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Photography Massimo Gammacurta Fashion Mia Solkin
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table of contents FENDI WHITE CRYSTAL–EMBELLISHED 3BAGUETTE ($4,700, WWW.FENDI.COM)
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42 LOS ANGELES PRIVATE SESSIONS Hedi Slimane gives the Grammys a run for their money with a real rock-and-roll show in Hollywood 44 HEROES Giorgio Moroder reclaims the dance foor, Barbie gets chatty, and Kurt Cobain returns in a Montage of Heck 50 MIRROR MIRROR Trip out in the tallest and most mesmerizing boots of the season 52 OFF THE GRID Create a psychedelic sensation with the season’s intoxicating new bags 54 SUMMER GUIDE From the most fun festivals to the most wanted accessories, our friends and collaborators spill details on all the season’s musts 56 GOOD TIMES Leave it to ChiC frontman Nile Rodgers to turn a music video shoot into the party of New York Fashion Week! See inez & Vinoodh’s exclusive photos from a wild night out 58 THIS IS SUNDANCE Our annual guide to the Sundance Film Festival returns: Matt irwin and Anna Trevelyan take to Park City to capture the stars and scene stealers to watch in 2015
66 THIRTY-THREE MOVIES IN SEVEN DAYS With everything James Franco does, how does he fnd time for screenings? Go through his schedule at the Sundance Film Fest and learn the names of the flms to know next
88 RIHANNARAMA BY STEVEN KLEIN She took a break from the radio but never the spotlight. Prepare for Rihanna’s ultimate Top 40 return Styled by Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele
70 DIARY OF A DIRTY HIPPIE Miley Cyrus and Cheyne Thomas share candid moments from a special road trip in their latest diary installment in V
100 BEFORE THE FALL BY HARLEY WEIR Lara Stone tells a story of personal versus public in the most poetic looks from Pre-Fall Styled by Max Pearmain
72 PARTYHOUSE V’s Powerhouse returns with the bombest, most buzzedabout parties on the planet! Wherever you travel, there’s no excuse to stay in for the night 76 THE SPECTACULAR NOW Six heritage brands are being shaken up behind the scenes. Check in with the new blood at Gucci, Loewe, Mugler, Sonia Rykiel, Versus Versace, and Tifany & Co. 82 WELCOME TO NEW YORK See what happens when Karl Lagerfeld takes Salzburg to the Big Apple in the form of Chanel Pre-Fall 84 THE PRE-FALL TENDERS in anticipation of a Chrissie hynde moment, dress like her in the best of Pre-Fall
112 BLUE JEAN BABY BY STEVEN KLEIN Kendall Jenner has achieved the unthinkable in parlaying a reality TV life into a major modeling career. Now, as the face of the new #mycalvins Denim Series, she’s hitting maximum exposure Styled by Matthew Ellenberger 118 ART NOUVEAU BY BEN TOMS Sasha Pivovarova fnds serenity in the delicate fowers of Spring couture Styled by Robbie Spencer 128 ALL ABOARD! Karl Lagerfeld and his closest friends set sail down the hudson River to meet Lady Liberty for an iconic evening sure to go down in New York party history
86 BARE ESSENCE Bask in the boldest scents right now
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V MAGAZINE 4 0
time they arrived personally lensed by Hedi Slimane and Inez & Vinoodh, respectively. When Karl Lagerfeld came to town with his Paris-Salzburg collection, he was welcomed by his muses on a cruise around New York. Check out photos from that night on page 128. We also turn our Powerhouse on the most popular party promoters on the planet. From Ladyfag’s shady New York raves to a party in the middle of the ocean, there’s no excuse to stay in anywhere you go. As if on cue, Giorgio Moroder is back with his frst album in decades. He sits for Hedi Slimane and talks with T. Cole Rachel about continuing to push dance music into the future. If you live on planet fashion, you know that we refer to this season as “Pre-Fall.” As these increasingly fascinating collections hit stores, we examine the notion of privacy and personal space in a story starring Lara Stone by Harley Weir and Max Pearmain. On the fip side, Sasha Pivovarova gets dolled up in daring looks from Spring haute couture, in a crisp, forid shoot by Ben Toms, styled by Robbie Spencer. But if it’s really attention you’re after, Kendall Jenner should set an example worth adhering to. On the occasion of her new campaign with Calvin Klein for the brand’s #mycalvins Denim Series, the superstar social media–phile talks about her rapid-fre rise as the most impactful model of the moment. Speaking of modeling, does Rihanna consider herself a legitimate crossover yet? She’s certainly landed no shortage of campaigns and magazine editorials, including her stunning cover story by Steven Klein and Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, rifng on leisure, swim, and the dystopian American industrial landscape. Ready to release her eighth album after a threeyear hiatus, the Barbadian beauty flls us in on what she’s been up to, what to expect from her new sound, and what she’ll be doing diferently this time around. We’re always ready to follow Rihanna wherever she takes us, and judging by her V shoot, our next destination is sure to be someplace hot. MR. V
Photography Massimo Gammacurta Fashion Mia Solkin Retouching Andi Kuonath (RedFishBlack)
Finally, summer. After what felt like an interminable polar vortex, New York thawed into spring and our minds immediately began to heat up with fresh inspiration and new ideas in advance of the most fun season of the four. We can’t wait to take in all that the next two months have to ofer: whether you’re heading to the French Riviera for Raf Simons’s Dior cruise collection, to Venice for the Biennale, or to the grand opening of New York’s downtown Whitney Museum, you’re cleared for departure and we’re leading the way. Our annual summer guide is rife with can’tmiss events, albums, and experiences chosen by everyone from Nancy Sinatra to Charli XCX. We couldn’t resist the urge to travel to Park City in January for the Sundance Film Festival. Matt Irwin and Anna Trevelyan take the helm of this year’s portfolio of breakout performers, who remind us how independent cinema continues to defy predictability—a trait that’s always award-worthy. James Franco takes us through the 30-plus flms he saw at the festival, and his musings make for an ideal preview of what’s to come at the Cineplex later this year. One could argue that Miley Cyrus is always tripping. But for such a hardworking talent, actual vacations come few and far between. For the second installment of her Diary of a Dirty Hippie, Miley and her BFF Cheyne Thomas go from the Grand Canyon to the Oklahoma compound of Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne. Thomas’s polaroids and Miley’s captions give an intimate glimpse into how the provocative pop star goes about recharging her creative batteries. Courtney Love, on the other hand, journeys inward, giving an exclusive interview to director Brett Morgen on the occasion of his Kurt Cobain documentary hitting HBO—the frst such authorized account of her legendary husband’s life to get greenlit. Theirs is a flm—and a conversation—not to be missed. Of course it wouldn’t be summer without a few ragers. Our party pages are back, and this
party
LOS ANGELES P R I VA T E SESSIONS
IN FEBRUARY, HEDI SLIMANE AND STEPHEN GAN HOSTED A PRE-GRAMMY ANTIDOTE CELEBRATING REAL ROCK MINUS THE RED CARPET PhotograPhy hEDI SLIMaNE As Grammy fever gripped greater Los Angeles the frst weekend of February, Hedi Slimane decided to toast rock and roll in his typically singular fashion. Slimane threw an impromptu show with V editor-in-chief Stephen Gan at Good Times at Davey Wayne’s on El Centro, in Hollywood, and the whole afair was a veritable antidote to the glitz of the big awards parties. With an entrance inside a refrigerator door reminiscent of Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe’s Black Acid Co-op with Deitch Projects back in 2009, the venue was the perfect ramshackle-by-design setting for the lineup that took to the stage: Sunfower Bean, The Garden, Bleached, Mini Mansions, and Sky Ferreira each played a set for the crowd. Young Hollywood actors, pop stars, alt rock heroes, and indie rock up-and-comers mixed casually with local punks. Charli XCX, Tobias Jesso Jr., DIIV, Warpaint, Jack Kilmer, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Juno Temple, Mark Ronson, and Daft Punk were just a handful of the attendees. “’Twas a night for kings and queens,” Fletcher Shears of The Garden says of playing the party. “We were merely the jesters, entertaining the masses.” “It was like [Hedi Slimane] brought two worlds together,” adds Jennifer Clavin of Bleached, “with the Burger [Records] kids and then Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age, and Arctic Monkeys, all partying in this super small bar together in the middle of Hollywood.” “It was great,” Jacob Faber of Sunfower Bean agrees. “Rock ’n’ roll.” As much as the night was an up-yours to the major label hullabaloo, it was refreshing to see longtime Slimane subject and muse Beck take home the night’s top prize (and even more ironic with Slimane foe Kanye West trying to upstage him). Maybe next year Slimane will attempt something more ofcial in conjunction with the Academy? Given the fun that was had with a DIY spirit leading the way, we’d be happy for him to do this all over again. V MAGAZINE 4 2
giorgio moroder
THE LEGENDARY ITALIAN PRODUCER RETURNS WITH HIS FIRST ALBUM IN 30 YEARS
PhoToGRaPhY heDI SlIMaNe V MAGAZINE 4 4
Production Yann Rzepka and Kim Pollock
If for some bizarre reason you aren’t familiar with the name Giorgio Moroder, then right now is the perfect opportunity to get acquainted with his genius. The Italian-born producer has had a heavy hand in shaping the landscape of contemporary music, beginning with his trailblazing production work back in the 1970s, when he was a pioneer in the use of synthesizers in pop songs, essentially single-handedly creating disco and opening the foodgates for the kind of synthpop and new-wave music that would defne the following decade. His collaborations with the likes of Blondie (“Call Me”) and Donna Summer (the forever-classic “I Feel Love”) are iconic. Moroder’s work as a producer and a composer of flm scores would be almost as important, and as a result movies like Midnight Express, Scarface, American Gigolo, and Cat People are as well remembered for their soundtracks as for their plotlines. After stepping away from the spotlight during the ’80s—at which point Moroder amused himself with things like creating neon art and designing his own sports cars—he once again assumed his rightful position in the mainstream spotlight after collaborating with Daft Punk on their 2013 juggernaut, Random Access Memories. The collaboration celebrated Moroder’s legacy as a sonic master and introduced him to a new generation of fans. Now, some 30 years since releasing his last proper album, Moroder is busy putting the fnishing touches on a new studio full-length—a feat that the now-75-year-old can scarcely believe himself. “I’m very surprised,” laughs Moroder. “It didn’t happen overnight though. When I frst started doing DJ gigs again in 2013—I did the frst one in Brooklyn— record companies started to contact me again. I had to start at the beginning, basically. I had to fnd management, started looking at contracts. I got a big push from a lot of people, including Daft Punk, to do something new. It wasn’t until about a year ago that everything was settled and I could start thinking about things like: How am I going to make an album? And who can I work with now?” Having already worked with (and helped launch) some of the biggest stars in the world, it’s no surprise that Moroder wouldn’t have to look too hard for new collaborators. For his new venture, a veritable who’s-who of the pop pantheon lined up to be involved—a list that includes Kylie Minogue, Sia, Charli XCX, and Britney Spears. Though the record is still being fnished, early singles such as the sparkling Minogue number “Right Here, Right Now” show that Moroder hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to creating a certain kind of ethereal pop magic, even if the technology involved is now light-years ahead of what he was formerly used to. “Back when I was working with Donna Summer or Blondie or David Bowie, it was a real collaboration,” recalls Moroder. “Meaning, you had to be in the same room. We’d sit down with a piano or a drum machine and compose the song together. Now you just do a kind of Internet collaboration. You don’t even ever need to be in the same room, which is wild. Things were created in diferent cities. Things were really spread out all over the world. When I was making ‘I Feel Love’ with Donna it was very difcult working with synthesizers—and it was tedious work to make them sound good and actually record them. They were very unstable and the tuning was very difcult. Now the amount of sounds you can create—good sounds—is actually incredible.” More amazing to Moroder is the extent to which a new generation of music lovers has embraced his back catalog. “I’m always amazed by how many people say they love Cat People. A lot of people mention it to me, even more than Midnight Express. Even Lana Del Rey told me that it was one of her favorite soundtracks. When I DJ now, and I look out at all these kids in their 20s, I see them singing along to the words and wonder, How do they know all of these songs? To be able to perform in front of so many people, it really makes me feel like an artist now. I was always behind the scenes. Until a year or two ago, I was just considered a producer or composer. Before I was always back somewhere behind the stage…and now I’m out in front.” T. Cole RaChel
heroes
barbie
Barbie has kept the world talking about her for over half a century, and now, as in touch as she was back in 1959, she’s talking back (follow her on Instagram @barbiestyle). The doll’s taste is a closely documented phenomenon simply because of its incredible ability to shape the goals of consumers everywhere, from careers to cars to boyfriends, so we’re honored that for her frst candid interview as a social media star, Barbie chose V. For the exclusive, we asked artist Laurie Simmons—with whom Barbie is acquainted, as you can tell from the archival photo above—to assist some special friends in NYC with a selfe. Meanwhile, I called the box blonde herself out in Malibu to catch up on her style, her love life, and what’s up next. NATASHA STAGG V MAGAZINE 4 6
You’ve been extremely active during the big fashion weeks lately. Who are your favorite designers, and who are the coolest people you’ve met around the shows? BARBIE The whole dynamic of the international fashion weeks has changed so much since the salon-style presentations when I was born. I love the fact that when I look over the show schedules to decide which shows to attend, the breadth of fashion is all encompassing, from formalwear and party dresses to streetwear and even the more risqué oferings—I like to be challenged as a show-goer! I have so many favorite designers and of course lots of friends in the industry, including Karl Lagerfeld, who I collaborated with on Barbie Lagerfeld last year; Roksanda Ilincic, who designed a new Barbie Dreamhouse for me in collaboration with SHOWstudio; Nick Knight, who I’ve interned with; and many, many more. Since Jeremy Scott moved to L.A. we’ve been able to spend a lot more time together, as you know. I inspired his summer Moschino collection, which is such an honor. The frst designer I collaborated with in the mid-’80s was Oscar de la Renta, so it was very sad to hear of his passing last year. I think Peter Copping, who recently presented his frst collection for the house, is an inspired choice, and I loved it all.
You’re most defnitely a role model. Who are yours? B Thank you! I’m so proud of what women are achieving today and remain committed to helping inspire girls and boys, sparking their imaginations and showing them that anything is possible. I’ve always encouraged girls to create roles for themselves. It’s often overlooked, but I did go to the moon before man landed there, and I was even a presidential candidate several years before Hillary Clinton. I crashed the plastic ceiling early on in my career, so I have a lot of respect and time for women breaking barriers and achieving their own goals. I get really inspired when I see women in exceptional roles in what was once seen as a man’s world and even more excited when I see them inspire the next generation of young women, who will in turn create more opportunities for future generations. Do you have any favorite music or movie stars? B I like to be open-minded and try new things. I love movie soundtracks, especially if they have been scored by a great master such as Ennio Morricone. At the moment, through Ken’s friend Carri Munden of Cassette Playa, I’ve been listening to a lot of FKA twigs. I’d love to check out SXSW in Austin soon. I may be into all the latest tech, but I still like vinyl!
