago, and it was probably [during my first year here that] I visited. It was my very favorite.

Salomon: There is this idea that your flowers [are] particularly accurate—they mostly are, but there is also a certain level of fantasy. They’re not just slavish recreations of botanical species.

Kanevsky: I’m not trying to make them as realistic as nature. I’m interested very much in botanical details, but I don’t use them directly. It’s like a portrait.

Salomon: Everything is site-specific at the

Frick. Everything you created was made for a very specific room or even table. How did you go about that?

Kanevsky: It was quite a difficult task because I was thinking what the relationships would be between the decorative arts in the room and masterpieces on the walls. I needed to introduce a third kind of object. I thought, I’m closer to the interior than to the masterpieces. I wanted to show that these pieces, they’re kind of guests there. They will be removed. Another aspect was which flower stands near which painting. It was your idea to put an artichoke under St. Francis in the Desert by Giovanni Bellini. I knew that I shouldn’t directly repeat something in the painting—it’s corny. But certain feelings that artichoke gives me, I received almost the same thing from the painting. I probably could explain it, but never fully. Same with the pomegranate in the golden room.

Salomon: So much of the inspiration behind this project came from the fact that in 1935, Ms. Helen Clay Frick decided to get flowers for the opening. Now, her selection of those flowers, I always find quite funny—incredibly boring. It was just a lot of roses. She was trying to be cheap as well, so they kept talking to the florist saying, “This is too expensive.” Your project is going to look so much better than anything we had in 1935. There were no photographs of these flowers being installed, which I suspect [was because] they looked sort of mediocre. For this second reopening, we [went] for a much grander look.

Kanevsky: I remember finding the receipt from the florist that said, “It’ll cost you Ms. Frick. It’ll cost you a fortune of almost 25 dollars.”

Vladimir Kanevsky’s porcelain flowers installed in the Frick Collection’s Portico Gallery.

Photography by Joseph Coscia Jr. and courtesy of the Frick Collection

Chad Murray Cosima zu Knyphausen

Darya Diamond Emmanuel Louisnord

Desir Emma McMillan G.V. Rodriguez

Malcolm Kenter Nan Montgomery

Nick Angelo Nick Hoecker Nihura

Montiel timo fahler Tristan Unrau

Sebastian Gladstone Gallery

Los Angeles | New York

FOR THE RECORD

A NEW EXHIBITION AT THE HISPANIC SOCIETY MUSEUM & LIBRARY BASKS IN THE UNFETTERED JOY AND DEFIANCE OF NEW YORK’S EARLIEST PRIDE MARCHES.

By Giuliana Brida

Before there was Pride, there was Christopher Street. The West Village thoroughfare lent its name to the Liberation Day Marches, which grew out of another turning point in queer history: the 1969 Stonewall uprising.

“Out of the Closets! Into the Streets!,” a new exhibition at New York’s Hispanic Society Museum & Library, brings the spirit of those early parades into focus through the lens of Francisco Alvarado-Juárez, a Honduran-born artist who documented the marches in 1975 and 1976.

Shooting on richly saturated Kodachrome, Alvarado-Juárez captured a perfect storm of protest and pageantry: sequins and feather boas commingling with hand-drawn political slogans and ephemera. The resulting images—featuring activists, lovers, and loners—distill a heady mixture of glamour and indignation.

The show, which opens May 8, offers a timely reminder that LGBTQIA+ history made in New York had a domino effect around the world. Figures like Sylvia Rivera, a founding member of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, whom Alvarado-Juárez lensed in the series,

paved the way for generations to follow, their activism extending far beyond Christopher Street’s eight-block expanse.

Today, most major cities have their own Pride march, yet the photographs on view at the Hispanic Society still act as urgent reminders of just how easily progress is eclipsed and justice forsaken. But 50 years later, the community represented in these images is as indelible as the message they leave us with, which might best be summarized by a note provided by the Liberation Day committee in 1970: “We are Gay and proud. No one can convince us otherwise.”

Francisco Alvarado-Juárez, Christopher Street #2, 1976, NYC

Photography courtesy of Francisco Alvarado-Juárez and the Hispanic Society Museum & Library

ALI BANISADR LIKE NEVER BEFORE

THE PAINTER’S FIRST INSTITUTIONAL SURVEY AT WESTCHESTER COUNTY’S KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART REVEALS HIS DEFT TRANSCENDENCE OF CATEGORIZATION.

By John Vincler

“I’m very much interested in our collective memory,” the painter Ali Banisadr explained to me as we stood before a series of paintings that were about to be packed away for his first solo show at Perrotin’s Shanghai outpost late last year. I had been voicing my skepticism about the art-critic cliché of describing his work, along with that of a rising generation of painters like Maja Ruznic and Nengi Omuku, as existing between figuration and abstraction. The longer you look at the Tehran-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s paintings, the more concrete details accrue, with those breadcrumbs quickly compiling into stories. The canvases aren’t stuck in between; they act like portals collapsing past, present, and future.

Banisadr and I met again more recently to chat about his first institutional survey, which was about to open at the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester County, New York. It’s about an hour’s ride from Grand Central Station, but that won’t stop New Yorkers from

characterizing their visit to the lower Hudson Valley with the phrase “going upstate.” Time also collapses in the exhibition, with nearly 20 years of work—including paintings, works on paper, prints, and (debuting for the first time) five sculptures in bronze—on view.

The gathering of nearly 50 works allows for an aerial perspective of the scope and accomplishment of Banisadr’s art, including major works like These fragments I have shored against my ruins, 2023. Massive at approximately 7-by-15 feet, it’s one of his best paintings to date, the centerpiece of a knockout Victoria Miro solo show in London that year.

One of the earliest works, The Waste Land, 2006, an oil on panel of only 9-by-12 inches (with another titular nod to T.S. Eliot), seems to show an explosion and a crater. The work recalls Banisadr’s childhood experience of witnessing the bombing of his schoolyard during the Iran-Iraq War, before he left Tehran with his family for Turkey and eventually arrived in California at the age of 12. Another

large painting here, It’s in the Air, 2012, borrowed from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, looks like an elaborate Hieronymus Bosch composition, the brushstrokes becoming untangled and poised to levitate off its surface.

Banisadr is among my favorite people to talk with about art. We’ve done it studio-visit style in his light-filled Brooklyn space, surrounded by his paintings and numerous reference materials arrayed on tables and workbenches (a selection of these will also be on view at Katonah). We’ve passed in and out of downtown galleries together in conversation, and we’ve met to look at Martin Schongauer and Dürer prints, Blake drawings, and Persian miniatures in the reading room of the Morgan Library. Banisadr’s art is as infused with intellectual record as it is with art history. He looks, he reads, and he has a seemingly infinite curiosity that informs and compels him in his own work. His show at Katonah welcomes everybody into the conversation.

Photography (left) by Genevieve Hanson and (right) Charlie Rubin, and courtesy of the artist and Katonah Museum of Art

Ali Banisadr, Animus, 2025.

Ali Banisadr working on a sculpture at the Modern Art Foundry in New York.

LOVE, ACTUALLY

“The fundamental issue with love is that it’s this deeply personal experience, but we’re all consumed with comparing ourselves to other people,” Shon Faye tells me ahead of the May release of her new book, Love in Exile. Part memoir, part gender theory, and part Lana Del Rey deep dive, it’s Faye’s follow-up to her bestselling 2021 manifesto The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. The undertaking was in part motivated by a first love’s aftermath: Faye channeled the pain of “the worst thing that has ever happened” to her into a lucid excavation of our modern-day romance landscape. Against the backdrop of our current compassion cold war, the British author offers up an inquiry into the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the love we seek—and find. Here, Faye shares what it felt like to put her own love language into language, what blackouts can teach us about infatuation, and why making queer art that stands on its own is still essential.

By Adam Eli

How would you describe this book?

I call this book a cold vivisection of my own heart. How can one be intellectually objective about one’s own romantic, sexual, emotional, spiritual life? Even though I know it’s impossible, the attempt is the book, and I think that attempt itself is interesting.

In the book, you say, “To this day, friendships with other queer people … are special to me, because they continue to act as an invitation toward greater self-possession.” Can you tell me more about that?

It is my friendships, not my romantic relationships, that have been the defining love relation of my life. When I was younger, my goal became assimilating as a trans woman—getting a straight boyfriend or whatever. But what I’ve learned in the intervening years is that the queer community I have in East London is where I find nourishment. Those friendships are what fuel a lot of my work and sense of self. In certain bonds with other queer people, I get permission to do things society doesn’t really want me to, and our mutual friend, [the musician] Tom Rasmussen, is one of those people. Something I often discuss with Tom is how to make work that is not just about reifying the victimhood position, that is about the full gamut of human experience. One of the most powerful things about art made by

queer people is that we display the fact that we are fully rounded people. Tom and I talk about making work that is good on its own merit and authentically queer without trading in this kind of “you have to like it because it’s queer” ethos.

I’ve read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about alcoholism and addiction, but I’ve never seen anybody include the physiological explanation of why people black out. Why did you include that?

Most of the stories in my love life also have this parasitic vine of addiction wrapped around them. One of the big errors I’ve made in my life was to mistake what I thought was love for addiction and vice versa. In the book, I put forward this idea that addiction and love are things that, culturally, we can mistake one for the other. Why wouldn’t we? If you can get addicted to cocaine, why can’t you get addicted to falling in love?

“Trans people have a very fucking interesting, humorous way of looking at life. Why wouldn’t that be of immense value to literature?”

People often don’t understand that blacking out isn’t about how much you’re drinking, but how fast you’re drinking. I was a blackout drinker. The same is true with me about

infatuation. If I was becoming infatuated with someone, I would want them all the time. Both blackouts and infatuation have a sense of rapaciousness.

The other thing is that a blackout is a narrative cut. If you’ve been in a blackout, it’s alarming because it’s like the scene has been cut, and then you wake up in another scene. As writers, we pride ourselves on cohesive storytelling. Yet if we’re an alcoholic or an addict, large segments of our stories have been left out. In many ways, that’s a benefit to an addict; a blackout is a way to not be present in one’s own life, even for a minute or an hour. In the book, I argue that certain forms of unhealthy love and romance mirror that. Both allow you to tap out and not feel your life. If you become completely obsessed with another person, you don’t have to worry about yourself.

“How can one be intellectually objective about one’s own romantic, sexual, emotional, spiritual life? Even though I know it’s impossible, the attempt is the book, and I think that attempt itself is interesting.”

Because this is your first interview with an American publication, is there anything in particular you’d like to say to the United States?

There are lots of things, but I won’t say them all. What I will end on is this: Toni Morrison always spoke so eloquently when asked about why all of her characters were Black. She explained that Black characters were at the center of her work because, as a Black woman, she always understood herself as already being at the center. She felt that the readers would come towards her because she and her characters were already an entire universe. She was saying that she is not niche. I am not niche. No trans writer or author is niche, even if that label is projected onto us by politics or by a publishing house’s marketing department, right? Trans people have a very fucking interesting, humorous way of looking at life. Why wouldn’t that be of immense value to literature?

Photography by Sophie Davidson and courtesy of Shon Faye

By Giuliana Brida

Photography by Paolo Zerbini

All Clothing and accessories by Gucci

GUCCI MUSE JENNY WALTON TAKES THE HOUSE’S LEGENDARY SILK SCARVES FOR A STROLL THROUGH MILAN.

An accessory is, if approached correctly, an anachronism—an artifact plucked from time that links another world to this one. Few are as lore-laden as the Gucci silk scarf. An embodiment of the iconic fashion house’s devotion to craftsmanship and spirit of reinvention, it seems to belong everywhere at once— cinched at the neck of a 1970s screen siren, knotted on the handle of a Milanese grandmother’s handbag, draped across the shoulders of a ’90s “It” girl.

The story begins in the late ’50s, when the house began working with the silk artisans of Como, Italy, on its first collaborative scarves. The initial design, “Tolda di Nave,” depicted a world of nautical escapades—a nod to the life of leisure to which Gucci’s earliest clientele were accustomed—but it was “Flora” that truly made history. Commissioned from Italian painter Vittorio Accornero de Testa in 1966 as a tribute to Princess Grace of Monaco, the motif bloomed into Gucci legend: 27 flowers, berries, and butterflies etched with such exacting delicacy that it required 37 layers of color to bring them to life.

Today, these and countless other silken heirlooms are preserved within the halls of Palazzo Settimanni, Gucci’s archive in Florence. Nestled in the Santo Spirito district, the 15th-century palazzo (once a factory, showroom, and atelier)

now serves as a living repository of the house’s artistic evolution. Its first floor is dedicated to textile creations, home to a selection of scarves that embody seven decades of the house’s collections—including the horse-bit and Gucci web, motifs of the house’s equestrian heritage; the legendary GG monogram of the late ’60s; the lush, jungly “Animalia” prints; and the “Marina Chain” pattern of looping golden links—their patterns preserved as blueprints.

This archive offers a wellspring of inspiration for new initiatives—like the 90x90 project (named for the dimensions, in centimeters, of the scarf itself) that invites a selection of artists to reinterpret the house’s classic patterns. It’s also the subject of a forthcoming volume from Assouline, Gucci: The Art of Silk, which traces the history of the scarves while offering a never-before-seen glimpse into the house’s archive. The sumptuous tome’s cover is, of course, the iconic Flora print.

Whether on the street, the runway, or in the archive, the lineage of Gucci’s silken creations is in constant dialogue with the ebbs and flows of contemporary style, a vessel for cultural memory and craft traditions. To illustrate their timeless appeal, artist, writer, and longtime friend of the house Jenny Walton took some of her favorites for a stroll on the streets of Milan.

AT HOME ANYWHERE

“FLORA,

TO ME, IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL GUCCI SCARF. THOSE WHO LIVE IN CITIES RARELY ENCOUNTER SUCH AN OVERWHELMING FEAST OF COLOR. IT’S THIS WONDERFUL BALANCE OF EXCESS AND SIMPLICITY—EXTRAVAGANCE CONTAINED IN A SILK SQUARE.”

“THE GENIUS OF A SILK SCARF LIES IN ITS VERSATILITY—YOU CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING WITH THEM.”

A selection of scarves from the Gucci Archive

“WHEN I MOVED TO NEW YORK, I REMEMBER SEEING VINTAGE GUCCI SCARVES IN THE ANTIQUE MARKETS. I FELL IN LOVE WITH THESE VIBRANT OBJECTS THAT WERE SO DELICATE, YET SO BOLD.”

Hair by Daniela Magginetti at Blend Management

Makeup by Giulia Cigarini at Blend Management

BEAUTY CULTURE: For a wash of hydrating color, try Gucci Rouge de Beauté Brilliant Glow & Care Shine Lipstick in Sally Soft Honey.

MAY 1 - 31

Step into a world where arts and culture come to life during MOSAIC

art, ideas and culture. Get deals unique experiences that will ignite your imagination like never before

A Private Life in Plain Sight

by Noua Unu Studio

All clothing and accessories from CHANEL 2024/25 Métiers d’Art collection

Chanel’s latest Métiers d’Art capsule bridges the familial with the ethereal. In the following pages, IAN MARKELL stages looks from the collection in a fictional bloodline’s reunion—capturing the diversion and drama that comes with shared heritage.

The French-born Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel surrounded herself with vestiges of worlds far beyond her own over the course of her storied career. The designer famously cherished Coromandel screens, not merely as decorative curiosities, but as immersive portals—lacquered landscapes that transported her beyond the walls of her 31 Rue Cambon apartment to the dreamy topography of West Lake in Hangzhou, China. It was on those mirrored waters that Chanel unveiled its 2024/25 Métiers d’Art collection, a reverie of jade greens, petal pinks, and the deep, inky blacks of Coromandel lacquer, last December.

Cosmopolitanism has always been synonymous with the Chanel woman—her wardrobe designed for elegance across time zones

and landscapes. This collection is no exception: Each look, meticulously crafted by Chanel’s time-honored artisans, fuses heirloom motifs with the maison’s modern savoir-faire. Lotus and Coromandel allusions meet phosphorescent braid detailing embroidered by Atelier Montex, tweed knits, and T-shirts with pagoda sleeves.

An heirloom and a passport alike, the collection beckons across generations. For CULTURED, photographer Ian Markell projects that world-wise savoir-vivre onto an imagined family reunion in Los Angeles. In the following pages, the Métiers d’Art pieces come alive against the backdrop of that household’s well-upholstered antics.

Photography

BEAUTY CULTURE: A red for the ages: Chanel Le Vernis Longwear Nail Colour in Pirate.

Pictured here: CHANEL 25 HANDBAG

Modeling by ZIZI DONAHUE, JANE TYLER PETTUS, BRIGHIE GROUND, COLLEEN, ALEX FRITZ, BOW, ODIE, MALICK DIOUCK, NINA CASH, and MARA MARK

CULT 100 CULT 100

PUBLISHING IS FULL OF RANKINGS, FROM POWER LISTS TO BEST-DRESSED LISTS TO UNDER-40 LISTS. THE CULT100 IS DIFFERENT. THERE IS JUST ONE CRITERION FOR INCLUSION—BUT IT’S A HIGH BAR. TO QUALIFY, A CANDIDATE MUST BE ACTIVELY SHAPING AND CHANGING OUR CULTURE IN REAL TIME. THE PEOPLE ON THIS LIST REPRESENT FIVE GENERATIONS AND HAIL FROM THE WORLDS OF FOOD, PUBLISHING, ART, FASHION, ACTIVISM, AND ENTERTAINMENT. TO PUT THIS GROUP TOGETHER, CULTURED’S EDITORS LEVERAGED THE FULL STRENGTH OF OUR NETWORK, TAPPING ARTISTS, WRITERS, AND CULTURAL LEADERS TO TELL US WHO THEY LOOK TO WHEN THEY WANT TO FEEL CHALLENGED, HOPEFUL, AND INSPIRED.

SOME MEMBERS OF THE CULT100 ARE HOUSEHOLD NAMES; OTHERS HAVE BEEN WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO MAKE POSSIBLE THE CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS THAT STOP US IN OUR TRACKS. IN A TIME OF BINARY THINKING, THE CREATORS FEATURED IN THIS YEAR’S LIST ARE EMBRACING CONTRADICTION, BOUNCING WILLFULLY BETWEEN DISCIPLINES, AND REFUSING TO TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. THEY HAVE GUTS, VISION, AND A POTENT COCKTAIL OF REALISM AND OPTIMISM. NONE OF THEM IS SHYING AWAY FROM THE ANXIETY OF OUR MOMENT. INSTEAD, THEY ARE THINKING BIG, SHARING GENEROUSLY, AND EMBODYING COURAGE. THE GOOD NEWS IS, THEIR WORK MAKES US ALL A LITTLE BIT BRAVER, TOO.

CULT 100 CULT 100

RENEGADES

JULIANNE MOORE:

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CASS BIRD

How do you sum up 70-plus films and four decades of Hollywood lore in a single profile? One writer does his best to take on the inimitable Julianne Moore.

‘I BECOME ANYTHING’

Julianne Moore wears a full look by Saint Laurent and earrings by Cartier.

Let me level with you at the top of this: I was nervous to interview Julianne Moore. Not because I’m a sweaty-palmed, starstruck fanboy, but because she’s one of the most seminal actors of her generation, with the kind of prestige that needs no fanfare, and I didn’t want to resort to the Hollywood platitudes we’ve all heard a million times. I also didn’t want to ask the insufferable rapid-fire, meme-y questions actors are subjected to these days, when their publicists want the press junket to go viral. You know Julianne Moore, I know Julianne Moore. She’s the thinking person’s movie star.

I have just 30 minutes on Zoom to excavate a 40-year career, which is fine, but she’s played so many roles that fucked me up (for better or worse), that left me emotionally limping from the cinema. I’m interested in Moore’s stealthy brilliance, her ability to zero in on the hairline fractures under the surface of everyday life. After all, our greatest crises rarely arrive as thunderclaps, but in slow, torturous drips.

Moore’s oeuvre sets the table of a manicured domestic life before serving up our sourest fears: What if this marriage is a trap? What if my surroundings are poisoning me? What if I lose my memories?

“Not many of us go to the moon, you know?” Moore says, bathed in warm light in her New York home. Despite the typical brutality of the Zoom rectangle, she looks every inch the Hollywood royal while retaining her ineffable indie-darling electricity. “We are not astronauts. There aren’t that many kings and queens. So I’m interested in the drama of everyday life—the lady next to me on the subway, or the family drama we’ve all witnessed.” There’s something a bit Dr Pepper-y (the old jingle goes, “ what’s the worst that could happen? ”) about Moore’s oeuvre, setting the table of a manicured domestic life before serving up our sourest fears: What if this marriage is a trap? What if my surroundings are poisoning me? What if I lose all of my memories? The way Moore works, like the way she lives, defies easy explanation.

“I don’t measure my career. I think of myself as a gig worker, always focused on the next thing. The minute something is over, it’s done.”

I am, nevertheless, in pursuit of explanations, but how do you ask an Oscar-winner who’s spent four decades in Hollywood real questions and get real answers? Part of Moore’s cosmic appeal is that she doesn’t so much perform as dissolve into a role, a masterful erosion of self. The flame

of red hair is a constant, but everything else is shed in pursuit of the truth of the story, and the woman at its heart. As reconnaissance, I read through her colossal IMDb page (which includes her back-to-back upcoming projects— the limited series, Sirens, out in May, and the June thriller Echo Valley), reveling in a filmography soaked in suburban malaise and private devastations: husbands who leave, children who die, houses that feel more like prisons than homes. I’m struck, as I scroll, by how many times she’s bowled me over—as a Tanqueray-swilling divorcée in A Single Man; a burdened mother of two in the pasticheswerving melodrama Far From Heaven ; a housewife suffocating in 1950s domesticity who struggles to repress her fearsome sexuality in The Hours ; an academic who’s excruciatingly aware that her mind is peeling away from her body in Still Alice ; or, in 2023’s May December, an eerily girlish and lisping woman who rebrands a scandalously age-inappropriate relationship with a teenage boy as an innocent romance. Last year’s Pedro Almodóvar–directed drama, The Room Next Door, wove many of these threads together. In it, two women (played by Moore and Tilda Swinton) confront the interlocking forces of female friendship, mortality, and grief.

How do you ask an Oscar-winner who’s spent four decades in Hollywood real questions and get real answers?

Unlike me, Moore has no interest in reviewing her past work. “I don’t measure my career,” she says offhandedly. “I think of myself as a gig worker, always focused on the next thing. The minute something is over, it’s done.”

She’s certainly no stranger to moving on. Born in North Carolina to a Scottish mother and American military court judge father, the actor had a nomadic childhood—23 moves, a new town and new faces each time. She developed her chameleon-esque skills then, learning the art of entering any new situation as a blank slate: “I become anything,” she says. “I start from a place of neutrality, always, and then I flip around.” At 16 in Frankfurt, Germany, Moore discovered her high school’s drama department and fell head over heels for the theatrical comedy Tartuffe by Molière, her medical and law school aspirations all but forgotten. She planned, much to her parents’ apprehension, to graduate and join a conservatory. Ultimately, they compromised on Boston University’s fine arts program. After securing her BFA, Moore landed a recurring role as twins in the soap opera As the World Turns, a small-screen bootcamp that won her a Daytime Emmy at 27.

I ask about the physical choices she’s made in her roles—the breathy lisp in May December, her Swiss enunciation in The Big Lebowski , and my favorite, her baby-pitched drawl as Carol in Todd

Haynes’s 1995 suburban nightmare Safe. The psychological drama is a critique of overconsumption and societal complacency— Moore’s initial uncontrollable cough reveals itself as a deeper allergy to the modern world, an undefinable affliction that forces her to seek out new-age remedies. I know Moore is tired of talking about her age and physical appearance, but I read that she lost weight for the role, making herself quite ill in the process. Is she willing to give that much of herself to a character today? “That was the first time I wanted to lose weight and look frail. I probably only lost 12 pounds, but for someone my size it was significant,” she recalls. “My blood pressure got really low, and my energy levels changed. I don’t want to do that to myself [again].”

When I wonder aloud whether these choices are conscious or instinctive, Moore stiffens almost imperceptibly. “I think there’s a misnomer that what we do is unconscious. It’s always conscious. When you’re an actor, you’re reading the script to get a sense of the character, but you’re also thinking, How does she move? How does she speak? How does she see herself? How does she want the world to see her? There can be a sense of allowing things to happen to you [on a set], but you’ve done a lot of preparation to get there. Actors are very, very aware of what they’re creating.”

Moore’s body of work does seem to feed into our macabre but persistent fascination with female suffering. Audiences love to watch a glamorous woman courting a nervous breakdown as we munch our popcorn, collecting emotional traumas like trophies. Despite the depth of her performances, people still, frustratingly, refer to “Julianne Moore movies” as their own genre: Woman Falls Apart. “I think at this point in my career—because I’ve made, like, 70-something movies—people want to create a through line,” she muses. “But my choices aren’t about playing women who suffer. They’re about playing real people.”

“I become anything. I start from a place of neutrality, always, and then I flip around.”

Of course, there is no single way to encapsulate a career as vast as Moore’s. It feels somewhat glib, almost rude, to attempt to sum up her cinematic breadth—some of the most poignant scenes ever committed to film—in my allotted word count, but that’s the rub. She, the multidimensional movie star; me, the hack hoping to bottle her lightning over a Zoom call. Each time she appears on our screens, Julianne Moore performs a sort of a symphony, an aria that articulates the shared complexities of being alive. To play it all back at once creates a din; to harmonize 40 years of notes is to flatten them.

Moore’s characters don’t just give into suffering —they reckon with it, leaving audiences to grapple with the question, Who am I now, after this? When the timed Zoom ends, I ask myself the same.

“I think at this point in my career—because I’ve made, like, 70-something movies— people want to create a through line. But my choices aren’t about playing women who suffer. They’re about playing real people.”

Julianne wears a top by Hodakova, T-shirt by Slvrlake, vintage trousers, and earrings by Cartier.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What keeps you up at night?

Worry. Worry about my children, about their health or their mental well-being or whether I said something that wasn’t the right thing to say in a parenting moment. Then I wake up the next morning and say, “I hope what I said was okay, I hope that was helpful.” That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me up.

