July 2020
GAL GADOT A DAY IN THE
LIFE OF THE EXTRODINARY WONDER WOMAN HERLSEF
BLAKE LIVELY IS ‘AWAKENED’
TALKING ABOUT SEXISM IN HOLLYWOOD AND RAISING FEARLESS DAUGHTERS
GAL GADOT ON LIFE, LOVE, WONDER WOMAN 1984 - AND SHE AND HER FAMILY ARE COPING WITH CRISIS
SPENDING TIME WITH GAL GADOT is an exercise in nonchalance. She is the coolest of customers, so unperturbed that you get a kind of contact high: Anxieties dissipate, defenses drop, tensions drain. Even as she goes about the business of a hectic, two-kid, big-career life—maneuvering her sleek Tesla (toys on the floor, half--eaten sandwich on the seat) through the precincts of show business (Hollywood to Burbank to Beverly Hills and back again)—she manages to make it seem like she’s just meandering on a Sunday afternoon. Indeed, it feels wrong to impose any sort of agenda, anything so uptight as an interview. It’s a hang, really. Part of this is nature—born that way—but Gadot is fundamentally a creature of her environment. She grew up in Rosh Haayin, a city near Tel Aviv, but lived most of her adult life with her husband among friends and family, just a couple of blocks from the beach. She speaks Hebrew to them, English to most everyone else. Her English is not perfect, but close, her fluency such that you can see the wheels turning as she searches for the right words—and discovers new ones before your eyes. She will sometimes stumble on a phrase or an idiom, question it, then either commit or find the right one. Which is why spending time with her feels like picking your way through a new world looking at all the pretty flowers. One morning after a workout, still in Capri tights and a loose tank, she’s driving from her gym to a photo shoot at the Montage Beverly Hills. “I will always feel foreign in L.A.,” she tells me, and I nod in agreement, though distracted by the novel experience of gliding noiselessly along the surface streets of Los Angeles in her Tesla. There’s a screen in the middle of the dash the size of a television, which feels like an extension of the windshield that disappears somewhere behind your head, all of which conspires to create the sensation that we’re levitating. “I love this car,” she says. “It’s like driving an iPhone.” Suddenly, a deep, otherworldly sound—boop...boop...boop. She looks at the screen. “Just a second—that’s my mom in Israel, where it’s 8 p.m., and this is literally the only window I have to talk to her.” She touches the screen and speaks in Hebrew—one mother to another. Are you okay? How was yesterday? Don’t work too hard. Take it easy next week! “Okay, Ema,” she says, and they blow kisses to each other. This is what she misses. In many ways, the success of Wonder Woman has stranded Gadot in Los Angeles, a 15-hour flight from home. “You can’t walk anywhere here,” she says, but that is the only complaint she will lodge because complaining is not her style. But she does relate this story, about how she came back from Israel recently and on the endless drive from LAX to her house in the Hollywood
Hills, her eight-year-old daughter, Alma, said, “You know what I like about home in Israel? Everything is five minutes away. Five minutes walking to the gelato place, five minutes to the beach, five minutes to our cousins’ house. And all of our neighbors are our friends.” Gadot sighs wistfully. “But there’s always give-and-take. How do you say in English? Eat the cake and leave it whole? Eat the cake and…. There’s something with a cake.” You can’t have your cake and eat it too, I say. “Exactly.” LIFE IN L.A. before you find your tribe and your rhythm—even (especially) for a newly minted movie star—can be alienating. You live at the top of one of those famous hills with a view of theworld—a dream come true—but driving all the way down and back up for a carton of milk can take an hour. Everything must be planned, strategized, and for a spontaneous creature like Gadot, it can be constraining. And then sometimes it’s just surreal. Leaving the gym earlier, Gadot stopped to talk to a woman with long blonde hair who looked like she’d just woken up and was slowly getting her 10 minutes of cardio in before the real workout began. It was the newly slender Adele, whom I didn’t recognize until she let loose with one of those honking laughs. I’d interviewed her several years ago, and once we figured it all out, Gadot and I stood next to her while she pedaled away, talking about the Vogue cover-story treatment. The Adele encounter is a reminder: This is, in point of fact, not a hang with some cool Israeli chick. Gal Gadot is an international superstar. Though it may have seemed like she appeared out of nowhere, fully formed, in the summer of 2017 as the star of Wonder Woman, an instant hit and box-office juggernaut that grossed over $800 million worldwide, Gadot has been making movies for more than a decade, most notably as the character Gisele in four films from the Fast & Furious franchise. And yet her entire career trajectory has been one of almost-didn’t-happen serendipity. At 18, she won the 2004 Miss Israel pageant, competed in Miss Universe that year in Ecuador, and then fulfilled two years of mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat fitness instructor. While still a soldier, she met Jaron Varsano, a real estate developer 10 years her senior whom she married in 2008. Her military service complete and at loose ends, she enrolled in law school in Tel Aviv and started modeling. One day, a casting director contacted her agent and asked her to audition for the Bondgirl role in Quantum of Solace. She didn’t get the part, but the casting director remembered her, which is how she wound up auditioning for 2009’s Fast & Furious. She got that part because