Artwork Laurie Simmons Photo assistants Mary Simpson and Dylan Nelson Retouching Feather Creative Special thanks Mandi Lennard, Sarah Allen, and Mattel
THE UBIQUITOUS AVATAR FOR GIRLS GETS CANDID WITH A LAURIE SIMMONS COLLABORATION AND A VERY RARE INTERVIEW ON HER LIFE AS THE MOST FOLLOWED DOLL
Above: Dolls from the Barbie Fashionista range pose for a selfe in Brooklyn, 2015 Left: Barbie in Laurie Simmons’s studio, 1992
In an interview you did for Forbes in 2009, you said you didn’t regret breaking up with Ken (in 2004) and never marrying. You guys got back together (in 2011), so how do you feel about marriage now? B Ken and I are happily dating and I feel lucky to have such a wonderful boyfriend. As far as getting married, I just don’t worry about it—the world is full of possibilities and right now every day feels like an adventure. It seems like you two never fght. B I can’t say we never have to talk things through but we never fght—it isn’t in my DNA. Do you ever argue with the other dolls? B We argue like all best doll friends. At the end of the day, everyone is diferent, and whether human or doll, you have to be true to yourself. After being in the spotlight for over a half a century, you must have a few stories about recovering your reputation. B I know that what comes with being popular all these years with girls, boys, and adults can also come with varied opinions about me. I love that people connect with me in diferent ways. What I don’t love is when they take things out of context and forget that at my core I am a best friend to girls
and boys everywhere—I love trying on new roles, connecting with people, and hopefully inspiring other girls to believe that they can be anything. I love fashion, as it’s one of the most fun and playful forms of self-expression. I always say do what you do and do it the best way you can. What are some of your most prized possessions? B The best thing is all the friends being Barbie has brought me. And I love shoes. Christian Louboutin created a special collection for me a few years ago and they’re still my favorites, but there’s so much great talent out there. I’ve been lucky enough to drive some great cars over the years; I do love a convertible to show of my large collection of hats, scarves, and sunglasses. And of course my phone—how else could I post on Instagram? What was the most embarrassing outft you’ve ever worn? B I get hung up on silly stuf like how my hair is styled. The billowing satin gown from Peaches ’n Cream was very full-on, but at the time (1985), I adored it, and a lot of Barbie collectors always say it’s a favorite. Any other regrets? B Probably the famous breakup with Ken in 2004. Sadly, it was captured in the public eye and I never felt either of us
was well represented. That’s well behind us now and today we’re happier than ever. How many jobs have you had now? B I’ve had over 150 careers on my résumé and most recently I became a flm director. I’m often asked what career I am most proud of and to that I always say it’s showing girls that they can be anything, from mermaid to architect. All little— and big—girls and boys should be able to try on all kinds of roles as they imagine their lives. What do you think about women who call themselves “reallife Barbies”? B I’m not comfortable with it as we are all individuals and should celebrate all kinds of attributes that go far deeper than appearance. How do you deal with jealousy? And do you ever get jealous yourself? B You know, I try not to look over my shoulder and prefer to focus on who I am and the person I try to be. I am pretty lucky to have such a crazy cool wardrobe, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of life. It’s my friends who make it all happen for me.
PHOTOGRAPHY LAURIE SIMMONS
heroes
KURT COBAIN
THE ROCK AND ROLL GOD GETS A LITTLE MORE HUMAN IN THE FIRST AUTHORIZED DOCUMENTARY ON HIS LIFE, ART, SEX, LOVE, FAMILY, FAME, AND INIMITABLE BRAIN On May 4, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck premiered on HBO and delivered on what rapturous reviews from Sundance had promised: a devastatingly intimate portrait of one of rock and roll’s most hallowed icons and celebrated misfts. His story is well-known enough not to warrant retelling, which is why director Brett Morgen’s documentary—the frst to be authorized by the Kurt Cobain estate—instead opts to venture closer to the poetic, acerbic, funny, and seditious spirit of the man behind the myth. Employing private diary entries, illustrations, doodles, sculptures, and animations, Morgen’s flm acts not only as a respectful homage to Cobain’s mutable creativity, but it shines a light on the sensitivity and humility that a generation fell so desperately in love with. Eight years after she tapped Morgen to helm what will easily come to be regarded as one of the most fascinating rock portraits of the year, Cobain’s widow Courtney Love talks to the director about her personal memories that were triggered by the flm, why she chose him for the project, and why she chose to stay (mostly) out of it. PATRIK SANDBERG
V MAGAZINE 4 8
Images courtesy HBO
BRETT MORGEN I’m going to take you back to 2007. What inspired you to make a documentary and why then? COURTNEY LOVE In 2004 I had been going through a really hard time and I was sitting in a loft on 30 Crosby Street that I owned, in SoHo, in a little tent that I had built for myself and I watched [Morgen’s] The Kid Stays in the Picture. When I really get into a movie, and Amadeus is one of them, The Breakfast Club is another one, I can watch it over and over and over again. So I just had it on all the time. [My friend] Brett Ratner, he kept saying the only person worthy of making a documentary [about Kurt] is Brett Morgen. I also knew you were very hard to get, which always makes someone sexier. BM What did you feel was missing about Kurt that the world needed to experience at that point?
CL Well, the truth. There’s been Charlie’s book [Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross], which he spent nine years researching and it has a lot of facts in it. Like, I didn’t know that Kurt had played football. Stuf I didn’t even know. And that’s great, but in terms of something people could experience on a more visceral level than a book, I wanted there to be a flm. No one knew Kurt was funny. And that’s ridiculous. He was ridiculously funny. BM The thing about Kurt’s humor is that it comes through in “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and on Top of the Pops, and [there] you get it. But the thing that was clearly missing from his interactions in public was the wit, because the footage of you two, and the banter I’ve described as sort of like Spencer Tracy and Hepburn, I never experienced that with Kurt. What attracted you to him to begin with? CL There’s a picture that some kids found of me 15 minutes before I met him in 1989. Everyone is like, “No one can remember how we met,” and it’s all this mythical bullshit. It was at the Satyricon in Portland, Oregon. I sometimes lie and say which bands were playing but I actually don’t remember. But Nirvana was obviously playing. He was cute, he was attractive, and he was funny. I said something smart to him, probably kind of mean. I told him he looked like the singer in another band and then I insulted his girlfriend. He started wrestling me on the foor. Everyone always writes that the song that was playing was Living Colour, but that wasn’t it. It was “Dear Friend” by Flying Color. He had this guy named Jason in his band and I noticed that Jason had big Soundgarden hair and looked very Seattle, not Aberdeen. People don’t distinguish between the two—they always think Kurt and I are from Seattle and neither of us are. He had this guy named Jason who came from Seattle and I noticed him turn the guy’s guitar all the way down on the Fender Twin they were playing through and I cackled at him about it after the set and I was like, “So you just have him up there because he looks like he’s in Soundgarden?” And he tackled me onto the foor. We had this physical attraction that was instant. That was in 1989 and my band was a ways of. So when my band came together, I just started chasing him around, man. BM At our frst meeting you told me Kurt was a prolifc artist and you felt that was something the public didn’t get to experience, and that was something that really appealed to me. I think we were having lunch at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills…a place I’m sure Kurt would have loved.
CL [laughs] He might have grown into it! No one knows what he could have ended up liking. He could have divorced me and married Stephanie Seymour, for all I know. BM That was something that struck me, and was really the main reason I pursued it because I like dealing with ephemera in the way I make my flms. CL Well, yeah. He took his painting and his puppets really seriously. I have 434 vinyl albums of his and there’s almost not one of them that he hasn’t drawn on. The Flintstones soundtrack is all covered in stamps, and then he calls it “The Fuckstones.” When he got a little money, he still collected novelty records but now he could collect art supplies and medical stuf. On the cover of In Utero, he really wanted that image of that invisible woman and we had to deal with the whole estate of the invisible man and the invisible woman people, and he did it all personally. Even the cover of Nevermind, that came from a drawing that Kurt made. He made comics out of everything, collages out of everything, and if you look at the documentary we weren’t that obsessed with money, or name brands, or any of that stuf. BM You were aware of it far more than he was. CL Yeah. If you look, one of your shots has some Tifany boxes, that’s from me. There’s the part where I talk about the Cartier scissors. I was aware, but I was also street smart. But in 1994 if you said, “Will you do a Versace campaign?” I would have told you to go to hell. No way! A big day for me was going to Urban Outftters and spending a thousand dollars and maybe getting a Chanel lip liner. That was my idea of luxury. BM Something a lot of people have commented on to me was the sort of squalor you guys were living in at a point when Kurt was selling a thousand albums a week. CL We did want to get out of that apartment—the one with my boobs—it was right near Canter’s Deli, it was a basement apartment. This was the time when Nirvana was selling. It was Nirvanamania, and the management was young. They’d never dealt with what I call “the rocket,” which is like, the little band that’s expected to sell maybe a quarter of a million but is selling ten. We had a joint checking account and we didn’t really care about the money because we had each other. We had art. We could write checks and people accepted those checks for tables and funny lamps. We were so in love, if this doesn’t sound corny, that we didn’t really care about all that other stuf and that includes me. And I’m pretty materialistic. BM Now for a million dollar question that I’ve always wanted to know but haven’t asked you point-blank. You gave me fnal cut of this flm. You made no attempt to see the flm before it was fnished... CL Why did I trust you? Well, I’m really bad at lawyers and I’m really bad at boyfriends, but I think I’m good at picking flmmakers. I just knew you were to be trusted. All I said to you was, “Tell the truth.” So it’s really an easy answer. Brett, I trusted you. Unfortunately, that’s bitten me on the ass in other cases, but it didn’t with you, so congratulations to both of us. BM What people probably don’t realize is that your possessions are sort of intermingled with Kurt’s and they are all held in a storage facility. When I was given access to that storage facility, it wasn’t as if you went there to clean up before I got there in case there was anything you didn’t want me to see. CL I don’t even know what the hell is in there. You’re the one who informed me about certain things that are in there, other than the albums and the coat he died in. Pretty much everything is there. BM The fact that you did that is beyond trust. Was there a sense like, fuck it? Whatever happens happens? CL I just let you do your thing because I knew in my heart that it would be okay. I also think I read in The Guardian that you went to college and studied mythology. Is that true? BM Yeah. CL Okay. Given that I did not know that until I read it, it makes perfect sense. I’ve been reading a lot about mythology and ego and how I’m depicted because of the suicide. Just marrying the guy created a mythology around me that I didn’t expect for myself, because I had a very controlled, fve-year plan about how I was going to be successful in the rock industry. Marrying Kurt, it all kind of went sideways in a way that I could not control and I became seen in a certain light—a vilifed light that made Yoko Ono look like Pollyanna— and I couldn’t stop it. So, what do I have to lose? By just letting you tell the truth and do your narrative, I have nothing to lose. Transparency. What the hell? Sometimes you just gotta take a leap of faith. BM From the time I was publicly announced as the director of the flm, I started receiving death threats. I know you were cast as the villain in Kurt’s story by jealous women the moment you met him. Did that make it more difcult to grieve? Did you ever feel that you were able to grieve for Kurt?
CL No, because it was like, “Here. Your husband is dead. Handle it. Your lawyer is falling to pieces and she’s not handling it, so you handle it.” So in a very un-Jackie O. way— someone said, “Here, read the suicide letter,” and then I had an album that came out within the month of his death—a tour bus pulled up to my house and I got on it. So, that era of shows was really cathartic for me, but, no. Grief, in terms of dealing with it technically, psychologically, I’m still a little bit of a mess about it. BM When you saw the flm for the frst time you were confronted with images that I know you’ve never even seen. CL I wasn’t gonna see it. BM Why? CL I didn’t want to see it. [My agency] said, “You cannot go to Sundance and promote this flm if you don’t go see it.” So I really had to man up, and I asked Frances [Bean Cobain] to come with me and she didn’t want to see it a second time because it had been, for her own reasons, harsh on her. He died when she was a year and a half old, so she doesn’t know him except for the way the public knows him. It was such a public death, and for that generation it was the JFK moment, if you will. Everyone knows where they were. So, to see it in that room with my daughter was very cathartic and I was very happy to spend a little time with him and to fnd out, to see things and hear audio, and see into his heart. It was an important moment of bonding between Frances and me, and I think it’s very healing for our family and for our relationship. What you’ve done, beyond making a supremely great flm that’s truthful, that’s transparent, that’s got warts and all, etcetera, is that you’ve really helped a young woman come to terms with her father’s death in a way that I certainly couldn’t do and that no book could do. BM I think memories are really defned by, let’s say, a photograph. So, you have a photograph of a friend, and that becomes the event in time because you don’t remember the other sides. Did the flm trigger memories of Kurt that you might have forgotten or suppressed? CL It fucked me up. I remembered the sexual relationship, which, as you know, is the core of any good marriage. It almost rendered other intimacies meaningless. I remembered how much I love him, and it made me really think about a few other people I don’t want to name, but a few other people I’ve been in love with. And should I have married them? The answer is actually no. Nobody else was as funny. Nobody was as compatible and got my jokes. And you can see it in the flm. Neither of us really liked the whole “Courtney is the bad guy” thing. He fucking hated it as much as I did because it shamed him, it emasculated him, and it made him look weak. He is considered to be the rock star who didn’t want fame, the weak pathetic guy who was taken over by this controlling female, and yadda yadda. It kind of fucked me up, and to be honest with you, I don’t have a boyfriend right now, so I’m single. [The flm] made me really evaluate what, at the age of 50, I want out of a relationship. He’s a hard act to follow. I love him and I always will. BM Frances said something really touching yesterday about Kurt’s smell. That she has, I think, a teddy bear of his that still has his smell burned into it. CL Oh, that’s his binky. I gave it to her. BM It’s 25 years later and you’re seeing this footage, and it’s amazing that some of this footage even exists. I think I could debunk any notion or myth related to you and narcissism because when I showed you the flm I was certainly expecting you to comment on your appearance. You’re basically naked in half the scenes and not necessarily looking your best, and Courtney, you’ve never once made a comment to me about it. It’s kind of remarkable. CL Well, I’ve never been accused of being vain on a flm set, which I’m really proud of. I never depended on my looks, so now that I’m aging, guess what? Big deal. And that’s who I was 22 years ago, so why try and hide it? BM When you contrast most people with their younger selves, it inevitably becomes a flm on aging, and in this case, you actually look better in the present day than 25 years ago. CL I do. I’m much better looking now. I know how to take care of myself. I know how to juice, I know how to do pilates, I’ve done the fashion gamut, I’ve posed for Versace, I’ve photographed with Avedon, I’ve photographed with the greatest, I’ve done the covers of certain Vogues all over the world. I bought into all that shit and then I bought out of all that shit. So I’ve been fashioned. And the thing that’s so ironic is that at the time of all that footage, Kurt and I were starting all these trends. We didn’t know that! We had no idea. There have been so many collections that have come out in the last fve years that have referenced my look or Kurt’s look, it’s insane. BM How much were you impacting his look? CL Not at all. He was on his own there. I hated when he dyed his hair red. You know, the person who impacted his look the
most was Pat Smear, because Pat loved David Bowie. The way I impacted his look was by informing him that he was beautiful because he did not know. But I will tell you this: the reason he thanks [Quentin] Tarantino on the back of In Utero is because Tarantino and his team approached us both about Pulp Fiction to play the Rosanna Arquette and Eric Stoltz parts, and I felt like they were just asking me so they could get to Kurt. So I was like, “Just ask Kurt. I don’t want to do it.” So Kurt chickened out, and then he got another script by a guy called Michael Tolkin, do you remember him? He held that script close to his chest and he was so excited and for fve seconds he thought, “Oh, I could be in movies.” And then he kind of dropped it and it wasn’t really a big deal. But they did come knocking a little bit. He found out he was pretty and I think he tried to hurt his looks. BM The flm was your idea to begin with. Although in a traditional flm you would be an executive producer, there was a decision made to have Frances executive produce the flm. And you very graciously supported that move. As a mother, what did it mean to you for Frances to get involved with the flm? CL E.P.! I like that for her. I think she represents the family really well, in this situation. I think she can be objective about it. I know of other projects where the subject gets too involved and wants to cut things, and I didn’t want to be that person. You’ve realized your flm, hopefully, to the best of your ability, and I think Frances did a really good job of being there for her dad and being involved in what is part of the family business, which is keeping up Kurt’s legacy. I’m really proud of her. Unfortunately, that’s part of what she and I have to do. We go through a process of doing projects and stuf—and it’s not that unfortunate. It’s ethically correct. BM Has the experience brought you and Frances closer together in some way? CL Yes it has. I think that those few extra minutes with him for me, and an extra two hours with him for her, has been really good. Kids tend to blame themselves, and with suicide everyone ends up blaming themselves. There’s so much guilt and so much fnger-pointing. It’s ridiculous. Many people who’ve sufered the after-efects of suicide, and in Frances’s case, like any child of suicide, she wondered what part she played in it and why wasn’t she important enough? I think the flm points out that absolutely, without a doubt, from whatever age it is that he starts talking about it, that that was where he was headed.