What’s something people get wrong about you?

That I’m a serious person, especially around my work.

What’s one book that got you through an important moment of your life?

When I was 10, we moved to Alaska and it was a big move for everyone in my family. It was traumatic because it was different, and Alaska back in the day was a very different place. That was the summer I read Little Women, and I would read the part where Beth died over and over again, and I couldn’t stop crying. It was such an emotional release for me. The book was very much about female selfdetermination, and it was really formative for me to realize that you could have big feelings and also determine your own destiny.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality of yours, what would it be?

I’m really persistent and I try really hard. I’ve never been cool about anything.

Julianne wears a coat and pants by Phoebe Philo, and earrings by Cartier. Gloves and shoes are stylist’s own.

“There’s a misnomer that what we do is unconscious. It’s always conscious. Actors are very, very aware of what they’re creating.”

Julianne wears a dress and shoes by JW Anderson, T-shirt by Slvrlake, socks by Falke, and earrings by Cartier.

Hair by DJ Quintero for Living Proof at the Wall Group

Makeup by Romy Soleimani

Nails by Gina Eppolito

Production by April Ellis and Andrew Chung

Lighting Direction and DP by Clay

Howard-Smith

Digital Tech by Anthony Miller

Styling Assistance by Chloe Kerins and Cyrenae Tademy

Makeup Assistance by Jackie Piccola Lighting Assistance by Angelo Capacyachi

Julianne wears a coat by Bottega Veneta and earrings by Cartier. BEAUTY

CULTURE: A rose by another name: Valentino Liquirosso 2 in 1 Lip & Blush Soft Matte Color in Catch Me If You Can.

WHO WRITES LIKE JAPANESE BREAKFAST?

BY SOPHIE LEE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEON PROST

STYLING BY CHARLOTTE ROBERTS AND MELODIE ZAGURY ALL CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES BY VALENTINO

MICHELLE ZAUNER’S LITERARY AND MUSICAL OFFERINGS ROCKETED HER TO THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN ZEITGEIST. FOUR YEARS LATER, THE ARTIST RELEASED HER FOURTH ALBUM INTO A DIFFERENT CULTURAL CLIMATE—ONE THAT’S ONLY MADE HER WORK MORE URGENT.

Michelle wears a Valentino jacket, shorts, bralette, pumps, tights, and Valentino Garavani gloves.

Michelle wears a Valentino jacket and skirt, and Valentino Garavani gloves and Bowow Pumps.

“I’M REFLECTING ON THE FUTURE IN A SOMBER WAY. IT’S NOT NECESSARILY NEGATIVE, IT’S JUST A FIXATION ON THE PASSAGE OF TIME.”

In 2012, Michelle Zauner was looking for a name for her new band. While scrolling through pictures of small portions of rice, miso soup, and salmon —a Japanese breakfast, so distinct from the excesses of a typical American spread—she thought the name might stir something in a country with an enduring appetite for palatable forms of otherness. Now, Zauner is a two-time Grammy nominee whose memoir, Crying in H Mart, spent a whopping 60 weeks on the bestseller list. Many of her casual listeners might still be surprised to find that she is, in fact, Korean.

It’s ironic, since Zauner’s heritage—she was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and American father, who raised her in Oregon—is central to all that she creates. Last year, she left her current home base in New York for Seoul, with the goal of immersing herself in the language of her birthplace. While there, she directed music videos for her latest album, last month’s For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), with all-Korean crews—a test of her burgeoning fluency. “It’s hard enough to communicate in your native tongue. Especially with art, where you’re creating something that doesn’t exist,” she tells me, calling in from Los Angeles, where she’s beginning to promote the album. The experience will eventually be the subject of a yet-undated second book.

The album is Zauner’s first since 2021, when she released Japanese Breakfast’s breakthrough record, Jubilee, and her bestselling prose debut, which charts her repeated visits to the cult Korean grocer H Mart following her mother’s death. In the span of a year, Zauner went from indie upstart to a staple of the mainstream music and literary circuits—an exhilarating and all-consuming crash course in hyperexposure. The now-36-year-old mentions a dinner party around that time where the filmmaker Cameron Crowe, an idol of Zauner’s, leaned over to recite a line of her book back to her. “Who writes like that? You write like that!,” he exclaimed. “That was maybe one of the top five moments of my life,” she recalls animatedly.

Zauner’s genre funambulism echoes the latitude of artists like Patti Smith, whose M Train and Just Kids share many of the same bookshelves as Crying in H Mart. The tomes are more than memoirs penned by musicians—they’re snapshots of the cultural moments that sparked them, and glimpses into the emotional topographies of the artists who soundtracked those periods. In 2021, Zauner was reaching for levity in the midst of grief, and the resulting Jubilee was shot through with the same unwavering optimism and sugarysweet production of K-pop bands that, though wholly distinct from Zauner’s sound, had begun to familiarize American audiences with Korean culture, the absence of which Zauner felt acutely growing up. That album was a salve during a hard time, and Crying in H Mart ’s intimate depiction of losing and finding one’s own culture hit stands at a moment when audiences seemed particularly hungry for “diverse” voices—a now-dubious appetite when our current political framework prizes conformity.

“IT’S HARD ENOUGH TO COMMUNICATE IN YOUR NATIVE TONGUE. ESPECIALLY WITH ART, WHERE YOU’RE CREATING SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST.”

On For Melancholy Brunettes, Zauner follows this darker turn to its inevitable end. “Plotting blood with your incel eunuchs / I could be the home you need,” she laments on “Mega Circuit,” an account of hitching oneself to a young radical. The 10-track record explores the seductive nature of ambition and vice—and in the wake of Zauner’s sharp ascent, fame. Poets are called to sea by sirens, spouses slink off into infidelity, and on one track, Jeff Bridges laments the insidious dangers of “Men in Bars.” “I was looking at people in my life succumbing to some sort of temptation or wanting too much,” she says. “I think it’s partially my age. I’m reflecting on the future in a somber way. It’s not necessarily negative, it’s just a fixation on the passage of time.”

Prior to her stint in Seoul, Zauner spent three years touring Jubilee. Earlier this spring, she headed back out on the road in a country that’s revealed itself to be a starkly different cultural landscape since the last time she traversed it. By the time you read this, the musician will be somewhere between the Deep South and Canada, two seeming antipodes in our political climate. But Zauner is no stranger to confronting dichotomies. “Who am I to leave behind,” she and Bridges harmonize on “Men in Bars.” “We built this / And even when it breaks apart / It’s ours.”

Michelle wears a Valentino dress and Valentino Garavani gloves.

Michelle wears a Valentino dress and Valentino Garavani fur stole and gloves.

“PLOTTING BLOOD WITH YOUR INCEL EUNUCHS

BEAUTY CULTURE: To recreate

Zauner’s glow, try Valentino V-Lighter Dual Use Liquid Light Face Base and Top Coat in Rosa.

Below: Michelle wears Valentino socks and Valentino Garavani Bowow Pumps.

IN THE SPAN OF A YEAR, ZAUNER WENT FROM INDIE UPSTART TO A STAPLE OF BOTH THE MAINSTREAM MUSIC AND LITERARY CIRCUITS—AN EXHILARATING AND ALL- CONSUMING CRASH COURSE IN HYPEREXPOSURE.

THE CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What is your trademark? HAPPY SLASH SAD.

What keeps you up at night? EVIL.

What’s something people get wrong about you? MY PERSONA IS MORE WHOLESOME THAN I ACTUALLY AM.

Name an influence of yours that might surprise people. ARIANA GRANDE.

Describe a recent crossroads at which you found yourself.

LIVING IN KOREA AND NOT WANTING TO COME BACK.

When you were little, what were you known for?

BEING LOUD. AND CLUMSY, HITTING MY HEAD A LOT.

What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?

I LOVE [SOUND] ENGINEERING BECOMING A MORE DIVERSE FIELD. I’M REALLY GLAD THAT IT’S BECOMING A LESS WHITE MALE-DOMINATED FIELD. [LESS] MISOGYNY, SEXISM, TRANSPHOBIA, AND BIGOTRY IN ART SPACES.

What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work? IS THIS GOOD?

If you could attribute your success to a single quality, what would it be? STUPID HARD WORK. JUST A STUPID AMOUNT OF EFFORT. TENACITY.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment in your life?

IN 2023, I READ THOMAS MANN’S THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. I WANTED TO READ IT WHILE WE WERE TOURING SWITZERLAND AND FUNNILY ENOUGH, IT’S ABOUT A MAN WHO INTENDS TO VISIT HIS COUSIN AT A SANATORIUM IN SWITZERLAND AND WINDS UP STAYING THERE FOR 12 YEARS. I GOT TERRIBLY SICK WHILE I WAS READING IT AND WROTE A SONG THAT ENDS MY NEW ALBUM, CALLED “MAGIC MOUNTAIN.”

What do you want next for yourself, above all else? ARTISTIC FULFILLMENT AND HAPPINESS.

Michelle wears a Valentino cape and gown.

Creative Direction by Daphné Mookherjee

Hair by Gor Duryan

Makeup by Natsuki Oneyama Set Design by Julia Zagury

Production by Management Core

Production Assistance by Sandra Soltane

Lighting Assistance by Kazo Digital

Special Thanks to Samira Simon and Lucile B.

ANNE IMHOF’S VISIBILITY, VOYEURISM, AND SURVEILLANCE

BY JOHANNA FATEMAN

THE ARTIST IS FRESH OFF THE DEBUT OF HER BIGGEST PERFORMANCE PIECE YET, AT NEW YORK’S PARK AVENUE ARMORY. ONCE MORE, SHE’S ESTABLISHED WHY VIEWERS DEDICATE HOURS TO SITTING WITH EACH OF HER INCREASINGLY DARING WORKS.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMY LIEBMAN

STYLING BY DIONE DAVIS

Anne Imhof wears a full look by Loewe at the Park Avenue Armory in New York

Anne wears a full look by Saint Laurent with Devon Teuscher at the Park Avenue Armory.

DOOM, the title of Anne Imhof’s three-hour performance which premiered at the Park Avenue Armory this spring, spelled backward is—well, you can read it for yourself. That seemed to be the haters’ main complaint: The sprawling piece—part tableau vivant, part promenade theater—was all vibes. I wonder, though, did those who so quickly dismissed the piece really try ? On opening night, I entered the 55,500-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall a skeptic and left a believer, won over in part because of the demands the work made upon me—to maneuver through and against the crowd for a vantage, to acclimate to the night’s shifting temporality, and to attune myself to the surprising emotional range of its detached melancholy and menace (yes, its mood ).

The artist, who splits her time between Berlin and Los Angeles these days, is not yet halfway through the show’s nearly two-week run when we meet to talk in one of the upstairs rooms at the Armory. The fabled military facility and Gilded Age social club— emblematic of American industrialist wealth—was a fitting site for Imhof’s revised lexicon of oligarchic force. Downstairs, steel barricades, a Jumbotron countdown clock, and 26 black Cadillac Escalades formed the ominous mise-en-scène for the show. Later, spotlights would lead the audience around the dark, hangar-like space, through the dispersed cavalcade of empty cars. Perhaps hitting upon a new slogan (Cadillac is a sponsor), she adds, “It’s full of power and beauty—for the people who are safe inside it.”

It was Imhof’s Golden Lion–winning performance Faust, made for the German Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, that announced her arrival. Her beyond-buzzy, one-to-watch status has never flagged since.

Imhof traces her sense of dystopian threat back to childhood. Born in 1978, she grew up in the German town of Giessen, located in the Fulda Gap—a lowland corridor identified as a likely path for Soviet tanks should the Cold War turn hot. That ambient tension, and the more explicit fear that “Chernobyl could happen again,” provoked a deep depression at age 11, she recalls. In Frankfurt, where she moved to as a young adult, she discovered punk (“It was the anger that resonated with me”). By age 20, she had a baby. “I was like a panther in a cage at that time,” she says, “and I was also, in a weird way, a very happy mom.” Such apparent contradictions seem to have served her well, at least creatively. She graduated from the storied Städelschule art school at 34, and eventually, became an internationally acclaimed artist.

It was Imhof’s Golden Lion–winning performance Faust, made for the German Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, that announced her arrival. Her beyond-buzzy, one-to-watch status has never flagged since. Neither have her fundamental artistic concerns changed. Looking back at that breakout endeavor— whose desultory, S&M-inflected ensemble action was likewise imminently Instagrammable, fragmented, and impossible to view in its entirety—Imhof compares the hierarchy evoked by the architectural intervention of its fishbowl set to that established by the Escalades. “I was working a little bit in the same way—I was thinking about the transparent glass panes that I saw so much, in luxury stores and banks,” she recalls. “You pretend that everything is transparent and equal because you can see through it,” but, referring to the raised floor in Faust, through which viewers could observe a crawlspace-like stage, she notes, “When you take glass and [lay it] horizontal, suddenly you know [that all is] not equal; there’s an above and a below.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m an activist; it doesn’t make me an activist to have some notion of what we do as a group.”

Visibility, voyeurism, and surveillance are implicit themes in all of Imhof’s work, but so are intimacy and community, despite its often studiously blank affect. The artist leverages a distinctly alienated glamour, anchored in the physical beauty of her fashion world performers—perhaps especially in the brooding charisma of artist Eliza Douglas, her longtime collaborator and former partner. This adjacency is seen by some as working counter to an image of authentic collectivity. But the stunning political hostility of our moment throws another aspect of Imhof’s world—what is queer, trans, nonbinary, feminist, collaborative, non-hierarchical, countercultural, disaffected, like-a-panther-in-a-cage about it—into sharp relief. Coolness is matched by sincerity.

Alternatively, these two elements clash— producing a palpable awkwardness, like in DOOM, where the piece’s aloofness serves as an unlucky foil to its unironically overplayed existential and romantic tropes. But I’ve always preferred work that errs on the side of corniness, as topical forays into “the political” often do. When I ask about Imhof’s response to the repressive climate in the U.S., she replies, “I wouldn’t say I’m an activist; it doesn’t make me an activist to have some notion of what we do as a group.” It was Douglas’s idea, she says, to make the cardboard protest signs that appear at one point during the night. (“Save the Dolls,” “You Can’t Control My Body,” and “Trans Rights” were among the slogans.) Imhof seems to see this content—whether explicitly articulated or not—as a given: “The people I work with are vulnerable.”

The cast of nearly 60 performers included actors, dancers (from the Flexn scene and ballet), models, musicians (a pianist and a punk band), skaters, and other category-defying participants. Douglas watched, waited, vaped, and sang as the evening’s sequence of vignettes unfolded. With the characters (sometimes) dressed in the sports jerseys of fictional, dueling high school teams, Imhof taunted us with the plot structure of a feud. But her hybrid script, drawing from such far-flung sources as dance criticism and Rimbaud, hung its action on a skeletal, backward version of Romeo and Juliet DOOM asks, What happens when you play a tragedy in reverse?

“The people who perform, they know what they can hold and what they can’t. That’s what I trust in.”

Imhof tells me that the idea for the starcrossed lovers’ death monologues to occur at the beginning originated with the actors. Ultimately, actor Talia Ryder (the show’s primary Juliet) insisted on the flipped structure. Imhof hesitated but gave in: “It was a good choice,” she says. “The people who perform, they know what they can hold and what they can’t. That’s what I trust in.” From the interpretation of archetypal roles by ballerina Devon Teuscher to music director Ville Haimala’s sweeping electronic score, the artist brings our far-ranging conversation back, again and again, to the inspired contributions of those around her. The severity of her aesthetic is complemented by her in-person warmth—or fervor, even.

Perhaps, ultimately, it’s that fervor that makes her art such a topic of critical (and group chat) debate. It’s epic, ambitious, and forbidding, but also unpolished: rendered charming by its sincerity, ragged edges, and even its hiccups of teenage cliché. To see an artist court disaster on such a grand scale is arguably a mood, I suppose, but I think Imhof—with DOOM, and in her general practice—gives us more than that to sit with. As the artist turns toward a more structured, scripted, tightly choreographed approach, vibes become an asterisk.

Visibility, voyeurism, and surveillance are implicit themes in all of Imhof’s work, but so are intimacy and community, despite its often studiously blank affect.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

When you were little, what were you known for? I was the Dreamer.

What’s something people get wrong about you?

The introvert/extrovert thing. I’m an introvert.

What question do you ask yourself the most while you’re making work? Is it good?

Who do you call the most? My daughter.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment in your life?

I listened to Jimi Hendrix’s

“All Along the Watchtower” just before I gave birth to my kid; also “Foxy Lady.” And then a very influential book would be Rimbaud, A Season in Hell.

What do

you

think

is your biggest contribution

to culture? Not to have tried to make art. Not to have tried to make, like, “real art.”

Hair by Cody Ainey

Makeup by Ernest Robinson

Production by Dionne Cochrane

Tailoring by Chloë Boxer

Styling Assistance by Keanu Mohammed and Dylan Keoni Production Assistance by Brittany Thompson and Kaylah

Anne wears a full look by Balenciaga, and earrings and rings by Tabayer.

By ELISSA SUH Styling by STUDIO&

MOLLY GORDON’S REVENGE FANTASY CASS BIRD

With her solo directorial debut and first leading role on the horizon, the actor is on track to become one of Hollywood’s most unstoppable triple threats.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Molly Gordon wears a coat and heels by Marc Jacobs, and tights by Falke.

“All you have to do is be brave enough to make the attempt and brave enough to fail.”

At the age of 18, Molly Gordon did what a few thousand young adults do every year: move to New York to start school at NYU. Her college career lasted less than two weeks, however— “not long enough to have a conversation about it,” she tells me archly, calling in from London, where she’s working on a new script with actor and writer Phoebe Walsh. Her real edification came in the form of a hostess job. Her campus? The well-heeled fixture Balthazar. “I always think of that Broad City episode where they mix up everyone’s coats,” Gordon recalls. “I did that all the time. I was a fucking mess, but I learned how to get my shit together.”

Just over a decade later, the Los Angeles native has emerged as a certified scene stealer in films like Theater Camp and Shiva Baby, administering a dose of insolence or sincerity at just the right moment, whether as a dorky theater counselor or an intimidating highschool ex. Now, she’s preparing to step into the spotlight in a very big way, with years of work culminating in a string of major projects— including her first leading role. “People always ask why I haven’t taken [one on] yet, and I’m like, ‘No one’s asked me to!’” she says, laughing. “For me, it’s always been about the filmmaker and the project, not the size of the role.”

In Oh, Hi!, set to release later this year, Gordon plays half of a romantic couple (opposite Logan Lerman) on a weekend trip that quickly goes awry. It’s a familiar logline, but you haven’t seen it play out quite like this. (Without giving too much away, expect a ball gag, witch spells, and David Cross.) Born from a shared experience of heartbreak, Oh, Hi! is the brainchild of Gordon (who received a story credit) and Sophie Brooks, who wrote and directed.

Riffing on the brand of psychological intrigue

Fatal Attraction and Misery crystallized in the late ’80s and early ’90s with an updated humor quotient, the film centers on Gordon’s Iris, offering a sympathetic window into what society has deemed “crazy” female behavior.

Oh, Hi! ’s revenge-fantasy plot was initially even more chaotic, with the first draft skewing “a bit ‘fuck men,’” Gordon admits. “It was deep in Covid, and we were drawing from some pretty dark places.” When the movie premiered at Sundance earlier this year, critics noted how deftly it navigates millennial romantic anxieties, especially before a relationship is fully defined. But Gordon argues that its themes should resonate with people of all ages: “‘Fuck boys’ and ‘soft boys’ have existed forever.”

The film offers a clear indication of what Gordon can do: redefine the “complex female character” for a permanently online generation. Her characters deliver a blunt edge in a girlnext-door envelope, complicating the often incompatible values social media demands from its users: high-octane authenticity and studied self-awareness. While deadpan humor and a knack for brutal honesty can occasionally veer into “bitchy” territory onscreen, Gordon always ensures her characters have a touch of relatable awkwardness. And she has no problem exposing the more unappealing, untethered aspects of a character—or indulging in goofiness. “Life’s too sad to not make funny things,” she tells me.

For someone frequently caught up in tense interrelational situations onscreen, Gordon’s real life is surprisingly calm and, she notes, mostly solitary. “I’m in my nomadic phase of life,” she tells me. With longstanding aspirations beyond acting, she’s focused on writing and juggling script deadlines these days. Fellow zillennial darlings Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott are among her close-knit circle of friends; beyond appearing in a suite of projects together, they’re also navigating a shared experience of coming up in the industry. “I literally texted Rachel this morning about how to submit something and what happens after I turn it in,” Gordon says. (When I compare her group to a Taylor Swift–esque girl gang, she chuckles, promptly noting that everyone’s welcome.)

Next, she’s adapting Outrageous Fortune, the 1987 film starring Shelley Long and Bette Midler as actors who inadvertently become involved in a heist, and preparing her solo A24-backed directorial debut, Peaked, in which she’ll also star. Gordon likens the film, a dark comedy about a high school reunion, to an adult bar mitzvah. “It’s such a great space for shit to go down. Everyone is coming for different reasons, with something to prove or looking for closure,” she says. “It’s very human, especially [relatable] for my generation, which is having a really hard time being an adult.”

Gordon is adamant about maintaining her multi-hyphenate status, stressing that writing makes her a better actor and vice versa. (Rounding out her triple threat: singing. A young Phoebe Bridgers once opened for her high school band, Louis and June.) “A lot of people end up leaving acting to focus just on directing or writing because once you’re seen as a female director, you don’t want to lose that label,” she explains. “There are only, like, five female directors out there.” She’s not too far off: In the Oscars’s 97-year-history, only 10 women filmmakers have been nominated for or won Best Director.

If she’s nervous about entering this new phase, on- and off-camera, and keeping all the plates spinning, Gordon doesn’t let it show. She grew up in the business—her father is a TV director and her mother is a writerdirector—and credits her parents for her strong work ethic. “So many times, I would see my dad getting ready for a job, only for the project to fall apart,” she recalls. “This industry is all about tenacity.”

She also finds it helpful to remind herself that, because they’ll make fewer films in their lifetime than the crew, a director is likely to be the least experienced person on set. “All you have to do,” Gordon concludes, “is be brave enough to make the attempt and brave enough to fail.”

Molly wears a dress by Marc Jacobs. Shoes are stylist’s own.

Hair by DJ Quintero for Living Proof at the Wall Group

Makeup by Romy Soleimani

Nails by Lolly Koon for Chanel Beauty Production by April Ellis and Andrew Chung

Lighting Direction and DP by Clay

Howard-Smith

Digital Tech by Anthony Miller

Styling Assistance by Chloe Kerins and Cyrenae Tademy

Makeup Assistance by Jackie Piccola

Lighting Assistance by Angelo Capacyachi

Molly wears a dress by Loewe and tights by Falke. Shoes are stylist’s own.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?

My snot bubble in Theater Camp. Or my snot bubble when Carmy broke up with Claire in The Bear.

What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?

I would love to see more original films made by new voices. Less judgment of art with sentiment.

Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.

Steve Kerr? My parents are obsessed with basketball and usually bring up something he said when giving me advice.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment of your life?

I find myself always returning to the book Heartburn. I also return to truly anything Nora Ephron wrote when I’m feeling low.

When you were little, what were you known for? Being loud.

Who do you call the most?

I call my mom and my friend Owen Thiele every day. For that, I am sorry.

Michelle Williams’s Lust for Life

The actor has spent a three-decade career telegraphing grief and desire. Her latest project, this month’s Dying for Sex, presented an entirely new set of challenges.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Norman Jean Roy

BY Elena Saavedra Buckley

STYLING BY Kate Young

Michelle Williams wears a coat by Celine.

Michelle Williams’s face is mesmerizing to watch. It’s almost as if it were that of a newborn: reactive and curious, seeming to operate on its own timeline, stretching into a smile one second after you’d expect it to. The artistry of this face can make you forget that the rest of her body is doing a lot of the groundwork. Remember her in Brokeback Mountain, confronting Heath Ledger’s tormented Ennis, her stiff, angry body braced against a kitchen sink? Or in My Week With Marilyn—for which she reworked her gait to better tap into the spirit of Monroe’s hips? For her Emmy-winning television role as Gwen Verdon in Fosse/ Verdon, she played not only a dancer, but one learning a new style of movement over the span of 50 years.

That love of shape-shifting is what drew Williams to Dying for Sex, her second-ever limited series. In the dramedy, which she also produced, she plays Molly Kochan, a woman who receives a terminal diagnosis and leaves her husband, relying on her best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate) and her mother (Sissy Spacek) as her caretakers while seeking out the sexual experiences she’s spent her life yearning after. (The FX show is based on the podcast that the real Kochan recorded with her best friend, Nikki Boyer, before passing away in 2019.) “I loved making something that was so about a body,” Williams told me earlier this spring. She was snacking on falafel from a takeout container, wearing a butter-yellow pullover sweater with her Twiggy-esque hair swept up under a crisp, white Yankees hat, eyes aimed out a window of the Brooklyn brownstone she shares with her husband, the Broadway director Thomas Kail, and her children. “A body is a host to so many experiences. But we carry so much shame about them.”

Williams was pregnant when she first read the Dying for Sex script. “I was taken with it in a way that happens very rarely for me,” she recalls. “But I was also scared of what it was going to lead me towards.” Reading any pilot script is already an exercise in the erotic—the thrill of committing wholeheartedly to something without knowing where it might lead—but most roles don’t call for multiple onscreen orgasms, let alone chemotherapy. (Unlike Anora, the Dying for Sex set did have an intimacy coordinator, and she taught Williams a few things. For example: “To give a convincing onscreen blow job, you suck your own thumb. It gives the proper, uh, tension,” she tells me. “Before that note, I looked like I was bobbing for apples.”) Plus, Williams had a pregnancy to contend with. “[The other producers and I] talked about, like, ‘Could we do this with CGI?’” she remembers. “It seemed pretty ridiculous, trying to negotiate sex scenes with a six-month stomach.” Ultimately, the timing worked out: After Williams gave birth, she tracked the project down again. Filming began in the spring of last year.