the director, Justin Lin, was taken by the fact that she knew her way around a military weapon. Riding along in her car, I say that I’d read that just before Wonder Woman came along, Gadot was so unhappy with her career that she was on the verge of quitting and never coming back to Los Angeles. (Doing press for Wonder Woman, she told one reporter, “You go to the audition and you have a callback, then another callback and then a camera setup, and people are telling you your life will change if you get this part. And then you don’t get it. I reached a place where I didn’t want to do that anymore.”) So now you’re an actor living in L.A., I say, how do you feel about it? “Just . . . inertia.” She laughs. “You know, one of the people I really admire is Charlie Kaufman,” she says of the celebrated screenwriter, director, and novelist. “He rarely gives interviews. But there’s a video of him giving a BAFTA speech a few years ago, and I don’t remember it exactly, but the vibe is, You know, I’m here, but I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m a writer, I guess. But I never refer to myself as a writer, except when I’m filling out my tax forms. But you know, I want you to care about what I do; I just don’t want to care about what you think. And I thought, That’s so interesting! We’re living in a world where everything is by titles: You are a writer; I am an actress. I don’t want to sound too New Age–y . . . but we’re always evolving and changing, and life happens and takes us in different directions. Yes, I am an actress, but at the same time, I have this appetite to do more—bigger, deeper, more interesting.” THE NEXT MORNING, I meet Gadot at her daughter Maya’s school. As I am looking for a parking spot on a side street, I spot Gadot on foot and roll down the window. “Perfect timing!” she says. Even among the stylish L.A. mommies and daddies, she cuts a glamorous figure in her skintight jeans, camel coat, and enormous sunglasses. The elementary school is in one of those midcentury institutional buildings common to L.A.—it’s hard to tell where the outside ends and the inside begins. We find ourselves in a covered, open-air parking structure, with a series of couches and a coffee station that seems to be a spot for nannies and parents to congregate while dropping off the kids. Gadot is here to read to Maya’s class of three-yearolds and, with the help of Maya’s sister, Alma, decorate cupcakes. “Sheesh, what a morning!” she says as she grabs a coffee and we sit on one of the couches. “I left the book I’m supposed to read at the house, so Jaron is bringing it.” Lest you think that those scenes in Big Little Lies of California elementary school drop-off culture veer toward parody, I’m here to tell you just
the opposite: They’re closer to documentary footage. Heading inside to Maya’s Butterfly classroom, we pass through an open-air hallway with jungle gyms and play areas that look like art installations. In the classroom, there are a dozen kids and a startlingly exuberant teacher wearing a Frozen T-shirt, a blue sequined jacket, brightpink sneakers, and a mouse-ears headband, who never breaks character, even while speaking with the adults.At one point, a mom and dad in high-strung-showrunner casual arrive late with their son. The mother gets into a conversation with Gadot about the terrifying possibility of same-day birthday parties. “His birthday is actually on the 22nd,” she says. “We’re doing it on that afternoon. But our times don’t conflict so I think we’ll have good Butterfly turnout.” It’s saying something that Gadot—soldier/ model/movie star from Tel Aviv—is the most regular-seeming person in the room. When she pulls off her jacket and sits down to read her book to the kids, I notice for the first time that her hair is in a tangled ponytail and that her sapphire-blue cashmere sweater looks like it got pulled out of the hamper just before she ran out the door this morning. The teacher herds the children into formation, and everyone sits on the floor, including Gadot. The book she has chosen is about kindness, and as she starts to read—fully committed, acting out every part—the kids, to
a one, slip into that contented, enchanted, glazed stupor, hanging on every word. Too young to understand who she is—other than Maya’s mom—they nevertheless succumb to the magic of transference that great movie stars inspire. A thing to behold! Adults from all walks of life have been falling under Gal Gadot’s spell for years. Kristen Wiig, Gadot’s costar in Wonder Woman 1984, met her at the Governors Ball in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. “She walks into a room and you’re like, ‘Um, is that person real?’ But she’s such a weirdo in the best way. And so kind, such a loyal, beautiful friend. I mean, the text and voice messages she sends make me laugh so hard. They’re the highlight of my day.” Patty Jenkins, who directed both Wonder Woman movies, tells me that men, women, and children approach her with what they think is their little secret: I am in love with Gal. “So charmed by her,” she says. “Smitten from a distance. And I constantly say to all of them, ‘Here’s the shocking thing: It only gets stronger when you get to know her.’ You forget completely that she’s a movie star.” As we are zooming around Los Angeles in Gadot’s Hovercraft, she gets a call—this one from her husband, Jaron. She answers with the common Israeli term of endearment that has no English translation but sounds like Mommy.