BM A lot of people have had opinions about your relationship, all based on innuendo and suggestion, whereas in the movie you’re confronted with it. It’s interesting that this flm is coming at a time when it feels like there’s a renaissance for you. How do you see yourself in the current zeitgeist? CL Well, according to People magazine I’m one hot commodity right now. I just got this incredibly lucky break by getting these agents, by asking Lee Daniels if I could be on his show [Empire], by asking Kurt Sutter if I could be on his show [Sons of Anarchy], and by meeting Todd Almond and being in his musical [Kansas City Choir Boy]. I feel like I’m taking better care of myself physically. When I was living in New York I was sort of drifting and going to events and looking really good, but I wasn’t doing anything. That was sort of a healing period, and then I got here to L.A. about a year and a half ago and I just said, Man, it’s going to be over soon. You’re at the halfway point in your life. You’d better fucking go for it and be really, really proactive about how to get back to work in terms of acting, and make sure this relationship with my daughter—because I only have her, in the end it’s her and me—make sure the relationship stays on track. And I think your flm has helped with that a lot, and it’s a good thing. I don’t mind promoting this flm with you, but I don’t love living in the 22 years ago, because I don’t. But it is who I was, and Kurt is a part of who I am. In terms of mythology, he will always defne me. If I marry the guy who owns Google tomorrow, Kurt will defne me. BM Is that an invitation? CL No, he likes models, I think. I don’t know. But Kurt is what defnes me in the culture and there’s nothing I can do about it so the best answer to it is to act so I can be somebody else and inhabit another character, and I take a lot of joy from that. The rock star part is just getting old. I just didn’t like it. BM From the moment I was brought into your world, I had to deal with the crazies and the death threats and the psychopaths that you’ve had to deal with for the last 20 years. It’s hard enough to grieve over the loss of a husband, but to be a single parent and to be a single parent in entertainment and rock and roll, which you’ve done, I think you’ve really defed all odds. I just need to say that. CL Thank you, that is so sweet. I really appreciate that.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of HeCK iS StreaMing noW on Hbo go
Prop stylist Hans Maharawal Photo assistant Johnny Tang
HIT FROM LEFT: DIor LAMBSKIN LEATHER BOOT (PRICE UPON REQUEST, 1.800.929.DIOR)
ChaNEL SUEDE CALFSKIN AND PATENT TUMBLED KANGAROO BOOT ($3,900, 1.800.550.0005) VaLENtINo CALF LEATHER STRIPED BO-Y-CH BOOT ($2,075, VALENTINO.COM) FENDI LEATHER SUBWAY BOOT ($1,550, FENDI.COM)
MIRROR MIRROR
TAKE A TRIP WITH THE SEASON’S ALL-NEW GO-GO BOOTS—THE LOOK IS WAY UP AND FAR OUT PhotograPhy JUNIChI Ito FaShIoN MIa SoLKIN V MAGAZINE 5 0
SHOUT OUT TO EVERYONE WHO MADE VFILES MADE FASHION F/W ‘15 THE MOST EXCITING MOMENT OF NYFW.
DESIGNERS: Andrea Jiapei Li, DI$COUNT UNIVER$E, Julia Seemann, Ximon Lee STYLIST: Mitch McGuire HAIR: Braydon Nelson, MAKE UP: Andrea Samuels PHOTOGRAPHER: Seung Lee MODELS: Lashonda Bell, Chynna Rogers, Jude Liana, Marc Luloh, Jakub Pastor, Christen Mooney, Marc Domingo, Christian Coppola, Mckenzie Walden, Sahara Leung, David Chiang, Nikolay Dzhevakov, Omar Ahmed, Sarah Dick, Stefan Radojkovic, Miles Chamljey-Watson, Somalia Knight, Pauline Prieto, Marina Albino, Austria Ulloa, Symon Goodloe, May Hong, Irina Chiganaeva, Britt Haegglund, Luke Dortch, Ana Khutsishvili, Abigail Lipp, Nika De Carlo, Maris Berkowitz, Sam Weir, Nina Wisner, Yulu Serao, Sita Bellan, Masha Koe, Brianna Smith, Harmony Boucher, Kayla Clark, Brenda Cruz, Juana Burga, Ash Foo, Iliana Ruiz, Brianna Perlmutter, Alina Krasina, Isabelle Sauer, Cindy, Maluca Mala, Lily M., Xavier Cha, Nicky Ottov, Santana Williams, Walter Pearce, Ruth Gruca, Nicole Albino, Hari Nef, Carlos Santolla, John Tuite Dese, Nick Newlin (Yentech), Louie Vasquez, Cody Critchelo, Mallory Merk, Danielle Phaeton, Penelope Edmonds, Roger Pena, Prince Franco, Marcel Pawlas, Naomi Shimada, Chet Dehart, Betts Dehart, Casey Spooner, Marti Ragan, Sadaf Nava, Jake Petan, Spencer Lee, Florencia Galarza, Andrenna Haynes, Alexandra Marzala, Mademoiselle Yulia Manon Macasaet, Oscar Sanchez, Sabrina Fuentes, Vashtie
Prop stylist Hans Maharawal Photo assistant Johnny Tang
HIT CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: VaLENtINo CALF LEATHER SINGLE HANDLE MIME BAG ($3,445, VALENTINO.COM)
FENDI LEATHER GEOMETRIC GRID PRINT PEEKABOO BAG ($6,800, FENDI.COM) PraDa SAFFIANO LEATHER BAG ($2,500, PRADA.COM) gIVENChy By rICCarDo tISCI 100 PERCENT AYERS SNAKE BAG ($3,250, GIVENCHY.COM)
OFF THE GRID
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ADJUST YOUR SCREEN—THESE CLASSIC BAGS ARE READY FOR SOME SOCIAL DISTORTION PhotograPhy JUNIChI Ito FaShIoN MIa SoLKIN V MAGAZINE 5 2
VFILES MADE FASHION F/W 2015 PHOTO DIARY BY PHOTOGRAPHY WINNER SEUNG LEE.
SUMMER GUIDE
V ASKED SOME OF OUR FAVORITE PEOPLE WHAT THEY’RE MOST EXCITED ABOUT THIS SUMMER. THE RESPONSE? ADVENTURES ON THE ROAD, AT SEA, AND IN WONDERLAND
MAKING WAVES
“I’m looking forward to a whale watching cruise with my family and Captain Dave of dolphinsafari.com.”
—NaNcy SiNatra
MULTI-LOVING
“[Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s] Ruban Nielson’s love of vintage funk is still intact, but this time without the woozy quirks of his frst two UMO records. It’s more direct and danceable. Candy-colored ‘Like Acid Rain,’ bouncy ‘Ur Life One Night,’ fuzz jam ‘Puzzles’ (straight outta Paisley Park), and the disco-fed ‘Can’t Keep Checking My Phone’ are all charmers that scream summer.” —JohN NorriS
UNTANGLING
MULTI-LOVE iS available May 25 froM JaGJaGUWar
“I love the duality of these earrings because they feel modern and graphic but are similarly very playful, having been inspired by vintage metal tangle toys.”
—vaNeSSa traiNa baleNciaGa PALE GOLD ZIG-ZAG MULTI-THUNDER BRASS EARRINGS ($510, 212.206.0867)
REINVENTING CLASSICS
Diesel’s Pre-Fall ’15 reversible bomber is a reiteration of Nicola Formichetti’s very frst collection as creative director. And if anyone can rock a new classic, it’s iGGy azalea.
DieSel REVERSIBLE JACKET ($348, SHOP.DIESEL.COM)
V MAGAZINE 5 4
BONDING TIME
Everyone is excited about the 24th JaMeS boND flm, Spectre, but leave it to luxury timepiece house Omega to work that frenzy into the fnest details. This watch’s face is actually a symbol inspired by the Bond family coat of arms, repeatedly interlocked.
oMeGa SEAMASTER AQUA TERRA 150M JAMES BOND LIMITED EDITION WATCH ($7,350, +44.0.845.272.3100)
Clockwise from top right: Capt. Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Safari, Mark S. Tyson; courtesy Balenciaga; courtesy Omega watches; courtesy Mad Love/Interscope; PA Images; courtesy Jagjaguwar
WEAVING DREAMS
“Ryn [Weaver] is such a talent. She’s a supergirl. I remember when I met her for the frst time at a friend’s birthday party, standing at the edge of a swimming pool, she reminded me of a cute little bunny rabbit, the way she spoke, the way she moved, the way she was so hyperactive and nervous at the same time. I couldn’t wait to work with her. We spent a few days together in Jim Morrison’s old house in L.A., writing songs with Benny Blanco and Cashmere Cat and we just clicked. She has such an amazing brain and her lyrics are so cinematic and beautiful. I was blown away and almost envious of her ability to write such poetic songs. Ryn is going to be a star. Everything about her glows so bright and I can’t wait to watch her rise.” —charli XcX
DAY-TO-NIGHT DANCING
“Emporio Armani’s Techno Perforated capsule collection adds pores to technical wool, neoprene, and leather accessories and garments, mixing sport mesh and lasered leather with the classic shapes of Armani—fresh in even the sweatiest of dance clubs.” —NATASHA STAGG
EMPORIO ARMANI SANDALS ($425, ARMANI.COM)
GETTING LOST
“Over the past 150 years, Alice has managed to survive the test of time, in part because so many diferent creative individuals have been inspired by her. She’s an everygirl, really, and is so relevant to all times and places. There are four diferent sections of [The Alice Look]. In one, we look at Alice within the context of the original story, as well as later, illustrated editions, in one of which she’s wearing jeans. We also explore the way in which she’s been picked up in diferent parts of the world. We include the Lolita Alices from Japan, and also have an area that shows how she’s been an inspiration to celebrities, designers, and stylists from the ’50s onward. There have been a dizzying array of Alices from across the world and hopefully people will walk away seeing her as fresh.” —KIERA VAclAVIK, CURAtOR Of tHe
ALICe LOOk, ON VIeW At tHe VICtORIA AND ALBeRt MUSeUM Of CHILDHOOD fROM MAY 2 tHROUGH NOVeMBeR 1, 2015
TURNING UP
“Martin Gore has the looks of an angel with a voice to match and a mind that defes them both. His mastery of melody and lyrical genius have coursed through my blood vessels since I was old enough to understand what lust and loss were. When he decides to foray into a more anonymous 21st century style of composing I shall follow him wide eyed and ready, like the bleach-white-teased-hair, striped-biker-short-wearing 101 fan girl I am at heart. Drive anywhere M.G., you behind the wheel.” —TAMARyN
MG IS AVAIlABlE NOw fROM MuTE
Clockwise from top left: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (drawing by Sir John Tenniel, 1886); courtesy Emporio Armani; Travis Shinn, courtesy Mute; Nick Simonite © Lollapalooza; Josephine Meckseper, The Complete History of Postcontemporary Art, 2005, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, purchased with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee, 2014.65ap; courtesy Hugo Boss
RECONTEXTUALIZING
BEING A BOSS
Boss’ Pre-Fall ’15 bespoke bag is, like most things Hugo, infuenced by menswear tailoring—down to the gold closure, which resembles shirt cufinks. Designer Jason Wu’s friend JulIANNE MOORE gets the reference.
BOSS BeSpOke exOtIC MINI ($1,795, HUGOBOSS.COM)
“It’s hard to pick one item that I’m most looking forward to seeing at the new Whitney because there are so many works that haven’t been seen in a while that we will have an opportunity to show now. We have two important vitrine works by the artist Josephine Meckseper [one pictured above] that we acquired separately in the last year, Tout Va Bien, and The Complete History of Postcontemporary Art. We are going to inset them next to one another in a wall that faces our grand staircase. It’s a great example of how hospitable this building can
DAY TRIPPING
“Festival summer is the best! You get to be a hippie for months. I can’t wait to play all of them but I’m so looking forward to Hangout Music Festival [May 15-17, Gulf Shores, AL], ’cause it’s on a beach and I’ve never been to a festival on a beach before!” —TOVE lO “I’m so excited to perform in Finsbury Park at the Wireless Festival [July 3-5, London, England] this summer. The lineup is crazy!” —TINASHE “This summer we can’t wait to play Secret Garden Party [July 23-26, Abbots Ripton, England] again and dress up like fairies!” —SAy lOu lOu
be to the works in our collection. Something not well known but included in the inaugural exhibition is a group of collection works made in the 1930s that were made in protest of the horrifying frequency of lynchings at that time. While the works were made by artists from various backgrounds, they were unifed by their insistence, to use the extremely relevant words of our moment, that black lives matter.” —DANA MIllER, CURAtOR Of tHe peRMANeNt
COLLeCtION At tHe WHItNeY MUSeUM Of AMeRICAN ARt, NOW OpeN At ItS NeW LOCAtION, 99 GANSeVOORt StReet, NeW YORk CItY
party
good times
Le fashion week, c’est chic! inez & vinoodh turned a music video shoot for niLe rodgers’s chic into fashion’s wiLdest night out with heLp from karLie kLoss, v, and a few of our fabuLous friends PhotograPhy Joe hume V MAGAZINE 5 6
Forget the stufy cocktail parties and the passé soirées of fashion weeks past. This February, between the furries of snow and shows, V teamed up with our longtime friends and collaborators Inez & Vinoodh to throw a party for New York Fashion Week that had everyone disco dancing. The evening was centered around a special performance by Nile Rodgers and CHIC, which Inez & Vinoodh flmed as a music video for the band’s hit “I’ll Be There” from It’s About Time, their new album that’s out this summer. The video follows a stunning Karlie Kloss dressed in white Atelier Versace as she arrives outside Pacha NYC in a vintage taxi cab and is led into a sea of fashionable faces to dance her heart out to a set of classics—“Le Freak,” “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and “I’m Coming Out” included. “We Are
Family” had her and everyone else in the three-story historic nightclub feeling like exactly that. “When we frst talked about the video, I told [Inez & Vinoodh] I just wanted there to be music throughout the whole thing, nothing static,” says Rodgers. “Their frst reaction was, ‘Great, let’s do a party! We should do it with V during fashion week.’” This idea was born after the trio met on set for V93 (our 2015 Music Issue)—an encounter that Rodgers describes as “love at frst sight.” The feeling was mutual. “Working with CHIC was a dream come true,” say the photographers. “The video refects the joy of dancing all night to the best music ever (disco), the sexiness and glamour of the disco era so perfectly
embodied by Karlie Kloss. We somehow managed to turn a super fabulous V party into a work environment and vice versa but we could have kept on working and dancing way past closing time.” The song is one of many previously recorded tracks that Rodgers believed had been lost until a backup set of fles was miraculously discovered four years ago. According to Rodgers, this gives the album (the band’s frst in over two decades) an added amount of special signifcance. “Almost every person who was on my frst CHIC recording is on this frst single, which made it so important to me,” he says. “I can’t tell you what that feels like. It’s the most rewarding feeling I’ve ever had. I’m overwhelmed by this whole thing, being given the chance to do this again.” WILLIAM DEFEBAUGH
sarah silverman
“I’m usually good at this stuf, because I’ll be funny,” says Sarah Silverman after her frst trip to Sundance, of promoting the profoundly unfunny I Smile Back. She plays, for the frst time, the dramatic lead—a depressed drug addict named Laney— and she isn’t sure how to talk about it. “It’s heartbreaking, and it’s so subjective. I can’t say this is a character that’s X-Y-Z. I could say she’s a housewife, she has demons, she’s, you know, struggling. But whether you empathize with her or see her as a huge asshole depends on your own life experience.” In the end, it’s a performance as arresting as her standup is jocular. As with any of her hugely popular past projects—a memoir and a Comedy Central series, to name a couple—Silverman drew from her own life experience for Laney: “As a kid, chemical depression came over me so fast, and stayed for so long. I’d had to go to camp every summer, and I was a bed wetter and it was humiliating, and I knew that feeling of being homesick. [Depression] was exactly that feeling, but there was more despair, because I was home. There was no way to facilitate that homesick feeling.” Not that this tragic role was necessarily more difcult than her more familiar mischievous stoner. “People always say that a comedian is trying to get street cred in a drama, but they never say that to a dramatic actor in a comedy. Comedy is just thought of as this lighter, easier fare. I’m just saying lines as if they were real. Like, in The Sarah Silverman Program, Sarah’s all about herself. [In I Smile Back,] Laney’s self-centered, self-loathing, self-punishing. She lives in fear of ‘what if,’ and becoming her father, or abandoning her children. When you live in that space of anxiety and selfhatred, that isn’t modesty, it’s complete self-obsession. There isn’t room for anybody else.” In other words, she says, even if her prep for drama is vastly diferent than prep for comedy, it’s similarly researched. It was the sex scenes in I Smile Back (her frst, and they’re brutal) that made Silverman anxious, if only momentarily. “To my friend I was like, Oh my god I’ve got to get beaten up and there’s a scene where he has anal sex with me,” she recalls. “After the frst week, he was like, How was the anal sex scene? I go, You know what? It was pretty good.” With this remark, she laughs, and her relief is audible. After her frst real foray into dramatic acting, Silverman is over sadness, at least for now. Natasha stagg
SILVERMAN WEARS SWEATER raLPh LaUrEN PANTS MaX Mara
THIS IS SUN DANCE
whether dramatic, demonic, or just plain dope, this year’s sundance film festival lineup was anything but dreary. meet indie cinema’s class of 2015 PhotograPhy Matt IrWIN fashIoN aNNa trEVELyaN V MAGAZINE 5 8
tye sheridan