“I was taken with this script in a way that happens very rarely for me. But I was also scared of what it was going to lead me towards.”

Three decades into her career, people forget that Williams got her start on Baywatch and took off with Dawson’s Creek when she was 16. At that time, she was living alone in Burbank, having legally emancipated herself from her parents, ordering two

pizzas a day for breakfast and dinner. She was playing a worldweary teen onscreen and a self-sufficient adult off of it—neither was her natural state. “I felt that if I had stopped and admitted that I didn’t know what I was doing then I would be really lost,” she told GQ in 2012. “The best thing to do was to just keep forging and to act like you were okay.” When she wasn’t on set for Dawson’s, Williams was working hard to figure out what a natural state might look like—diving into independent projects that played against her doe-eyed teen-soap type, like the late-’90s teen satire Dick or Wim Wenders’s post-9/11 drama Land of Plenty. It was 2005’s Brokeback that laid bare her capacity to embody grief, bringing to life characters whose losses and desires infect them like a virus—a role she also unwittingly played in early-aughts tabloids, which hounded her after the death of her ex-partner, Ledger, in 2008.

Eventually, she harnessed these abilities, and the rest of her filmography is a record of her capacity to communicate years of accumulated suffering, longing, and connection well beyond the camera’s lens—Blue Valentine, Manchester by the Sea (both of which earned her Academy Award nods), and four awardsladen microbudget features by Kelly Reichardt. (She did a couple superhero films like many of her peers, but that’s easy to forget.)

“A body is a host to so many experiences. But we carry so much shame about them.”

Dying for Sex checks what have now become some quintessential Williams boxes—a character with a terminal illness is practically the physical epitome of aching, after all—but the series is also more responsive to cultural discourse than much of her indie or period drama fare. It’s peppered with cameos from comedians like Robby Hoffman and SNL’s Marcello Hernandez; it takes place in Brooklyn, where the apartments are beautiful and the clothes jewel-toned and hip (down to every last member of the hospital’s cancer recovery support group).

Perhaps most topical of all is the show’s belief in the transformative power of sexual liberation. Yet unlike some buzzy midlife crisis, grab-for-freedom escapades, Dying for Sex is still about dependence, relationships, and their many symptoms—just the ones that exist outside of marriage. “What’s so great about best friendship is that this person has witnessed it all; they’re holding exactly what you’re holding,” Williams reminds me. “There’s no explaining. You can just sit with it, and then go deeper and aid each other’s healing process.”

Perhaps this is what makes Williams an actor’s actor, the kind that tunnels past the bounds of a script, beyond the confines of a character and into their unspoken communion, their companions, their mortality, and their own body. After all, she seems to do the same in her own life. “The test of true friendship is the ability, desire, and willingness to tell the truth, as you see it, about the other person—because we are our own blind spots,” muses Williams, who has been known to bring her best friends to award shows instead of her partners.

“When I told my friends, ‘I’m thinking about doing this show about a woman who gets a terminal diagnosis, leaves her husband, and turns to her best friend and says, “I want to die with you,” they were like, ‘Go. Please make that.’”

Reading any pilot script is already an exercise in the erotic—the thrill of committing wholeheartedly to something without knowing where it might lead—but most roles don’t call for multiple on-screen orgasms, let alone chemotherapy.

Michelle wears a dress by Jacquemus and bracelet by Cartier.

Michelle wears a hat by Valentino.

Hair by Chris McMillan

Makeup by Angela Levin

Nails by Elle Gerstein

Production by Dionne Cochrane

Photography Assistance and Set Coordination by Jojo Roy

Photography Assistance by Kyle Thompson and Max D’Amico

Styling Assistance by Natalie Gilhool, Bonnie Robbins, and Chloe Jenkins

Production Assistance by Brittany Thompson and Thalia Saint-Lôt

Location: Pier 59 Studios

“The test of true friendship is the ability, desire, and willingness to tell the truth, as you see it, about the other person—because we are our own blind spots.”

What keeps you up at night?  My children.

What's one book, work of art film that got you through an important moment in your life?

Can I say Faerie Tale Theatre?

Who do you call the most? My husband.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality of yours, what would it be?

Maybe, possibly, my childhood in Montana.

THE QUEEN’S SPEECH

By Danielle Jackson

by Jeremy Liebman

TWELVE YEARS SINCE HER LAST FORAY INTO FICTION, CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE RETURNS WITH A NEW NOVEL—AND A FRESH TAKE ON THE ROLE OF FREE SPEECH AND FEMINISM IN A MODERN SOCIETY.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie doesn’t like to travel. “I travel through books,” she tells me, “but travel [itself] is not my favorite thing to do.” Nevertheless, the Baltimore-based Nigerian novelist dials into our interview from San Francisco, the latest stop on a book tour that has her ping-ponging from the U.K. to the Pacific Northwest to Northern Europe.

I’d spent much of the preceding weeks making myself a student of Adichie’s repertoire— parsing her literary interests and political views, listening to her speeches, and charting her relationship to a fame that has blossomed over the two decades since the release of her breakout novel, 2006’s Half of a Yellow Sun. I had read that despite the intimacy of her prose, the writer herself is famously private— indeed, at the start of our phone call, her demeanor is clipped, even wary. Her newest novel, she says, “has been a long time in the making.”

Adichie has embodied the dream of American multiculturalism just as readily as she has

punctured it. At 47, her reputation has fluctuated from novelist to public intellectual to, in recent years, something of a combative recluse. “If the world were divided into people who need to go out and people who don’t need to go out, I am firmly in the latter group,” she said in 2015. Her literary debut, 2003’s Purple Hibiscus, was followed by the war epic Half of a Yellow Sun; three years later, her TED Talk “The danger of a single story” went viral on a still-nascent YouTube. She published two tracts on the fortunes of women, including We Should All Be Feminists, which has been translated into 32 languages. Through her seismographic differentiation of African cultures by ethnic group and employment status, skeptical surveys of Black Americans, and skewering of academic circles in the American Ivy League, Adichie emerged as one of a handful of African writers bolstered by the romance of “global voices” during the dawn and sunset of the Obama administration. None of her works encapsulate these overarching concerns as efficiently as her 2013 blockbuster novel, Americanah, which

chronicles the joys and frustrations of Nigerian émigrés—practically required reading for American youth during that balmy period of cultural polyphony.

This spring’s Dream Count, her return to the novelistic form after 12 years away, taps into many similar themes, detailing the romantic histories of four women whose lives are interconnected across time and continents: a pair of cousins, a lifelong friend, and a foreign housekeeper. Oscillating between the firstand third-person, Adichie draws inspiration from recent international events, dispatching from across the African diaspora: a Guinean community reacting to the NYPD’s killing of 23-year-old immigrant student Amadou Diallo, rising Covid anxiety in Abuja, the effects of pornography on young Igbo men, and the assault of hotel housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo by IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. As in many of Adichie’s novels, the women in Dream Count seem isolated—seated among friends at dinner parties and on world-class vacations, they find themselves ill at ease, apart.

Photography

Styling by Dione Davis

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wears a full look by Issey Miyake, shoes by Jimmy Choo, and earings and bracelet by Tabayer at Salon 94 in New York.

“MY WORLDVIEW IS VERY MUCH ONE OF FAITH—EVEN OPTIMISM—IN THE ABILITY OF PEOPLE TO FIND THEIR TRIBE, COMMUNITY.”

“I had felt like a spectator, sated and satisfied, but a spectator still,” says Chiamaka, one of the protagonists in Dream Count. Yet, when I ask about the alienation her female characters face, Adichie is taken aback. “My worldview is very much one of faith—even optimism— in the ability of people to find their tribe,

community,” she asserts. “Deep-seated alienation is something I’m not particularly interested in.” When I ask what she hopes readers will take away from the book, a story full of public humiliations and private disappointments, she responds crisply: “Love.” We share a long pause. “I’m interested in the idea of how much we know other people and how much we know ourselves,” Adichie adds. “It seems to me that to love somebody is to attempt to know them. I am not sure we can ever fully know someone, but the longing is still there.” It was a fitting comment from someone who, before achieving international fame, was thoroughly dissected as a public figure in her native Nigeria. Her words, I find, tend to obscure as much as they reveal.

Adichie owes her meteoric rise in part to her ability to marry the language of liberal feminism with an ethos of universal human rights to achieve a dazzling, globally conscious centrist position. On the role of women at work and home, or taking a husband’s name,

one hears the echoes of feminism’s long-forgotten second wave; on the importance of “choice”—of hairstyles, dress, or sex positivity—one hears the familiar mantras of the early 2000s (“Why can’t a smart woman love fashion?” she asked in an essay for Elle).

“IT SEEMS TO ME THAT TO LOVE SOMEBODY IS TO ATTEMPT TO KNOW THEM. I AM NOT SURE WE CAN EVER FULLY KNOW SOMEONE, BUT THE LONGING IS STILL THERE.”

In 2017, Adichie’s universal feminist bona fides turned sour. During a five-minute promo on Channel 4, an interviewer asked the author about her attitudes around transness. “When people [ask,] ‘Are trans women, women?’ my feeling is that trans women are trans women,” Adichie replied firmly. The aftermath of this statement was protracted and brutal, with the author’s favored platitudes around women’s rights to self-determination ringing hollow. Suddenly, she was at the center of a highly publicized online firestorm, with younger writers—both in Nigeria and the West— taking to Twitter to accuse her of transphobia. She, in turn, accused them of opportunism.

While the row revealed the author’s heterodox politics, it was also, in many ways, an age-old trap: Adichie was certainly not the first highprofile West African artist urged to weigh in on a context-specific hot-button issue in place of a qualified expert from the same region. Her pluralist perspective can also shroud the unique cultural context in which Adichie— an Igbo woman from an academic family in Nigeria—is situated and which has shaped her ideas. She has repeatedly delineated for her international audiences the ways that gender and patriarchy have shaped her own life, sometimes to convoluted effect. “I don’t feel that I’m the authority on feminism,” she added in a far less-quoted exchange that followed her fateful comment in the same Channel 4 interview.

After the flap, Adichie emerged an outspoken defender of free speech. “There’s been this incredible suppression,” she tells me. “I feel we’ve lost a lot as a society. People have not told the stories they want to tell in the way they want to tell them because they’re terrified of backlash.” This sentiment is borne out in Adichie’s novels, which have long taken aim at the frivolity of Western speech: its overconfidence, sanctimony, surfeit of politeness, and fuzzy ideas. While Adichie’s readers have long adored her

Chimamanda wears a full look by Marc Jacobs.

withering, pithy effacements on the page, their real-world counterparts (plus Adichie’s knack for tossing off razor-sharp one-liners) have granted her a deep staying power online and in culture writ large. In another viral exchange with French journalist Caroline Broué in 2018, Adichie was asked, “Do people read your books in Nigeria? Are there bookshops in Nigeria?” Broué had intended irony—aping international audiences’ ignorance of the breadth of Adichie’s fan base, her family’s academic credentials, or even the fact that the climax of Adichie’s bestselling novel takes place in a Lagos bookstore—but her meaning was missed. “I think in general,” Adichie replied coolly, “that France doesn’t seem to realize that it is no longer an 18th-century war power.” Adichie later acknowledged the miscommunication.

“I FEEL WE’VE LOST A LOT AS A SOCIETY. PEOPLE HAVE NOT TOLD THE STORIES THEY WANT TO TELL IN THE WAY THEY WANT TO TELL THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE TERRIFIED OF BACKLASH.”

But live by the sword, die by the sword. It was “Flawless,” the Beyoncé song that samples Adichie’s 2012 TEDx talk—not the writer’s finegrained prose—that catapulted her into the dubious echelons of Famous Feminists (a status that has made her cringe), and a frenzy of tweets and blog posts—not her manifestos on gender politics or patriarchy—that brought her reputational damage. The social media age, with all its vitriol, brevity, and inexpertise, makes the idea of the novelist as public intellectual feel borderline irresponsible.

“FICTION IS OUR LAST FRONTIER

FOR HONESTY.”

Adichie doesn’t concern herself with these vagaries. Instead, she holds fast to her faith in literature’s capacity to air out society’s festering conflicts. “I feel that fiction is our last frontier for honesty,” she reasons. “We come to literature to find something that we can’t find in journalism or in politics. There’s depth there.”

CULT100

QUESTIONNAIRE

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Thinking about all of the disasters that could happen in the world.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My determination.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? A wonderful collection of poems called Faster Than Light by Marilyn Nelson.

When I was working on my novel, I went through what people like to call writer’s block, but I’m too superstitious to use that expression. So, I just went through a patch, and I started reading her poetry, and it brought my words back. It made it possible for me to get back into my creative zone.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

People think that, because I have the liberal feminist title attached to me, I must be sort of doctrinaire and fun-less. I’m actually very curious about every opinion. I’m open to hearing what people think, even if they disagree with me.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

My determination.

Hair by Cody Ainey Makeup by Ernest Robinson Production by Dionne Cochrane

Tailoring by Chloë Boxer

Styling Assistance by Keanu Mohammad and Dylan Keoni

Production Assistance by Brittany Thompson and Kaylah Dawkins Location: Salon 94

Chimamanda wears a dress from By Malene Birger and jewelry by Tiffany & Co.

Sarah Jessica Parker wears a jacket by Balenciaga and earrings by Cartier.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S ROLE OF A LIFETIME

SINCE 1998, THE ACTOR HAS BEEN BEEN SYNONYMOUS WITH THE CHARACTER THAT MADE HER NAME. BUT ANOTHER PART HAS BEEN WAITING IN THE WINGS: SJP HERSELF.

PHOTOGRAPHY

BY

NORMAN JEAN ROY

BY

EMILIA PETRARCA

STYLING

BY

KATE YOUNG

In February, Sarah Jessica Parker emerged from an early dinner with Andy Cohen and Amy Sedaris—the motley trio calls themselves the “Nitwitz”—at her longtime favorite Italian restaurant, Gene’s, only to find herself sockless in a blizzard. “When we walked there, the weather was one thing. When we left, we found ourselves in the midst of [what felt like] a fake snowstorm—it was so unbelievable and perfect,” she tells me over Zoom a few weeks later. The scene was like something out of a movie (specifically Sex and

the City, the movie), and Parker did what any good actor would do: She pulled out her phone and started filming.

“Everybody was excited,” she continues. “You could feel it. So we kept walking west, and we saw all the snow plows [moving down Seventh Avenue]. It felt very planned, you know, like our city at work—our municipal workers out there doing their jobs.”

To most New Yorkers, the sight of

snow plows wouldn’t be much to write home about. But for Parker, who was perhaps a little tipsy post-dinner, it was thrilling. She took it all in with a sense of childlike wonder. “Look at that proud plow,” she cooed in one of the two videos she later posted to her personal Instagram account, which has close to 10 million followers. A small fleet of them rattled down the street, their blades scraping against the gravel and producing an awful sound. “It’s a parade of plows!” Over 100,000 people liked the video.

Although we may know Parker best as Carrie, the buoyant, curly-haired sex columnist “joyfully tripping through Manhattan,” as she once described the famously clumsy SATC protagonist, I’d argue that one of the actor’s best performances has been playing Sarah Jessica Parker herself. In moments of darkness or uncertainty, I turn to SJP, not Carrie, for relief. She is remarkably consistent, relatably unrelatable, and, above all, deeply camp—a theater kid dying for you to give her an A+. Her Instagram account, which she runs herself, is the purest distillation of this spirit. (Trust me, you’ll want to watch the videos of her live-reacting to a solar eclipse in 2017.)

When we speak, Parker, who turned 60 in March, is instantly in character: “I feel [like] I should be thanking you,” she says, apologizing for being just two minutes late and for scheduling the call on a Saturday. (I would have done it on Christmas.) She’s just returned to the city via the Hampton Jitney, and her signature blonde mane is slicked back into a bun. She wears aviator reading glasses and a sage green, V-neck cashmere sweater tucked curiously into her bra. (I thought this was an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction until I noticed that her dangly necklace was tucked underneath her bra strap, hanging sideways over her armpit—a “classic” SJP self-styling move, a friend and longtime fan later explained.)

Although Parker may look and sound like Carrie, Carrie she is not. She is as diplomatic as a British royal and known for never cursing. She would ask you a million questions before revealing anything about her personal life, let alone her sex life, and rather than wonder

aloud about whatever’s on her mind that day, she speaks slowly, weighing her words with care.

One thing Parker and Bradshaw do have in common, however, is their undying love for New York. SJP has played the role of unofficial ambassador for the city willingly and without fail since at least 1979, when she was cast as “Annie” on Broadway at the age of 13. While playing the part, she was recruited to sing “Tomorrow” on the steps of the New York Public Library as part of an anti-littering campaign—an early foreshadowing of her calling to cheer up New York when it’s down.

A few days before our interview, the city experienced a handful of unseasonably warm early spring days that released a sudden burst of optimism into the air. Parker took it in with as much glee as the snowstorm. “Something happens to New Yorkers on the first day it cracks 50 degrees,” she tells me. “For one thing, so many straight guys in shorts.” Life here for Parker is not all rainbows and snowflakes, though. “Simultaneous with these eruptions of dazzle, there’s so much to be worried about,” she muses. She’s concerned about government funding for libraries, public schools, and the arts, among other things, and speaks passionately on the subject. “I don’t have enormous faith in what’s happening at City Hall. That’s a problem for me. Who is the parent of New York right now?”

As much as I agree, I feel the need to guide our conversation back to the proud plows. Please, more proud plows! For years, Parker’s unfiltered Instagram has provided me with a steady stream of bite-size, innocent reminders of why I’m so lucky to live where I do (in addition to LOLs). Recently, it also provided her with a new job. On New Year’s Eve in 2022, Parker was scrolling through her feed when she came across a post from the official account of the Booker Prize, the prestigious English literary award, in which three judges discuss the daunting task of reading 170 novels in seven months. “Oh let me try!!!!” she commented with characteristic ebullience. The prize’s chief executive reached out. This year, Parker is among a group of judges that includes literary critic Chris Power and novelist Kiley Reid.

ALTHOUGH PARKER MAY LOOK AND SOUND LIKE CARRIE, CARRIE SHE IS NOT.

She’s also running SJP Lit, her imprint with the independent publisher Zando. “I’m literally always reading,” she lets out with a touch of exasperation. “I’m always, always, always reading.”

Carrie, it turns out, also has literary designs. In the third season of And Just Like That…, which filmed in

New York last summer and premieres this May, the show’s star can’t help but dabble in fiction—and worked closely with production to select the books that appeared onscreen. “She’s in this beautiful home that she’s very lucky to have, and it feels a little bit like she’s at sixes and sevens again, but she’s so much older and it feels less out of control, even though she can’t control how she finds herself there,” Parker says cryptically of her character’s next chapter.

In any case, I think it’s safe to say viewers don’t watch AJLT for the plot. (“God, what even happened,” replied a screenwriter friend when I asked him for last season’s

Hair by Chris McMillan

Makeup by Elaine Offers for Exclusive Artists and Tom Ford Beauty Nails by Gina Eppolito-Cohen Production by Dionne Cochrane Photography Assistance and Set Coordination by Jojo Roy

SparkNotes; all he could recall is that Carrie moved to Gramercy and that Aidan, who announced he would not be coming with her, wore a “jacket that [he] kinda liked.”)

Instead, we watch—and have always watched, and will continue to watch—to keep hanging out with Parker, who describes the upcoming season as being “as happy and tasty as a soufflé can be.” In a way, she herself is a sort of human dessert; it’s hard not to enjoy her very carefully measured sweetness, which keeps us coming back again and again.

Never change, SJP. Never get too slick, too jaded—too, well, Carrie.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What keeps you up at night? I HAVE CHILDREN, THEREFORE IT’S JUST ASSUMED THAT I AM UP NO MATTER WHAT—WHETHER THINGS ARE PERFECTLY FINE OR THERE’S POTENTIAL FOR WORRY. BUT ALSO LATELY, WORLD EVENTS ARE REALLY WORRISOME.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment of your life?

A few days before the “proud plow” post, on the first of the month, Parker posted the caption “Rabbit rabbit” for good luck. It’s a superstition she’s had for decades, which later morphed into an Instagram tradition. “I’m always a little afraid to look at comments because you never know what you might come across,” she says of her Internet habits, “but what’s so nice about posting on the first of the month is that it’s a little bit of positivity, and everybody wants a spoonful of it.”

Parker takes a pause. “I don’t want to give anyone any artificial ‘positivity,’” she clarifies. “It’s just a hopeful little wish.”

ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO, I WENT TO AMSTERDAM BECAUSE THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF VERMEERS WAS GATHERED TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THE RIJKSMUSEUM. MY HUSBAND AND I WENT FOR THREE DAYS TO SEE THOSE PAINTINGS. THEY WILL NEVER TRAVEL AGAIN—IT WAS ONE OF THOSE ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME EXPERIENCES. ON THE LAST DAY WE WERE THERE, WE ALSO GOT TO SEE VAN GOGH’S LAST 72 PIECES, WHICH WERE BEING SHOWN FOR THE LAST TIME. WE BOTH KNEW WHEN WE WERE LEAVING THAT WE’D NEVER FORGET IT.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality of yours, what would it be? CURIOSITY AND HARD WORK.

Sarah Jessica wears a cardigan and skirt by Carolina Herrera, shoes by Christian Louboutin, and earrings and a ring by Cartier.

V.CHASE STRANGIO COLE ESCOLA

by Jeremy Liebman

by Heathermary Jackson

The lawyer and CULTURED cover star goes head-to-head with the comedian for a conversation about the unlikely crossovers between their two disparate fields.

Photography

Styling

Chase Strangio wears a jacket, top, and pants by Gucci.

It’s a rarefied group that can count Supreme Court machers as recurring dream protagonists. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio is one of them. “When the justices start appearing in my dreams, it’s not good,” he remarks.

Since graduating from law school in 2010, Strangio has made himself an unavoidable bellwether of the American legal landscape— from defending trans people in New York prisons and jails while working at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, founded by the country’s first openly trans law professor, to serving as lead counsel for Chelsea Manning in her lawsuit against the Department of Defense. In 2015, he joined the teams fighting for same-sex couples’ fundamental right to marry, and in 2020, he ensured federal employment protections for trans individuals. Last December, when Strangio argued before the Supreme Court for a still-pending case on the banning of gender-affirming medical care for youth, he became the first (known) trans person to do so.

Lawyers—even those working on far less trailblazing cases—are known to swear by a personal rotation of rituals to bolster their mojo, from statue-rubbing to banana-binging. Over the last year, one particularly idiosyncratic talisman found its way into Strangio’s legal binder: a playbill from Oh, Mary! The Broadway smash hit sees Mary Todd Lincoln contemplate leaving her First Lady life behind to become a cabaret performer and has teed up its mastermind and mascot, Cole Escola, as a household name. Oh, Mary! is the kind of show you hear about even if you don’t follow theater—even if you aren’t actively seeking out what Strangio describes as “true queer excellence.”

The satirical biopic’s home run against an increasingly hostile political backdrop has turned it into a flagpole of sorts for dissenters. Just this past March, the president vowed to stop drag performances and the honoring of any “radical left lunatics” at DC’s Kennedy Center, where he installed himself as chairman—a pit stop on a larger campaign against the public expression of queer culture.

But the show must go on. Earlier this month, Escola returned to the Lyceum Theatre stage with the rest of the original Broadway cast for an encore ahead of the Tony nominations. Meanwhile, Strangio continues to await the Supreme Court’s decision on United States v. Skrmetti . In the midst of it all, CULTURED sat the two down for a conversation about what unites their seemingly dissimilar cultural output: willpower, a sense of panache, and, of course, a very special playbill.

Chase Strangio: This is very exciting for me.

Cole Escola: Is it? I’m nervous.

Strangio: I said, “If I could talk to anyone in the world, it would be Cole.”

Escola: You’re just so used to thinking intelligently that you wanted a chance to turn your brain off and slum it.

Strangio: For me, it was more that—and I’ve said this to you—over the last two years, feeling creatively inspired is the thing that has kept me going. You’re the person that creatively inspires me the most.

Escola: Thanks. I became aware of you through Instagram—watching you be an advocate, but also having to be a spokesperson for the whole community. Do you feel the pressure of that?

Strangio: Sometimes. This past year, I felt more pressure than I ever have because of this narrative of, “Oh, you’re going to be the first to do something.” It became so loaded. Usually I try to channel that feeling into how grateful I am that I get to be trans in these spaces and the disruptive force it can have. I also get to remind people that we’re in all sorts of places.

“I’ve brought my, Oh Mary! playbill into court since I saw the play, including at the Supreme Court. I had it in my binder as a reminder that I’m also doing a performance and that I’m channeling people who inspire me.”

—Chase Strangio

Escola: When I’m really upset or angry, all articulation goes out the window. I resort to name-calling and exaggerations and saying things I don’t even mean. Is it just in your nature to channel your feelings into intelligent expression? When you’re arguing before the Supreme Court, do you worry about getting too emotional?

Strangio: That’s a good question. It’s in my nature to use words and arguments as a defense mechanism. When I’m really upset, I’m like, I’m gonna have to win my argument about why I’m right. I have that tendency, but I’ve learned how to compartmentalize because the work I do can be so infuriating and such an assault on everything I believe as a human, a trans human, and a person who cares about others. I’ve become better at staying focused and analytical, which is hard because you’re sort of like, “Let me analyze for you why it’s wrong to make it a crime to be trans.” That can be difficult. I think a lot about this video of a kid carrying this cup of coffee over to his mom. He’s shaking, but he’s doing really good. Then, he spills a little bit. He looks at it and just throws the whole cup. I was worried in the Supreme Court that if I made a little mistake, I would just throw the whole cup. I would have a breakdown. That was the fear: that I would lose all sensibility. And I didn’t.

Escola: I’m in awe of your ability to keep your cool while being like, “Oh, that’s interesting that you think I’m not human. Here’s why I am.” Being a professional arguer, does that make you a nightmare partner?

“I was worried in the Supreme Court that if I made a little mistake I would have a breakdown. That was the fear: that I would lose all sensibility. And

I didn’t.”