Mommy. They speak to each other warmly in Hebrew about their schedules, and afterward I ask how the two of them met. “In the desert at this chakra/yoga retreat type of party. And he was too cool for school. Like, we were in the same group of friends, but I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. And something happened kind of from the first moment we started talking. When we got home, I was like, ‘Is this too early to call you? I want to have a date.’ Then we go out, and by the second date he told me, ‘I’m going to marry you. I’m going to wait for two years, but we’re going to get married.’ I was like, ‘Fine.’ ” Jaron remembers it in a bit more detail. “We were in a very unique laboratory—a desert retreat in the south of Israel. And both she and I were at a stage in our lives where we were thinking about what is love and what is a relationship. We started talking at 10 p.m., and we kissed at sunrise, and we held hands on the drive back to Tel Aviv. At that moment, we were just glued together. It was beautiful.” Gadot says she always knew she wanted to be a young mother—and where she goes, so goes the family. Alma is also enrolled at a school in London because Gadot has shot three films there in as many years, including Death on the Nile, which is due to come out later this year. The director, Kenneth
Branagh, says, “I get the sense that she feels very secure in her family life: She knows what they are, who they are, and that they are with her. And I think that lets her be adventurous in her work and also at ease in her work. She’s a serious person, so she knows the world is a tricky and challenging place from time to time, but there is this ongoing sense of fun about her, and it seems to come out of the wellspring of family. She is determined to smell the roses along the way, and it makes her an exceptionally sort of effortlessly positive energy to be around.” AFTER THE VISIT TO her daughter’s school, Gadot drives us to the San Vicente Bungalows, Hollywood’s newest members-only clubhouse. There are a lot of silly rules here, including a ban on camera phones, which requires an elaborate ritual of temporary confiscation of nonmember phones so that they may be covered in cute little stickers, which are meant to disable the camera and microphone. Luckily, the place is like a dream, achingly romantic, with flowers and climbing vines and green-and-white striped umbrellas. Indeed, it looks like the kind of spot you might find along the beach in Tel Aviv. “You see?” she says when we sit down. “It’s like we’re having a date. And it’s Valentine!” Three years ago, Jaron sold his entire real estate portfolio, including the hotel, and he and Gadot moved to L.A. when
she was five months pregnant with Maya. Jaron was now the one at loose ends, and Gal said to him, “You’re a developer. Develop movies.” And then one night they had dinner with Annette Bening, who encouraged them both. “You two think and talk so beautifully about making movies,” she said. “Go and find amazing projects.” Now they are partners in an ambitious production company, Pilot Wave, with 14 of those projects in various stages of development. Most intriguing (and first up) is a series based on the book Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, about a star from a more glamorous era that this place throws back to, with its Tommy Dorsey soundtrack and starchy table service. Lamarr was born in Austria and had a brief career in Czechoslovakia before fleeing to Paris and then London, where she was discovered by Louis B. Mayer, who gave her a movie contract in Hollywood. Gadot, whose mother’s family is Czech and Polish, her father’s Austrian, Russian, and German, would seem to be just about the perfect person to play Lamarr. So it won’t be long now before Gal Gadot gets sprung, at long last, from the constraints and the limited range of carchase franchises and comic-book tentpoles. But first, Wonder Woman 1984, which I see about a half hour of, under supervision at the Warner Bros. lot. Other than to tell you that it is an