“Oh my gosh. I was really busy,” Tye Sheridan says of his whirlwind experience at Sundance. The burgeoning 18-year-old actor had three screenings to attend after it was announced on day one that he would star as Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse, the next installment of the multibillion-dollar mutant franchise. As one of Marvel’s moodier superheroes, Cyclops is a perfect ft for Sheridan, whose frst acting experience was not on a Disney Channel sitcom but in director Terrence Malick’s 2011 Oscar-nominated drama The Tree of Life, playing the son of Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt. “Working with Terrence Malick right of the bat was an eye-opener,” says Sheridan. “I don’t know how successful I could have been without learning from him and some of the directors I worked with after. Everything just worked out the right way.” The Tree of Life set the trajectory for a precocious career that was well-represented by his consistently dark festival oferings. In the painfully original Entertainment, from The Comedy director Rick Alverson, Sheridan stars opposite Gregg Turkington (in character as his comic alter ego Neil Hamburger) as two terrible comedians on a soulless tour of America. “I never read anything that was so unique,” says Sheridan, who, as Eddie, delivers a very specifc mode of standup. “It’s not a verbal you-have-to-tell-jokes kind of a comic. It’s more of a physical mime performance.” Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment is based on the infamous 1971 psychological experiment of the same name conducted by Stanford University researchers with the support of the U.S. military, in which a group of college males were assigned guard and prisoner roles in a full-time prison simulation with brutal results. Sheridan plays rebellious prisoner No. 819, in an ensemble that includes Ezra Miller, Olivia Thirlby, and Billy Crudup. In the biblical father-and-son drama Last Days in the Desert from director Rodrigo García, Sheridan is confronted by Jesus, played by Ewan McGregor, who also plays Lucifer. “I’ve always seemed to connect with darker flms more, and on a deeper level,” the Texas native explains. “I love flms that are about people and their problems—problems that we all relate to whether that’s grief or guilt.” With his track record, it’s easy to wonder if Sheridan feels like he’s missed out on anything. Would he consider doing a television show about sexy young vampires? “Who’s the director?” he laughs. MARK JACOBS
SHERIDAN WEARS CLOTHING CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION S/S ’15 NECKLACE HIS OWN
brie larson
Brie Larson has spent most of her career quietly shining in ofbeat comedic roles. Whether she’s playing a murmuring rock star in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Toni Collette’s reckless daughter in United States of Tara, or the mostly silent voice of reason in Don Jon, she’s consistently subtle and naturalistic, a girl-next-door if the girl next door was just a little bit sharper than you. As an actress, she’s drawn to the more submerged parts of the human psyche, and even her lighthearted performances can be penetrating. “There’s so much that you can learn through a comedy,” she explains. “But being able to take control of the darkness is a gift, I think.” Larson received more than two dozen awards and nominations last year for her performance as social worker Grace in Short Term 12. It changed her career permanently: “Destin Daniel Cretton took a chance and saw something in me and believed in me. And now that I have this flm that people can see and go, ‘Oh, you can do dramatic roles,’ it’s easier for me to go down that road. It’s something that I think is a really honorable choice.” Now, she’s able to bring her unafected, knowing quality to more complex roles, showing of a talent for exposing the raw and vulnerable sides of her characters, as with her most recent project, Digging for Fire, which premiered (and was quickly picked up) at Sundance this year. Larson calls Digging for Fire a “thinking movie.” Her other upcoming projects, like Room and Brooklyn Bridge, are equally thoughtful. “All the movies that I enjoy making are not ones you can have an immediate response to. A flm at its best satisfes immediately; as you’re watching it you’re enjoying every second. And as you’re walking out of the theater, you think about it again and realize there’s so much more than what was on the surface,” she says. Larson devotes a great deal of thought to her craft; she references archetypal frameworks and casually quotes Joseph Campbell and Joan of Arc. “It’s very difcult for me to speak in streamline,” she admits. “It’s much easier to speak in metaphor. The only way that I fnd comfort, make life and its difculties make sense on this planet, is through art.” That attitude explains the edge she brings to her deadpan punch lines and dramatic monologues alike and why all her characters seem so immediately familiar. It’s easy and sometimes uncomfortable to see what she calls “the river underneath the river” in her performances, the things we only unearth in the act of creating art and metaphor, the things we’d sometimes rather keep buried. CAROLINA gONzALEz
LARSON WEARS JACKET BURBERRY PRORSUM PANTS RALPH LAUREN JEWELRY JENNIFER FISHER
james franco
In the magical world of our contributing editor James Franco, where time is not an obstacle and knowledge is contingent on collaboration, Sundance is just another opportunity to study. (His diary from the week, which reads a little like college lecture notes, can be found on page 66.) As you’ll read later, he stars in two flms here, and one at peripheral festival Slamdance. Perhaps the most talked about of the three is a project directed by Justin Kelly, whom he met through a friend, director Gus Van Sant. The story of I Am Michael goes: Van Sant tipped Franco of to the true story of Michael Glatze, a gay activist who became a Christian advocate. The director next introduced Franco to a friend—fedgling director Kelly—urging them to make a movie. The two jumped at a chance to work together, and to depict such an interesting character on flm. Kelly was on board from the beginning, a longtime Franco fan, while Franco says of agreeing to work with Kelly, “I like fnding new talent. They’re excited and eager and grateful. [It] makes me fall in love with movies all over again. And I want to give people with talent the opportunities I was given.” Glatze’s is a difcult story to tell, but Kelly does so in I Am Michael sensitively, and Franco transforms from activist to anti- powerfully on-screen. “He came to Sundance and saw the flm,” Franco says of the real-life Glatze. “The frst thing he said to me was, ‘I want to thank you. That is a beautiful movie. You are a great actor.’” Watching a person’s views change so drastically is an emotional experience no matter how you side, but more likely the future fans of I Am Michael are interested in marriage equality, as are its stars and director. Luckily, Glatze has since stopped picketing for the opposite as a part of the Christian right. “I think the flm has changed him,” says Franco. “He said it was a healing experience. He’s moved away from some of his extreme views.” Franco has persuaded one important moviegoer of the flm’s merit, at least. And of any Interview-like controversy he may come across once it’s set to be released? “I don’t read about myself,” he responds. So, does invasive or bad press ever upset him? “Not at all. They hate us cuz they ain’t us.” NS
FRANCO WEARS SWEATER GUCCI S/S ’15 SHIRT PRADA S/S ’15
alia shawkat
When Alia Shawkat attended her frst Sundance in 2009, with the acclaimed post-9/11 Palestinian-American drama Amreeka, she was 19 years old and slept on a blow-up mattress in the middle of a living room. This year, she had her own room at the Marriott, was a Short Film juror alongside photographer Autumn de Wilde and production designer K.K. Barrett (who has worked with Spike Jonze and Sofa Coppola), and showed her startling hot-ticket dramedy Nasty Baby from writer-director Sebastián Silva. Nasty Baby follows a gay couple (played by Silva himself and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe) in sidewalkstroller Brooklyn, as they conceive a baby with their best friend, played by Kristen Wiig. “And then shit gets really weird at the end,” Shawkat says about the much-discussed third act, which comments on the gentrifed bubble. Shawkat, who is well-known as Maeby Fünke on Netfix’s Arrested Development, plays the assistant to Silva, a visual artist creating a project called “Nasty Baby” in which adults act like newborns on camera. “We all had to do it,” the Palm Springs native explains. “Like rolling around on a mat. It was weirdly therapeutic. We were just wearing underwear and tank tops.” Shawkat’s other role on the flm was as a co-producer. She became close with Silva two Sundances ago when he screened his flms Magic Magic and the Director Award in World Cinema–winning Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, as her friend and Arrested Development costar Michael Cera starred in both. She suggested Adebimpe, whom she met at a music event years before, and Wiig, whom she has known since costarring in Drew Barrymore’s 2009 roller derby comedy Whip It, for the project. Shawkat looks forward to producing and writing more, in addition to acting in smartly chosen projects like the underrated HBO comedy series Getting On, upcoming flms that include Green Room and The Final Girls, and that Broad City episode where she and Ilana Glazer, two proud curly-haired women styled to look exactly alike, fall in love at frst sight (Abbi Jacobson, Glazer’s comedy partner, famously thought that Glazer was Shawkat after they frst met). “I’ve been acting since I was nine and my relationship to this industry has changed a lot. For the better,” Shawkat says. “It’s just part of being older—being happy with where you’re at. I’ve worked a lot so it’s gotten me to a place where people are actually curious about what I’m making and that feels great.” MJ
SHAWKAT WEARS CLOTHING JUST CAVALLI NECKLACE HER OWN
avan jogia
One of the biggest stories of this year’s festival was Avan Jogia’s wide-brimmed Sundance hat, which he picked up in downtown Park City at Burns Cowboy Shop. “It makes me wish I had a small cigar and a handkerchief,” jokes Jogia, whose messy, long hair was up to the challenge of accessorizing. “I’ve been going ‘mountain man’ ever since we stopped doing Twisted. It’s getting to an almost radical length, almost like a political statement at this point.” Twisted was the ABC Family teen mystery–thriller Jogia starred in last year, after four seasons on the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious. Born and raised in Vancouver, Jogia is living up to his Teen Vogue nickname, the Haunted Heartthrob, and then some, as evidenced by his nuanced oferings in Park City this year. The 23-year-old plays Teddy, the emotional lynchpin in Ten Thousand Saints, a late-’80s coming-of-age drama from American Splendor directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini that is alternately druggy and straight-edge. “The most important thing about Teddy is that he is very much alive. I wanted to make sure the character was alive in every sense of the word,” says Jogia, who costars with Hailee Steinfeld, Emile Hirsch, Ethan Hawke, and Asa Butterfeld. “He has to be a fully-fedged human being so that when he’s taken away from the audience it’s impactful.” Jogia also has a crucial role in I Am Michael from director Justin Kelly, based on the true story of Michael Glatze, the gay activist and former managing editor at XY magazine in San Francisco turned ex-gay and born-again Christian, played by James Franco. He appears as Nico, a dreamy gay love interest Glatze meets at a Buddhist retreat. “Justin said he was making his ode to French flm with my section of the movie,” Jogia says. “Nico is this reminder that he’s a human being. But the catch is that it doesn’t feel good for him because he feels like he’s pouring love into someone that doesn’t have the ability to love him back.” It is infnitely satisfying work. “As you get older, as you keep being selfrefective, you can grow exponentially. And the work you’re able to do is exponentially deeper,” he says. mj
JOGIA WEARS CLOTHING DIOR HOmmE S/S ’15 HAT HIS OWN
maika monroe
One of the most surprising Sundance hits this year was It Follows. Directed by David Robert Mitchell, the story is ostensibly an STD parable that starts with a girl named Jay having sex in a van, which causes a ghostlike entity that can take any human form to follow her (instead of the guy who gave her the disease). Jay can pass the disease along, but if the next person in line dies, the ghost comes back to her. “I remember as a kid growing up always having this thought that someone was watching me,” says Maika Monroe, who plays Jay. “For me, that was the scariest, over watching any sort of horror movie. Knowing that someone’s watching you or following you or something that’s consistently there behind the curtains is more terrifying than something in your face.” Beyond the creepy ghost, the flm is ultimately about the underlying sexual disafectedness of the teens in the flm. Monroe, 21, has a very sober view of the sexuality depicted in the movie. “It sits in this generation, because, to me, sex isn’t what it meant before,” says the Santa Barbara–born former pro kiteboarder. “It’s almost nonchalant. I think it has a diferent meaning now than it did when my parents were growing up. I was speaking to my mom about her relationships—she would kiss someone, and then after a while she was dating someone, and then you had sex. In our generation, you have sex with someone, and then, ‘Do we have a relationship now?’ It’s a diferent time, and the movie speaks to that.” After her run of indie horror hits—Monroe also starred in Adam Wingard’s The Guest last year, which earned her a teen scream queen moniker—Monroe will turn to postapocalyptic sci-f, beginning with Bokeh, a flm about a couple that goes on vacation to Iceland, only to wake up to fnd that everyone in the world has disappeared. After that comes Monroe’s mainstream breakout role as the badass warrior Ringer in a flm adaptation of The 5th Wave (part one of the megapopular YA trilogy about an alien invasion), also starring Chloë Grace Moretz. “She’s got to know how to work guns and make it seem like she’s been doing this her whole life, so there was a ton of training,” says Monroe. “The coolest part of it all was fght training and learning how to assemble an M16, which I probably would have never learned otherwise.” MAXWELL WILLIAMS
MONROE WEARS CLOTHING GUCCI SHOES GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI DESIGN
chanel iman
“I’ve always wanted to act, I just didn’t think it would be so soon,” says Chanel Iman, one of the world’s most celebrated models and a star of Dope, the breakout coming-of-age comedy from writer-director Rick Famuyiwa. The 24-year-old former Victoria’s Secret Angel, who signed with Ford Models when she was 13 and appeared on her frst Vogue cover when she was 16, now has her frst movie credit, on a project so beloved that it sold in Park City for $7 million after a news-making bidding war. It’s not a bad way to participate in your frst “ofcial” Sundance. “I went last year just to snowboard but I didn’t go to the festival,” the Atlanta native says. “I had no idea I would be coming back with a flm.” Set in Inglewood, California, Dope follows three ’90s-obsessed high school friends in a band that performs original music (produced in real life by Pharrell Williams), as they come into possession of and then try to unload a few kilos of Ecstasy in order to make Ivy League dreams come true. Chanel joins a stellar ensemble—including newcomer Shameik Moore, Kiersey Clemons (Transparent), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Zoë Kravitz, A$AP Rocky, and Odd Future members Vince Staples and Casey Veggies—to play Lily, the daughter of a kingpin (her brother is played by Sean Combs’s son Quincy Brown). “Lily is in her own little world. She’s a bad girl and likes to get in messes. She doesn’t give a fuck,” Chanel says of her character. In fact, Lily’s meme-worthy behavior inspires dealers to name their brand of Ecstasy after her. “She’s just one of those girls who likes to have fun and doesn’t care about the consequences.” While remarkable for its immaculate style and unpatronizing social media narrative devices, Dope is momentous as a pop State of the Generation address, blithely establishing new identity politics that cross race, class, and sexuality. “Our flm is compared to so many diferent movies but it’s its own,” says Chanel, who defnitely wants to do more flms. “Our flm is just diferent. It’s young. It’s fun. It’s the new generation of cool.” MJ
IMAN WEARS DRESS AND RINGS DIOR
kellan lutz
“I’m defnitely going to be trying to keep my shirt on more,” says Kellan Lutz, who you may know as Hercules in 2014’s The Legend of Hercules or Emmett Cullen in all fve Twilight Saga flms. The attention he still sees from those roles has helped Lutz in his decision to move away from Venice Beach, L.A., to a secret spot where paparazzi can’t as easily catch him on his way to the water. “They never fnd me, and I’m not in tabloids anymore,” he says defantly. “I don’t care to be in those. I know a lot of people who need them to stay relevant. I’d rather be relevant with my work.” The flm he’s promoting at Sundance is one in which he doesn’t star, or take his shirt of. Experimenter is a cerebral drama about studies conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, which uncovered startling truths about just how obedient most humans tend to be. Lutz plays William Shatner, who played Stanley Milgram in the TV movie version of his life. Lutz was a fan of Shatner’s, sure (“who isn’t?”), but it was the script’s message about conformity that spoke to him. The chance to meet two of his favorite actors—stars Winona Ryder and Peter Sarsgaard—probably helped, too. “I’m quite fascinated with the studies of human behavior. Acting is, in a way, the same thing. As an actor you have to be able to put yourself in someone’s shoes. Sometimes you’re as surprised as Stanley Milgram was.” Behaviors Lutz has witnessed in Hollywood— including his own—have surprised him since his arrival. As an example, he describes a Milgram experiment in which people walking near a group of individuals looking toward the sky almost always stop and do the same—the bigger the group, the more passersby are afected. “Conforming is a scary thing. In L.A., the entertainment industry sets the trend. People who have infuence—Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie did, and now Kim Kardashian does—it’s fascinating when people in our industry say something is cool, and then it becomes cool. Even if it is not cool! When I frst came out to L.A., tight jeans and Ed Hardy were the trend. I spent hundreds of dollars on jeans I only wore once. I looked terrible in them; I have big legs. I’d put all my trust in my publicist.” That was back when he was on The Bold and the Beautiful, and since the soaps and all those shirtless scenes, his work has often veered toward meta. Besides playing Shatner, Lutz has played himself on 30 Rock, and a sitcom star on The Comeback. “I still prefer shooting guns and driving fast and fghting,” he stresses, “but sometimes an action movie doesn’t turn out to be that sophisticated of a flm.” NS