—Chase Strangio

Strangio: [Laughs] Well, I’d like to think no. I’m a Scorpio, double Aries. I realize those are nightmare signs for relationships in many ways, but I try to really bring the fire to my advocacy and be much softer in my relationships. Sometimes, my 12-year-old kid is like, “Dad, you’re using your work voice again,” which I think is when I’m being stern and argumentative, laying out my case. I try not to bring my lawyer voice into my intimate relationships.

I want to come back to how I first became aware of you. I saw Difficult People and was truly taken by your comic and performative genius. Then, when Oh, Mary! was still off-Broadway, I didn’t get tickets and put a sad post on Instagram— and you reached out to me with tickets! I’ve brought my Oh, Mary! playbill into court since I saw the play, including at the Supreme Court. I had it in my binder as a reminder that I’m also doing a performance and that I’m channeling people who inspire me when I enter those spaces that are meant to be so serious, but are in fact so absurd.

Escola: This isn’t “make Cole cry hour.” I’m supposed to be asking you questions, but that really means a lot to me. I’m gonna leave it at that. Do you think about the long-term effects of your work, like on jurisprudence? Could you tell that was the first time I’ve ever said jurisprudence?

Strangio: No, it came out very naturally.

Escola: Yeah, I’m preparing for my next show, Oh, Ruth!

Strangio: I’ve been at the ACLU for more than 12 years, and I’ve worked on so many pivotal cases. Obergefell [v. Hodges], which was the marriage equality case, and then a bunch of trans cases including Bostock [v. Clayton County], which was about the federal employment protections covering LGBTQ+ people—our client was fired for being trans. Now, it’s [United States v.] Skrmetti and the question of whether or not we have constitutional protections as trans people. As someone who, I will admit, is very controlling in my work and wants to have a say in how things are constructed when we’re arguing in court about trans people, I feel really grateful that I get to have a role in shaping the arguments that have gone to the federal courts and the Supreme Court over the last 12 years. I am also aware that the law has such significant limitations and is not going to be our path to liberation. We’re entering a period where so many of the minimal protections that we’ve gained as trans people are on the chopping block in every single way. It feels more critical than

Chase wears a jacket, vest, shirt, and pants by Loro Piana, and shoes by Church’s. Tie is stylist’s own.

Styling Assistance by Brittney Aceves

ever to engage with our other tools and ways of being human. This, for me, comes back to what it means to be a creative person in the world: to imagine a better set of possibilities.

“Do you think about the long-term effects of your work, like on jurisprudence? Could you tell that was the first time I’ve ever said jurisprudence?” —Cole Escola

Escola: This work is so personal to you—not just because of who you are, but who your loved ones are and your community—but you seem healthy and happy. Do you have structure?

Strangio: I think this is the first time someone’s ever said I look healthy and happy, so I hope that makes it into print. I never finish at 6, and I work every weekend, for the most part. My life is consumed by work, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t find some energetic joy in it. I’m really motivated by it. I like being around my colleagues; I like being around trans people. Then, I just make sure I do things that fill me up in the times that I am not working. That’s why I appear, in this moment, happy and healthy. How are you feeling in this moment? Like, the world isn’t great, but you’ve had a very exciting year. How does it feel to celebrate and also watch the world in crisis?

Escola: I feel like a zombie, a little bit. I’m very confused.

Strangio: Is there something that you feel particularly excited about that’s coming up?

Escola: Well, I’m going back into Oh, Mary!

Strangio: I know that’s what I’m excited about. Most people I’ve asked to tell me in the past few years about a work that was powerful and meaningful and they loved, it was Oh, Mary! That changes people in a time of pain and despair.

Escola: Well, sometimes in art and culture, we give ourselves too much credit. But I’ll let you give me some credit.

Strangio: I’ll give you credit. A lot of lawyers are given too much credit too.

Escola: We’re just a couple of assholes patting ourselves on the back.

Strangio: Exactly.

Escola: I’m just in awe of what you do and I feel like such an idiot talking to you, but I appreciate you letting me talk to you.

Strangio: Well, I feel very lucky. I hope that my work will make an impact on people’s lives and your life, as you have on mine. We’re just gonna keep fighting. Maybe it will make us feel less zombie-like at times. What I tell myself every day is that the confusing, unsettling nature of transness for other people is the thing that will spark the revolution we need. It’s the uncertainty, the in-betweenness, the traversing of binaries that we offer that’s gonna destabilize the whole thing. That’s what they’re scared of, and they’re right to be scared if they want that type of certainty. I think together, we’re gonna do that.

“Being a professional arguer, does that make you a nightmare partner?” —Cole Escola

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What keeps you up at night? The fact that we live in a country where people channel their fear and insecurity into being cruel to others keeps me up at night. I simply do not understand the impulse to wield power over and harm others.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment in your life? The Wicked movie got me through preparing for my first Supreme Court argument last December. I would manage the anxiety and stress by singing “Defying Gravity” and trying to channel Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba.

What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work? Doing legal work means building and engaging in a system that causes harm, and so the question I always struggle with is how I can minimize those harms and create more space for people to build expansive and liberatory projects.

What’s something people get wrong about you? People think I am more serious than I am. I like goofiness, being playful, and watching bad reality TV.

When you were little, what were you known for? When I was little, I was known for being intense. Proud Scorpio even as a little kid.

What do you want next for yourself above all else? I would like an indulgent vacation that includes lots of rest and delicious food.

WALTON GOGGINS’S

by

SINNA NASSERI

Over the past five years, the 53-year-old actor has risen through the ranks to become one of Hollywood’s most ebullient and irresistibly watchable figures. The secret to his success? A fear of letting us down.

SECOND COMING

Photography

Styling by REBECCA RAMSEY

Walton Goggins wears a full look by Valentino on the Santa Monica Pier. Special thanks to Hotel Casa del Mar.

As with Christ, there is a before and after Walton Goggins. One day, everyone woke up with his name on their lips—and they felt a type of way about it.

The Alabama-born, Georgia-raised actor has been around for over three decades, with memorable turns in blockbusters like Django Unchained and Lincoln , but it’s his glitzy swagger as the spray-tanned, silver-streaked televangelist Baby Billy in The Righteous Gemstones that made him a bona fide star. Ratings and viewership of the Danny McBride sleeper hit have been rising steadily since its 2019 premiere, with Billy warbling and conning his way through every season. Last year, Goggins’s eerily erotic performance as a festering ghoul in the first season of apocalypse drama Fallout turned him into a sort of unsettling heartthrob. “It was a surprise,” Goggins told Rotten Tomatoes at the time, of his newfound sex appeal. “He doesn’t have a nose?”

So by the time the actor surfaced in Thailand on the latest season of The White Lotus—as a begrudging sugar daddy with daddy issues, tanned and ripped with scotch and a cigarette perpetually in hand—the word was out. One need only look to the headlines: “His Hair Is Greasy. His Eyes Are Bulging. I Think I’m in Love,” or “Thank You God for All This Goggins.”

Despite all his years in the business, Goggins isn’t that surprised by the sudden frenzy. He greets the attention with a disarming joie de vivre—pausing during his CULTURED cover shoot to take outrageous selfies with adoring fans on the Santa Monica Pier and interjecting repeated thanks to longtime collaborator Jonathan Nolan during their conversation for the issue.

“I’m just an extremely enthusiastic person,” he tells Nolan, who helped direct and executive produce Fallout (the pair are currently filming its second season), a few days after the shoot. The Westworld creator and frequent Christopher Nolan co-conspirator (yes, that’s his brother) is well-versed in bringing our darkest desires to the screen—a task both men seem to relish. Here, Nolan helps our cover star unpack a wild year.

Walton Goggins: Thank you so much for being here, my friend. This is like a therapy session.

Jonathan Nolan: How are you, Walt? You’re having a year. Not my words, I’m just reading off this sheet they gave me, but seriously— you’re having a fucking moment. I can’t get rid of you. I see you at work, I go home, turn on the TV, and there you are again.

Goggins: It’s interesting to hear that term— “you’re having a moment.” What does that really mean? I feel like I’ve had so many moments in my life.

Nolan: One could even say your life has been a sequence of moments.

Goggins: Right? I guess it means you’re suddenly in more places than before. It feels like things have been expanding over the course of my career. But now, I’m at a point where people can tune in to what I’m doing on more than one channel—that’s pretty cool. You’re partly to blame, buddy. CULTURED asked me this question on set the other day—“What do you think the secret to your success is?” It was interesting to sit with that and try to answer honestly—I said, “If I’m being real, it’s fear.” Truly. A heavy dose of anxiety.

Nolan: Fear of what?

Goggins: Of letting people down, being unprepared, dishonoring the people who made it possible for me to play pretend in front of a camera. So, I try to work harder than anyone in the room. For me, that means spending time in my imagination, reading the script over and over, trying to make it as real as possible.

There’s joy in it, for sure—I love what I do. But it’s driven not only by wanting to do a good job —that’s boring—but by being on the level with everyone I’m working with.

Nolan: I’m fascinated by how people’s techniques and approaches change throughout their careers. For me, writing is an endless mystery. Directing, on the other hand, you learn. Sometimes you screw something up and have to put it back together.

Goggins: Can I insert one thing? People love to put us into categories: Are you a writer? A director? A showrunner? What box are you in? I genuinely believe that, even if you evolve, you never stop being the first thing you were. I’m an Angeleno from Lithia Springs, Georgia, who now lives in the Hudson Valley. I’ve brought all my life experiences with me to this point. If you’re a writer-director who then becomes a producer, you’re bringing your writing and directing experience into that role too. So I guess the question is: How has being many things helped you throughout your career?

Nolan: For me, writing is the foundation. I encourage anyone I work with—even if they don’t see writing as a major part of their career—to try it, just to understand it.

Goggins: I’ve tried it. I’m horrible at it.

Nolan: It’s not for everyone. I’m not even sure it’s for me. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and still sit in front of the computer thinking, Ugh Writing is tough. But you can’t get any closer to the essence of a project than the writing.

At the same time, writing is the thing that gets pulled apart. Literally—a bunch of people take the script and pull it to pieces. So as a writer, your only control is excellence. The only way to ensure something stays in the film is to make it undeniable. If it’s borderline, it’s vulnerable. Writing a script is like writing a recipe you never get to cook—with ingredients you never get to hold, smell, or taste. It’s a weird job.

I had one of the best working relationships you

could have starting out—I was related to my first director [Christopher Nolan]. I had a couple of inches on Chris, so I could intimidate him into giving me what I wanted on set. But the truth is, the films directed me. Producing and directing completed the arc for me—finally putting the pieces together and synthesizing the work.

In some ways, actors have the most and the least control on set, right? I worked with one actor who said, “If I don’t like what you’re doing with the camera, I’m going to spit in the middle of the take.” Literally spit on the ground. He told me that up front, and halfway through the shoot —boom—he did it. It was about control.

Goggins: I agree with that. But I also believe part of the process is being out of control —and leaning into that vulnerability. One thing I feel I have control over is creating space for vulnerability. That comes from the director, for sure—but I can help protect that too. I’ve definitely helped other actors in that way, because I’ve watched other actors do it. I want to make it clear: Whatever you want to try, no judgment, I’ve got you.

I’ve [produced] three or four movies in my life —you haven’t seen them, most people haven’t —but I’m proud of them. And through those experiences, being behind the camera with my partner, who directed them, I learned what it is to boom, to do wardrobe, to grip, to run craft services. I pride myself on that.

Nolan: Do you have a philosophy for your approach to acting? I love to come over and connect on set, but there are definitely times when I think, “Nope, he’s fully in it.” Especially on [the set of Fallout], when you’re under 20 pounds of prosthetics. Is that distance something you carry into every role? Does it follow you home?

Goggins: If I had to call it something, it would be “reverence.” It’s not like I’m doing anything new—plenty of people I admire do it. It’s not method, it’s not “a way.” I believe storytelling is a kind of religion. It’s its own god. I wouldn’t wear sweats to church; I’d show up looking ready to be saved. In any spiritual practice, the posture is: “Whatever you have for me, I’m prepared to accept it.” I feel the same way about working in film.

I’ll say this. Someone I worked with on The White Lotus didn’t fully understand my process. My character—Rick Hatchett—he’s isolated. So during filming, I was isolated. I liked mirroring that, but it was emotionally difficult. Then, a few months into The White Lotus, Fallout premiered and started to take off. One day, this actor I was working with—nice guy, good actor—came up to me and said, “You’re brilliant in Fallout Please tell me you had a good time making that.”

I just stared at him. Because he didn’t get it. I don’t care how good you are—if you don’t understand that there’s a world beyond the script, if you don’t give yourself over to it, then you’re missing something profound in this

“Comedy, drama—I take it all seriously. How many of these chances will I have? I want to squeeze as much life experience as I possibly can out of each one.” —Walton Goggins

Walton wears a full look by Celine. All jewelry is actor’s own.

“I don’t care how good you are—if you don’t understand that there’s a world beyond the script, if you don’t give yourself over to it, then you’re missing something profound in this work. This is the drug.” —Walton Goggins

work. This is the drug. I said, “No. I play a guy who’s lived for 200 years and seen the worst of humanity. Every day was fucking horrible.” He just stared back at me like, “Okay, wow.”

So, I lean into that. The people I look up to lean into that. And this guy—again, great actor— just couldn’t understand. “Why would someone do that?” I thought, Why wouldn’t you? I bring that level of seriousness to everything I do. Comedy, drama—I take it all seriously. How many of these chances will I have? I want to squeeze as much life experience as I possibly can out of each one.

Nolan: People often talk about the “character actor”—a term I’ve never fully understood. I mean, there are great actors and there are boring actors. That’s really it. I don’t know how you separate into categories like character versus lead. It just doesn’t make sense.

Goggins: I’m so glad we’re entering this territory. I don’t believe in “character actors.” I hate that fucking term. “You’re a great character actor”—I don’t know if that’s a compliment or a criticism.

Was Gene Hackman a character actor? Ed Harris? Julianne Moore? Frances McDormand? All of these people have been leading men and women for decades. Maybe it’s just the difference between who’s throwing the party and who’s a guest.

Nolan: It does feel patronizing. I think I under-

stood the term more before I worked in the business. You’re right—Gene Hackman was just a great actor. Was Al Pacino a character actor or a leading man?

Goggins: Some actors are just infinitely watchable. Marlon Brando, Michael Fassbender —I could watch them read the fucking phone book. I think the term is useless. It may work at an awards show, but it doesn’t speak to an actual career.

Nolan: You’ve had the good fortune of returning to certain TV roles in your career. Uncle Baby Billy [has come back] into our lives, which I’m grateful for. Are there any [other] roles you’re excited to return to?

Goggins: I didn’t know serialized television would become what it has—or that I’d be part of the early wave with The Shield. Not my words, but a lot of people say The Sopranos and The Shield helped usher in this golden age of TV.

With Fallout, I can’t wait to get back to work. It’s a lot with the prosthetics, but I think about it even when I’m working on other things. There are movies I’ve done with characters I’ll never get to be again. And I think, Fuck, I want to be that person again .

Nolan: We’ve discussed how silly it is to categorize actors. I do think there’s a more useful distinction between comedy and drama. At least on my side of the business, there’s still a tribal divide—you’ve got the comedy folks over here,

the dramatic folks over there. I remember trying to figure out whose career to emulate when I was starting out as a screenwriter. I was captivated by Ernest Lehman—he wrote both North by Northwest and The Sound of Music. And I thought, Fuck, if I could have a career like that… In some ways, I have that balance—most of what I did for my brother was to try and lighten things up a bit.

But you, my friend, have a passport to both nations. It’s hard for me not to think of people like you—who are masterful across that entire spectrum—as just better in a way.

Goggins: Well, I think this interview ends with that statement from Jonathan Nolan on Walton Goggins.

Nolan: I love it. I’ll see you on Monday.

“I believe storytelling is a kind of religion. It’s its own god. I wouldn’t wear sweats to church; I’d show up looking ready to be saved.” —Walton Goggins

Left: Walton wears a full look by Celine.

Here: Walton wears a swimsuit by Speedo and boots by Lucchese.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What is your trademark? Playing morally dubious characters that people end up rooting for and sometimes falling in love with. Hopefully.

What keeps you up at night? Providing for my family. It’s a product of growing up in poverty. I know full well that the life of an actor comes with no guarantees. That, coupled with a deep fear that I have made a mistake and might be living beyond my means, is debilitating. I’m constantly having conversations with myself about plan A, plan B, C, D… on a bad night I can get to the end of the alphabet.

What is one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment in your life? The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh got me through a moment when I was experiencing unrelenting grief and was seeking a new path forward. I went to India. This is the book I brought with me.

What is something people get wrong about you? My name. It’s Walton, not Walter.

Name an influence of yours that might surprise people. The poem “If—” by Rudyard Kipling. For so many years I carried around a folded-up copy in my wallet. I would read it for comfort and confirmation. It became an evolving talisman. My next tattoo will be the final line:

“And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

When was the last time you surprised yourself at work? Becoming the Ghoul on Fallout. The idea of being in this makeup every day terrified me but I was able to let go, to surrender to this claustrophobic process and turn it into a prolonged meditation. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to rip it off, but it just takes me 12 hours to get to that point now.

Describe a recent crossroads at which you found yourself. I wake up every morning and stand at the crossroads with two cappuccinos in my hands. I ask myself what kind of artist I want to be, what kind of friend, what kind of father, what kind of husband. My dilemma isn’t about my occupation; it is about what sort of man I can be on any given day.

When you were little, what were you known for? The tagline given to me as a kid was “Walt raised himself.” I used to think that was my superpower, but eventually I realized that no man is an island. I learned that lesson the hard way. There was so much joy waiting for me after I opened myself up to needing other people. Thank you psilocybin.

What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture? Empathy. In dramas and comedies, most of the characters I have played are loners, usually because of circumstances beyond their control. These are judged harshly: seen through the stereotypes they represent

instead of the people they are. Beneath all these misconceptions, I find and play a lonely person yearning for connection.

What do you want to see more of in your industry, or less of? More: Seeing movies in theaters! I miss the communal experience. I think we have spent enough time alone at home. More small films with simple human stories.

Less: I wish every set would introduce a no-smartphone policy, since we are incapable of regulating ourselves. This device has prevented us from the kind of focus and connection film magic is made of.

What question do you ask yourself most often while you are making work? Is this real, and if it isn’t, how do I make it real?

Are people ever starstruck by you? Fuck yes, I’m Walton Goggins.

What do you want next for yourself above all else? A day on any Mediterranean beach with my wife and son, a Contratto spritz in my hand, a novel on the table, and a little pill that will allow me to smoke cigarettes with reckless abandon for the rest of this god-given life.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality, what would that be? Insecurity. That single gnawing sensation compels me to show up for everything in my life as prepared as I can possibly make myself. I take nothing for granted.

Walton wears a full look by Celine.

“I don’t believe in ‘character actors.’ I hate that fucking term … Maybe it’s just the difference between who’s throwing the party and who’s a guest.” —Walton Goggins

Grooming by Ermahn Ospina for Exclusive Artists and Armani Beauty Photography Assistance by Anna Sophia Moltke and Maxim Marshall Styling Assistance by Kat Cook

Walton wears a jacket by Zegna, pants by Y-3, swimsuit by Speedo, and boots by Lucchese.

RAMY YOUSSEF: ‘THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING’

IN THE MIDST OF FILMING HIS LATEST ONSCREEN CAPER, THE ACTOR, DIRECTOR, AND WRITER CALLED UP A FRIEND WITH JUST AS LONG A CREDIT LINE.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMY LIEBMAN

STYLING BY DIONE DAVIS

Ramy Youssef wears a full look by Hermès.

AYO EDEBIRI CAN’T PINPOINT THE EXACT MOMENT SHE MET RAMY YOUSSEF. “I DON’T REMEMBER THE DAYS BEFORE WE KNEW EACH OTHER,” SHE TELLS THE CULT100 COVER STAR. THE PAIR HAVE CROSSED PATHS FREQUENTLY IN WORK AND LIFE SINCE—DROPPING IN ON EACH OTHER’S SETS AND CRASHING ON ONE ANOTHER’S COUCHES.

THESE DAYS, YOUSSEF IS IN UTAH SHOOTING SUCCESSION MASTERMIND JESSE ARMSTRONG’S YET-UNTITLED FILM ABOUT A GROUP OF BILLIONAIRES WEATHERING A FINANCIAL CRISIS. HE’S ALSO FRESH OFF THE RELEASE OF HIS ANIMATED SHOW, #1 HAPPY FAMILY USA, ABOUT A MUSLIM-AMERICAN FAMILY NAVIGATING A POST-9/11 U.S. EDEBIRI, FOR HER PART, IS BACK IN CHICAGO FILMING THE BEAR’S FOURTH SEASON.

HERE, THE PAIR HOPPED ON THE PHONE FOR A LONGOVERDUE CATCH-UP BEFORE THEIR RESPECTIVE CALL TIMES.

when I got here, it was less than a week. The script is thick dialogue. I don’t know if you remember watching Succession —but you kind of don’t understand half of what they’re saying because it’s so business-speaky. Here, there’s a similar sensation. We’re in this finance tech world and all these words are so big.

EDEBIRI: I remember watching movies and TV shows when I was younger and being like, Whoa, TV writing’s so crazy. Then you find yourself in those spaces and you realize that those people really talk like that. It’s like, I thought that this was just Woody Allen, but now I’m at my Jewish friend’s house in Rochester and it’s actually how his family talks.

YOUSSEF: I watched so much Entourage as a teenager. Then I got to LA, and Hollywood’s kind of like Entourage

AYO EDEBIRI: Ramy, did you have a dream last night?

RAMY YOUSSEF: I had a really strange dream. I was with my wife and we could only get around by canoe. I started surfing the canoe, and she was like, “Dude, do you not realize I’m also in this canoe?” I got back in, but then she started surfing the canoe. She was like, “It looked really fun.” Eventually, we got to the mini-mall parking lot where we lived. Then my alarm woke me up so that I could call you.

EDEBIRI: Wow. Are you having stranger dreams in Utah?

YOUSSEF: I think it’s the altitude.

EDEBIRI: Salt Lake City is so bizarre. It’s so flat. You can tell that they blew up a mountain to make a town. I could see a version of my life where I was born and raised there. I would be a missionary.

YOUSSEF: You have the earnestness, you have the drive. You would attract a lot of followers.

EDEBIRI: Are you enjoying being on location?

YOUSSEF: It’s cool because you get to hang with the cast more. Usually, I’m shooting in New York and everyone just goes on with their lives. But in Utah it’s like, “Well, we could go to Whole Foods and then maybe hang?”

EDEBIRI: You’re starting to simulate what it would be like to be a normal human being. I’m always hanging out at the grocery store. It’s like the number-one thing to do when you’re on location. Are you enjoying being just an actor?

YOUSSEF: I’m used to getting there way before call, making lots of decisions, ensuring the set is right. There’s something cushy about just walking in and remembering that all the decisions have been made by someone brilliant. Working with Jesse Armstrong is really cool because this the first thing he’s directed, but he’s so locked-in and confident in what he wants. Between when I got the script and

“I HAVE THIS FEELING OF, LIKE, OH, THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. I’M STILL FIGURING ALL THIS OUT, STILL EXPANDING INTO IT.” —RAMY YOUSSEF

EDEBIRI: The great lesson of life is that sometimes it’s exactly like Entourage and there’s nothing you can do about it.

YOUSSEF: Is it fun jumping into this season of The Bear where you know the character so well?

EDEBIRI: Each season I’ve gotten to do different things. Last season I directed for the first time and this season I’ve written an episode. It’s been a minute since I’ve written for TV, and I’ve learned so much since the last time—even something as simple as knowing what it’s like to shoot an overnight. So, my episode will be taking place during the day.

YOUSSEF: You said you directed one and you wrote one, but you kind of skipped the part where you were in one that I directed in season two—

“WHEN YOU’RE WATCHING STEVE CARELL LOOK LIKE A CURIOUS KID WHO’S EXCITED, YOU GO, FUCK, I WANT THAT.” —RAMY YOUSSEF

which obviously was very affecting for you as a performer.

EDEBIRI: Yeah, that’s probably the experience that has shaped me the most as an actor. There’s one scene where you directed me and I thought, Whoa. Felt different after.

YOUSSEF: A transformative scene.

You’re welcome.

EDEBIRI: Do you think about directing when you’re acting?

YOUSSEF: This is why it’s so cool to work with someone like Jesse and obviously someone like Yorgos [Lanthimos, director of Poor Things]. You walk into their playground—and

Ramy wears a suit by Brunello Cucinelli, shirt by Stoffa, and shoes by Auralee.

Hair by Andrea Grande-Capone Makeup by Stephanie Wise

you signed up for it because you love what they do. So no, I don’t think about it at all. It’s just about understanding different roles and ways of supporting. I try to put myself in a position where I’m down to just move in service of whatever they need. There is something about really digging into the process of making [a project] and having fun doing it. That can be more satisfying than releasing the thing itself.

EDEBIRI: The making is, at least 97 percent of the time, more fun than the release. There’s this quote from

“THE GREAT LESSON OF LIFE IS THAT SOMETIMES IT’S EXACTLY LIKE ENTOURAGE AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.” —AYO EDEBIRI

Sarah Paulson that I’m gonna bastardize, but I think about it a lot. She’s like, there’s three different versions of a project: the version you read when you’re by yourself, the version that you make in the room with everybody else, and the version everybody else gets. The second one is the most important. When you’re an actor that has to be true, because if you’re more concerned with what you read or your vision for the result, you’re doing a disservice to the act of collaboration.

YOUSSEF: You have to be genuinely present for it to translate effectively. Steve Carell’s in this film I’m working on. This guy is a pro, and he’s asking questions and being curious—it’s almost like we’re all doing it for the first time together. [He]’s not like, Oh, I got this. He’s like, I’m gonna give myself the freedom to investigate it and prepare for it without any judgment. Watching Steve Carell look like an excited kid makes me think of that phrase “first time, every time.” You go, Fuck, I want that.