all-encompassing and visually stunning (and quite loud) experience, I will admit I have absolutely no idea what it’s about, except to say that it’s set in 1984 (the year before Gadot was born), has an exhilarating New Wave soundtrack, and features an oleaginous guy who may remind you of Donald Trump in his much more harmless ’80s salad days. Neither Jenkins nor Gadot would reveal a single plot point. “No one really knows that much about the movie,” says Wiig, “which is crazy in this day and age. It’s amazing that nothing’s leaked. Everything you get from Warner Bros. is sort of encrypted, like, your computer will explode if you open this.” Part of the reason for the top-level security clearance on the project is that the Wonder Woman effect has been enormous—especially for Jenkins and Gadot.“It completely changed my life,” says Gadot. “Somehow it came out at a point in time where people were really craving it. It made an impact. And Patty and I were very lucky, I would say, that the movie was received the way it was and that it came out in the era it did, and I think we just, without even knowing consciously, ticked a lot of the right boxes. Because it was in our DNA—we didn’t have to think about it too much. We were two women who cared about something, and that wound up in the DNA of the movie.” “I miss great, grand, blockbuster films that have all of the things that you go to the movie theaters for,” says Jenkins. “Like humor and drama and romance . . . but also weight and significance of narrative. So it’s that. I was aiming to make
something big and grand but very detailed and thorough. But I also think Wonder Woman stands for something pretty incredible in the world, so I won’t say anything about the plot, but she is a god who believes in the betterment of mankind. She’s not just defeating bad guys—and that has a lot of resonance with the times we’re living in right now.” As Gadot and I are finishing our egg sandwiches, the place begins to fill up with the lunch crowd, and I start looking around to see if there is anyone of note. We get to talking about the fine line between admiring someone from afar and being starstruck. Oddly enough we agree that we would both be nervously excited if Barbra Streisand walked in. You must get a lot of young girls who go a little Wonder Woman gaga over you, I say. “Yeah, it happens a lot,” she says. “Pretty much constantly. My friends ask me, ‘Don’t you get tired of it? That’s your time and space and privacy. You’re not the character.’ ” It is true: At the moment, Wonder Woman is more famous than the actress who plays her. And young girls, at least for now, are starstruck not because they have met Gadot but because they have bumped into Diana Prince, the Amazonian-Olympic demigoddess. “They care,” says Gadot. “It had an effect on them; it meant something to them. And just because of that, I care for them, and I want to hear what they have to say. Often it’s about a profound effect that it’s had on their life. Usually it’s that it triggered them to make a change, to do something they would never do, to be courageous.”
A MONTH LATER, on an afternoon in mid-March, Gadot calls me to talk about the new reality we’re living in. Practically everyone is at home; Gadot’s upcoming Netflix movie, Red Notice, which she had been filming in L.A. with Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson, has been put on hiatus. Her parents in Israel have canceled their long-planned Passover visit, which was also meant to be a celebration of their 60th birthdays. “Yes, of course I miss my family,” she tells me, “but the biggest priority for all of us is to stay home, not get it, and not give it to other people. With all the sadness and all the big . . . missing that I feel, that’s the only thing we can do right now.” Maya, her three-year-old, doesn’t understand what’s happening. “As far as she’s concerned, she’s on a vacation from preschool.” Her older daughter, Alma, is more aware. “But we talk about it in a PG way,” Gadot says. “We try to avoid watching the news when they’re around. So right now that’s the situation. We’re trying to enjoy the quality time that we have. The girls are not worried. They feel safe. I think the girls are going to grow up being able to tell their kids that they lived through the corona times. But we’re really trying to...how do you call it? Um...there’s a saying. Let me see if I can get it...Um...It’s like... something in disguise?” She pauses for a moment, and just as I’m about to prompt her, she finds the right words on her own: “Blessing in disguise.”