LUTZ WEARS T-SHIRT HIS OWN
KIRKE WEARS SHIRT CHANEL
emory cohen
It’s hard to tell how Emory Cohen feels about what he does for a living. He admires, and aspires to, great performances, but he’s also almost aggressively honest—not just about himself, but about the flm industry and its self-involvement, and those who pay more attention to movies than they do global crises. “Talk about the artist who’s been doing this for about 56 years,” he insists. “Those are the people that deserve real interviews. The only other people that should have interviews are scientists, economists, you know, people who inform people on what’s real.” Cohen is volatile and sincere on-screen, too. In Brooklyn, based on Colm Tóibín’s best seller and scripted by Nick Hornby, he plays a working-class Italian-American in love with Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey, played by Saoirse Ronan. It’s an understated performance; Cohen was inspired in part by the 1948 Italian neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief, explaining, “I was really struck by the grace of the flm more than the grittiness, and how they can make such a graceful flm be impactful.” Brooklyn is a more unusual project for him, not just as a period piece, but because of who Cohen had to portray. “I’m comfortable being the mean guy,” he says. “Being the sweet guy, the good guy, the romantic, that was harder for me to live in. It’s even hard for me to watch the flm, really. Acting is a transformative art, a transformative thing; it has a lot to do with the imagination. For me to transform into the good guy whereas I’ve transformed into the bad guy, and I don’t know what kind of guy I am, really, outside of other people’s talk, was harder for me to watch.” It’s true that Cohen has played a lot of rougher types who are, if not outright violent (The Place Beyond the Pines, Beneath the Harvest Sky), at least morally questionable (The Gambler). But what’s transformative about these characters for him is not that they’re “bad,” but that they create moments that more run-of-the-mill characters often can’t. He cites fellow actors from the upcoming By Way of Helena as inspiration: “I remember seeing Chris Baker drink a cup of cofee that he’s had since take one, and Chris Berry eating a piece of bacon. And they just created this incredible moment, and these incredible characters they’ve helped in creating, but especially in these moments where they’re just walking outside with Woody [Harrelson].” In other words, Cohen wants to express a lot with very little, which luckily requires exactly the kind of intensity and candor he deals in, whether he’s playing a good guy, bad guy, or, more likely, anyone who can’t be defned so easily. CG
COHEN WEARS JACKET BURBERRY PRORSUM S/S ’15 SHIRT DIESEL BLACK GOLD S/S ’15 BEANIE HIS OWN
Makeup and grooming (Mia Hansen-Løve, Avan Jogia, Kellan Lutz, Sarah Silverman, Lola Kirke, Maika Monroe, Emory Cohen) Ashleigh Louer using NARS (Starworks Artists) Makeup and grooming (Brie Larson, Tye Sheridan, Alia Shawkat) Fabiola using Giorgio Armani cosmetics (Tracey Mattingly) Makeup (Chanel Iman) Angel Merino Hair (Mia Hansen-Løve, Avan Jogia, Kellan Lutz, Sarah Silverman, Lola Kirke, Maika Monroe, Emory Cohen) Brian Fisher using Oribe (The Wall Group)
lola kirke
“I saw The Squid and the Whale when I was in sixth grade,” says Lola Kirke, star of Noah Baumbach’s most recent flm Mistress America. “I had a boy-next-door pal, and we went to see it in theaters. We felt precocious and sophisticated for liking it. Then, I had a brief stint as a child actor, and I auditioned for Noah for a part in Margot at the Wedding. He doesn’t remember the audition at all—I do—but I didn’t get the part. Right when I graduated college, there was a very secretive Noah Baumbach flm circulating, and I went and auditioned for it 14 times.” Kirke landed the role this time, as a young woman obsessed with her soon-to-be step-sister, played by Baumbach’s real-life girlfriend, Greta Gerwig. The flm premiered at Sundance, with Kirke being quickly labeled as a young breakout star, a place Gerwig inhabited a few years ago. Kirke describes a familial friendship she’s developed with the duo, which includes career guidance. “I’m so grateful to have Greta,” says Kirke. “She’s one of the most intelligent people I know, and she has a very outspoken view on the career. I don’t want to paraphrase that view, because I’m afraid of getting it wrong, but she’s defnitely given me good advice.” Kirke has other places to look for advice on a career in the entertainment industry. She is the daughter of legendary rock drummer Simon Kirke (Free and Bad Company) and fashion designer Lorraine, and sister of Girls actress Jemima and singer Domino. But more than career advice, she thanks her family for style counseling when she was in elementary school. “In ffth grade, Jemima decided I should be punk and dressed me for school every single day the night before. She would pick out these incredible outfts like a snakeskin skirt with orange fshnet tights, foral Dr. Martens, and white lipstick,” Kirke recalls. “She made me be eccentric, but maybe I was, because I was so willing to go into my very uptight school dressed in that way.” Now, Kirke jokingly says her style is “hot lesbian cowboy,” which jives with her recent role as a scheming drifter in David Fincher’s Gone Girl. “My mom was fipping out, because she had read the book, and she thought I was going in for the role of Emily Ratajkowski’s part, because age-wise it made sense, and my mom thinks I’m the most beautiful woman in the world—thank god someone does. I was like, ‘Okay, I got the name of my character: Greta.’ And my mom was like, ‘Ewwww! She’s bloody trailer trash.’” Having been born in London and raised in New York, Kirke notes the discrepancy in background between herself and her star-making character. “I don’t know why I got the role,” she says. “I wore a really tight shirt that maybe showed my nipples accidentally and some horrible cut-of shorts, and stufed my face with Skittles during the entire audition, which worked I guess.” MW
Hair (Brie Larson, Tye Sheridan, Alia Shawkat) Crystal Tran (Exclusive Artists Management) Grooming (James Franco) Jamal Hammadi for Hamadi Organics (Walter Schupfer Management) Digital technician Devin Doyle Photo assistant Christian Bragg Production HMS Production Retouching Love Retouch Location Deer Valley Bristlecone, Park City, Utah
mia hansen-lØve
Although Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden doesn’t shy away from the excess of the ’90s French house scene, it also doesn’t revel in it; it’s a movie more interested in intimacy than indulgence. Because her brother was a DJ, Hansen-Løve says, “my parents allowed me to go to his parties quite early. I was 13 when I was actually going to the bar where he was a resident. It was quite nice for me to be there, close to him, and it was also a way for me to rediscover him.” Her brother, Sven Hansen-Løve, organized the Paris parties that helped launch house’s most important names, including Daft Punk. He both cowrote the flm and inspired Eden’s protagonist, Paul, who never quite reaches that level of superstardom. A decade-spanning story with a cast of hundreds might seem unusual for Hansen-Løve, whose flms (Goodbye First Love, Father of My Children) are often quiet and intimate. But Eden, like those movies, constantly returns to the question of love. Not just the love of music, although it’s there, as Hansen-Løve acknowledges: “At that time, at that place, people would go because they were really crazy about this specifc type of music, and to feel the enthusiasm and the kind of communion that was happening there was something quite amazing.” That love is also not simply nostalgia, despite the flm’s afection for its era. “There is a very deep concern with being faithful to the clubs, their specifc atmosphere and lighting and music, how the people were dressed at that time,” says Hansen-Løve. “The apartments we shot were the real places of the people that inspired those parts in the flm. We never thought we were making a documentary, but we were interested in fnding a certain poetry, and I thought it would be easier to fnd it through some kind of realism.” Poetry can be a hard sell, and Eden lost producers several times. “Some would say, ‘Oh, it’s a shame because it’s such a nice subject, but she doesn’t deal with it in the way she should,’” she recalls. But Hansen-Løve deals with her subject in much the same way she did at her brother’s parties. “I always felt more necessity in depicting these people who have troubles, difculties, are fragile, and trying to make the audience love them. It’s about trying to enjoy this experience with someone, to a point, and then trying to face with him the darker side of his life. And at the end trying to see what that all leads to,” says Hansen-Løve. Through music and memory, Eden documents the discovery, rediscovery, and love of a person, a process with no neat beginning and end. “I don’t think it’s leading nowhere, actually,” she adds. “I think it’s leading to himself.” CG
HANSEN-LØVE wEArS CLOTHING DONNA KARAN
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THIRTY-THREE MovIEs In sEvEn daYs FRIDAY 1/23
1. We took of from Los Angeles at 6:30 and landed around 8 AM. Our assigned driver, Boyd, drove us the 40 minutes to Park City; snow out the window, empty freeway; we picked more movies to see. I had told my assistant, Sam, that I wanted to see as many movies as possible. She didn’t understand that that meant fve or six a day. She squeezed us into Best of Enemies. 2. 11:45 AM Best of Enemies Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley battle it out on the failing ABC network during the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions. Buckley, the conservative quasi intellectual liberal baiter with the sharky smile V MAGAZINE 6 6
versus Gore Vidal, the Myra Breckinridge– writing (transgender character, orgies, anal sex), popular, intellectual lefty with a sharky smile. Great doc.
3. 2:30 pm James White Drug-troubled/drink-troubled son tries to get his life together, but his mom starts dying of cancer. Confdent, vulnerable performances, all shot in extreme handheld close-ups, almost Dardenne style. Think: subjective camera/ intense performances.
4. Then I had to do some press for my movie, True Story, or jump some rope, or something. Then we met Brad Pitt and the Plan B crew at the premiere of True Story.
5. 6:00 pm True Story Jonah Hill plays Mike Finkel, a disgraced journalist who has been fred from The New York Times; by coincidence a man, Christian Longo, was caught impersonating Mike Finkel while hiding out in Mexico after his three children and wife were found murdered. I play Christian. See me and Jonah go head-to-head in the prison, talking about life, writing, love, and murder. 6. 9:45 pm Ten Thousand Saints Young people in New York. Emile Hirsch, Hailee Steinfeld, Ethan Hawke. Pregnancies. 7. 11:45 pm Knock Knock Keanu Reeves gets in trouble with two young
minxes. A sexy, fun Funny Games?
SATURDAY 1/24
8. Woke up early and jumped rope. 9. 9:00 AM The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Documentary about the famed organization. Great old footage, great new interviews. See all the guns, see all the leather jackets: stylish. See how the issues of racial repression and inequality still resonate.
10. Then I had to do interviews and photos on Main Street for True Story and I Am Michael, my other flm premiering at Sundance.
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james franco takes us through park city by the hours with his guide to the sundance film festival TEXT JAMES FRANCO 11. 6:30 pm Mistress America Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig kill it again with this young girl/older girl romp through New York City and their dreams of artistic/ unique greatness. I love the editing: quick cuts and quick talking keep everything moving and fun. 12. 8:30 pm Z for Zachariah The postapocalyptic nightmare of this world stays ofscreen; we watch these young beauties work on a farm, fall in love, and get jealous as they try to pull humanity out of its midnight hour. Adam and Eve rise again. 13. 11:30 pm The Overnight Wackiness with two couples during a long
night: big dicks, little dicks, jokes, asshole paintings, drunkenness, embarrassing stuf, orgies, children, fun. Funny actors.
motorcycles, injuries, glamour, women, violence, the American Dream in your fucking face!
back to L.A. and return on Thursday. Instead, I stayed and had a movie marathon.
14. I had press all day with my I Am Michael director, Justin Kelly, and my costars Zack Quinto and Charlie Carver. Up and down Main Street doing interviews and photos.
16. 8:30 pm I Smile Back Sarah Silverman goes for it as the drugaddicted mom in crisis. Bleak, bleak, bleak, but ballsy because it’s so bleak. Good for Sarah—and my old friend from acting class, Paige Dylan, who was a writer on this.
Rushed the Hollywood Foreign Press interviews and raced over to the theater.
17. 11:30 pm Hellions Kids; horror flm; weird stuf happens.
19. 9:00 AM Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck The great thing about this and the Brando doc that I saw later was the use of audio recordings of Kurt and videos to tell the story. See baby Kurt as a little Ryan Gosling; see teen Kurt as an awkward outsider; see his career take of; see heroin use; see young Courtney.
SUNDAY 1/25
15. 5:30 pm Being Evel Johnny Knoxville–produced documentary about the 1970s legend Evel Knievel. Evel, jackass performance art at its best: Americana,
MONDAY 1/26
18. So then I was stuck in Park City because the I Am Michael premiere wasn’t until Thursday. Everyone asked me if I would fy
20. 11:30 AM Dope Fun. Like Superbad on the hard streets of L.A. ’90s hip-hop, jokes, violence, music, selling MDMA on the Internet, going to Harvard, and a message about race in America.
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21. 3:00 pm The Diary of a Teenage Girl A young artistic type in San Francisco in the 1970s starts a relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. Beautifully shot and expertly crafted; the tone makes the disturbing subject matter palatable and poignant. 22. 6:30 pm Hot Girls Wanted A doc about amateur porn in Florida. The girls fy out, do a few videos, and within three months they are washed up as performers. It’s a look at the sad situation in an unregulated part of the industry, run by men, exploiting young women. 23. 9:30 pm Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief The one everyone is talking about. There
were even guards at the screening. There is some great footage of L. Ron Hubbard. Think Philip Seymour Hofman in The Master x 10.
group of 30-somethings look for meaning in their lives by talking, drinking, and having fun. The casual feel makes some people overlook the flm’s depths.
24. 11:30 pm The Wolfpack A documentary about a pack of brothers prevented from leaving their New York apartment by their strange father with a god complex. Trapped inside for years, they are brought up on movies, and learn about the world through them, and remake their own versions. See them fnally leave the apartment and enter the outside world.
26. 12:00 pm Beaver Trilogy Part IV The frst three parts of The Beaver Trilogy are a legendary set of flms about a young man in Utah who performs as Olivia Newton-John in a local talent show. The frst one is nonfction, the second stars a pre-Fast Times Sean Penn, and the third a young Crispin Glover. This one documents the history of the trilogy and the characters that were involved.
TUESDAY 1/27
25. 8:30 am Digging for Fire Joe Swanberg and his team do it again. A
27. 3:30 pm The Witch My favorite of the festival; 1600s, strange ways of talking, Satanic goats, ladies in
the woods, killing babies, possession, and Satan’s black book.
28. 6:30 pm The Nightmare A horror documentary by the guy who made The Shining documentary Room 237. Everyone has a similar nightmare of strange shadow men. 29. 8:30 pm 99 Homes Michael Shannon as a ruthless real estate gangster in Florida. Strangely it feels full of nonstop action. 30. 11:59 pm Slow West Michael Fassbender plays a badass Western outlaw who takes a young Irishman across America.
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WEDNESDAY 1/28 Photography (1,4,8,10,14,18) Bruce Thierry Cheung Still from Yosemite (38) courtesy Rabbit Bandini Productions Other stills and press images courtesy Sundance Institute
31. 8:30 am Zipper Politics and sex. A rising political star has a secret sex life with escorts. He must reconcile his desires with the expectations of his position in public ofce. 32. 11:30 am Welcome to Leith Documentary about a crazy white supremacist who tries to take over a small town. 33. 2:45 pm Listen to Me Marlon Documentary about the great Marlon Brando, with extensive audio recordings. His life is told entirely in his own words.
34. 6:00 pm A Walk in the Woods Redford and Nolte play old dudes walking the Appalachian Trail.
prisoner/guard come to life. The only problem: fx those silly fake mustaches!
35. 9:00 pm The End of the Tour Jason Segel gives his career-best performance as David Foster Wallace talking about writing and life as a nerdy reporter follows him at the end of his book tour for Infnite Jest.
37. 9:00 pm Don Verdean Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) delivers with Sam Rockwell, Danny McBride, Will Forte, and a group of other comedy killers. A comedic Indiana Jones.
36. 11:45 pm The Stanford Prison Experiment Great. What’s so good? That the experiment was enacted in an ofce hallway with dinky sets and janky costumes, but underneath the hokey exterior, the very real dynamics of
THURSDAY 1/29
38. 2:00 pm Yosemite This was at Slamdance. Directed by Gabrielle Demeestere, based on some of my short stories. I play a character based on my late father. Gabrielle won best female director for the way she captured the beautiful hopes
and fears of childhood.