EDEBIRI: I never want to feel settled. I want to be content, but I always want to be searching a little bit. My

parents had jobs that weren’t their passions, so to be in a position where we also get to pursue our passions makes me want to be as excited about it for as long as possible and not get jaded in a business where that happens quickly. You have to protect an innocence for yourself.

YOUSSEF: I have this feeling of, like, Oh, this is just the beginning. I’m still figuring all this out, still expanding into it. There are so many twists and turns that could happen. What you’re describing is the fuel for that, right?

EDEBIRI: I hope so! If we remain curious and excited. I think that’s what separates people who have a sense of humor from those who don’t. I’m not sure where it comes from—being traumatized as a youth or what—but you say, Fuck it, am I gonna laugh my way through this? Find something that connects me to other people? Since you’re already suffering, might as well try.

YOUSSEF: If you ever see me and I don’t seem curious and excited, you’re allowed to beat me up if you want to.

“I WISH I COULD BE LIKE, ‘REMEMBER WHEN I USED TO SLEEP IN YOUR GUEST BEDROOM?’ BUT I STILL DO.” —AYO EDEBIRI

EDEBIRI: That’s nice to have in print. If you ever see me not looking curious and excited, you can just do a soft check-in.

YOUSSEF: I keep getting pictures of your magazine covers next to mine.

EDEBIRI: We’ve come so far. I wish I could be like, “Remember when I used to sleep in your guest bedroom [and now we’re both on magazine racks]?” But I still do. I have some dates to ask you about later, I’m not gonna lie.

CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What keeps you up at night? USUALLY, ITS SOMETHING I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IN A SCRIPT. SOMETIMES I’LL THINK OF A JOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, BUT IT’S ALWAYS BAD.

What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment of your life?

PROBABLY A MIX OF THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X. THEY ACTUALLY HAVE A LOT OF CROSSOVER.

Who do you call the most? MY MOM, WITHOUT A DOUBT. EVEN THOUGH SHE’LL TELL YOU THAT I DON’T CALL, SHE’S MY NUMBER ONE.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality of yours, what would it be? IT WOULD HAVE TO BE MY EGYPTIAN WORK ETHIC. WE JUST WORK. WE DON’T SLEEP.

CHLOE FINEMAN TAKES THE LEAD

Chloe Fineman wears a full look by Hermès at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Peter B. Lewis Theater in New York.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HEATHER STEN STYLING BY YAEL QUINT

WITH A NEW FILM ON THE HORIZON, SHE’S POISED FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF METAMORPHOSIS.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then there is no bigger admirer of the people who shape our culture than Chloe Fineman. As a cast member on Saturday Night Live since 2019, the comedian and actor quickly became a reliable home-run hitter for her impressions of figures ranging from Drew Barrymore and Nicole Kidman to Timothée Chalamet. (Listen to her do Barrymore with a blindfold on and you’d never figure out who was who.)

Fineman’s impressionistic chops are the result of a unique combination of comedic talent and theatrical training. She graduated with honors from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has appeared in the Noah Baumbach–directed 2022 film White Noise and Francis Ford Coppola’s controversial 2024 opus Megalopolis. Last year, she made her Broadway debut opposite John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, and Richard Kind in Simon Rich’s All In: Comedy About Love, an adaptation of short stories the writer published in The New Yorker. She has also had memorable turns in TV series including Search Party, High Fidelity, and Laid.

Next up, she’s taking on the role of a strippermeets-spirit-guide in Summer of 69. The film, which will be released by Hulu this May, chronicles a high school student eager to educate herself about sex before graduation by hiring Fineman’s character, an exotic dancer named Santa Monica, as her teacher.

The Berkeley, California, native is a master of noticing the smallest quirks that make people tick—and truly understands that keen observation is a necessary ingredient for both good comedy and genuine self-reflection.

CULT100

QUESTIONNAIRE

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Probably the phrase “dress British, think Yiddish,” which I stole from my dad. Also, “Diet Coke is water.”

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Sarah Bernhardt. She was a completely original, weird, and magical actress. I have her catchphrase—“quand meme”—tattooed on my arm. It has a million definitions, but I like “so what.”

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK? I trained to play a stripper this summer and got really into it. I worked day after day with an amazing coach, so when it came time to shoot my big dance number, I felt so prepared. But in true me form, I couldn’t stop tap dancing between takes. So new skill unlocked: tap dancing in nine-inch pleasers.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. Blonde… or brunette?

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? My first-ever catchphrase was “fashion before death,” which I would say whenever I refused to wear a jacket in the cold.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Hopefully, it’s showing people that we can laugh at ourselves.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More people doing theater, fewer people doing TikTok?

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Do I like it? Does it make me laugh? I have to ask myself that constantly. It’s easy to get distracted by what you think other people will like or find funny. Don’t make stuff you don’t like!

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To keep making stuff I like, with people I like.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Putting stuff out to bring stuff in. Share the art, show the painting, stage the play, post the thing, do the stand-up show. You never know what will come back to you from that.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Leslie Jones’s Problem Child

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? Only on the subway.

Chloe wears a full look by Chanel. Hair by Takuya Yamaguchi at the Wall Group Makeup by Samantha Lau for Chanel Beauty and A-Frame Agency

Styling Assistance by Laynie Rouch, Claudia Bell, and Lauren Delfino

Location: Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim

KAREEM RAHMA IS THE TALENT

THE

SUBWAYTAKES CREATOR NEVER PLANNED TO INFILTRATE THE MEDIA

CIRCUIT, BUT HE’S CERTAINLY MADE AN ENTRANCE.

BY ANNIE HAMILTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUCIA BELL-EPSTEIN

Kareem Rahma never had a plan. The 38-year-old entertainer—who managed to transform the art of interviewing in his Internet shows SubwayTakes and Keep the Meter Running (cover star Ramy Youssef is currently developing the latter into a TV series)—claims to not have one, even now. And I have to say, I believe him.

For starters, Kareem’s got charm. The late, great Mike Nichols once described being charming as “giving away a vital part of yourself which you can absolutely part with.” In the hour I spent with Kareem in a Midtown hotel, I saw this illustrated in real time. Nothing was off-limits. He generously answered all of my questions about his past divorce (sans an “off-the-record” groan), regaled me with tales from his “midlife crisis,” which he quickly rechristened his “midlife enlightenment period”—and entertained a hearty amount of shit-talking (I started it). Yet when I left, I got the sense that what I had perceived as a vulnerable exchange was actually no sweat off his back.

The Monday I sat down with Kareem, he had already interviewed 16 people (one of whom happened to be Cate Blanchett) for SubwayTakes, sifted through the footage (he also produces the show), and taken several meetings (one of which dealt with the release of his latest comedy special), all before going home to spend time with his infant daughter and wife, Karina Muslimova, with whom he had recently starred in a Gap campaign. I asked Kareem to show me his schedule for the week, but it was so jam-packed I had to make him translate it for me out loud. We only made it through one day before I noticed his phone exploding. (Forty-one unread texts from 16 different people in under 20 minutes—totally normal for him). How did all this come about for a man without a plan?

Kareem grew up with no real dream. Zero dreams. “I mean, I just grew up in a suburb,” he says, shrugging. That suburb was Mendota Heights, outside Minnesota’s Twin Cities; he describes his

adolescence as “very pleasant, on a cul-de-sac. There wasn’t much art or culture, so I think people’s aspirations were very limited. I wasn’t really into that.”

After high school, Kareem went to the University of Minnesota as part of a (now-defunct) program he lovingly described as “taking aimless folks who almost didn’t get into college and bringing them together to, like, take algebra again.” He chose to major in journalism because “it was fun and easy.” At 25, he moved to New York and settled into a media career, spending his first eight years doing audience development and marketing at the likes of Vice and The New York Times before launching his own production company. Things, as they say in Minnesota, snowballed from there.

Kareem has never booked anyone for SubwayTakes. This means he’s never reached out to any of the celebrities who have been on his show—they all made contact first (Jane Goodall, John C. Reilly, Lil Nas X, FKA Twigs, and Blanchett, to name a few). He made a rule for himself: Release 100 episodes before even considering interviewing a famous person. “I hate when people are like, ‘Who’s the talent attached?’ At that stage, I was not ‘talent.’ I later realized, ‘This show will make me the talent.’ And so I wouldn’t let anyone [famous] come on the show for those first 100 episodes, even though people were emailing.”

I ask Kareem how he copes with meeting his heroes, but he tells me he hasn’t met enough of them. “A lot of it is driven just by the desire to surprise myself, which is why there are so many different projects and so many different mediums,” he says, pointing to his band, Tiny Gun, as one of his more absurd ventures. “Like, why do I have a rock and roll band? Literally, why? Because, first, I like it and I think it’s fun, and second, I’m like, Holy shit, I can make music. That’s pretty cool. It’s a surprise to me as much as anyone else.”

I suppose my point, if those even mean anything anymore, is: Kareem is the talent. He has been all along. So, duh, Kareem has plans. The rest of us just haven’t figured out what to do with them yet.

CULT 100 QUESTIONNAIRE

What keeps you up at night? MOST OF THE TIME IT’S ACID REFLUX.

What’s something people get wrong about you?

PEOPLE TEND TO ASSUME I’M UNHINGED AND HYPERACTIVE. THE TRUTH IS, I’M PRETTY MELLOW AND LOW-KEY.

WHEN MY WIFE AND I FIRST MET, SHE MENTIONED HOW SURPRISED SHE WAS THAT I’M ACTUALLY SO CALM. I DON’T KNOW, MAN. I’M PERCEIVED ONE WAY BUT FEEL ANOTHER.

If you could attribute your success to a single quality of yours, what would it be? WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? Are people ever starstruck by you? SOMETIMES PEOPLE ASK FOR SELFIES OR DAP ME UP IN PASSING. I LOVE A GOOD DAP.

Who do you call the most? I CALL MY FRIEND BLAKE A LOT. IT’S KIND OF LIKE A GAME? I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT. WE SORT OF JUST CHIT-CHAT AND SHOOT THE SHIT, KIND OF LIKE WHAT I IMAGINE CAB DRIVERS DO ALL DAY. WE LITERALLY CALL EACH OTHER MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY.

Photography Assistance by Henry Dolan Location: The Fifth Avenue Hotel

These individuals absorb the raw material of life, transmute it, and reflect it back in ways that challenge, disconcert, and sometimes knock the wind out of us. These aren’t just keen observers or technical virtuosos—they are magicians.

RASHID JOHNSON

A singular voice whose oeuvre plumbs the anxieties of contemporary life, the ARTIST’s trajectory has taken him from his hometown of Chicago all the way to the Guggenheim’s rotunda—where his major survey is on view through next year.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing. It got me through a moment of adolescence when I was trying to understand what the world could be for a young boy against an urban backdrop.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I’m really into George Clinton from Parliament-Funkadelic. There’s a natural sense of avant-garde and unexpected rigor born of his contribution to music that is very influential to me. It’s allowed me to think about doing the unexpected.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mother.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE STARSTRUCK? When I met Posdnuos, Plug 1 from De La Soul, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami gala in 2019. It’s probably the only time I was ever starstruck. I told him how big a fan I was and how big an influence his music had been. It made me see there were people like me in the world.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF? I would describe myself as kind, complicated, confident, and confused.

by

Photography

SABRINA SANTIAGO

LONNIE HOLLEY

The ARTIST and PERFORMER, once described as a “modern-day shaman,” transforms castoff materials into madcap assemblages. His wide-ranging practice is the subject of an eponymous monograph from Rizzoli, published last month.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? For as long as I can remember, I’ve always said “thumbs up for Mother Universe” whenever I meet someone or at the end of a conversation. I talk a lot about the three mothers: the mother that gave birth to you, Mother Earth, and Mother Universe. I’ve always tried to care deeply for all three mothers and try to honor Mother Universe in everything I do.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Well, literally, making art. But also worrying about the world, the only one we’ve got. My upbringing was very difficult. A lot of that was detailed in the podcast Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. When you’ve lived through slavery-like conditions as a

child, the demons come to visit you when you sleep. That keeps me up more than I wish it did.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I’ve been called a lot of things: A visionary artist. Self-taught. An outsider. A naive artist. I’m just an artist, none of those other things. Those names cling to me like an ill-fitted suit. I’m just an artist trying to make America and the world a better and more understanding place. And I’ve learned so much from other people. Many artists go to school to learn to make art, and I’d have loved to have had that opportunity.

But my grandpap taught me so much about materials and how to use them. My daddy’s mama,

Momo, took me to the city landfill and taught me how to recycle and reuse things. Uncle Jesse taught me all about taking things apart. Daddy James, who married my mama, taught me how to become a brick mason and how to use concrete and mortar. Mr. and Mrs. Smith taught me to use judgment, not always a ruler—and to believe in myself. I had a different kind of school.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

There is a porter at the Atlanta airport who always recognizes me from reading about me in the paper. He always goes out of his way to say hello and check on me when I’m coming home from a trip.

Photography by VIVA

VADIM

HANS ZIMMER

The greatest film COMPOSER COMPOSER of the 21st century can hack our emotions with a single note. Following the release of Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert, a compilation of his most storied film compositions, he’ll translate speed into sound in this summer’s F1.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The unwritten piece of music with the deadline rushing towards me.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I went to music school. I didn’t. I had two weeks of piano lessons and have been making it up ever since.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Trying to make people aware of how important it is for us to support orchestral music. We are always at the precipice of losing the orchestras. Film might be the last place that consistently still commissions orchestral music. For me, watching an orchestra play together is proof of the highest achievements we humans are capable of. Hearing musicians unite in a common emotional gesture

and having that reflected in the audience gives me hope that humanity is capable of great moments of profound togetherness and joy.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

Battling against authority, being thrown out of eight schools, and keeping the whole neighborhood up by playing the piano at 3 o’clock in the morning.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? The whole joy of writing a piece of music for me—and doing something new—is that you’re aiming for something that surprises you in an exciting and unexpected way. For instance, there are two notes in the piece “Time” that shouldn’t work together, but the dissonance and conflict they create gives the piece a needed moment of tension and surprise. But really, the biggest surprise in my life is me leaving my studio and standing in front of an audience, looking them firmly in the eye, and not hiding behind a screen anymore—and loving it.

by JULIAN

Photography

UNGANO

RACHEL SCOTT

The CFDA-endorsed CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF DIOTIMA funnels the visual culture of her native Jamaica into Caribbean-inspired garments and artfully advocates for a definition of luxury beyond the European canon.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Sensual craft.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Whenever I feel I need grounding, or I need to return to my foundation, I always go back to Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire. It can and should be read and reread; it is always timely and urgent.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I want to see more kindness, more community, and more love in the industry, especially amongst and towards independent brands. We are in a terrifying moment of erasure, particularly of voices of communities that have always been excluded or erased. We have to support and lift each other up, now more than ever.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

Does the thing I am making add value to the world in some way?

If something feels like it already exists, then there is no reason to make it. Every single piece in a collection needs to feel like it is adding beauty or subversion in some way, hopefully both! To add to beauty in a real way is to question beauty; it is in itself a subversive move.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To never stop growing creatively, to never stop challenging myself through the work. For Diotima, I want longevity.

RAMELL ROSS

The documentary FILMMAKER and ARTIST set a new bar for literary adaptations—and narrative debuts—with his formally inventive and deeply felt Oscar-nominated interpretation of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

Hopefully—wishfully—a philanthropic grantor to support two culturally significant mixed-genre projects that will run $10 million total. The projects are unprecedented in every sense; their scale is something to behold. Who wants to fund something special?

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

The two aforementioned projects. Their power produces a motion of the mind—they ask to be separated from the dream state. Don’t relegate me to the oneiric, we aren’t fantasy, they say, rousing the synapses.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? Often. Very often, in fact, when I’m mistaken

for other Black people. But it’s nice to be familiar enough to put one at ease. Someone looming at six foot six, backlit by history, and cast in infinite silhouette often produces a shock in the American stranger.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE.

Medusa. The act of looking. That perception and lithification are not unrelated. A stare, a gaze, a glance. Slow energy. Slow matter. The photographic fixing of idea-things in our personal storms of consciousness.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Wait, who is this other self asking this question?

Does myself have a self? Who is this whisper of self?

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

Raking leaves with fervor. Being unable to swallow pills. Drinking V8s in lieu of eating the veggies. A high-pitched voice.

Photography by MEREDITH LACKEY

FERGUS & MARGOT HENDERSON

The CHEFS have helped transform London into a culinary destination by turning overlooked ingredients (turnips and gizzards, anyone?) into modern meals at St. John and Rochelle Canteen.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Fergus Henderson: My passion for food, a healthy appetite, and cowboys. I wore a gun holster for quite a few years.

Margot Henderson: Gymnastics, high jumping, general hyper energy, and my signature dish— snails cooked with garlic, parsley, and bread crumbs. At 10 I thought it was the coolest dish.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Fergus: My thoughts turn to the greatest food film ever, La Grande Bouffe, the first meal in the film being a heavy-set roasting tray full of roast marrow bones. This is the first eating, together.

Marcello Mastroianni and Philippe Noiret and their companions go around sucking on the bones, and they’re still looking bonny! Not the liverish, bloated gentleman they become on their fatal culinary adventure. That was a “do you see the light” kind of moment for me, a matter of weeks before St. John opened. I went to see this film and it became our signature dish!

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Fergus: [My books] The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating and Beyond Nose to Tail are my proudest moments. I love the way that chefs and folks at home have both enjoyed these books. And St. John. It’s my life’s work.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

Margot: Recently cooking in South Africa at the beautiful Twee Jonge Gezellen estate where they make beautifully crafted wines. It was a three-day gig and thankfully I was joined by Rose Chalalai Singh, Hector Henderson, and Fergus at the helm. It was a little nerve-racking cooking in uncharted lands, but it all came together—not only the produce, but also the most beautiful sea bass from Mauritius that Hector made into a dreamy platter. We were a team, and there was a beautiful gelling. A real joy when that happens. Maybe the beautiful wines helped as well.

LAUREN HALSEY

The ARTIST creates epic monuments to South Central Los Angeles—and continually reinvests in the neighborhood that made her. Halsey’s latest community-minded caper? Her “dream park,” slated to open in 2026.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Breaking into the world of stage design and creative direction for music festivals, fashion runways, and concerts. ASAP!

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Toni Morrison’s lecture at Portland State University from 1975: “An artist’s role is to bear witness, to contribute to the record, the real record, of life as he or she knows it, perceptions that are one’s own.”

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. “To fold or not to fold?” Don’t fold.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I’m not painfully shy. I am.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? I presented about 115,200 CD-ROM discs on the walls and floors of a gallery at the Serpentine, seamlessly. Total immersion.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Basketball. I wanted to play for Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols more than anything in the world.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

Contemporary neighborhood funk through space-making?

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More ambitious public artwork in the hood. Less conservatism and bureaucracy in the art world.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

What would Toni Morrison think?

Photography by EDDIE SALINAS

THOM BROWNE

The DESIGNER of shrunken jackets, cropped pants, and some of this century’s most iconic handbags has redefined “uniform” dressing—becoming a leading voice of New York’s fashion ecosystem in the process.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? Always Andrew [Bolton]. There’s no opinion I value more than his, in life and in work.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? Creativity. It’s important that everything starts from a point of creativity and evolves from there.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? I push myself to consider whether I’m creating something that will change the conversations people are having. Are my team and I working at the highest level? Is it better than before?

For me, there’s nothing worse than for someone to leave one of my shows without an opinion.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? Often, people come up to me to tell me that they love my Thom Browne [designs] without knowing that I am Thom Browne. When I’m noticed for my work, instead of [as a figure]— that’s the best.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? More of the same, as long as it feels right. I never want to do anything that feels forced or out of necessity for a certain moment in the business. There’s so much more to do, so many people to reach.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Rigor. I’ve always done everything because it’s what I wanted—wanted people to see, to experience, to understand when they think of my brand. Because of this rigor and consistency, there is a level of authenticity. It’s so important for every designer to bring something to the work that feels very personal.

FABRICE PELLEGRIN

The PRINCIPAL PERFUMER OF DSM-FIRMENICH

PRINCIPAL PERFUMER OF DSM-FIRMENICH is known for distilling far-flung inspirations into memorable fragrances. His latest for Valentino is Anatomy of Dreams—a chorus of seven olfactive offerings that encapsulate a sun-drenched evening in Rome.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

With the Valentino fragrance Sogno in Rosso from the Anatomy of Dreams collection, I dared to make a real olfactory statement by exploring an intense and contemporary gourmand: a milky overdose subtly contrasted by black pepper. This unique accord surprised even me. It has a singularity that is immediately felt. It is powerful, it is identifiable, and above all, it is a fragrance that leaves a mark. It reflects both my creative vision and the audacity of Valentino.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK?

I like to formulate in a concise, minimalist, and structured way. Each ingredient has its place and tells a story. Nothing is superfluous. At the same time, I love generosity—the generosity of gesture, of sharing, but also the generosity I grant to raw materials. I like to go deep into working with materials, making them speak loudly, daring to be excessive. When I choose a material, I don’t underdose it: I celebrate it. I make it vibrate.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? There are several questions that arise at each stage of the creative process: Am I doing things correctly? Is this the right olfactory direction? Does it bring something truly new to the world of perfumery? And also, Will people enjoy wearing this fragrance? Asking these questions is essential. It pushes me to remain curious, to never settle for the obvious, and to always seek to innovate.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? I was born in Grasse, the cradle of perfumery, and I have a deep attachment to this city that I am keen to share. Whether during the educational visits I lead at the Villa Botanica, an artistic residence dedicated to perfume, or by training young perfumers in the art of composition and the use of natural materials, I strive to generously share my knowledge. My contribution also means leaving a contemporary olfactory imprint, creating avant-garde signatures that will remain a lasting part of olfactory heritage.

SHARON EYAL

The L-E-V CO-FOUNDER, CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, AND CHOREOGRAPHER left Batsheva Dance Company in 2013. Ever since, cultural luminaries, including Maria Grazia Chiuri and the National, have lined up to tap into her infectious kinetic energy.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? I’m still not sure what that means. When I meet an artist who has changed something in my life, I get very excited. Sometimes, I receive very strong reactions from people who say amazing and interesting things, describing experiences they’ve had through my work in ways I could never have imagined. When I create, that’s never my intention, but I’m very proud of it.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To ensure that everything I love is safe, to continue doing what I’m already doing, to never get bored, and to keep enjoying and discovering.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My beloved husband, Gai Behar.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I was a hyperactive kid who loved to dance, create, and move.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? It’s hard to point out only qualities—failure plays a huge role in achieving success. But if I focus on the positive, I’d say it’s sticking to what brings me joy and feels right. That usually feels like success to me and those around me, both on a small and large scale. But really, everything is equally important.

LUX PASCAL

The ACTOR was already a star in Chile, where she grew up, long before making her international breakthrough in Narcos. This year, she’ll solidify her place in the industry with the release of Miss Carbón—her first lead role in a feature film.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I was rather shy with other kids but very chatty with adults. I always sat at dinner tables with grown-ups and wanted to talk about politics or movies. Definitely thought I was smarter than I was. I wish I could regain that confidence!

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? The Chronicles of Narnia . I went to a Catholic school that had really good literature teachers. In third grade we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I became obsessed with C.S. Lewis. I read that he was a Christian and that the

Narnia books all had a connection with religion and the Bible. Being a kid and being religious was not cool at all, but my love for his books made me realize that there is more complexity to people than what they believe in—and that there is such a thing as timelessness.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I am a problem solver and am able to think quite practically about things I am passionate about. Sure, I get my heart broken every time, but I allow it to happen. I let myself go through difficult times because I like to get to the bottom of things. Ultimately, there is a solution to everything.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? How can I have more patience—with others and with myself?

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I want to have a sustainable relationship with my work, enjoy what I do do, and let go of things that aren’t meant to be, but always keep the wonder alive.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Excitement… and regret.

Photography by JUAN PABLO UBILLA

EMMA CHOPOVA & LAURA LOWENA

While their safety-pin skirt has itself reached icon status, the CHOPOVA LOWENA FOUNDERS AND CREATIVE DIRECTORS AND CREATIVE DIRECTORS’ entire line has ushered a punk sensibility back into the fashion mainstream with a distinctly sustainable ethos.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Carabiners!

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Production orders, pleats, clips, ideas, our dogs, and crying babies.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Emma Chopova: Drama. Laura Lowena: Dogs and dolphins.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

More exciting things in the fragrance world, a lot of trips, a team trip to Bulgaria, twins

turning one, shoes, shoes, shoes, bags, bags, bags, and a runway show.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That we only make skirts.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Rock climbing was key to starting our brand.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? Kamen Chopov, Emma’s dad.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Warpaint gets us through everything, Addison Rae’s “Aquamarine” got us through last season.

Photography by

MIYAKO BELLIZZI

The COSTUME DESIGNER has made a name for herself as a consummate vibe-setter, whether she’s lending her eye to historical fare like this year’s The History of Sound or the cortisol-spiking marathon Good Time.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Most of the projects I take on help me through a moment in my life. Some films I know about years in advance, while others present themselves without much time to react. It’s exciting but can throw life around a bit. I was able to work on a film called War Pony, which took place on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota. I wasn’t able to stay through the shoot, but the short time I had there really had an effect on me—something I didn’t know I needed at the time.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? Every time I complete a film, I’m surprised with myself for a few reasons. One is that I completed it successfully. Another is looking back at the process and the decisions I made in that moment.

So much of my work consists of making decisions quickly and trusting my intuition. I won’t know whether or not they were the right ones until the film is completed.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Someone said something to me when I was at a crossroads between fashion and film that has always resonated with me. It’s that fashion can change as an industry, but film changes the culture. Looking back, I can see how some of my film work has affected the culture as a whole.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? Film is not as diverse and inclusive as it should be.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? How can this be better?

Photography by DANIEL

For these multi-hyphenates, evolution isn’t an option—it’s the only way forward. Rather than stick to a single discipline, these artists, entrepreneurs, and makers have lived multiple lives. Each is stronger because of the one that came before.