How to Clean Your Face Mask—And Protect Your Skin— For Optimal Safety This Summer “Phone, keys, wallet…face mask?” Such is the mental checklist that we tick off before leaving the house in the time of COVID-19. Adapting to wearing face coverings has introduced an array of new considerations, chief among them: How to clean your face mask? And how often should you be washing them—both to stay safe and keep skin healthy? Here, experts weigh in on the best practices for wearing and maintaining a face mask for optimal hygiene, as well as how to keep your complexion soothed and protected all summer long. Why wearing a face mask is essential: “When we sneeze, cough, talk, or even just breathe, we all emit small particles to the air—and those particles can contain the virus that causes COVID-19,” explains Kirsten Koehler, an occupational and public health expert who is an associate professor in environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “Face masks can reduce the spread of these particles, which is especially important because some people are infected but have no symptoms. It can also reduce the number of the particles that you breathe.” Accord-
ing to Koehler, a tightly woven fabric that fits snugly around the face will provide the best particle-removal efficiency. “If it’s too loose, all the air will go around the sides of the mask and none of the particles will be removed that way,” she says. During summer, when exhaled breath is especially humid, it’s important to note that cloth masks run the risk of becoming damp with wear, and you may want to bring an extra mask with you. Additionally, it’s essential to wash your hands after handling or touching a used face covering. Why you need to wash a face mask after each use: Reusable cloth face masks should be cleaned and disinfected after each use, says Koehler. While washing is the ideal, if you can’t do so after every wear, you can place the mask in a paper bag (not plastic!) and keep it in a warm place, like near a window. “Wait at least two days before wearing the mask again,” explains Koehler. “This will allow the mask to dry completely and for the virus to become inactive.” It’s essential that you’re not walking around with a dirty mask as it could potentially contain respiratory droplets that evaporate into lingering particles, which could potentially expose those in close proximity to you. According to
K r a I o g t a W c “ t s e m “ m b m m r
Koehler, you can include your face covering as part of your regular laundry with a gentle detergent and the warmest appropriate water setting for the fabric of your cloth mask. If you’re washing a cloth mask by hand, keep the CDC-recommended handwashing technique in mind. “Give it a good scrub for at least 20 seconds with soap and warm water,” instructs Koehler. “Then be sure to rinse it thoroughly and let it dry completely in a warm place before reuse.” Why face masks can be irritating to the skin, and how you can treat it: “Depending on the material and the fit of the mask, extended periods of mask wearing can occlude some of the skin surface and thereby contribute to acne or heat rash,” explains Andrew Alexis, M.D., MPH, and professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Choosing breathable materials, such as cotton, to minimize sweat and oil getting trapped, or having periodic mask breaks in a safe, socially distanced setting are strategies for mitigating this.” For visibly inflamed skin, Alexis recommends applying hydrocortisone cream, which can provide rapid relief of the discomfort. If it’s an acne outbreak, a top-
ical benzoyl peroxide treatment with a concentration of 5.5% or less can be used. If the skin is eroded, applying a thin layer of a petrolatum-based healing ointment will help restore the barrier quickly. How to keep skin soothed and protected underneath a face mask: To further prevent irritation, prep your skin. “Applying a facial moisturizer before putting on your mask is an important step in ensuring a healthy skin barrier and therefore reducing risk of irritation,” Alexis says, adding that hyaluronic acid and ceramides are two robust ingredients to look for. In the summer, Alexis also advises his patients to wash their face twice daily with a hydrating cleanser, skip wearing makeup as much as possible to avoid acne flareups, and to wear sun protection. “While a face mask covers a large portion of your face, it is not designed to protect against UV from the sun, so it’s paramount to continue putting on sunscreen to your whole face (and other exposed areas of skin) before going outside,” he says.
Blake Lively Is ‘Awakened’: The Actress Talks Sexism in Hollywood and Raising Fearless Daughters Blake Lively is midsentence in the dining room of a chic Vancouver hotel when her hand darts inside her shirt. “Why is my bra so lumpy?” she asks, rummaging around. “Ah, there’s a big fold. I’m going to unfold it.” She grins at me. “I’m gonna look like I’m feeling myself up.” Turns out the lumpy bra is for a good cause: Lively breastfed her baby girl, Inez, before arriving today. Sitting in her frayed blue jeans and noshing on ceviche, she looks exactly like the laid-back L.A. golden girl we first came to love in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Gossip Girl. But the decade that has passed has been transformative for the actress, who turns 30 in August. She married her Green Lantern costar Ryan Reynolds, with whom she now has two daughters— Inez, who will turn one in September, and James, age two. Professionally, she graduated into more complex roles: a drug-addled single mom in Ben Affleck’s The Town, a 1930s divorcée in Woody Allen’s Café Society, and a blind woman who sees her marriage differently once she regains her sight in All I See Is You, out September 15. Now she’s making her next big career move: producing The Husband’s Secret, an upcoming movie based on a book by Liane Moriarty, the author of Big Little Lies. Lively will also star in the film, but as executive producer she’ll have more creative control, a bigger financial stake, and the ability to plan her schedule around her family. It’s a savvy move, and one that could earn her a new kind of cred in an industry where women are learning the power of telling their own stories. Lively sounds a decade wiser too. She talks about sexist stage direction in scripts and how the election “awakened” her; she’s deeply educated on issues of child exploitation like sex trafficking and child pornography. Lively might still have Serena van der Woodsen’s glorious hair, but she’s developed the kind of thoughtful feminist attitude that comes only with experience. Bra in check, we discussed it all. How long are you in Vancouver and how does that work, when you have two people with amazing careers? It must require some careful negotiation. BLAKE LIVELY: My husband’s shooting Deadpool, and I’m here for the full shoot. We don’t work at the same time. We’re here as a family, then we’ll pack up, and I’ll go do a couple movies. I admire people who find that what fulfills them is their art or their work, but what fulfills both me and my husband is our family. Knowing that, everything else comes second. We’ve each given up stuff we loved in order to not work at the same time. I’m fortunate to be in a place now where I get to find the material—a book or script—early and develop it. So I know ahead of time that I’m going to be working on this job at this time. And we can plan around it. One thing you found early is The Husband’s Secret. What
about it made you say, “I want to produce this one”? BL: It’s a little bit pulpy; that makes it really fun. And there are a bunch of women at the center of it—strong women, flawed women. Any day you employ women, to me, is a good day.