39. Then I went over to the New Frontier section, which was full of virtual reality shorts. Fly as a bird over New York City. Or the most disturbing: live out a date rape situation at a college party frst from the guy’s perspective and then the woman’s. It was like a short story in motion. But goddamn did it make you nauseous. 40. 6:00 pm I Am Michael Our premiere. The true story of Michael Glatze, the gay activist who transformed into a straight Christian pastor. A movie that looks at the vital issues of identity and faith today.
diary of a dirty hippie
after a trip to the grand canyon, miley cyrus and cheyne thomas take a party-fueled rv pilgrimage to flaming lips front man wayne coyne’s house in “oklahomies” PhotograPhy cheyne thomas V MAGAZINE 7 0
Polka-dot foor WAYNE COYNE painted in 1993 (FEAT. 1 EYED LIL)
AT WAYNE’S KITCHEN TABLE. ARM BANDAGE DUE TO SURGERY TWO DAYS PRIOR
ROCK CARDBOARD ART FROM THE FLAMING LIPS VIDEO “WHEN YOU SMILE”
BALL Wayne got, trying to make one BIG ENOUGH so that it would stretch out to be the size of a three-story building!
Globe where Wayne and his girlfriend, Katy, put a jewel on each place they’ve visited AROUND THE WORLD
WENT THROUGH WAYNE’S RECORD COLLECTION. THAT WHERE WE GOT THE Linear Downfall album, below me
Wizard ART by Daniel Sutlif from Tulsa, Oklahoma, made out of Post-Its! FEAT. LIL CAT and weird chair hand-me-down from Albert Einstein ;)
WHEN PACKING, I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS POLKA DOT FLOOR. JUST SO HAPPENED TO BE PERFECT WITH MY LOOK. SO WE GOT STUCK HERE
This is Wayne’s painting of his G/F squirting with ARTIST Oliver Hibert scarf underneath me
POWERHOUSE
WHAT MAKES THE BEST PARTY? A KILLER TEAM. FOR OUR LATEST EDITION OF POWERHOUSE, MEET THE CREATIVES BEHIND THE MOST MAGICAL NIGHTS OF YOUR LIFE V MAGAZINE 7 2
SHADE, NEW YORK
A Age: Ad decade d Frequency: A few times a year Founders: Ladyfag and Seva Granik What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen happen at your parties? Crazy is subjective. Blow jobs in the corners of the dance foor aren’t crazy, that’s natural! We’ve had people returning expensive items they found, and while not crazy, in some ways it’s not natural, and that amazes us and gives us faith. On the crazier side of things there was this one time (a long time ago, we swear!), Seva did an illegal party in an abandoned, condemned building and the cops came to break it up. Seva was scared he was going to get arrested so he was hiding in a closet and they found him, shoved a gun in his face, and dragged
him out. Parties aren’t worth dying for, but I guess we almost had that once. What makes a great party? This is the hardest question to answer in nightlife as there’s not one defnitive answer. You could spend millions on a terrible party or a few hundred bucks on an amazing one. Throwing parties is always an experiment that you can’t—and shouldn’t— try to fully control. You put together all the right core elements and then let it loose and see what happens. It’s sort of inexplicable, that moment where all the elements fuse and the crowd comes together. The energy is palpable, it feels like you can actually cut it with a knife. It’s like a collective orgasm where everything comes together and for that moment nothing else matters, and everything
makes sense. Those moments are what a “perfect party” is about, it’s those moments that are the dragon we’re always chasing. What makes this party diferent from all others? We really do believe that it’s our crowd: they are the most inspiring, most diverse bunch of people who truly live and breathe nightlife. Anyone can have incredible installations, or amazing sound, or good DJs, but you can’t buy our crowd. That said, we are proud of the level of production that goes into SHADE. People are always asking us when we’re going to have a baby together, and we laugh because we already do: her name’s SHADE!
PhotograPhy Jason rodgers
POWERHOUSE
HOLY SHIP!, THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
Age: Four years Location: MSC Divina (a ship) Frequency: Once or twice a year Founder: Gary Richards What makes a great party? There are three main ingredients to making a great party: amazing location, great people, and the best music from around the world.
The cruise lineup? HS! February DJs [pictured here] included Skrillex, Fatboy Slim, Baauer, DJ Snake, and suprise guest Kaskade. How did you get your start? I used to pass out fyers and DJ in the early ’90s. I started my own thing way back in the day. What other parties do you throw now? HARD Miami, goHARD, HARD Red Rocks, HARD Summer, and HARD Day
of the Dead. Celebrity sightings? We like to keep that stuf confdential in Lalaland, but Jared Leto, Dita Von Teese, and Sarah Hyland are fans of HARD Summer. Katy Perry has also come to our HARD Day of the Dead party.
PhotograPhy Erik VoakE
UNLEASHED, AMSTERDAM
Age: Six years Frequency: Every three to four months Founder: Zaki Silverman Celebrity sightings: Strictly confdential, for obvious reasons What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen happen at Unleashed? Our parties are fetish fantasy events so I’ve seen many kinds of crazy things, from astonishing costumes and breathtaking body art, hair, and makeup to shocking sexual behavior, jaw-dropping role-plays, and outrageous fetishes. In each event I get stunned by how creative people can be—the imagination and humor. Human beings are amazing and limitless creatures if you just supply them with the safe conditions of acceptance. The craziest? I would go for an extraordinary show by an aerial artist working a trapeze with a laser lightsaber fashing from her posterior—a prismatic intersection of sex, circus, and special efects. What makes this party diferent from all others? Fetish events in general are sexier, and more extreme, extravagant, daring, sensational, and wild than other parties, and within our niche we put a big emphasis on a high production value and select crowd. We try to bring new elements to every party and to make sure we tickle all the senses of our partygoer during the night. I believe that sexuality is one of the fronts our society still has a lot of taboos and false impressions about. When you difuse this tension in an event you get people in a much purer form of themselves, allowing them to have true fun and to connect on completely diferent levels than what they are used to.
PhotograPhy DaVE aMStErDaM V MAGAZINE 74
ELECTRIC DAISY CARNIVAL, WORLDWIDE
Age: 17 years Location: Nevada, Illinois, New Jersey, Florida, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the U.K. Founder: Pasquale Rotella, head of Insomniac Records (pictured here with wife, Holly Madison, their daughter, Rainbow Aurora Rotella, and the rest of the Insomniac team) What makes a great party? No one thing makes a great party. Everything has to work together—the art, the production, the venue, the music, the logistics, and most importantly, the headliners (aka our fans), who are ready to have a good time and bring positive vibes. What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen at EDC? The strangest thing I’ve witnessed is some people being against something that is so beautiful; something that is so needed for the soul and body. Coming together to celebrate life, escape your everyday problems, and dance like nobody is watching is a necessity, and it’s good for mental and physical health. People thinking that we’re strange to promote love and togetherness? That’s crazy to me. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen happen at any party? There was a party in 1991 called Paw Paw Ranch and they had a full-on petting zoo. I also adopted a cat at Winter Music Conference one year. That was pretty strange. How did you get your start? I threw my frst party in 1993 at a warehouse in Los Angeles and have been doing it ever since.
PhotograPhy BsK Photo for insomniac
NIGHTSWIM, LAS VEGAS
Age: Seven years Frequency: April to September Founder: Managing Partner of XS Nightclub, Jesse Waits Celebrity sightings: Rihanna, LeBron James, Prince Harry, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joe Jonas, Ryan Seacrest, One Direction What is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen at Nightswim? We allow 5,000 people in the pool at a time, so over the course of eight hours we will have around 12,000 people throughout the night. People are fowing in and out, so you
can imagine what the place looks like and how much energy is out there. There are literally hundreds of pool toys fying around and water being splashed every time the DJ hits the climax of a song. What makes your party diferent from all others? You have the combination of being outside at night, perfect weather in the high 80s into the low 90s, a massive heated pool, and to top it of you are inside a 5-star resort, under an open sky full of stars. For this particular party it’s about adding elements to the pool to make people want to go in the water and have
fun. So we threw a bunch of toys inside, infatable rafts, beach balls, etc. We predict that 2015 will be the most successful year to date for us, because of the 10-million-dollar technology enhancement. We have added more than 14,000 new individually programmed RGB LED lights to animate the pool and bring it to a new level with our production on every wall, tree, and cabana throughout the club. We have added another element with lasers, 20-foot pyro fames, hazers, and confetti.
PhotograPhy Denise truscello
the spectacular now
alessandro michele for gucci
For the frst time in recent memory, the fashion set is going berserk over Gucci. Berserk. It has been since January, when 42-year-old Alessandro Michele replaced the storied Italian brand’s longtime creative director Frida Giannini. “It’s a new era!” some insiders cry. “Is this still Gucci?” others ask. “Who cares?” the rest of the world wonders. The real question is not who cares (the industry does, obviously, and so do the consumers), but why. Despite the rumors that Christopher Kane and Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci were next in line for the Gucci throne, Michele’s hiring wasn’t exactly shocking. He had, after all, been on Gucci’s design team for 12 years and, for the last three and a half, was head of accessories. When Giannini resigned earlier than planned, the shaggy-haired Michele was thrust into the spotlight. Some saw his F/W ’15 menswear collection, which, due to Giannini’s abrupt exit, was a fantastic race against the clock, as an audition. And in the eyes of Gucci’s higher-ups, he nailed it with his bohemian, gender-bending lineup. Michele’s ofcial appointment came two days later, and in February, he made his romantic Gucci ready-to-wear debut at Milan Fashion Week. Everyone opined, and it remained a hot-button topic for the duration of fashion month. The same thing happened in 2013, when Jonathan Anderson was tapped by 169-year-old Spanish brand Loewe. Many an editor was curious to see what this LVMH-owned label wanted with Anderson, a provocative London-based V MAGAZINE 76
up-and-comer who was, at the time, perhaps best known the far more complex conundrum of legacy and respect for putting his male models in rufes and dresses. Today, vs. authenticity and relevance, and whether the former pair nearly two years later, we wonder where Loewe would be even matters anymore. without Anderson’s calculated but uninhibited hand. The “Heritage and legacy obviously mean a fashion house with same qualities that made him such an unexpected choice a track record, usually of some decades. I feel both notions are precisely those that have breathed new life into the forhave been paid enough lip service now to have outlived their merly of-the-radar house. And like Gucci, for the frst time usefulness,” says Tim Blanks, Style.com’s editor-at-large. in recent memory, people are going berserk over Loewe. “Realistically, who is now seduced to buy something because Designers jump in and out of major houses all the time— of the weight of history behind the label? Hedi Slimane, one in 2012, Hedi Slimane replaced Stefano Pilati, ushering in of the sharpest tacks in fashion’s toolbox, totally gets that. an era of gritty rock-and-roll glam at Saint Laurent; Raf His fans aren’t remotely interested in buying the ghost of Simons began reimagining Dior’s bold femininity through Yves (which is why one of the frst things Hedi did was trim his minimalist lens following John Galliano’s much-publicized the name). By the same token, Raf Simons has now made dismissal; and Alexander Wang and his urban sensibility Dior his own. Bye-bye Bar. It’s all a measure of what is hapreplaced Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga. In 2013, after pening everywhere in the world. The speed of life breeds an Marc Jacobs’s departure, Ghesquière moved to Louis Vuitton, urgent and all-consuming interest in the moment. I’m not saywhere he’s instated a crisp, youthful modernity. Never mind ing the designers are sufering from short memories—Hedi the late ’90s and early aughts, when John Galliano took the and Raf’s work is informed by all sorts of art, fashion, and reins of Dior, Tom Ford sexed up Gucci and brought a fresh music that’s come before—but they are more obsessed with toughness to Yves Saint Laurent, Nicolas Ghesquière began response to the future than respect for the past.” his journey at Balenciaga, and Marc Jacobs became the frstIs it important for David Koma, Mugler’s creative direcever creative director of historic French luggage house Louis tor since 2013, to honor the aesthetic of founding legend Vuitton. The press went berserk during all of these shifts, too. Thierry while making clothes women actually want to buy? Which brings us back to our initial question: What’s the big Is it necessary for Julie de Libran, hired to head up Sonia deal? Well, sales, for one. A new designer—and new look— Rykiel last year, to ensure the house’s wares remain as on can mean losing old clients or gaining more. And there’s beat and accessible as they were in the ’70s? Does Anthony
meet tHe mavericks seizing tHe reins at Heritage brands, boldly taking fasHion into tHe future text katharIne k. zarrella
JONATHAN ANdersON fOr lOewe
Vaccarello, the recently crowned creative director of Versus Versace, need to be the second coming of mentor Donatella? These questions and more are addressed in the following pages of V. For his part, Anderson, who has infused Loewe with the androgyny, futurism, and intoxicating awkwardness we see in his eponymous line, insists he designs with the Spanish brand’s heritage in mind. “It’s a leather house, so it’s all about the craftsmanship. That’s what I think about. I’m very reactionary and completely schizophrenic, so for me, as long as the craftsmanship is good, then I’m happy,” says the strapping, starry-eyed 30-year-old. “You’ve gotta throw, kick, scream, and drag [the collection] to the point where there is craft, but also, ultimately, where there’s fashion culture, too.” That balance runs throughout Loewe’s F/W ’15 ofering, which is based around outer space and scientists (think more feisty fembot than chemistry nerd). The buttery dolman sleeve leather bomber that walked down Anderson’s Paris runway in March isn’t your average topper, but it’s sure to become a fast wardrobe staple. Suede skirts with graphic leather appliqués embody “craft” to the core, so too do a pair of tweed trousers with shredded bottoms. Lab coats in sterile pastels and pleated metallic lamé dresses will bring out the street style star in many a luxury shopper, and chevronembellished round-toed boots are quirky enough for the lookat-me fashion obsessive, but quiet enough for most anyone
who shops the Barneys shoe foor. More importantly, they just look so damn cool. Michele’s inaugural Gucci collections prove that he’s radically diferent from his predecessor, Giannini. However, Giannini, whose clothes were slick, strict, and, if we’re being honest, a little uninspired at the end of her almost decadelong tenure, isn’t the fabric of Gucci. Neither are Tom Ford and his in-your-face sex appeal. Leather, horses, and Italian craftsmanship make up the 94-year-old house’s DNA. And while the women’s line Michele showed in Milan was a dreamy, vintage-tinged menagerie geared at the next generation of luxury client—one who’s freer and more relaxed than her mother—those key Gucci elements were there. In addition to fuid silk foral dresses, thick-rimmed glasses, the occasional pom-pom hat, and a fur coat beaded with a pair of birds, he proposed Cousin Itt–esque fur slippers accented with gilded bits. Double chain-strap bags came in the signature Gucci G canvas (though sometimes it was painted with pink fowers or embroidered with a wasp motif), and Michele’s opening look—a sheer white point d’esprit blouse, a wisteria choker, a cherry-red leather skirt, and fur sandals—was literally tied (well, buckled) together with a leather belt boasting a giant, bronze G-logo closure. This is not the Gucci of yore, but it’s very clearly still Gucci. “The reading of [philosopher] Giorgio Agamben’s work was really inspiring me,” Michele tells V of his F/W ’15 collection.
“I truly believe in his idea that to deeply understand contemporaneity you don’t have to perfectly coincide with your time and its demands and codes. I tried to explore the world through this disconnection and to record not merely the present, but the threshold between the ‘no longer’ and the ‘not yet,’ all focused on a strong afrmation of freedom beyond what’s traditional and conventional.” This complex credo is refective not only of Michele’s F/W ’15 collection, but of his approach to Gucci—acknowledging the past while embracing the future. Heritage no longer determines the success of a storied brand. At this point, when it comes to decades or centuriesold houses, we’re so far removed from what they once were that it’s nearly impossible, or just pointless, to try recreating the past. However, there’s no sense in pretending like the past doesn’t exist, and both Anderson and Michele have found clever ways to wink at their houses’ histories (or the spirits of them) while ushering in the new. Loewe and Gucci are exciting again. Their clothes are covetable again. And that’s because Anderson and Michele are looking largely toward tomorrow. Nobody goes berserk over the same old same old. “I think it’s going well,” muses Anderson of his progress at Loewe. “I think we’re doing things diferently, and it’s fun. You’ve gotta have fun.”