VICTORIA BECKHAM

From Spice Girl to fashion DESIGNER to beauty impresario to Old Masters art collector, the many iterations of Victoria Beckham are united under one banner: good taste.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? The tension between masculine and feminine has become a signature throughout my collections. Where the tailoring might directly borrow from the traditional men’s wardrobe in terms of construction, there’s always an ultra-feminine detail that nods to an underlying sensuality. Equally, our gowns, which are very feminine, always have something quite empowering about them. I like playing with that duality, which I think speaks to the multifaceted experience of being a woman. I want women to feel confident and sexy!

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I’m inspired by artists when I’m working on a collection. Recently, I became fixated on Lucio Fontana’s “Olii” series, in which he treats the canvas like fabric. That was the creative spark that eventually led to the wire-constructed gowns in my recent Autumn/Winter 2025 collection and the idea of gathering the fabric around the body like paint.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I am, and always have been,

very driven, disciplined, uncompromising, and have never shied away from hard work. When I set my mind to something, I see it through— but I also know that I can’t do it alone. Having an incredible team, where the respect is mutual, has been just as essential in getting to where we are today. There have been some really challenging times, but success comes from staying true to yourself and your creative vision, and surrounding yourself with people who believe in it too.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? It was after my last fashion show for the Autumn/Winter 2025 collection. Following the show, my family came backstage, and seeing the look on their faces and how proud of me they were was incredible.

I felt really proud of myself at that moment, and it surprised me that I hadn’t felt that before.

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Photography

JAMES KELLY

GRIFFIN DUNNE

The ACTOR, WRITER, and DIRECTOR was born into the lap of American literary and cinema lore. His recent offerings—last year’s memoir The Friday Afternoon Club and this winter’s mid-life crisis dramedy, Ex-Husbands—make lasting contributions to both fields.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? I don’t know about “trademark,” but I rarely leave home without wearing my extensive collection of T-shirts that bear artwork from old rock bands, heavyweight fights, and obscure beer brands from all over the world.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Sadly, I already hit it out of the park with two movies I made in the ’80s. An American Werewolf in London was

the first film to alternate between humor and horror. Almost all horror flicks since are designed to scare the shit out of you and make you laugh for comic relief. After Hours invented a whole new genre I call “anxiety comedies,” which have paved the way for all the “worst day of your life” movies that followed.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? It is my hope that people will return to the box office to see the

latest from filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, Sean Baker, and Brady Corbet, just as we used to before streaming and Covid chained our fat asses to a sofa.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? I ask myself to stop questioning and follow the instincts that made me want to work on the project in the first place.

MICHAEL GANDOLFINI

The ACTOR first made waves in 2021 playing a teenage iteration of his own father’s role, Tony Soprano, but has since proved to be far more than a legacy act in Beau Is Afraid, Daredevil: Born Again, and Alex Garland’s forthcoming Warfare.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The last tribal council that I saw on Survivor.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

The Place Beyond the Pines got me through a lot of nights, and gave me a lot of answers.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Sam Shepard, Jessica Chastain, Mark Ruffalo, Annie

Leibovitz, Sally Mann, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Yebra, John David Washington, Joe P, Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Duvall. I could go on…

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? A one-man lip-sync performance of Wicked. Over and over again.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To continue to grow, and to see my job as an act of service serving someone’s vision or something bigger than myself.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Just sheer sex appeal, probably. Can’t help it.

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Photography

THEA TRAFF

ZAC POSEN

Fashion’s enfant terrible turned red carpet mainstay took over as EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF GAP INC. as attention turned to classic American brands.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I’m a city person. I’m happiest barefoot in the country.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? That’s hard. It’s between resilience and passion.

NAME AN INFLUENCE THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Jim Henson.

WHEN’S THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? Every day.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. Choosing to become the executive vice president and creative director at Gap Inc. I was meeting with luxury brands in Europe and in the process of going in-house at one of the Hollywood studios.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Song and dance.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

SUKI WATERHOUSE

The MODEL and ACTOR made her name in front of the camera—but it’s music, her most recent pursuit, that has captured her heart. Her debut album seals her fate as a renaissance woman for the Internet age.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? I’ve been thinking a lot about the upper deck of a London bus and how much it formed me. It can be one of the most peaceful places on earth or the most horrendous. It’s where all worlds collide, and I really miss it.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Miroslav Tichý’s photographs. A teacher taught me that he built his own cameras out of cardboard and clandestinely photographed thousands of women in public. He kept his work

secret for years—it was later discovered by a neighbor. It made me feel like I could watch, document, and create privately and it helped me understand that that process, at the time, was all for myself.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? Sometimes I read that people think I’m from an aristocratic English bloodline.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I loved to interview my parents’ friends, especially about their divorces.

MIA KHALIFA

The former adult film star has shown us what it means to reinvent oneself in the Internet age. Her next chapter runs the gamut: She’s a politically outspoken CONTENT CREATOR, JEWELRY DESIGNER, and ACTIVIST.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Food! I’m so inspired by fine dining—the architecture, the design, the storytelling in the menu, the ceramics, and then the actual food, which is usually an extension of the chef’s nostalgia. It inspires and excites me. Connecting with your inner child is the cheat code to creativity.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My ability to not take doors slamming in my face personally!

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

American Idiot by Green Day informed who I was going to be as a person at the ripe age of 12. It got me through so much angst and, no matter the stage of my life, has continued to teach me about myself and the world.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

Almost everything, and then they feel bad after they meet me. Sometimes I can see it on their face: the shift and the guilt of their preconceived notions.

Photography by Fabien Montique

RUSSELL WESTBROOK

Many men have played for the Denver Nuggets, but few this well, and none while looking this good. The BASKETBALL STAR has fused sports and fashion with his sartorial prowess, all while reinvesting in the cities that brought him up.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Intensity.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? I want to do whatever I can to help the underserved. Everything I do is for my community. I spend all of my energy trying to create more opportunities for the inner city.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

I’m working on a lot of things off the court, including some fantastic collections for Honor the Gift and some opportunities for my organization, the Why Not? Foundation. I recently invested in a professional soccer team that will start playing in 2027 in Oklahoma City, so we’ll be sharing some big announcements about that this year.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Denzel Washington.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

I want to see more authenticity, especially in the fashion space. And more people staying true to who they are.

MILES ROBBINS

Having Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon as parents, and Mulder and Scully as onscreen parents, leaves a big legacy to live up to, but the ACTOR and MUSICIAN is stepping out with confidence in Halloween, Blockers, and this year’s Control Freak.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Luck. Being economically supported by my parents in my early 20s while living at home in New York and being afforded the chance to practice art and submit myself to opportunities. I have qualities I am more proud of, but as far as “success,” it would be insane to not acknowledge the advantage economic support gives a young person in the arts. Making a living in the arts is not a pure meritocracy; it is a matter of being good enough to be in the right place at the right time. And it is very hard for a young person in this country to practice art in school or have the opportunity to go to auditions at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday when they must work several jobs to afford the skyrocketing cost of living. I

want nothing more than a more equitable economy in this country. This would give us a chance to hear from the many brilliant artists who are currently restrained by the excessive demands of an exploitative system.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I’m hoping that I may soon have the opportunity to achieve my dream of selling out. I specifically would like to be the spokesperson for a seltzer company, and to appear in a commercial in which I drive a bubble bus (public transportation is very important to me). If any seltzer companies are reading this, I am thinking: “Next Stop, Refreshment!” You don’t have to pay me for writing the copy, thanks.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

I want to see more $3 million budgets given to little freaks.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

I just got a driver’s license for the first time in my life. I thought it might give me some sort of second teen awakening full of spontaneous independent travel in an old, beautiful car with the windows down—but I will more likely be using a convenient, economical 2017 hatchback to help my friends transport chairs and instruments.

by CLAYTON CUBITT

Photography

RALPH LEMON

The CHOREOGRAPHER and ARTIST once said he aspired to be “only a rumor.” In a boundary-pushing survey at MoMA PS1, which ran through this March, his ineffable ability to fuse the two disciplines was on full display.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? How much do I care about this thing that I am doing?

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Instigating. I drove my siblings crazy—as much as I loved them. Once, one of my sisters became so angry that she stabbed me in the arm with a pencil.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. My two daughters.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? This afternoon.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mother.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

The Miles Davis quote “Play what’s not there.”

Photography by DAVID MCDOWELL, AND COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND PAULA

COOPER

GALLERY

JENNA LYONS

The fashion DESIGNER reupholstered J.Crew’s all-American aesthetic. Now, as a Real Housewife of New York and the creative brains behind consultancy FundamentalCo, she’s embracing an untamed second act.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Discovering Antonio Lopez’s Antonio’s Girls was so inspiring because I experienced a very narrow version of beauty growing up in Southern California, where everyone looked like they were on Baywatch. This book opened my eyes to different types of beauty, like Grace Jones and Tina Chow.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? People assume I’m serious and uptight—maybe because of the job, the glasses, and slicked-back hair—but it is really the opposite.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Does this actually feel new? Am I repeating myself—or someone else?

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Glasses, a red lip, and a shirt buttoned inappropriately low.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE?

To work smarter and cuddle harder.

Photography by CASS

Photography by LYNETTE GARLAND

BELLA FREUD

A nepo baby of the highest brow (father: Lucian; great-grandfather: Sigmund), Freud chose fashion as her playground. The DESIGNER’s new podcast has placed the industry’s leading voices on the divan—and simultaneously spurred interest in her already beloved eponymous brand.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? “Is there garlic in this?”

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

As much creative output as possible: new collections, writing, and more Fashion Neurosis, my podcast, which I was put on this earth to do. I love it so much.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

Gosh I hope so! What fun that would be.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

More collective caring for society. We in the fashion industry have a lot of heft; we could be more active with it.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? I’m always quite thrilled when I have a really good day’s work with hardly any sleep. It makes me feel invincible.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Excitement. I quite often have “white nights” where I can’t go under. It’s tiring but fun—so who cares!

TRAMELL TILLMAN

The ACTOR got his big break in everyone’s favorite workplace dystopia Severance, channeling the middle-manager archetype in a way only someone with extensive prior experience in corporate America could.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Love and light.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The state of our world has me concerned. More specifically the future of our democracy. The safety and protection of my Black and queer communities and the investment in and care for our children.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

The release of Severance season two and the latest Mission Impossible film are certainly high on the list, but this year I am entering a new decade. I turn 40 in 2025! I’m stepping into my grown-man era.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Nature. At one point in my life I wanted to be a storm chaser. I was fascinated by tornadoes. They are stunning —from a distance. What powerful lessons they hold. Maximum effect, minimal effort. Oh, to be a force of nature!

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

I was doing a production of Shit. Meet. Fan. at MCC Theater. I was asked to participate in Comic-Con International in São Paulo, Brazil, during our production run. This meant leaving the show for four performances. The day I left, I performed in this highly emotional play’s matinee [then] caught a red-eye to Brazil. We did tons of press, meeting fans, and audience engagement. Essentially, I spent less than 36 hours in the city. I flew across international waters back to NYC in just enough time to do two shows of SMF at MCC (the same day), complete a full week of press for Severance in New York, continue the run of the show, and host a network of friends and colleagues, all without anyone in our audiences suspecting a thing— never missing a beat. When I think back on it, I am dumbfounded how I did it. My manager affectionately calls me “The Machine.”

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Gospel music. The musical stylings of Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, Fred Hammond, Daryl Coley, and Vanessa Bell Armstrong are particularly special to me.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I’m serious… all the time. It’s not true. I will admit I probably don’t help to disprove this theory. I take the work seriously, but not myself. I’m a goof!

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My manager and my stylist. We love to work.

Photography by LUCIA

SAGG NAPOLI

The Italian ARTIST and former competitive archer, whose work mines then explodes our preconceived notions of class and gender, has become an Instagram phenomenon in the process of living her art.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? My hometown, Napoli.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Mahmoud Darwish’s The Butterfly’s Burden

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I am obsessed and deeply influenced by Rococo architecture.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? A lot of my work is based on patience. I wasn’t born patient though; it is something I [brought] myself with time. I guess when I see myself exercising patience, I am still surprised.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I was the entertainer and I guess I still am.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? My ongoing research mapping the contemporary aesthetics, culture, and subculture of Southern Europe.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I would like to see people using their heart as much as they use their brain. And I would like to see less self-referential art.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I want to stay focused, remind myself I’ve got nothing to prove, continue making work that is honest, and enjoy the process—maybe get lost a little but have faith I will find my way back.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

I think people find my contradictions to be bad, while I think they are one of my biggest strengths.

LUCY SANTE

The WRITER spent decades chronicling the emotional topography of urban life. More recently, she turned her unsparing eye on herself with a gut-punch of a memoir about transitioning at age 66.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? I’m known for writing about cities as experienced by the poor, in the past and in my youth—also about photography, also memoirs (I’ve written two). I have a lot of range, and most readers know me for one or two aspects—different combinations of aspects for different people.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? It happens almost every time I sit down to write. Going into a work, I never quite know where I’m headed, exactly. I let my unconscious take the wheel for long stretches, and wind up taking turns I never anticipated.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

I want to see more attention to detail, more adventurousness, more of the music of language.

I want to see less short-sightedness, less virtuesignaling, less academic prose. We’re actually in a really good period for literature, but there’s

so much being published it’s hard separating wheat from chaff.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My memory.

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JEM COHEN

KYLE SMITH

Football fans care about fashion—or so the NFL’S FIRST FASHION EDITOR has proven. Next time you see a linebacker wearing a look straight off the runway, you’ll know who made it happen.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Wondering whether my clients are going to wear the outfit we chose or go completely off the rails. But that’s what I love about athletes—they do whatever they want.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

My sister’s high-school graduation.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Charlie’s Angels, 2000.

WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

People often think I’m chronically online, but I’m whatever the opposite of that

is.

When I tell people this, they often follow up with “Then how do you find trends?” Diva, I go outside. I look at what’s happening in the world,

I travel, I read, and then I find the links. Fashion is everywhere for those with eyes to see it.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST?

My best friend [redacted] who works at the Pentagon. She only wears Prada to work, which is how I know she’s very important, but also good at her job.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

Joe Burrow in a backless suit.

ROSE BYRNE

The Australian ACTOR’s quietly disarming humor has made her the patron saint of the romantic comedy. This year, she flexes a different muscle as the lead in the drama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and will be seen next in the chilling limited series The Good Daughter.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Still looking for it!

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Figuring out my trademark.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I moved to New York at 28 to begin shooting Damages. I was super homesick. I happened to pick up the second volume of The Diary of Anaïs Nin at a thrift store—she also moved to New York around that age. I found this beautiful chronicle of her time there very inspiring.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE . Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? I was truly shocked to win the Silver Bear at Berlin for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You . I’d already flown home when I received the news.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To not forget to put the capoeira uniform in [my son] Rocco’s backpack every Monday.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. I recently left all our passports on the plane en route to Sydney. This is a crossroads I do not wish to visit again.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

Bushy eyebrows and curly blonde hair.

NAOMI BECKWITH

The GUGGENHEIM DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND CHIEF CURATOR has made a career of opening museum doors for seminal and soon-to-be-seminal artists. On top of it all, she’s piloting the 16th edition of Documenta, the art world’s most scrutinized exhibition.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I’d love to put a halt to the phrase “art industry.” I’m not naive; there is loads of capital roving about the art world, and that is welcome and necessary. But to call this work an “industry” implies that its primary purpose is to produce financial value. I am not here for that kind of violence. I am here to bring artists’ dreams into being because their dreams enable us to imagine new worlds, test boundaries, experiment in democracy, upend reason, and turn value on its head.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I look to athletes for influence more than anything: Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Rafael Nadal. The lessons: Build stamina, work hard every day, and switch up your game from time to time.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

Being an incurable tomboy. Now, I’m just a taller version of that little tomboy.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Tenacity. I was taught from a young age that the world will be unkind to women and to Black people, so when that happens—and it does happen—I’m empowered by that kind of resistance. I meet it head-on and move on, oftentimes with the help of kind allies.

Not everyone changes culture from center stage. Some work behind the scenes, challenging systems from within so others can devote themselves to the work they’re meant to do. Their contributions foster a culture that’s more accessible, just, and reflective of the world we live in.

JEN RUBIO

One of the most prominent female CEOs in a business landscape that’s still a boys’ club, the AWAY FOUNDER is also a serial museum board member and one of contemporary art’s most prominent champions of Latinx makers.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? People often assume that I’m always in control or have everything figured out. There’s this misconception that success comes from having it together, when the reality is that I’ve had to embrace the messiness, the uncertainty, and the learning process along the way. I’m constantly questioning, evolving, and adapting, and I think that vulnerability is something people don’t always see.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. The work of architects—specifically, the way they think about space, structure, and how people interact with their environments. I’ve always been fascinated by how architecture shapes experience, whether it’s the flow of a room or the design of a building that tells a story. It’s deeply connected to how

we think about the concept of “home.” Travel is often thought to make us feel out of place, away from the familiar, but I’m always interested in how we bring those feelings of comfort, warmth, and connection with us.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I want to see brands treating what they create as more than just a product—thinking like artists, not just businesses. The most compelling brands have a clear point of view, a strong narrative, and a sense of craftsmanship that makes what they do feel meaningful. It’s not just about selling something; it’s about evoking emotion and building culture. I’d love to see less trend-chasing.

There’s so much noise —brands jumping on every aesthetic or cultural moment without considering if it aligns with their identity.

The most iconic brands, like the most iconic artists, aren’t trying to do everything; they have a distinct voice, a unique perspective, and a commitment to making something that lasts.

Photography by

BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN

MADELEINE GRYNSZTEJN

The DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO

DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO is at the forefront of a movement to make museums more welcoming, accessible, and reflective of the communities they serve—DEI backlash be damned.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? I’m a museum leader of integrity, determination, and hope; an advocate for artists; and a friend and mentor to fellow women museum leaders.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I’m going to cheat and name two. Nick Cave’s newsletter, The Red Hand Files, got me through Covid and has since become my Monday morning hymnal. His words have a way of cutting through the noise. And always, my community of artist friends—forged throughout my curatorial career but especially when I organized the 1999/2000 Carnegie International—continues to guide me. Artists are my true north.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? More power in artists’ hands. The Artist-Museum Partnership Act, a proposed piece of legislation, would return to artists the right to take a full charitable tax deduction when donating their work to museums. This would change the entire art ecosystem—and our world—for the better. When artists drive what is seen in museums, art becomes more varied, accessible, and available in more places. I’ve advocated for this on Capitol Hill because until it changes, the public’s ability to see, be inspired by, and learn from the best artists of our time remains compromised.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My itinerant, multilingual background across Latin American, Europe, and the United States cultivated in me an insatiable hunger for and delight in learning something new every day. That curiosity fuels my work in museums, where the ability to listen, learn, and bridge perspectives is essential. Museums can no longer simply reflect the world; they must actively bring together diverse voices, foster understanding, and push against divisiveness.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The current state of the world and its impact on artists and communities is undeniable. However, at the MCA Chicago, we don’t flinch.

Photography by MARIA PONCE

SARAH ARISON

The most consequential arts philanthropist of her generation, Arison just took over as the PRESIDENT OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART’S BOARD after luring Connie Butler from California to helm its sister institution, MoMA PS1.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? My kids. Oh, and also that we live in a country where hate speech, racism, and antisemitism is acceptable; women have no rights over their own bodies; and climate change isn’t real. It’s difficult not to be unsettled by that.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

When I moved to New York, I just started showing up—for artists, for friends, for institutions. I was dedicated to getting to know all the organizations, the work they were doing, and

the people involved. Over the past 20 years, I have seen so much and met so many people, and that’s why I’m able to do the work that I do. I am so lucky to be part of this incredible community.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? Michi Jigarjian. I consider her my sounding board for so much. We both sit on the board of YoungArts [whose board I chair] and MoMA PS1, and she also chairs Baxter Street and is on the board of the Brooklyn Museum. And she builds hotels. And she’s an amazing collector and phenomenal

supporter of artists. And she has three kids. She’s the most incredible, supportive friend ever.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY?

Collaboration! It’s the only way we will make it through the challenging times we are facing.

Photography by ABBEY DRUCKER

LIEV SCHREIBER

The Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe–nominated ACTOR and ACTIVIST will appear in Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing this year, a deep dive into New York’s gritty underbelly.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Slavic

and angular eyebrows.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

I don’t like to start a job unless I have an idea or an angle for my way into the character. Susanne Bier, the director on The Perfect Couple, told me something that really touched me. She said, “You know, sometimes you just have to jump.” I’m really glad I did. Trust, in many ways, is part of our job as artists. The mistakes that come from that are often the things that people relate to the most.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I’ve had the nickname Huggy Buggy Pinchy Winchy since I was a baby. My brother gave it to me because I would pull the hair of anybody who put their face near my carriage.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

When I was very young and doing Glengarry Glen Ross, a guy sent me some socks. I thought that was kind of weird.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? When things feel overwhelming and confusing, I always think of American values. I was in Florida recently raising money for BlueCheck, a charitable network that identifies, vets, and fast-tracks financial support to Ukrainian NGOs and aid initiatives. The conversation got kind of emotional, and a woman, clearly frustrated, said, “What do you want us to do?” The reason I’m involved with Ukraine is not because I’m Ukrainian—it’s because I’m American and I see it as an inherent American value, one that I’ve inherited, to make sure everyone feels welcome here in a way they might not be elsewhere. I have this incredible feeling of gratitude—for my grandparents and the generation of Americans who fought for the right to raise your children the way you want, to pray where you want, to express your gender and sexuality how you want. What I said to that woman was, “Reflect our values—with your partner, your neighbor, your dog, your kids.” There’s so much going on right now in our world, and one thing we can do is create change in our microcosms. I may not be negotiating with Macron, but how am I treating my family, my community?

LONTI EBERS

Rejecting the notion that a private foundation must be a monument to the collector’s taste, the AMANT FOUNDER empowers curators and artists to realize their most ambitious visions at Brooklyn’s most intellectual nerve center.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? My Ottica Urbani vintage plastic sunglasses.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Italian Renaissance art.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. I may be at a crossing, but am happily installed at the intersection of supporting artists via Amant and collecting art personally.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

Big eyes, a deep voice, and disobedience (and not necessarily in that order).

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Conceiving of and creating Amant, the nonprofit arts organization that I opened in 2020. The core of its mission is to advance the presentation of contemporary art, with an emphasis on innovative formats and ideas, so we tend to work with experimental artists of great ambition. Many of the artists we show have not had solo institutional shows in the United States, so we are certainly adding to the cultural landscape both in New York and internationally.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Fortitude.

Photography by SASHA MASLOV

DARREN WALKER

The most powerful figure in American philanthropy oversaw $7 billion in grants during his tenure as PRESIDENT OF THE FORD FOUNDATION FOUNDATION—and showed the world that funding art really can create social change.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

This year marks my final one as president of the Ford Foundation, where I have been for more than a decade. While I look forward to what this new chapter will bring, it’s going to be a big change. I revere this institution and I am so proud of the work we’ve supported during my time here, but it’s good to know when it’s time to move on and make space for something new.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I think James Baldwin is one of the most important writers and activists of our time. His work beautifully articulates the alienation that people living on the peripheries of society can experience, as

well as the need to challenge ignorance and examine how unchecked privilege and power can fuel injustice.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Inequality is the greatest threat to our democracy, and it’s something that I am deeply concerned about on every level.

I fundamentally believe that if we fail to address pernicious factors that drive inequality and broaden gaps to opportunity and pursuit of happiness, we will regret it for generations to come.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? One album I always return to is George Michael’s second album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 He was a complicated, troubled, and brilliant artist, and a philanthropist who left an enduring legacy.

MEADOW WALKER

The MODEL and CONSERVATIONIST is holding her industry accountable from within. As DIRECTOR OF THE PAUL WALKER FOUNDATION, she empowers ocean conservationists through scholarships and other pivotal programming.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Definitely the duality of my personality. I love watching Modern Family or The Office, reading, and doing puzzles in my downtime. Then the next minute I’ll be scuba diving, swimming with sharks, or snowboarding. My friends always point out that I don’t have much of a balance between being really laid-back or an adrenaline enthusiast. I tend to be one or the other.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Because it’s too tough to pick one, three books that got me through important moments are The Four Agreements, The Alchemist, and The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari. All of these books kept me centered and grounded when making important decisions or deciding how I wanted to live day to day.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Sylvia Earle and Christy Turlington. I’ve looked up to these two incredible women for most of my life. Sylvia is a pioneer in ocean exploration and conservation. She has dedicated her life to making sure the

world understands the importance of protecting our oceans and challenged expectations of who belongs in science along the way.

She has influenced ocean policy and reinforced the urgent need to protect our ocean. Christy is one of the most iconic supermodels of all time whom I’m grateful to know and love. She inspires me with the work she does with her organization, Every Mother Counts. She has found a healthy balance with her career, her philanthropic work, and her family life, which I aspire to accomplish.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

Sustainability is important to me.

I’d like to see more people in fashion caring about the environment and taking action and responsibility for what they are using and putting out there.

ALES ORTUZAR

The Spanish-born, New York–based ART DEALER ART DEALER is the industry’s most reliable starmaker for artists who have been unjustly excluded from the canon, from Ernie Barnes to Suzanne Jackson.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Believe it or not I was a bit of a rebel. I kept my parents up at night!

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

Well-deserved museum shows for a few of our artists—Takako Yamaguchi at MOCA in Los Angeles and Suzanne Jackson at SFMOMA. We will also have some exciting new artists at the gallery, and a potential new second gallery location.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Marian Goodman. She always brought a conviction to her program, irrespective of the market. Artists revere her because she was so supportive of the creative process. She built a gallery on her own terms.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More risk-taking, from all parties—museums, galleries, artists, collectors. Less focus on trends and more focus on individual artists.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

The environmental and political crises we find ourselves in.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? On any day, it’s either my mom or Suzanne Jackson.