tion, I asked a law enforcement agent, “How young are kids in child pornography?” He said the youngest he’d seen still had the umbilical cord attached.
I feel like articles always talk about this perfect life you have: perfect body, perfect clothes, perfect husband, perDo you agree with Reese Witherspoon that, to achieve fect family, perfect career. How do you feel when you read parity in the industry, women need to produce their own that stuff? stuff? BL: It’s nonsense. It simplifies people. Not all men, but BL: I think it helps a lot. Nobody’s going to fight for a subsection of men, have a desire to understand and you as much as you fight for yourself. That said, I control women. To do that, you have to paint them know a lot of great men—directors, producers, stuinto this thing you can wrap your head around. But dio heads—looking to tell stories about women, some women are complex. It also is [a reminder] that what because they’re drawn to those stories, some because you see in the media is not real life. The night before an they’re husbands or fathers and want to see the women interview, I have complete anxiety: How is this person in their life represented more accurately, and some just going to spin me? So when you read, “Oh, she’s got a because they look at the numbers. They see, “Wonder perfect life,” or “Her life is crumbling”—they pick narWoman has replaced religion in America. We should ratives for everyone. And the narratives stick. probably invest in female summer movies.” How do you guys deal with conflicts in your marriage? Newsflash: Women buy tickets to movies! Let’s talk about BL: In other relationships, if something came up, I All I See Is You. You play Gina, a blind woman whose would call my girlfriends or my sister, and say, “Hey, relationship with her husband changes after her sight is this is what he did—what should I do?” Where with restored. It’s a pretty harrowing movie in its depiction of him, we were friends for two years before we were ever dependency and codependency. Gina starts out barely dating. And I treat him like my girlfriend. I’m like, letting go of her husband’s arm. He says her need for him “Hey, this happened. It upset me. This is how I feel. makes him feel special. What do I do?” And he does the same for me. He treats BL: Gina’s husband appreciates her. It seems like he me like his best buddy. doesn’t mind that she has this condition that makes her rely on him. But what you learn is it goes beyond Speaking of girlfriends, while filming The Sisterhood of the fact that he doesn’t mind. It becomes an obsessive the Traveling Pants, did you imagine you’d be friends love story. You realize it’s a codependency. And when with America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, and Alexis Bledel the codependency no longer exists [when she can see a decade later? again], it can create fractures. It’s an exploration of BL: Yes, and I’m grateful we are still friends. They’re relationships. three of my very best friends and role models. They’re so artistic, and they’re activists. They’re wives, and How do you feel the election changed your mind-set? most of us are mothers. They’re producers, directors, BL: It made me more aware, more conscious, more and writers. They’re not limited. They’re unlimited. sensitive. Not just of sexism but of discrimination in all areas—class, gender, race. I had realized that there Finally—do you have any words you live by? were problems [before]. You know, I do a lot of work BL: “This too shall pass.” It’s a reminder—if something against sex trafficking: There are hundreds of thouis painful, it will pass. But also, if something is beautisands of missing-children reports in the United States ful, knowing that this too shall pass makes you hold on each year; some of those children are sex-trafficked. to the moment. Savor it. But that’s not reported. You see [stories about] only the wealthy, middle-class white girls who’ve been kidnapped. There are people missing all the time, and because they’re minorities, because they come from impoverished neighborhoods, they don’t make the news. That is so devastating. You investigated sex trafficking for the documentary A Path Appears. You’re working with Child Rescue Coalition, which provides law enforcement with technology to track and prosecute child predators. You seem drawn to issues of child exploitation. BL: I so appreciate the purity of my own childhood, and the idea that a child doesn’t have the opportunity to be a child is devastating. With Child Rescue Coali-
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Catwalk shows that shaped fashion – in pictures
The fashion show, as we know it, is changing, with in-real-life events replaced by a digital schedule, an enforced pause which may alter fashion forever. As the industry shifts, it’s a moment to look back as well as forward, over shows that made a mark in the modern era. From the cast of the models – which was often depressingly undiverse until just a few years ago – to spectacular concepts and some really great clothes, here are 8 shows that shaped fashion over the past 25 years.