IllustratIon rIcardo Fumanal
Pre-Fall appointments at New York’s Milk Studios. “I just felt that I needed my own space.” That’s not to say Koma, who continues to design his sixyear-old eponymous line in London, failed to familiarize himself with the house. In fact, he’s somewhat of a Mugler expert, having studied it from the time he was a 13-year-old in his native Saint Petersburg. “I’ve wanted to work for Mugler since I was a kid,” he says. “I know everything about it. I’ve watched every single show. I’ve always been obsessed with the aesthetic, proportion, vision, and cut. I’m very confdent saying that I truly understand what this brand is about.” For Pre-Fall, Koma proposes a well-rounded combination of smart, sporty separates, elegant outerwear, grommeted cocktail frocks, and slick eveningwear. Cutouts abound, as do metal and leather details, which recall Thierry’s penchant for severity and futurism. “The female form and its curves are my main inspiration every season,” Koma says. “I don’t like doing things that distract from human beauty. I want the Mugler woman to look strong and desirable, so we’ve gone with a really clean, minimal approach that I feel is most suitable for this particular moment.” Koma has experienced his share of critical comparisons to Thierry (who now goes by Manfred), but they’re not entirely fair. Sure, fashion obsessives pine for the explosive moments that were Thierry’s specialty, but his shows seldom received acclaim in their time. Of his S/S ’92 outing, the New York
Times’ Carrie Donavan wrote, “The ebullient and talented Thierry Mugler once again seemed mired in theatricality. His spring show was a parade of tawdry costumes with no fashion whatsoever.” Not only that, virtually nothing the supermodels wore on his catwalks made it to stores. Thierry would hold separate press presentations in his Avenue Montaigne showroom, where he’d reveal pared-down, saleable, real-world garments. For better or worse, the industry doesn’t operate the same way in 2015 as it did in the George Michael era. The demands have changed, as have the consumers. Koma is catering to the now. “We’re living in a diferent time. The lifestyle is diferent, and I want to adapt [Mugler] to the modern world,” he says. “Strategically, I feel it’s more important for me to build a real base—a real identity of a new Mugler.” It appears to be paying of. After only three seasons, the new Mugler is already stocked by 80 stores internationally. But while Koma is thriving at the house, he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. “When you’re facing a lot of responsibility, the only thing you’re left with is your instinct,” he says. “Too much analysis can destroy you. Right now, my instinct is clean and minimal. If next season I feel crinoline, I’ll do it.”
david koma and model in paris, january 2015 PhotograPhy tung walsh Fashion ondine azoulay koma wears clothing and shoes his own model wears dress and shoes mugler
Makeup and grooming Marion Robine (Calliste) Hair Seb Bascle (Artlist) Model Tanya Katysheva (Next) Digital technician JM (Digitart) Photo assistant Morgane Pouliquen Equipment rental Studio Zéro, Paris
David Koma is not Thierry Mugler. He’s not going to send assless evening gowns, metallic sexbot suits, or motorcycle bustiers down the runway. It’s not going to happen. Get over it. Impossible ensembles like those are often associated with the house of Mugler, launched by Thierry Mugler in 1974. So, too, are its namesake designer’s elaborate runway romps, which were more like Vegas shows featuring mega models like Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schifer, and Jerry Hall. Some highlights include a performance by James Brown, the debut of the S/S ’97 rubber tire dress, and Diana Ross strutting down the S/S ’91 runway in a Showgirls-worthy sequined bodysuit. Thierry’s 2003 departure from his maison—now mostly owned by beauty giant Clarins—marked the end of its extravagant era. And while the much-publicized 2010 hiring of Nicola Formichetti (a longtime V contributing fashion editor and the current creative director of Diesel) seemed like an attempt to revive Mugler’s glory days, his fantastical creations received mixed reviews. When Koma was tapped to helm the brand in 2013, it was clear that in order to succeed—both creatively and commercially—he was going to have to do something very diferent. Perhaps that’s why the 29-year-old Georgian-born, London-based Central Saint Martins graduate designed his Resort ’14 collection—his frst for Mugler—without even peeking at the vast 6,000-piece archive. “For some reason, I felt it wasn’t right to immediately dip into it,” Koma says between
david koma for mUGLEr
julie de libran for sonia rykiel
Makeup William Bartel (Artlist) Hair Seb Bascle (Artlist)
Girlish knits, efortless belted coats, high-waisted, wide-legged trousers, and a playfully Parisienne leopard-print cape. These were just some of the looks Julie de Libran showed during her bohemian Sonia Rykiel Pre-Fall presentation. De Libran’s second outing since being appointed as the French house’s creative director last June, the show was held at New York’s Jane Hotel (“Pre-collections are really for the American market,” quipped de Libran when asked about her choice to hop across the pond). Sophie Auster crooned en français et anglais as ’70s-styled models sauntered through a labyrinth of velvet couches, where editors, It Girls, and guests like flmmaker Sofa Coppola sat. Coppola audibly gushed, “Oh, I love that,” as a hooded brown fur coat, a printed rust tunic top, and a pair of louche star-motif trousers strode on by. That’s de Libran’s forte—making clothes that women love. The French-born, California-raised de Libran got to know Sonia Rykiel through her mother—or rather, her mother’s closet. She remembers perfume-scented mohair knits, cardigans she used to borrow (de Libran’s mother eventually gave these to her daughter, who would wrap herself in them while studying fashion in Milan), and a satin, Bermuda shorts suit de Libran wore in the ’80s. “That suit always made me feel quite glamorous,” she says. It was de Libran’s father, however, who opened her eyes to the possibility of a career in fashion. “I was always drawing clothes. After I graduated from high school in California, my father, who has always been a mentor, looked into fashion
schools in Europe,” she says. “My life in San Diego in the ’80s was fantastic, but it wasn’t until then that I realized I could be a designer.” She ended up at Milan’s prestigious Istituto Artistico dell’Abbigliamento Marangoni. “I enjoyed school so much. It was a relief. I had found my way of expression.” De Libran cut her teeth at Gianfranco Ferré, Prada, and Versace before heading to Louis Vuitton in 2008, where she served as Marc Jacobs’s right hand for six years and designed the house’s pre-collections. But when Sonia Rykiel approached her, she was ready for a change. “Sonia Rykiel was always a huge inspiration. She is someone I look to because of her way of thinking and her way of freeing women. It felt really right when they called me for the opportunity.” Sonia Rykiel’s brand was born after she began designing ftted sweaters for herself in the late ’60s. Rykiel, who retired in 2009, soon became known as the grande dame of sweaters, creating cozy, fattering knits that her clients (including Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Deneuve, and Brigitte Bardot) could live in. There’s something to be said about a woman designing for other women—women who, like Rykiel (and de Libran, for that matter), have careers, families, or both. Rykiel understood that these women wanted to have fun. They weren’t just mothers and hard workers—they were (and are) people with vibrant personalities and a sense of humor. Rykiel always injected irreverence into her work, whether it was via a cheeky phrase splayed across a pullover or the cliques of
models she’d send down the runway during her shows. They’d chat and smile rather than stomp and pose, as so many of Rykiel’s contemporaries’ mannequins did. This is something de Libran feels strongly about maintaining. “When I’m doing a ftting, I’ll take the jacket of the model and try it on myself. I want to see it on someone with real proportions, because the customer isn’t always amazingly tall and thin. I try things on to make sure there’s still movement, because the Sonia Rykiel woman is a free woman.” Naturally, de Libran pulls inspiration from the Sonia Rykiel pieces she wore in her youth, as well as the house’s archive. “Being in the archive and touching the fabrics and seeing the silhouettes was amazing—it was very emotional for me,” says de Libran. “But at one point, I decided I wanted to close those archives and do what [Rykiel] did—design for women of today. She designed for the women of her time, and I want to do the same.” De Libran has yet to meet the designer whose house she now represents. When pressed on what she wants to ask the legendary Rykiel, de Libran pauses. “I actually just want to listen to her,” she says. “I want to listen to all her stories.”
julie de libran in paris, MarCH 2015 PhotograPhy tung walsh de libran Wears ClOTHinG and sHOes sonia rykiel FOr an eXTended ediTOrial, VisiT VMaGaZine.COM
anthony vaccarello for versus versace hope I’m not tacky. A girl can be sexy. It’s about her attitude. The way she feels, the way she moves, the way she eats or smokes. But the dress shouldn’t be sexy.” Not long after their initial meeting, Versace invited Vaccarello to design a season for Versus, a line that is often referred to as Versace’s younger, club-going sister. It’s an apt description: when the late Gianni Versace launched Versus in 1989, he handed Donatella, his actual younger, club-going sister, the reins. “Versus is the rebellious heart of Versace,” Donatella Versace explains. “It is the brand that my brother Gianni created for me, and it is as important to me today as it’s ever been.” Donatella designed the range until 2004, when she went to rehab and the label was put on pause. In 2009, Versus was reignited with Christopher Kane as its creative director. After he stepped down in 2012, Donatella beefed up the brand via one-of collaborations with buzzy talents like Jonathan Anderson and musician M.I.A. And then Vaccarello debuted his S/S ’15 capsule, an outing that fused his own seductive signatures with house codes—gilded lion’s head embellishments, nightclub-ready silhouettes, and Greek key prints. “It went so well that I was hoping to stay on, and then it happened,” Vaccarello says. “I’m super happy here. We are ftting well together. It’s like a relationship—when you feel good with your lover, you want it to last for the longest time possible.” Versace, however, knew from the start that it was a match made in heaven. “As soon as I met him, I realized immediately
he was the one. He gets it. His talent screams Versus Versace. I love his fresh energy and innovation and I love being around a talent who brings newness to Versace,” she says. “Anthony has been passionate about Versace his whole life, so I think designing [the F/W ’15 collection, his frst as creative director] was a natural process for him. The whole collection is perfect, because it is the spirit of Versus Versace seen through Anthony’s eyes.” Just before his F/W ’15 show, Vaccarello tells V that he wants “to take Versus back to what it was in the ’90s—very cool, very direct, very linked with music. Maybe less decorative and more wearable...something women can project themselves into.” Translation? A dark and at times militaristic Fall ofering (think asymmetrical kilts; tartan sweaters; strict, tailored wool coats; and a black Jekyll-and-Hyde frock that’s demure on one side, and much less so on the other) that is largely inspired by the English countryside and ’90s rock. “I’ve always loved music like Radiohead,” he says. “I’m still obsessed with them. And Fiona Apple. I think today’s music is a bit fake—it’s plastic.” Also on his mood board was a vintage Bruce Weber photograph of Kristen McMenamy. “It’s a portrait of a real girl wearing strong clothes. I like that.”
ANTHONY VACCARELLO iN pARis, jANuARY 2015 PhotograPhy tung walsh VACCARELLO wEARs CLOTHiNg His OwN
Hair Seb Bascle (Artlist) Grooming Marion Robine (Calliste) Digital technician JM (Digitart) Photo assistant Morgane Pouliquen Location Studio Zéro, Paris
Vaccarello for Versus Versace. It has a nice ring to it. It’s alliterative. It glides of the tongue. And it’s just one of the reasons that Anthony Vaccarello’s full-time appointment at Versus feels so right. It all began in the summer of 2013, when Donatella Versace summoned Vaccarello to the Bristol Hotel in Paris. “My heart was beating like crazy,” he recalls. “She sent her bodyguard to bring me to her room, and I could smell her perfume as soon as I walked in. She was lying on the sofa like a queen—Queen Donatella. But she was super warm, jumped into my arms and told me she was a fan of my work. Of course, I’m a fan of her work, too, so it was like a meeting of two lovers.” “You’re forced to be inspired by that house,” he continues. “I grew up with MTV, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon, all the iconic [Versace] advertising. So I often think about that vision, that kind of musical image, and I’m still inspired by that era and mood.” The Italian brand’s infuence is clear in Vaccarello’s eponymous line, which he bowed in 2009 after working under Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi. His collections, brimming with fashes of skin (remember his muse Anja Rubik’s hip-baring white 2012 Met Gala gown?), black leather, and punkish metal accents, each ooze a new breed of the va-vavoom, rock-star glamour that Versace pioneered in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But don’t call his clothes sexy. “I hate the word,” he contests. “Sometimes I associate it with tacky. I
francesca amfitheatrof for tiffany & co.
Makeup Seong Hee Park Hair Tomo Jidai (Streeters London) Digital technician Carlo Barreto Photo assistant Ayesha Malik Production Justin Rose (Management Artists)
Tifany & Co. design director Francesca Amftheatrof began attending Valentino shows at the age of six. Her mother worked for the house, and she recalls the presentations, then held in Rome, with vivid precision. “They were always outdoors next to Piazza di Spagna, during these beautiful Roman evenings with the most amazing models—real mannequins,” Amftheatrof says. “I knew everyone in the atelier and I’d go in and sit on the tables while they made dresses. Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino Garavani were the sort of people I knew as a kid.” Perhaps this early introduction to the fashion world, along with her unorthodox upbringing (Amftheatrof’s father was the bureau chief for Time, which required her family to move from one country to the next every few years), contributes to her blunt yet lighthearted approach to high jewelry. “A sense of humor is so much a part of Tifany, but it needs to have an elegance, too,” she reasons. “That’s what I’m trying to bring back.” To that end, Amftheatrof, who became Tifany & Co.’s frst female design director when she was hired in 2013, worked fearlessly with million-plus-dollar stones to create her debut Blue Book collection—a high-stakes undertaking that the designer all but shrugs away. “It’s about that freedom of being amusing but having utter elegance around you. These two elements are representative of how wealthy people live.” In the ’90s, after studying at London’s Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, Amftheatrof was asked by White
Cube Gallery’s Jay Jopling to put on a show. “Loads of fashion editors came. I was immediately picked up by stores like Maxfeld and Colette. But I had no idea what I was doing,” Amftheatrof says. “Tony [Gross] from Cutler and Gross would help me. Everyone rallied around. That’s the way London is. All of my friends were artists or fashion designers and everybody helped each other out.” After that initial splash, she was introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, who ordered a shipment of vases she’d designed. “He asked me if I would do [jewelry for] Fendi, and then if I would do Chanel. Karl likes to have young blood around him. He absorbs everything and then he teaches you. He’s a fantastic mentor.” Now based in Brooklyn, Amftheatrof admits that she misses parts of her East London life. “Mainly the creative aspects. London has a dirtier, rawer creative extreme. I fnd [Brooklyn] so middle class compared to East London.” The ocean-inspired Blue Book collection, Amftheatrof’s second major efort for Tifany & Co. (the frst being her highly wearable T range), is a fusion of visual puns, vintage house motifs, and high-clarity precious jewels. For instance, the wave necklace, which Amftheatrof wears in this photo, includes references to the brand’s pocket watch chain from 1880. A stunning collar that blooms with sea creatures and fora fashioned from radiant stones came to be after she found a 1950s illustration in the archives. She thought it tragic that the sketch had yet to be realized, so she designed it
herself. “It’s kind of phenomenal,” she chuckles, caressing it in the Tifany & Co. showroom. Elsewhere, she garnishes diamond-and-gold cufs with Tahitian pearls; combines turquoise, aquamarine, and diamonds in a decadent bib; and ofers bubble-shaped, diamond-encrusted rings that she suggests wearing together. It may cost you more than a house to do so, but in Amftheatrof’s eyes, these are her “little sweeties.” As for the bib, “It’s just for sitting by the pool, casually, in a caftan, with a cocktail in your hand,” she laughs. (Cate Blanchett felt it was ft to pair with her Maison Margiela Artisanal gown at the 2015 Oscars.) Still, the designer’s favorite series comprises bracelets, earrings, and necklaces that nod to David Hockney’s swimming pool paintings. (In addition to designing accessories for Marni, objects for Alessi Italy, and silverware for Asprey & Garrard, Amftheatrof did a stint as an art consultant.) The sapphire accoutrements are intended to resemble rippling water, and even boast little diamond diving boards. It seems if anyone can carry high jewelry into the 21st century, it’s Amftheatrof. “I’m never not going to push boundaries,” she says. “I’m always going to do something that’s inspiring, new, and out of the box. I fgure, why not have fun in life?”