CAROLINA & CAMILLA CUCINELLI

Heirs apparent to Italy’s most quietly radical house, the BRUNELLO CUCINELLI CREATIVE DIRECTORS are reintroducing their father’s namesake line to a new generation primed to appreciate their brand of slow fashion.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Carolina Cucinelli: They say that the night brings wisdom. For me, it is the perfect time to think about projects; the future; the small, beautiful things; and sometimes, the less beautiful ones that life has in store for us. The day can be too chaotic to pause for such reflections. For me, nighttime is also when I make important decisions.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Camilla Cucinelli: Music has been a presence in my life ever since I was little and used to take dance classes. As soon as I get home after work,

the first thing I do is put music on. It soaks up all the bad vibes that build up throughout the day. I’m also really into reading. I recently reread The Great Gatsby, and it got me thinking deeply about the value of emotions. Reading works like a mind booster—it pushes you to explore thoughts you wouldn’t usually dwell on.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Carolina: I was known for being a serene, creative, and dreamy child, who loved creating parallel worlds out of cardboard. I was always willing to help others. My mother always used to say that it seemed as if I wore an invisible, protective coat, which made me see only the positive side of things.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Camilla: Have I done everything possible to ensure that our collections honor the brand’s tradition and DNA while also staying relevant and open to the evolution of culture? I constantly reflect on this delicate yet fascinating balance.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? Carolina: I would love to wake up one day in a world where art and beauty reign supreme, where the fundamental value guiding all of humanity is full respect for people and their freedoms.

EMILY WEI RALES

The GLENSTONE FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR GLENSTONE FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR is building a Frick Collection for the 21st century—and outside of New York—while redefining what we expect from art institutions in fraught times.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark is the book I reach for when I feel disillusionment creeping in. There is always a way through. The work never stops, it just recalibrates.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? We need more

mutual aid in museums and arts organizations. Roadblocks of all kinds—cultural, financial, conceptual—keep us from collaborating and leveraging our respective strengths.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Rushing off to ballet class every day after school. Dance shaped my childhood. It taught me discipline, excellence, and grace under pressure.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

How to make sure that art and culture remain vital and thriving in America.

AGNES GUND

For decades, the ARTS PATRON ARTS PATRON has underwritten the creatives who who make our cultural landscape a more thought-provoking place. More recently, she has used her own collection to advocate for ending mass incarceration.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

To keep doing everything we can to continue protecting everyone’s civil rights and liberties. I will continue to support organizations that fight for free speech, immigrants’ rights, reproductive freedom, racial justice, voter rights, the environment, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender justice. I also remain hopeful watching my children and grandchildren continue to do great things.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS

TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I guess I just try and show up as much as I can. It is so important to push ourselves to keep getting out there, seeing and doing and supporting, even if we have limitations, whether they are physical or emotional. And I hope to make people feel appreciated and seen. I think

the following phrase is so true: “People might not remember everything you say, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Ava Duvernay’s film 13th certainly changed the trajectory of my life. It was the impetus for starting the Art for Justice Fund eight years ago. I am also a voracious reader and have at least three to four books on my nightstand on any given day.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK?

I always try and write thank-you notes—not

over email, but real letters. I know it is old-fashioned, but I think it is important to acknowledge when someone does something nice for you.

And receiving something in the mail still feels a little more special somehow. I also love giving books as gifts from independent shops. One of my favorites is Three Lives & Company on 10th Street. I gave certificates to Three Lives to all the staff at MoMA for the holidays.

TOMMY DORFMAN

After rocketing to prominence with roles in 13 Reasons Why and Jeremy O. Harris’s play Daddy, the ACTOR channeled her momentum into writing and directing this fall’s I Wish You All the Best. This spring, Dorfman took the stage as the star of Becoming Eve off-Broadway, and in May, is releasing a memoir about navigating her transition and addiction.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Sally Mann’s book Hold Still shifted the way I think about creating art, the impact of family on my work, and developing my own voice as an artist on- and off-stage and screen. I remember reading this book shortly after graduating from college—feeling lost in the world and in my body, lacking a clear focus on what my future could be—and feeling eased by her prose and wisdom.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mother, who always answers. I don’t know how I would survive without her humor, love, and compassion. She always has sage advice, and if I catch her in the evening, I get the great pleasure of listening to her stories from the day—moments mundane and familiar but told with wit and whimsy.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

Why am I doing this? What is the purpose of this particular opportunity? What can I learn from the

people I’m working alongside? How do I hope this work will change me?

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I’m not afraid to fail, which often means I try a million things and 99 percent of them don’t see the light of day.

I have

been

described as delusional, but I think that’s because most people fear their potential, and I want to challenge myself to take the most risks in this lifetime.

Photography by CLIPS SPLIT

MASSIMILIANO GIONI

The NEW MUSEUM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR NEW MUSEUM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, who is known for placing self-taught artists alongside conventionally trained ones, is the mastermind behind the expanded institution’s ambitious inaugural exhibition, “New Humans.”

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. Bowery and Prince.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? Cecilia Alemani. She cur(at)es the curator.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Always leave them wanting less.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I have an Italian accent.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

I believe that art has open arms, so I make shows that blur the boundaries between recognized artists and unconventional figures.

I make shows where artists present not only their work but their entire creative universe. I call them “introspectives.”

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Is this possible? Is it even advisable? Is it allowed?

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? A day off.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Lucy Lippard.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The budget.

JACOB KING

The art-world power player has placed challenging work in some of New York’s most famous buildings, proving that “lobby art” can be anything but boring and an ART ADVISOR ART ADVISOR can be much more than a tastemaker.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I don’t know if this qualifies as a single work, but the Hans Holbein retrospective at the Morgan Library in 2022 was very important for me. The world was just emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was in the midst of a difficult professional transition.

I was floored by the immediacy of these paintings that were created in a time and place that was far more violent and uncertain than our own. (Holbein died from the plague, and many of his subjects were beheaded by Henry VIII.) The works’ endurance over 500 years is astounding, and somehow, comforting. The background on my iPhone is still set to a detail shot I took of Holbein’s An Allegory of Passion , with a horse and rider galloping above a tagline from Petrarch: “And so desire carries me along.”

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More long-term thinking. People are so caught up in the moment —hustling to make a sale, or secure a show, or predict what an artwork might be worth in a year. They rarely prioritize the long-term cultivation of collectors and artists. Growing the art market will require nurturing lasting relationships and building trust. Anyone who wants to understand contemporary art—let alone try to foresee what new art might be relevant in the future—needs historical perspective.

WHAT

KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Global warming.

WHEN’S THE LAST TIME YOU WERE STARSTRUCK? [Seeing] Bruce Weber at the Amber Waves farmstand in Amagansett.

by WESTON WELLS

Photography

AMANDA NGUYEN

After the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act she helped orchestrate was passed unanimously in Congress, the ASTRONAUT, ACTIVIST, and WRITER was nominated for a Nobel Prize. This year, she’s preparing to be the first Vietnamese woman to fly into space.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Throughout my life I am constantly faced with two burning questions: What is my place in the universe? And what am I going to do about it? I’m answering the first question by flying to space and the second by fighting for civil rights here on Earth.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More open conversations about gender-based violence and more support for survivors who have had to step away from their work in STEM because of gender-based and sexual violence. A 2018 National Academies of Science report found that half of women faculty and staff, and up to half of women students, have experienced sexual harassment. Gender-based violence continues to be a barrier for women in STEM, and I hope that we can work toward a future where everyone feels safe in science.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF.

At the crossroads of justice or my astronaut dreams, I chose justice. When I decided to write the federal Survivors’ Bill of Rights, I had to put my dreams of being an astronaut on hold.

It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made. But, I knew that space would always be there

and that one day I’d come back. I’m so grateful that all of this led me here—I’m preparing to launch into space for the first time.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? I have a group of friends called the Space Sisters. They are incredible women who have all flown to space. Whenever one of us needs advice on this shared journey, it’s the first place we go. We discuss everything—our experiences around space and science, but also as women in the world.

GLENN D. LOWRY

The MOMA DIRECTOR is stepping down this fall. Over 30 years, he oversaw two renovations, one merger, and a dramatically expanded definition of what it means to lead a museum.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE?

To be able to ride my bike seven days a week.

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? Purple socks.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

I am looking forward to stepping down as the director of MoMA in September and focusing on a series of lectures that I will give at the end of the fall at the Louvre.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I am often thought of as very competitive. Just ask my wife! But I am really only competitive with myself.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST?

The cultural theorist Homi Bhabha.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I have spent a lot of time, especially during the last five years with the difficulties of the pandemic and everything that happened after it, thinking about Jack Whitten’s magisterial 2014 painting Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant. It is an extraordinary work of art that is all about the power of creativity and the boundless horizons of the human imagination.

Photography by PETER ROSS AND COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF

Photography by RIEL STURCHIO

KAVEH AKBAR

Though the WRITER has been called “poetry’s biggest cheerleader,” it was his debut novel, last year’s Martyr!, about a poet struggling to find purpose, that made him a literary world darling.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? When I die, I won’t be able to read everyone’s new books.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? The “eh” in “Kaveh” sounds like the “e” in the word “red.”

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? I was reading Heather Christle’s The Difficult Farm in the days before I got sober, and during the early weeks of sobriety I clung to it like the skull of a saint. I probably read it cover to cover a hundred times.

These figures speak the truth with a dose of humor, making the pill a bit easier to swallow. They share a gift for mixing highand low-brow cultural standpoints to poke holes in our hard-set dogmas and hold a mirror up to society’s shortcomings. Most importantly, they keep us honest.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK?

At parties, I ask “What do you love?” instead of “What do you do?”

I recommend it! If you ask “What do you do?” people just tell you what they do for money, which is often the thing about which they’re least enthusiastic.

OWEN THIELE

After breakout roles in Hacks and I Think You Should Leave, the ACTOR and PODCASTER PODCASTER is preparing for turns in this year’s upcoming series Snowflakes and Overcompensating—and developing a semi-autobiographical series for Amazon.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? I’m legally obligated to record my podcast, In Your Dreams, in the middle of the night. So probably that —and rereading the cringe texts I sent the day before.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

When I started dating my boyfriend, I didn’t like to use the bathroom at his apartment because I was shy. Instead, I would go to the Starbucks down the street. The barista was so nice and always gave me the code. Three years later, I randomly saw her at LAX. She was definitely starstruck by “bathroom boy.”

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind . I was in my peak puberty awkward years (imagine the worst-case scenario, then multiply that by five), and I would come home every day, turn on A Mighty Wind, and laugh my ass off. It’s a masterpiece.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mom. I call her every 15 minutes. Is that not normal?

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

I mostly do comedy, so I often ask myself, Is what I’m doing funny, or will it make people worry about my mental health? There’s a fine line, and I teeter.

Photography by BRIAN HICKMAN

AMELIA DIMOLDENBERG

The British COMEDIAN and HOST OF CHICKEN SHOP DATE has flirted her way into the upper echelons of Internet fame and made red carpet interviews spicy again.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Wallace and Gromit. I love them so much. Their sense of humor, awkwardness, and charming facial expressions have always inspired me.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

When I did my first red carpet interviews, I was surprised by how much attention they received. I was so happy that people found them entertaining and that my personality could shine through beyond the chicken shop.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? My interview style.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Self-belief. I have always been confident that if I have an idea, I’ll be able to make it into reality. It might take longer than planned or come about in a different way, but with self-belief and the right team around you, it’s possible.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? My name. People think it’s “chicken shop girl,” or even “chicken” sometimes, but it’s Amelia. Amelia Dimoldenberg.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The foxes in London, screeching.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? I’d like to fall in love; that would be great.

ALAN CUMMING

The ACTOR has long been a household name, but serving as the TV HOST on The Traitors brought him back to our screens. Soon, he’ll appear as the lead in Brian Cox’s directorial debut.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I am in the really lucky position of having my public persona be pretty identical to who I actually am. I know a lot of people who have to hide parts of themselves or monitor the information they allow the world to have about them, but I feel really liberated. I am an open book.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Can you see the cogs moving? Of course performance is artifice. It is spontaneity you repeatedly fake. But the trick is to make people suspend their disbelief. So I love it when people get lost in what I am doing and are genuinely worried for me in a play or a film, or when I’m doing my cabaret show and they think I’m

just making the stories up as I tell them. That’s when I know I’ve got it right.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? There’s a book called The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway, an amazing Scottish novelist, and it is this harrowing and mesmerizing story about going through such trauma and anxiety and slowly losing it. I read it when I was going through something similar, and although maybe you shouldn’t read about nervous breakdowns when you are having one, it was so beautifully written and so raw that it made me realize I was not the only person to ever have gone through something like this. It gave me hope that I would come out the other side, and I did.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I am prepared to be vulnerable.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

Serving androgyny and queerness to an America that is being brainwashed into thinking both are the enemy.

Photography by

CHELSEA HANDLER

The COMEDIAN and best-selling WRITER, who just released new work in both mediums, has proven that even after two decades in the business, there’s still plenty left to reveal.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Skiing in my bathing suit.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? People with bare feet on airplanes.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Cher.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? Hitting number one on the New York Times list with my most recent book, I’ll Have What She’s Having.

DARREN STAR

The TELEVISION WRITER and PRODUCER behind Sex and the City and Emily in Paris has met the concept of guilty pleasure television head-on, proving that there’s nothing to be guilty about.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Coming up with the next episode.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? I love reading any book about the creative process when I’m feeling stuck. The War of Art [by Steven Pressfield] is an especially great one.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Demonstrating female independence.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My honesty.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Hopefully, not another pregnancy.

Why will people want to watch this? And, Does it move me?

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Season five of Emily in Paris, filming in Rome and Paris. Embarking on two new series: Climbing in Heels for Universal Television, and one more that’s yet to be announced.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Resilience.

PAUL FEIG

The DIRECTOR and PRODUCER captured the indignities of high school in Freaks and Geeks. He continues to explore the complexities of class and power with projects like Another Simple Favor and The Housemaid—making us laugh at ourselves along the way.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? A martini. To me, it’s the most beautiful drink in the world and the ultimate symbol of grown-up fun. As a kid, I only wanted to be an adult and seeing adults drinking martinis symbolized the height of maturity to me.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. James Brown is my hero. He was the ultimate performer and a musical genius who knew how to truly move people. His music always makes me happy.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Crying. I would cry at the drop of a hat. I was scared of everything, and I was too emotional and way too sensitive. It was so debilitating that I had to force myself to not be emotional as I got older. I don’t think I’ve cried in decades. It’s probably not very healthy.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Does anyone want to see this? Is this something that, if I saw a trailer for it and it wasn’t me who made it, I would actually be excited to watch? Is it entertaining? I have no interest in making things that people consider homework.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Tenacious ambition. I’ve always known what I’ve wanted, and I’ve done everything in my power to get it. But I’ve also tried to do it as morally and as kindly as I can. Achieving your goals by ruining other people’s days holds no interest to me. If you can get what you want and still have people like and respect you, that’s the ultimate achievement. And it’s just how you should run your life as a member of society.

Photography by JOSH TELLES

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I believe that any success I have is because I love and know God. The special thing about me is that I love myself so much and have so much fun with myself. I think that’s because I felt God’s love for me first.

It’s easier to love yourself if you believe a higher power loves you. God makes me feel free, and funny, and alive. Oh, also I have a huge rack!

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? Yes! Next question.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I want to open up a restaurant. Kidding, but I have learned to cook this year and it’s become one of my favorite hobbies. I just want to keep working on projects that excite me with people I’m obsessed with being around. I think it would be fun to do something really dramatic, or maybe a horror film. But above all else, I just want to hold on to the things I have—my partner, friends, family, and God. I’ve won the lottery every day for forever.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I would love to see fewer red carpets and more pool parties. How fun would it be if instead of walking the red carpet, everyone was just swimming around waving at each other? I would also love to see more mixed-genre films. Sci-fi/coming-of-age? Mystery/comedy? I want a rom-com/slasher where you don’t know if you’re going to get a kiss or a jump scare.

MEGAN STALTER

The COMEDIAN and ACTOR won over audiences as an impossibly confident, woefully incompetent nepo baby in Hacks. She’ll woo us again as the romantic lead in Lena Dunham’s forthcoming Netflix series Too Much.

BENITO SKINNER

The COMEDIAN, otherwise known as Benny Drama, comes to Prime Video next month as the WRITER and PRODUCER of Overcompensating, his new series about a closeted jock.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Marissa Cooper dying in The O.C.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Frank Ocean’s Tumblr letter got me through that gay phase where you fall in love with a straight man… really scary.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? God, I call Mary Beth Barone 30 times a day—usually from the tub. She’s seen my dick on FaceTime once a week for five years. That’s family.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Performing “Oops! … I Did it Again” anytime we had people over to my house. I didn’t take requests.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? My TV show Overcompensating is coming out on

little miss Prime Video! I’ve been working on it for about five years now, so it feels so surreal that it’s finally happening. I’m gonna throw up!

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? When I was writing Overcompensating, I never thought about having to actually perform the scenes. I just wanted them to be as truthful, funny, or devastating as possible. Then I would show up on set, read the sides, and be like, Damn, Benny. Why the fuck did you do this to us? Photography

Photography by

TALIA RYDER

The ACTOR, fresh off starring in Anne Imhof’s latest performance piece, DOOM, will next be seen in Ethan Coen’s road trip flick, Honey Don’t!, alongside Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mom. I would say my brother and sister too, but they don’t answer their phones.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK?

My involvement in Anne Imhof’s latest piece, DOOM.

I had never done anything like that before; the process and type of performing were totally

foreign to me. It was incredibly vulnerable and cathartic. It was a beautiful experience that brought so many people together.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I was known for how much I loved dance. And how much I loved the Muppets. I think I was a little intense. I love hard; I always have.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Nicolas Cage.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN

IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Matilda the Musical. It moved me when I was 12, and it still moves me to this day. I was lucky enough to see it on the West End recently. “Nobody else is gonna put it right for me / Nobody but me is gonna change my story.”

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Never letting anyone know your next move. I am constantly reinventing myself as an artist and person. I think my choice of projects to work on is surprising to a lot of people. I love challenging myself and trying new things.

CHI OSSÉ

The youngest NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBER in history is showing politicians across the country how to harness social media to cut through the noise. Exhibit A: His video series Why Is Shit Not Working.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

Some people think I don’t take my job seriously because I have fun with it. I get sarcastic comments about my “little videos” and not doing the hard work of government. But I do both. I think we have to.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Politics are increasingly driven by cultural kinship instead of policy. I’m trying to make political participation accessible and cool. I try to make this work fun and engaging. People spend more time on TikTok and Instagram Reels than TV or Netflix these days. They’re coming for entertainment. I try to have fun and make it fun to come along for the ride, and I think we’re seeing that play a pretty central role in the ongoing merger of culture and politics. Last year, I defeated the real estate lobby in New York to pass the FARE Act, which ended forced rental broker fees. Big money had beaten every previous attempt, but I used social media power to mobilize the people and win. That was both a contribution to culture and a use of cultural strength to change lives.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More spine! Fewer spineless people bending over for big money!

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KELLY MCCARTHY

NARA SMITH

The MODEL and CONTENT CREATOR CONTENT CREATOR has conquered the Internet with her ASMR-coded take on the tradwife phenomenon, making everything from toothpaste to soda from scratch while decked out in couture.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Most nights, I find myself unable to put down my current fantasy book—even when I want get to bed early.

The rest of the time, I sit in bed tweaking recipes and thinking about what to have for breakfast the next morning.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? I’m with my husband constantly. When I’m not, I call him more than I probably need to. He always has something helpful to say in hard moments, and he helps sort my thoughts.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Having an abundance of books in my room. Fantasy, cookbooks, Greek mythology, you name it.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Being ambitious and hardworking. If I have a goal in mind, I’ll do everything I can to achieve it.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

So much. I’m very passionate about all that I get to do—cooking, fashion, beauty—and I have so many ideas. I’m excited to keep on building.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Am I staying true to my brand and vision? Does this have longevity?

Photography courtesy of NARA SMITH

TONY TULATHIMUTTE

The Whiting and O. Henry–winning WRITER of Private Citizens turned the literary world on its head last year with the release of Rejection, which maps our modern, digitally mediated discontents.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? It would be nice to see more of an even playing field with debut books—fewer seven-figure jackpots at the expense of other threadbare advances. I would like to see health insurance for writers happen somehow. Also, you should always buy from indie booksellers unless it’s absolutely not an option.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? My last name. You get four letters in and then it just breaks your will.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. Recently, I had to decide whether to be a loose-jeans guy. My friends tell me it’s what Zoomers are wearing, but I’m doing it precisely because I’m middle-aged. I’ve bought a trial pair of Levi’s 555 Relaxed Straight Jeans and am going to wear them until I get made fun of. Then it’s back to the millennial 501s I guess.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK?

Suffering, shame, humiliation, and a one-pan roasted salmon and broccoli recipe that will knock your socks off.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I was generally not known at all, but I was probably best known in second grade for being accused of dealing drugs after I offered another kid an Altoid. This was at the height of the D.A.R.E. era. They made me go to the principal’s office and presented me with the Altoid in a baggie and everything. Curiously strong indeed!

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Photography

CLAYTON CUBITT

YOUNG MAZINO

The ACTOR made a grand entrance into our lives on the high-octane series Beef, which garnered him an Emmy nom. He secured his place on our screens this spring with an appearance in Opus and a lead role on the second season of The Last of Us.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Not sure if this counts, but I leave lighters wherever I go, involuntarily. And I tend to steal them from other people, also involuntarily.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Agnes Pelton. She was a painter who moved from New York to Cathedral City in her 50s, and there she began to make her sublime “Desert Transcendentalist” work. I was at an exhibit of hers and they showed her artistic evolution over the years, and it really put things into perspective for me. I trust the process.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

I was unhinged. I liked to run around on all fours like a cheetah, and I had something called an Ace Ventura dance.

I’d spend hours drawing stick-figure armies, and I played a lot of violin and basketball. I did not pay attention in class.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I want my loved ones to be healthy and happy. I want to make great films —whether that’s through acting or writing and directing. I want to settle down and start a family. I want to stop mouth-breathing in my sleep.

Photography by ANGELLA CHOE

COOPER KOCH

The ACTOR broke through with grizzly thrillers like Swallowed and They/Them. Last year’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story escalated his heartthrob status to new heights.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Turning 29!

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Being overly dramatic about everything.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

Why am I saying what I’m saying?

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? A great story to tell.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Trust.

Photography by NINO MUÑOZ

CLAIRE MCKINNEY & SOPHIE ANDES-GASCON

The SC103 FOUNDERS AND CREATIVE DIRECTORS SC103 FOUNDERS AND CREATIVE DIRECTORS embody a DIY aesthetic tailor-made for Gen Z’s sartorial leanings. The pair are following in the footsteps of material-driven masterminds like Susan Cianciolo, earning them a foot in the art world as well.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Everything looks better worn-in, washed, sun-kissed.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE.

Claire McKinney: Memories of odors—good and bad.

Sophie Andes-Gascon: Family reports from the jungle.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT

WOULD IT BE? Perseverance.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

The magic of a duo built on independence and trust is the element of surprise every time a new direction, character, or technique presents itself to one of us, and the other gets to see it unfurl—[like] Sophie’s ceramic dioramas, Claire’s hand-lettering, and many more. We like to conceal some things, then celebrate it together.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

Another runway show for all, produced in partnership with our loving and loyal friends. See you there.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

McKinney: Outdoor experiments. Andes-Gascon: Being bossy.

Each of these creatives has, at some point in their career, been told,

can’t do that”—and then gone ahead and done it anyway. They are all proof that coloring inside the lines will only get you so far.

“You

PERCIVAL EVERETT

The WRITER, known for acerbic social zingers like Erasure or last year’s National Book Award–winning James, has spent his four-decade-long career subverting expectations and defying genre.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? I am kept up at night by thoughts of the world that my kids will be entering as adults. The anti-intellectual right shows little regard for building a better place to think and live. I want my children to live lives of meaningful exploration, not simply survive.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

I surprise myself every day, or perhaps every day surprises me. I made a painting last week unlike any of my other works. I keep thinking it is not done, but I cannot see anything else I can do to it. It came from someplace, but I don’t know where. It makes perfect sense to me, but I don’t understand it.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? People think that I am a workaholic.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

I would like to see readers more interested in being confused by texts.

I would like some of the meaning that is made to come from an interrogation of the form and the idea of storytelling. I would like the film industry to stop relying on the (rather bogus) claim that anything is based on a real story. All stories are real and true and none of them have happened.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? I would like to see my sons grown, safe, and happy. What else is there?

Photography by JAMESON BALDWIN

KATHRYN HAHN

The ACTOR has given complex female characters of yore a run for their money with turns in deliciously uninhibited fare like I Love Dick and Mrs. Fletcher. With her foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and this year’s Hollywood satire The Studio, we won’t be looking away.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK?

Probably my snort when laughing. I also have a pretty loud, hearty, and startling sneeze.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Peter Gabriel’s music got me through a lot of break-ups and heartbreak when I was a teen. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? Sometimes, I’m not taken seriously because of my class-clown energy. I’m trying to work on that without losing my joy.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I want to see auteurs given more trust in their visions and voices, and less cooks in the kitchen. I

would love to see this industry chill out about how much money a movie has to make. As long as it makes more than it costs, that is something to celebrate.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Camille Claudel, an incredible sculptor who lived in the shadow of her more famous lover, [Auguste] Rodin. She fought for her art and constantly challenged the idea of the “muse.” I’m influenced by her belief in herself above all else.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Oh god. I think it’s the films and shows I’ve been in with women directors and writers my age who were fearless in showing us in all our complexity. Plus, they were funny.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

Agatha All Along was constantly a surprise. We went deeper and deeper as the show went on—I didn’t realize just how dark it would get. Wow, I’m proud I was a part of that.

SADIE MAE BURNS & ANTHONY HA

After building a cult following with their transient pop-up, Ha’s Đăc Biêt, the RESTAURATEURS opened Ha’s Snack Bar last December on the Lower East Side, where they serve up reliably adventurous fare.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Sadie Mae Burns: Reading Google reviews about our restaurant.

Anthony Ha: Finding my dream car on Facebook Marketplace.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Fingers crossed, restaurant number two is on the way. Big year!

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Burns: I started walking very early on, which my parents say was due to an itch to constantly be socializing and front and center at every party. Not much has changed.