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5 7 From Left to Right (1. Thierry Mugler, Haute Courture, AW95, Paris. 2. Christian Dior, Haute Coutute, SS98, Paris. 3. Alexander McQueen, SS99, London. 4. Louis Vuitton, SS14, Paris. 5. Chanel, AW14, Paris. 6. Yeezy, AW15, Paris. 7. Versace, SS18, Milan. 8.Burberry, AW18, London.
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Will the Pandemic Permanently Change Our Beauty Routines? How long does it take to make or break a habit? A decade ago Phillippa Lally, Ph.D.,a researcher at University College London, led a major study showing that people need, on average, 66 days to change their ways. I was reminded of this 60-ish days into my own pandemic-induced seclusion, after fleeing my small apartment in Manhattan to join friends at their home in upstate New York. As the novelty of sheltering in place wore off (I, too, grew sick of baking and binge-watching) and I adapted to my newly rural lifestyle, I became preoccupied with the question of who, exactly, I would be if and when I returned to my “normal” life—and beyond that what, exactly, I’d look like. After months of no gyms, no manicures, no bikini waxes or Botox injections, women across America have been grappling with the same question. Are we on the verge of adopting an easygoing new attitude toward beauty and fitness? Or, as soon as we’re given the chance, will we re-embrace old habits, racing back to our trainers and colorists in order to drop the weight we put on in quarantine and touch up our collective roots? I miss the old me—the lipsticked, hair-blownout person who started her day with the stern alarm clock of a reformer class at New York Pilates and a takeaway coffee from the neighborhood place where the baristas knew both my order and my name. But I’ve also grown fond of the new me, who rises with the sun and, three mornings per week, laces up her sneakers for a lengthy head-clearing run in the woods. Other mornings I’m awakened by my friends’ toddler, who likes to climb into my bed while I’m still dozing and demand we put on red lipstick. It’s the only time I wear makeup these days. “This whole experience has definitely made me question my beauty routine,” notes Annie Schmidt, 37, vice president at an entertainment company based in New York, Los Angeles, and London. “If I don’t need to put on a full face of makeup to do a meeting over Zoom, why should I have to when we go back to meeting in person?” Schmidt’s comments track with the 22 percent decline in makeup sales in the first quarter of the year compared with a year ago—and with prognostications, like those of McKinsey analysts, anticipating an even steeper drop if working from home and mask-wearing remain commonplace. It’s not that there’s no point making up a face that won’t be seen; it’s that this unseeing is forcing us into a beauty version of what Nietzsche termed a “revaluation of values.” All that stuff we did to self-optimize—did it matter? And who was it really for? Schmidt’s take is clarifying. While she may be ready to forgo foundation and eyeliner, she mourns the loss of her signature eye-popping gels, which East
Village nail artist MoMo used to apply every three weeks or so. “Listen—I love those nails, but I also love MoMo,” Schmidt says. “I’d be in her tiny salon for hours at a time, gossiping. It’s really hard for me to imagine my life without that.” A similar wistfulness has Melanie Kimmelman eager to return to her Rumble Boxing classes ASAP. Pre-pandemic, the 32-year-old publicist hit the Upper East Side studio several times a week—and the Zoom sessions she helps organize, led by Rumble trainer Dale Santiago, only partly fill the void, she admits. “I miss the actual workout—I don’t have a hanging water bag in my apartment—but I also miss the people,” says Kimmelman. “Just walking in and seeing familiar faces— that meant a lot to me.” Kimmelman’s words hit home. I started going to New York Pilates so I could strengthen my core and tone my ass, but I kept at it because the community at my studio was enormously grounding. There was an ambient comfort in knowing, for instance, that I’d usually see the same 10 people in Kai-Ting’s Advanced Technique class on Tuesdays—and that, without our ever becoming friends per se, that hour of planking and pliéing was “our thing.” It’s impossible to re-create that virtually, though I do get a little frisson of excitement whenever NYP founder Heather Andersen posts a mat workout to Instagram, and there are names I recognize in the comments