Ha: I was known for touching everything— from cars to poking around people’s fridges.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Seeking new standards in the restaurant world, from the quality of the produce we use to the way we work and lead a team. We are always trying to keep these practices at the forefront of what we do. Restaurant work is incredibly grueling, so we try to pepper in as much fun and levity as we can. Ultimately, when people feel taken care of and respected, that’s when the best work comes through.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More sharing of ideas! Less hate and ultra-competitiveness. Things got really gatekeep-y for a while, which is such a boring way to operate. Much more fun when you can learn from your peers and unabashedly draw inspiration from all over.

Photography by LUCIA

TORREY PETERS

The author of the smash debut novel Detransition, Baby is avoiding the sophomore slump with this spring’s genre-bending Stag Dance.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? For years, I have driven a pink motorcycle—a Yamaha F2700. But recently, I’ve entered a suit era, and that can be my new calling card. I’ve been wearing a black suit with a silk pussybow blouse and it has felt really good for me. Of course, there’s no reason I couldn’t wear the suit on the motorcycle.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. The Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness. I think about his masterpiece Independent People once a week. I could make myself cry by reciting the characters’ names. My life as a New York transsexual and the life of a poor Icelandic sheep farmer during the early 1900s may not seem to have much overlap (they don’t), but Laxness’s wry compassion is the tone I constantly strive for.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

I’m a novelist, not exactly the most glamorous of the arts. I have to do what I can to romanticize the profession. Therefore, yes! So many groupies. Many fainting admirers. Everyone is always like, “Please recite a passage of your work while we bite our lower lips and swoon!”

WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I wrote a book, Detransition, Baby about motherhood and the desire to have children. I think for a while people thought I was baby-crazy. I’m not. I wrote that book to figure out whether I wanted to be a mother, and it helped me figure out that I didn’t really need to be one. As soon as I decided that, I ended up as a stepmother to a 15-year-old. That’s exactly the right amount of parenting responsibility for me. My son, I believe, would agree.

FRANCIS KURKDJIAN

Even if you don’t follow fragrances, you’ll recognize this perfumer’s signature bottle. The left-aligned typeface is a staple of chic vanity tops, and his position as PERFUME CREATION

DIRECTOR OF PARFUMS CHRISTIAN DIOR

DIRECTOR OF PARFUMS CHRISTIAN DIOR offers him twice the shelf space.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s 1975 film Le Sauvage. It’s a romantic comedy in which the sublime, lively, and amusing Catherine Deneuve falls in love with Yves Montand, a moody yet seductive perfumer. He portrays a solitary creator who has cut himself off from the world on his island to escape the Big Firm. This fast-paced, brilliant comedy, loved by many from my generation in France, was a revelation for me. This character of the perfumer, idealized and romanticized, has always fascinated me. I wanted to be him!

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I come from a culture of superstition. I even recently created a fragrance called Bois Talisman, which brings

together my quirks and the legendary superstitions of Christian Dior. I tend to believe in signs too; I carry lucky charms and do card readings.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I lived for classical dance. It was my dream, my absolute. I danced a lot, all the time, with rigor and passion. In the end, fate decided otherwise. I am not a dancer, but a perfumer, and it is very good like that.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Is my story good? Have I found the right words? For me, a fragrance must absolutely begin with words —a name and a story that I want to tell about its origins and identity. Without that, a scent has no soul.

Right: Photography by WOLFE+VON FOR CHRISTIAN

Left: Photography by HUNTER

PAT MCGRATH

The first MAKE-UP ARTIST to be made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, BEAUTY BRAND FOUNDER BEAUTY BRAND FOUNDER Pat McGrath proved her mettle once again with her glass skin look for Maison Margiela’s 2024 Spring Couture show, which rocked the fashion and beauty worlds.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Constantly pushing boundaries and daring to dream. I’m always going to challenge the status quo; I never settle for what’s already been done. For me, it’s about transforming the way people perceive and experience beauty, making it more inclusive, diverse, and extraordinary. All of that is wrapped up in my brand, Pat McGrath Labs.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? Little Pat McGrath was an alchemist and a dreamer from day one. I was mixing pigments in the kitchen and making my own skincare when I wasn’t stealing my mum’s, shopping for fabrics that I could create with,

and running to the newsstand to buy fashion magazines. It has always been so much fun for me to create whatever I wanted—even at an early age.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Does it move me? If it doesn’t stir something in me, it won’t reach anyone else.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? Creating the glass skin for Margiela. Seeing it come alive with Galliano’s designs was utterly spellbinding. The reason I

created Pat McGrath Labs was to take a moment like that and then create something tangible for people to use at home.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

Showing that beauty belongs to everyone. Every shade, every face, and every story deserves to shine.

MICHAEL GOVAN

The CEO AND DIRECTOR OF THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART has been a tireless advocate of the Angeleno art scene. With LACMA’s forthcoming expansion, he is poised to transform what museum architecture can look like.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? I guess I’m known for building museums—the Guggenheim museums, Dia Beacon, etc. In my 35 years of working, I don’t think I’ve ever not been under construction.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

This is the big year when we put finishing touches on LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries—hundreds of millions of dollars of philanthropy, and a decade and a half in the making. (It’s kept me up many, many nights.)

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE.

The design of Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks, including Central Park. I always feel that walking through a museum should be a little more like walking through a park, finding your way through surprising paths of discovery.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? My skill in drawing. Art was my favorite activity for as long as I can remember. And I’ve programmed computers since they were just fancy calculators.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? Art museums need to be more about sharing art beyond their galleries. We’re doing everything we can to share our collections, not just with other art museums, but with local communities, schools, and places you wouldn’t expect to see LACMA’s masterpieces.

JAMIE HOOD

Following the release of 2020’s How to Be a Good Girl and her ongoing, Proust-infused newsletter, regards, marcel, the endlessly experimental WRITER is back with Trauma Plot, a lesson in the art of the post-#MeToo memoir.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Oh god, so many—art is why I’m still here. When I was younger, it was usually music: Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love, Joanna Newsom’s Ys Nina Simone and Patsy Cline, of course. The films of Catherine Breillat and Jane Campion— also Twin Peaks —gave a texture to my grief and my boundless desire.

And, yes, books: the poems of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the

novels of Shirley Hazzard. It’s devastating to watch people look to A.I. slop as a possible future for art, which it can and will never be.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My two best friends and I are in a group chat we’ve named “Low Engagement, High Breasts,” and it functions—by virtue of a shared, insatiable desire to send voice notes to one another—like a kind of 24/7 phone call. We talk about everything in our lives—our pleasures, our terrors, our yearnings; we send memes and tweets; we gossip about men; and we workshop our writing (between summer 2024 and spring 2025, all three of us published new books). The

rhythm of my days can be charted by our chatter. The happiness they bring to my life is immeasurable.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE LESS OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? Cynicism. Paranoid reading. Venture capital.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? People always tell me they’re intimidated by me, but I wish they’d understand it’s mostly that I’m sort of shy with new people and in new spaces. Plus, I have a forehead full of Botox. It gives me a rather imperious look.

by

Photography

IAN STEARNS

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Chaplin, Kurosawa, and Kubrick movies.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY OF YOURS, WHAT WOULD IT BE? A sense of humor and capacity for self-criticism.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? I feel fortunate that my work gives me opportunities to engage with diverse cultures, exchanging ideas and perspectives through design.

Beyond buildings, I try to contribute to culture by finding different avenues to share and shape conversations around architecture—giving lectures, teaching, exhibitions, and writing.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More open-ended spaces, less preconceived notions of architectural typologies.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

The New Museum expansion. It’ll be our first public cultural building in New York.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Do I truly believe in the design, or am I just trying to sell it?

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Zoom calls.

SHOHEI SHIGEMATSU

The prolific ARCHITECT and OMA PARTNER OMA PARTNER has refused to adhere to a singular style and injected a sense of play into long scoffed-at retail design. This has made him one of his discipline’s most interesting storytellers.

KATIE KITAMURA

The list of publications that hailed the WRITER’s novel Audition, released in April, as one of this year’s most anticipated is nearly as long as the preview blurb itself. But after Kitamura’s compulsively readable Intimacies, who could blame them?

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? I used to plan elaborate parties for my family—with menus and activities and games and prizes. I did this on a pretty regular basis. My parents and my older brother were forced to participate. Nobody else was invited. In retrospect, I can see that they were very good-humored about it.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? I avoid telephones as much as possible.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Extinction.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Agatha Christie. I read her novels over and over again as a child. I didn’t realize it until fairly recently, but that’s probably the reason why so many of my novels tip their hat to the mystery genre.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

A friend once said to me, “Your books are in a minor key, but you are in a major key.” I think I’m more cheerful than people expect me to be.

KRIS BOWERS

Bridgerton, The Color Purple, The Wild Robot—you name it, Bowers scored it. The Oscar-nominated COMPOSER plays classical for a pop audience and hits the perfect note time after time.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Is this triggering the right emotions?

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

Should that theme have quarter notes or eighth notes?

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? They assume I have nothing to say, but I’m just discerning about when I speak.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. My Bloody Valentine.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? A strong desire to actively listen.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? I hope not!

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I want to see a broader range of composers working on big-budget films and to end the pigeonholing of creators from diverse backgrounds.

Left: Photography by CLAYTON CUBITT

Right: Photography by MOLLY CRANNA

LAUFEY

At only 14, the musician appeared on Iceland’s Got Talent. Now, at 26, the Grammy winner’s masterful blend of classical training, jazz influences, and effusive pop has made her a viral phenomenon far beyond the borders of her home country.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The fact that I live on the other side of the world from my family.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

When I first moved on my own to LA, the words of Joan Didion really got me through.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? I recently did choreography—contemporary dance—for a music video, and I didn’t know I could move like that!

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. How to grow as a musician while staying true to myself and where I came from.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? I hope I’ve helped at least one aspiring artist to look beyond the rules and constraints of genre.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I grew up in a musical family and knew music was an option from the day I was born. I want kids [who aren’t] from musical or privileged backgrounds to get the same opportunities.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

I’m always thinking about my younger self —whether I’m listening to music I think she would’ve loved, or writing directly to her.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

All I know is that I still get starstruck meeting my idols, even after years in this industry.

Photography by NICOLE MAGO

JT

After a meteoric rise as one-half of the Miami rap duo City Girls, the RAPPER took a leap of faith, launching a solo career that has made her a regular on the Billboard Hot 100.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025? Elevation and diva activities all year long. Stay tuned.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? Who cares?

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? When I was a little girl, I was always, always talking.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Bollywood.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My boyfriend.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE?

To succeed beyond expectations.

Photography by HEATHER GILDROY

MAX HOLLEIN

Since joining the museum, the MET DIRECTOR AND CEO has overseen over 100 exhibitions that have pushed the legacy institution into the new century, as well as the construction of a forthcoming Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

Forty-three Met exhibition openings, four galas, one opening of a new wing, and travel to India, Peru, Japan, France, China, Korea, and a sleepy backwater village in upper Austria for our annual three-week family summer vacation.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I have been very interested in alternative, post-punk, and noise rock for years. [As a teenager, I] went to every concert of the Wire, Hüsker Dü, the Sugarcubes, the Fall, Black Flag, Toy Dolls, and the like that I could. It was an important part of growing up.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? I might come across as reserved, calculating, and managerial, but am actually quite impulsive and value creativity, risk, and challenge above all.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Many people make a direct connection between me and my father—the Pritzker Prize–winning, museum-building avant-garde architect. But it was really my mother, with her sensitivity, empathy, openness, and care, who has had the most profound influence on who I am.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

During my first-ever visit to the Venice Biennale with my parents as a 3-year-old, I fell into the Grand Canal and a gondolier had to fish me out of the water.

He called me “Massimo Terribile” and my parents did the same for years after.

When culture shifts from one era to another, these visionaries clock it. When history needs a rewrite, they pen it. Their antennae are always up—and we’re the beneficiaries of their vigilance.

SEÁN MCGIRR

Lifted from the studio of JW Anderson for his role as CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF MCQUEEN OF MCQUEEN, McGirr’s two-year tenure at the brand has already stirred plenty of controversy—a fitting ode to the brand’s founder, who enjoyed shock almost as readily as style.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? Usually it’s a jacket, or the heel of a shoe.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? I was reading Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow when I left Tokyo and moved to Paris. It was an interesting time.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I really love Nine Inch Nails.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To be inspired daily.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? Mostly my name. The accent is missing from the “á” sometimes, but many people do get it right and I appreciate that!

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK?

But… does it feel McQueen?

Photography by JOHANA KASALICKA

SAIDIYA HARTMAN

The MacArthur Fellow and Columbia University PROFESSOR has given us new language and frames of reference with which to discuss African American literature and history, as an immersive WRITER on the afterlife of slavery, 20th-century rule-breakers, and more.

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT? The state of the world.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT

MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Walter Benjamin.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? To explore new forms of expression.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? A deep connection to the ancestors.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Have I reached the heart of it? ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU? No.

EMILY SUNDBERG

The WRITER of the cult Substack newsletter Feed Me is the millennial Carrie Bradshaw—but instead of writing about sex, she writes about money—and how a certain set of New Yorkers is getting and spending it.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I think I was really onto something in 2021 when I wrote my story about the cultural dairy renaissance. The headline was “Hot girls are drinking whole milk,” and the gist was that everyone from baristas to cheesemongers were feeling an abandonment of alternative milk. Fast-forward to now—the raw milk, the cottage cheese, the colostrum—and it’s like, duh.

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Did I buy a new bag of coffee yesterday?

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT FOR YOURSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE? An uninterrupted mojito with the correct lime-to-mint ratio. High “open” rates. Unlimited towels for every shower I take. The strength to politely decline, instead

of last-minute canceling with four apologies. A vaccine for writer’s block. Privacy!

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Vigilance.

WHAT’S COMING UP FOR YOU IN 2025?

I’m making a podcast about young men in America. There was a point in late 2023 when media was obsessed with the idea of girlhood—the Prada bows, the Barbie movie, and a deep nostalgia for a specific kind of innocent, pink femininity. I didn’t relate to it. But more importantly, I didn’t see men having similar conversations of what it meant to be a boy in America. My questions about Gen Z men multiplied during the election last year, and I ended up calling about 30 of my college-aged readers to start researching their experiences. I

think it will be an empathy-building project, or at the least entertaining.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I watched both versions of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games during Covid. I was living with an ex in Beverly Hills and I didn’t know any of my neighbors. The mundanity of how the film takes form (a vacationing couple gets held hostage by summertime neighbors) stuck with me while going on walks or falling asleep at night, and inspired some of the original short fiction stories I wrote on Substack in 2020. I still often think about what goes on behind the closed doors of my neighbors, and how many people I know go home on first dates to strange apartments.

Photography by GABRIELLE SCELZO

LAUREN SHERMAN

The longtime FASHION JOURNALIST has become one of the most influential voices in the industry with Line Sheet, a Puck newsletter that explores the backchanneling, backstabbing, and board-room shenanigans that keep the fashion world interesting.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Anne of Green Gables. I had a pretty lonely childhood (only child, single mom, lack of interest in organized sports), and a book was often my only companion. The Lucy Maud Montgomery series about an orphan living on Prince Edward Island, just trying to stay out of trouble and pursue an interesting life, honestly made me feel like it was possible that I could do the same. It taught me that you could have everything you wanted: a career, a marriage, and a pretty dress (the protagonist, Anne Shirley, was obsessed with “puffed” sleeves)—even if you weren’t born into such fortunate circumstances. Also, this is where I first found the term “kindred spirits”—or people who share a similar sensibility and outlook on life—which is something I still think about a lot.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

My curly hair and asking too many questions. The neighbor would often refer to me as “Oprah.”

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. My first real reporting job was at a business magazine, so I read a lot of James Surowiecki’s old column in The New Yorker, called “The Financial Page,” which taught me how to write about business and economics in a clear, entertaining way. But I’d say the author Michael Lewis and in particular his debut, Liar’s Poker —about his time working as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the 1980s boom—made a huge impression on me and has deeply influenced how I approach my work.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More creativity. Over the past decade, the fashion industry got lazy because consumers were overconsuming. You could present a dirty dish towel and they would buy it. There was a reticence to take risks because what was already available was selling. But now, fashion consumers have closets full of clothes and more sophisticated taste than ever, and they’re asking, Why should I buy something else? Executives in the industry have to get more creative, hire more daring talents, and ask themselves, Why should someone buy this?

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? Why would anyone want to read this? If I don’t know the answer, then I have a problem.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? Persistence. The only thing that works is to keep working.

WILLA BENNETT

After making HighSnobiety into a brand to be reckoned with, Bennett is employing her sixth sense for virality as EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF COSMOPOLITAN AND SEVENTEEN, breathing new life into dusty legacy media.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. The Wizard of Oz. Something about stepping into a completely new world and making it your own has always stuck with me—maybe that’s why I love reinvention so much. (And maybe why I insisted on dressing like Dorothy for an alarming amount of time as a kid.)

I grew up addicted to early-2000s Internet culture. I came up in the era of chaotic Tumblr fandoms, hyper-personal LiveJournal essays, and niche forums where people wrote with zero filter and maximum passion. That kind of raw, unpolished, emotional storytelling shaped the way I think about writing today. I love stories

that feel personal—like they were made by a real person with a real perspective. I love writing that leaves me thinking about it the next day. And the days after.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? A commitment to wearing ties and menswear in a way that makes people wonder if I’m about to give a very important lecture or start a band. I’ve always been drawn to the tension between polished and irreverent—pairing something classic with something completely unserious, whether through fashion or the way I approach my work.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN

IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Twilight, because it hit at exactly the right time. But also Portrait of a Lady on Fire —a film that understood longing better than anything I’d seen before.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF. Balancing reinvention with legacy. Cosmo has such a strong voice and a rich history, but media is constantly evolving, and the way people engage with brands now is so different from even three years ago. I’ve had to navigate how to push the brand into new spaces— social, digital, cultural—without losing what makes it iconic.

Photography by CARTER HOWE

MATTHEW GASDA

The BROOKLYN CENTER FOR THEATRE RESEARCH FOUNDER AND PLAYWRIGHT puts on shows that excavate the lives of young people—think Zoomers, Dimes Square hangers-on, the polyamorous—and he does it on a budget befitting of a non-trust-fund youngster.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? Doing small plays in small places that have an outsized influence and create a lot of talk, both online and offline. I’ve discovered that I can inject myself into memes or the zeitgeist—whatever you want to call it—and find something human and alive in a situation, a type of person, or a person people have a lot of opinions about. I look for something human, interesting, or surprising. In other words, I’ve taken the plays I grew up writing—family dramas and relationship dramas—and turned them toward public culture: Dimes Square, Zoomers, Doomers

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? They see one of the many things

I do and associate me with it. I take a kind of pride in that. But in reality, I’m performing an act of ventriloquism to provoke reaction, to understand myself and the world better, and to create something entertaining, thoughtful, and—dare I say—deep. I’m not ingratiating myself with my subjects. In many ways, my view of life and my subjects is deeply critical. I am none of the things I write about.

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

A DIY spirit. Everything I’ve done has been for under $10,000. I might be the only person on this list who still has a day job.

Yet the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, my company in Greenpoint, is increasingly influential. We have a huge, thriving community built around a simple philosophy: Write something, edit it, workshop it, put it up as fast as possible. Don’t make excuses if it’s not good enough—make it better on the fly.

Photography by SOPHIA

SAM FRAGOSO

The PODCAST CREATOR PODCAST CREATOR’s program, TALK EASY WITH SAM FRAGOSO, launched in 2016, is practically a rite of passage for creatives taking a sharp turn in their career (up, left, right, you name it), with past guests including Mikey Madison, Hilton Als, Sebastian Stan, and Joaquin Phoenix.

WHAT’S YOUR TRADEMARK? The follow-up question.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

I moved to Los Angeles in August of 2016, right around the release of Blonde, which definitely eased my entry into this strange, unknowable, and sprawling city. Then Trump won (the first time) and the record started to feel like an elegy. I miss Frank.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU? That I’m actually just the adult version of Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused .

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Michael Jordan. I grew up in Chicago playing basketball, and his obsessiveness—his drive and passion, his tunnel vision—has fundamentally shaped how I make Talk Easy

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? In every industry, I’d love to see more investment in artists trying to tell new stories about what it feels like to be living through this moment. Less straight men in front of microphones talking about how they “maximize” their days and “minimize” their pain. We’re at capacity.

MARA BROCK AKIL

The Girlfriends creator returns this year as WRITER and PRODUCER of the new series Forever, following a pair of LA high-schoolers falling in and out of love for the first time.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE? Various portraits of Black women, from Joan, Toni, Maya, and Lynn to my latest portrait of Keisha Clark. In far too many mediums, our image has either been completely missing or distorted. I am proud to have hung some lovely, complex, and vulnerable reflections of Black women on the walls of our America.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

It blows

my mind

that I am recognized as much as I am. I am always met with so much love and respect, and honestly it is a highlight for me to hear firsthand the impact I have had on someone’s life through my stories.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I follow my heart.

Right: Photography by HEATHER

GILROY

Left: Photography by

JENNA JONES

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? The first thing I did when I arrived at MoMA PS1 was invite Ralph Lemon to create an exhibition. It surprised us both when he agreed, and the project turned out to be not just a highlight for PS1 but also a personal milestone. Uplifting PS1’s long history of supporting movement-based art is a project close to my heart, and Ralph is one of those rare artists whose work inspires and surprises on a daily basis.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? More intelligence and courage, less bad writing, more inspired choices, more sustainable practices, a smaller carbon footprint, and excellence in all we do. Excellence can mean many things, including continuing to push our cultural institutions to better represent the communities we serve.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR?

When I was young, I started “curating” my dolls, toys, and books in my bedroom. My family humored me and allowed me to tour them through my exhibits.

I’ve always thought of those sweet, early impulses as my budding curatorial imagination.

Little did I know of Andrea Fraser!

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE WORKING?

I often ask, What is the future of our work? What transformative role can a contemporary art space play in the 21st century? These are guiding questions for me, ensuring that the work we do is always forward-thinking and relevant.

CONNIE BUTLER

From remaking LA’s Hammer Museum to serving as DIRECTOR OF MOMA PS1 OF MOMA PS1 in New York, Butler has been expanding the canon and rewriting art history from coast to coast.

WOLFGANG TILLMANS

The Turner Prize-winning German PHOTOGRAPHER’s aesthetic precedes him. His stark, documentarian style and inventive gallery staging have become one of a handful of styles rigorously replicated in art schools across the country—the highest compliment a nascent image-maker could offer.

ARE PEOPLE EVER STARSTRUCK BY YOU?

Very occasionally, but I’m good at not noticing it.

WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT WERE YOU KNOWN FOR? My obsession with astronomy.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? The Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective at the British Film Institute in London was enlightening—I returned several times a week with friends to the same place.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE?

I got the idea for the new book, Things Matter / Dinge Zählen, which accompanies my show in Dresden, while leaving the studio.

I worked all weekend and on Monday I presented a finished 312-page PDF. What surprised me is that two months later, when the book was about to go to press, I realized that I hadn’t reworked 75 percent of the original pages. I still liked the collages as much as I did that first weekend.

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST?

My partner, Olly.

Photography by

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?

My infant daughter Grace has helped remind me that there are 24 hours in the day.

And to quote the title of a great David Wojnarowicz painting: History keeps me awake at night.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? The day after my father died, my brothers and I went to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. I have this wonderful picture of John and Marc flanking Matisse’s The Joy of Life, as if the painting were standing in for where Dad would be. It’s such an indelible reminder of the pleasures the past can give the present (when it’s not keeping you awake at night).

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. Fugazi played at Drexel University in the early 1990s. My dad worked there at the time. Though they weren’t exactly post-hardcore music fans, my parents must have heard them interviewed, and they introduced the band to me. I was probably 12 or 13. My work continues to be informed by them, particularly thinking about the tightrope they walked between improvisation and radical precision, heart-on-your sleeve emotion and raw aggression, political conviction and open-ended abstraction. I still try to wear their egalitarian ethos—all-ages shows, affordable ticket prices—like a uniform, even if under a suit!

WHAT QUESTION DO YOU ASK YOURSELF MOST OFTEN WHILE YOU’RE MAKING WORK? My favorite kind of art reveals itself slowly, like a mystery or a revelation. Take a candy piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. You and others can take a piece from this shimmering field, and the museum will ultimately replenish it to its ideal weight. The work is depleted and constituted anew. There’s delight and surprise and a commingling of senses, memory, and time. How do I explain this curious thing that I love to all the very smart people out there who don’t think about art every day? And what do I owe the artwork and the artist when I explain it? How much backstory—about the AIDS crisis, the artist’s biography—do I share or withhold so the work comes alive to viewers on their own terms?

DAVID BRESLIN

The MET’S CURATOR IN CHARGE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART is bringing cutting-edge masterpieces into one of New York’s most august institutions and overseeing the renovation of its Tang Wing into a temple of contemporary creation.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

NEW YORK

A PORT IN THE STORM

Christian Dior drew endless inspiration from the surroundings of Les Rhumbs, his childhood abode in Normandy. Tucked among seaside cliffs, the legendary couturier’s Belle Époque family home was ensconced in a winter garden bustling with botanical life. Embedded in the garden’s paving stones was a mosaic compass rose, rendered in shades of blue to mimic the ocean’s ever-changing hues. It would become a central motif of the designer’s storied fashion house. More than a century later, the emblem is the muse for Rose des Vents—a line of bejeweled amulets and charms designed as keepsakes with a protective power. The offering, now in its 10th year, is the brainchild of Victoire de Castellane, longtime artistic director of Dior Joaillerie. With each new collection, Rose des Vents reaches new heights while hewing close to the spirit of its origins—a timeless source of comfort and beauty.

Photography by Louise & Maria Thornfeldt

All beauty by Dior Makeup

Left: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Earrings and Ring Available

select Dior boutiques

Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Necklace and Earrings Available at select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Right: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Belt and Ring Available at select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Left: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Necklace, Ring, and Earrings

Right: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Necklace Available at select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Secret Timepiece and Ring

Available at select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Right: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Brooch and Ring

Available at select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Left: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Necklace and Earring Available

select Dior boutiques 1 800 929 Dior

Right: Dior Fine Jewelry

Rose des Vents Necklace, Earring, and Ring

Dior boutiques

Dior