feed. Andersen is currently converting NYP’s Montauk space into a digital studio, in recognition of the fact that physical reopening may be a long time coming. And even then, she tells me, it’s not like the studio experience will be just as I remembered it. “There will be so many new protocols, from how you space reformers to the way you sanitize between classes,” she points out. “And people are going to be nervous.” Some of her clients may, of course, stay away; not me. Though I’d be loath to give up my running routine at this point, I’ve realized that when I do Pilates, I feel like me. Super-stylist Kate Young has also been sheltering upstate, and a few weeks into quarantine she was faced with the dilemma of what to do about her signature peroxide-blonde hair. Grow it out? Wear a turban? In the end, I felt like—you know what? This is my thing.” So Joe Martino, Young’s longtime colorist at Orlo Salon, sent her the necessary supplies and coached her through the bleaching process over FaceTime. “I was terrified,” Young says of doing her color herself. “But when I woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror, and my hair was my hair, I’ve never felt so goddamned pretty in my life.” It’s this longing to affirm a pre-pandemic identity that’s driven many of us to beg favorite service
providers for guerrilla appointments, shelter-in-place orders be damned. MoMo, Schmidt’s manicurist, reports that she had around a dozen requests from women “who wanted me to risk my life, and everyone’s life, to come do their nails,” while facialist Joanna Czech had to explain patiently to countless clients that her studios in Dallas and New York would be closed until she considered it safe to reopen. “I refuse to make anyone sick,” says Czech. “If I have to look like I’m about to walk on the moon when I finally do my next facial? Fine. But if you look on social media,” she adds, “you can tell there are doctors making house calls for filler and Botox”—something Simon Ourian, M.D., cosmetic dermatologist to the Kardashian-Jenner clan, says he refused to do, though he acknowledges he received plenty of requests. When I spoke to him in early June, Epione, his Beverly Hills medical spa, was reopened for limited business and already booked solid months in advance. “I haven’t had any calls from clients who are saying, ‘You know what? I don’t need this anymore,’ ” Ourian tells me. “But then again, those wouldn’t be the people calling me.” The ones who are calling—and who were calling throughout California’s shutdown, he continues—are doing so less out of vanity than a desire for “normality.” “When people feel they don’t have control over things they can’t change, they take greater control of the things they can,” Ourian says. “And personal appearance is one thing you can change.” But should we? That’s where the revaluation of values comes in: There’s no way the upheavals wrought by this pandemic won’t scramble some of society’s beauty norms, just as World War I galvanized women to trade out Gibson-girl pompadours for undemanding bobs. “Maybe this disruption will be similar in that it will prompt women to want a lower-maintenance look,” suggests Whittemore House salon cofounder and colorist Victoria Hunter, who also points out that the
salon experience in the immediate future will likely be very different from what it’s been. Hair dryers could be verboten (out of fear—possibly unfounded—that they spread germs), and temperature checks upon entry may be mandatory, with stylists potentially kitted out in full PPE. The rigmarole associated with leaving the house for a workout you could do from home—or a touch-up that could wait— may induce women to retain some of the laissez-faire they cultivated during the COVID-19 quarantine. And if so, that might be a nice silver lining of this crisis— women emerging a touch gentler on themselves, more forgiving of fine lines and gray hairs and less consumed by the need to appear flawlessly contoured in selfies. But eschewing the stuff we felt like we had to do for perfection’s sake doesn’t mean we must give up on the rituals that make us feel good. I may have permanently given up on shaving my armpits—we’ll see!—but I cannot wait for my next eyebrow-shaping appointment with Jimena Garcia (I’ve been taking care not to overtweeze), and my morning lipstick sessions have made me even more obsessed than I was with perfecting the ruby-red pout. Old habits die hard. Especially ones we never wanted to give up in the first place.
JOY DIOR
THE NEW FRAGRANCE