FRANCESCA AmFithEAtRoF iN NEW YoRK CitY, mARCh 2015 PhotograPhy BEN hassEtt FashioN stElla grEENsPaN AmFithEAtRoF WEARS tURtLENECK Boss NECKLACE tiFFaNy & Co.
icebreaker
PhotograPhy Paul maffi fashion anna trevelyan
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Makeup Ayami Nishimura using Chanel Hair Jawara using Oribe (MAM) Models Khadija Otero, Sage (Ford), Sharam Diniz (Next), Louise Parker (The Society) Manicure Naomi Yasuda (Streeters) Digital technician Charley Parden
welcome to new york
CHANEL HEADS TO MANHATTAN, VIA SALZBURG
Photo assistants Ryan Garcia, Colby Edwards, Jane Rock Stylist assistant Paulina Olivares Makeup assistant Janis Marino Hair assistant Shequaya Collins Manicurist assistant Ayumu Takasawa Production and casting JN Production Production assistants April Chin and Salwa Hilali
Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld loves a destination show. Over the past few years, he’s debuted the French house’s Métiers d’art Pre-Fall collections (which celebrate Chanel’s artisans and history) at Linlithgow Palace just outside Edinburgh, the Fair Park in Dallas, and, most recently, an 18th century castle in Salzburg. On March 31, 2015, it was, for the frst time since 2006 (when Lagerfeld unveiled his Cruise ’07 collection at Grand Central Station), New York’s turn. Sort of. For those who couldn’t make it to Chanel’s fairytale Salzburg outing last December, Lagerfeld decided to restage the show at the Park Avenue Armory. “You can invite a limited number of people to an event that’s far away,” says Lagerfeld. “But events can travel to the other side of the world. You can recreate the mood of the show in a very diferent way and keep the spirit of the story. In a way, it’s a new event in a new world.” There may not be any rolling hills, singing von Traps, or Baroque palaces here in the Big Apple, but Lagerfeld feels his NYC romp was just as grand as his Salzburg extravaganza. “Why go to Salzburg when Chanel can bring Salzburg to you?” he asks. Not to mention, you can’t beat that Manhattan skyline. katharine k. zarrella
clothing, bags, jewelry chanel from the paris-salzburg collection experience chanel paris-salzburg in new yorK with our accompanying film, exclusively on vmagazine.com
trends
“BraSS IN PoCKEt” AN OVERSIZE ZIp-up WITH AN EVEN BIGGER puLL SAyS: I GOT THIS EMMy WEARS TOp CÉLINE JEANS fENDI SHOES PaCo raBaNNE
“hIghEr aND hIghEr” VERTIcAL STRIpES ANd RAISEd WAISTS REAcH NEW HEIGHTS FROM LEFT: GEORGIA WEARS SWEATER J.W. aNDErSoN JEANS DIESEL EMMy WEARS cLOTHING LoUIS VUIttoN
while we feverishly await Chrissie hyNDe’s New memoir, take her style Cue iN staPles that will staND by you PhotograPhy DoMINICK ShELDoN faShIoN aLEx harrINgtoN V MAGAZINE 8 4
Makeup Susie Sobol (Julian Watson Agency) Hair Shingo Shibata (The Wall Group) Models Emmy Rappe (IMG) and Georgia Hilmer (Next) Manicure Eri Handa using Chanel (MAM) Digital technician Mary Fix Photo assistants Mark Luckasavage, Austin Kennedy, Ian Barling
THE PRE-fall TENDERS
“UP THE NECK” THIS SEASON’S MUST-HAVE: A NO-NONSENSE TURTLENECK FROM LEFT: GEORGIA WEARS JACKET ELLERY SWEATER PROENZA SCHOULER DICKIE EDUN PANTS GIORGIO ARMANI SHOES DEREK LAM EMMY WEARS JACKET BALENCIAGA SWEATER AND PANTS VETEMENTS TURTLENECK MICHAEL KORS SHOES PACO RABANNE
Stylist assistants Luca Galasso and Doriella Hadar Makeup assistant Ayaka Nihei Hair assistant Shuhei Kadowaki Tailor Alexander Koutny Production Kieran Collings (North6) Production assistant Eduardo Silver Location ROOT Studios
THIS PAGE, FROM LEFT: Dior AMPHORA J’AdORE EAu dE PARFuM ($450, dIOR.cOM) A MOdERn EAu IS HOuSEd In THE AMPHORA-SHAPEd bOTTLE cREATEd by MR. dIOR In THE SPRInG OF 1947
issey Miyake L’EAu d’ISSEy cITy bLOSSOM by MAdEMOISELLE MAuRIcE EAu dE TOILETTE ($100, nORdSTROM.cOM) PInk PEPPERcORn, cITRuS, cALOnE, MAGnOLIA, And FREESIA HIdE bEnEATH OSMAnTHuS, AMbROx, And wHITE MuSk salvatore FerragaMo EMOzIOnE ($95, bLOOMInGdALES.cOM) wHITE PEAcH, bERGAMOT, And IRIS LEAd TO PEOny, HELIOTROPE, buLGARIAn ROSE, wHITE MuSk, And PATcHOuLI V MAGAzInE 8 6
Postproduction Rich Imaging
BEAUTY
bare essence
WHEN IT COMES TO SUMMER’S IRRESISTIBLE fRagRaNCES, BOLd NEW BOTTLES aRE SELLINg SEdUCTION aT a pREMIUM PhotograPhy robin broadbent beauty editor nicole catanese
THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Fendi FAn dI FEndI ExTREME EAu dE PARFuM ($86, bLOOMInGdALES.COM) CALAbRIAn bERGAMOT, TAnGERInE, TubEROSE, And jASMInE, WITH A LEATHER-And-vAnILLA ACCORd
giorgio armani SÌ EAu dE PARFuM ($115, ARMAnIbEAuTy.COM) bLACKCuRRAnT nECTAR, GREEn PEAR, ITALIAn bERGAMOT, MAndARIn, nEROLI, PIERCE FREESIA, ROSE dE MAI, And vAnILLA balenciaga L’édITIOn MER EAu dE PARFuM ($145, nEIMAnMARCuS.COM) TOP nOTES OF CRISP yuzu And GREEn SHISO LEAF MInGLE WITH A HInT OF WET FLORAL MuGuET And A SEASHELL ACCORd
COAT ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER SWIMSUIT POLO RALPH LAUREN BOOTS MANOLO BLAHNIK hOOp eArrIngS (ThrOUghOUT) And rIng CZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE pInKY rIng (ThrOUghOUT) rIhAnnA’S OWn V MAgAZIne 8 8
photography steven klein
fashion carlyne cerf de dudzeele
text patrik sandberg
COAT ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER SWIMSUIT POLO RALPH LAUREN EARRINGS (TOp, THROUGHOUT) RIHANNA’S OWN RING CZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE
SWIMSUIT NORMA KAMALI BOOTS MANOLO BLAHNIK rIngS CZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE
“i didn’t actually take time off. the past two years are the hardest i’ve ever worked.” —rihanna
somehow iN the last three years, the fashioN world became rihaNNa’s. betweeN her uNmissable iNstagram accouNt, editorials with top photographers, ubiquity iN the froNt rows of paris, aNd history-makiNg campaigNs, the barbadiaN beauty weNt from Number-oNe hitmaker to full-time style icoN—or so it seemed. Now she’s droppiNg her eighth album, aNd she’s ready to reclaim her spot at the top. doN’t act like you forgot: rih calls the shots, shots, shots!
“Nasty.” “that’s disgustiNg.” “this is so stupid.”
virtuosity she uses to send messages of rebellion, seduction, and revenge—to the late Princess Diana. In that widely circuRihanna, in a platinum-blonde wig, bikini bottoms, and a halflated op-ed, Paglia noted that despite their shared mastery shirt, surveys selects from her fashion shoot with Steven of the medium, Diana had less control over the paparazzi Klein and Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele. As surly as her reaction who transmitted her images than Rihanna wields with today’s might sound, her vocabulary actually expresses an ecstatic Instagram, resulting in a stunning live feed governed through level of approval. “Nasty” is a compliment in Rihannese. Early impulse and mood. in the planning process for this cover story, the star told V Perhaps the combination of strength and vulnerability she wanted to work with Klein in the interest of doing “somedemonstrated by both public fgures is what keeps us all thing sick.” Mission accomplished? so entranced with the artist who once galvanized night“Sublime!” Cerf de Dudzeele says, for her part. “Her nonclubs around the planet by asking us to make her feel like chalance plus her attitude plus her cat eyes plus her voice— “the only girl in the world.” It’s certainly proven no hindrance to die for—equals perfection!” The shoot was the fashion when it comes to booking fashion campaigns. For S/S ’14, editor’s frst collaboration with Klein, she recalls, since the Rihanna was the face of Balmain, cast by her friend, the two worked on a Gianfranco Ferré campaign twenty years designer Olivier Rousteing (who has called her “today’s verago. Their reunion was a brainchild of Rihanna herself, who sion of a supermodel”). For S/S ’15, she’s starring in Dior’s conceived the shoot with her creative team from the jump—a Secret Garden campaign series, shot by Klein, on location story many months in the making, and one that only came to at Versailles. The classical backdrop notwithstanding, the fruition when the star’s exacting demands perfectly coalesced. campaign made history of its own through Rihanna’s castFrom hair and makeup to location, stylist, photographer, and ing, which made her the frst black woman to be the face of concept, it’s RiRi’s way or the highway. Dior in the house’s 70 years—a factoid as unsettling as it is triumphant. But perhaps no image of Rihanna ricocheted On set with her tight-knit crew of friends and collaborators, Rihanna speaks in what can best be described as a across the cultural landscape with greater velocity than Bajan form of Polari. With an island cadence that bounces of that of her in the jaw-dropping custom Adam Selman dress the tongue like a rubber ball, she’s prone to cracking inside she wore to accept her CFDA Fashion Icon Award last year. jokes while emitting a self-possessed confdence that’s Sheer and made completely of crystals, the museum-worthy nearly as intimidating as her beauty is transfxing. In a 2012 garment cemented the reason she was there, capping of press junket interview searchable on YouTube, the Barbadian quite an extraordinary fashion era for the then-26-year-old stunner spoke of having to adjust her natural accent for the girl who immigrated from the small parish of Saint Michael sake of promotion. “In business conversations you want on the southwest coast of Barbados. Her impressive foray people to understand you very, very clearly,” she said then. into fashion in recent years has no doubt been mesmerizIt makes sense, therefore, that during the two and a half ing, but it’s also been a glittering distraction from the fact years since she released her last studio album, Unapologetic, that she’s been conspicuously absent from the radio for the Rihanna has preferred to communicate mostly through the longest period in her 10 years as a pop star. medium that speaks clearest for her: that of image. Since 2005’s Music of the Sun through 2012, Rihanna First, there’s the Instagram account @badgalriri, where turned out nearly an album a year. She’s charted a whopping Queen Rih imperiously holds court to the tune of 17 million 56 singles, sold over 150 million records, gone platinum six followers. One minute she’s snapping a selfe to show of her times, and hit the top of the charts 13 times, tying her with latest pair of Adam Selman sunglasses, and the next she’s Michael Jackson for having the third most number-one songs posting photos of her adorable baby cousin Majesty. Recently in history, the youngest to have ever achieved so many so she used the platform to promote her DreamWorks Animation fast. (Mariah Carey and Elvis are tied for number two, and flm Home (rated PG)…right before fipping of the camera the Beatles maintain the top bragging rights…for now.) She’s with A$AP Rocky in a sly nod to her upcoming album (her also credited as the highest-selling digital artist of all time eighth), referred to thus far in the media simply as R8. Her with a net worth that is valued at around $90 million. selfe-expression is a symptom of her signature dichotomy: “I didn’t actually take time of,” Rihanna clarifes in an email. a fresh-faced, relatable, family-oriented girl who’s simultane- “The past two years are the hardest I’ve ever worked. I’ve ously a defant social media anarchist. On one hand, she’ll been working on two albums, an animated flm, shooting for play the game and cater to her licenses and promotional multiple magazines, designing for Puma and Stance [socks], deals, while on the other she’s giving a middle fnger to the a new line of fragrances, a summer tour, I launched my frst masses. But as Rihanna would tell it, she’s just keeping it real. annual Diamond Ball at the end of last year, and I’ve also “I run away from anything that does not stimulate me,” been developing several projects to be revealed in the near Rihanna explains. “I often fnd myself gravitating toward the future.” Snap. underground. There is a certain creative freedom there that Home, a DreamWorks Animation flm Rihanna voice you can’t experience anywhere else.” When asked about her acted in earlier this spring alongside Jennifer Lopez and regard for privacy, she shoots back, “Do I even give a dick Jim Parsons, gave fans a taste of new material, albeit of the more family-friendly variety, on tracks like “Dancing in the about that anymore?” In an essay for The Sunday Times in 2013, arch feminist Dark,” “Towards the Sun,” and “As Real as You and Me.” But critic Camille Paglia compared Rihanna—and the photogenic Rihanna draws a clear distinction between that project and
her new LP. “The Home record was a soundtrack I curated especially for the flm,” she says. “My eighth studio album was a place for me to completely express myself creatively with no boundaries and try anything that I wanted.” It’s clear that fans are fending for the album material for that very reason. When she cryptically Instagrammed a Paolo Roversi–lensed record sleeve with the caption “#March26,” many of her fans stayed up the entire night before, speculating on Twitter about when her new song, “Bitch Better Have My Money,” would hit. The track, her second release from the new LP, expanded on a stripped-down aesthetic frst revealed with “FourFiveSeconds,” featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney—but with a more club-ready beat. When that frst song hit the Web earlier this year by way of an Inez and Vinoodh–directed black-and-white clip, it wasn’t the big, stomping return some might have expected. Wearing simple denim looks and little makeup, Rihanna gave a sensitive performance of a bare-bones ballad about—of all things—the working week, while Sir Paul strummed along on acoustic guitar. Is Rihanna going full-Springsteen on us? “The thing that made me fall in love with [‘FourFiveSeconds’] is the juxtaposition of the music and the lyrics,” Rihanna says. “When you read the lyrics it’s a completely diferent song than what you are hearing. The music is easygoing, but the lyrical content is very loud and in your face. In performing this, the key was to make sure the aggression wasn’t lost.” West serves as one of many producers on the LP, and he may have gleaned a thing or two from his time spent with the legendary sonic reducer Rick Rubin, evidenced by the track’s prosaic return to values. When the trio took to the Grammy stage in February, the power of the song and the strength of Rihanna’s vocals brought the house to its knees— even more so than the massive, pink, chifon Giambattista Valli gown she stormed the red carpet in hours earlier. But in a late-March performance of “Bitch Better...” for the iHeart Radio Music Awards, Rihanna emerged from a blacked-out helicopter in bright green Versace regalia, fortelling more opulence to come. As for the rest of R8, Rihanna’s real power will be in reminding us of her distinction as a vocalist, with her scratchy verses, wailing peaks, and chesty depths, which harness new levels of grit and ferocity—no need for the bells and whistles of her previous productions. In this regard, the record achieves something rare: it maintains Rihanna’s ubiquitous pop dominance while stripping away the excess to arrive at something disarmingly straightforward. “Dude, I’m in love with my interludes,” she says. “This one called ‘James,’ joint is on constant repeat. [The album is] soulful and aggressive, whether it’s lyrically, musically, or just the tone of my voice.” It’s also basic, in the best sense of the word, which is just one thing that’s changed for her in the past three years. “Well, for starters, I grew 10 pounds heavier,” Rihanna laughs. “But besides that, I keep challenging myself personally and professionally. I spend a lot of time analyzing every aspect of my life, trying to constantly improve. As a result I’ve become way more focused and intolerant. I don’t have the patience to waste time.”
SWIMSUIT NORMA KAMALI rIngS CZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE
“[THE ALBUM] IS SOULFUL AND AGGRESSIVE, WHETHER IT’S LYRICALLY, MUSICALLY, OR JUST THE TONE OF MY VOICE.” —RIHANNA
THIS SPREAD: jAckET JUICY COUTURE RINGS KENNETH JAY LANE
T-SHIRT BBC ICECREAM SHORTS CCD’$H$T RINGS KENNETH JAY LANE
“I OFTEN FIND MYSELF GRAVITATING TOWARD THE UNDERGROUND. THERE IS A CERTAIN CREATIVE FREEDOM THERE THAT YOU CAN’T EXPERIENCE ANYWHERE ELSE.”—RIHANNA
“MY EIGHTH STUDIO ALBUM WAS A PLACE FOR ME TO COMPLETELY EXPRESS MYSELF CREATIVELY WITH NO BOUNDARIES AND TRY ANYTHING I WANTED.” — RIHANNA
MakEUp YadIM fOr MaYbELLInE nEW YOrk (arT parTnEr) HaIr YUSEf USIng MaTrIx STYLE LInk (facTOrY dOWnTOWn)
Manicure Maria Salandra for GELISH Set design Stefan Beckman (Exposure NY) Lighting director John Torres Digital technician Joe Ferruchi Photo assistants Alex Lockett, Mark Luckasavage, Alexei Topounov, Austin Kennedy Stylist assistants Francisco Ovalle Jr. and Stella Evans Makeup assistants Kanako Takase and Mondo Leon Hair assistant Bellair Tailors Joshua Schwarz and Wesley Nault (In-House Atelier) Production Kellie Tissier and Marcus Ward (North6) Production assistants Eduardo Silva, Ritchie Fraschiella, Miyu Honda, Lili Hamlyn, Cleveland Randolph Set design assistants Yonatan Zonszein and Max Zinser Retouching Jim Alexandrou (1514) Steven Klein studio Adam Sherman and Joe Lally Equipment rental (digital) B2Pro Location Pier 59 Studios, NY Catering Chefs Agency Special thanks Ciarra Pardo, Sarah Rountree, Amanda Silverman, Jahleel Weaver
SWIMSUIT VERSACE STOLE ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER SHOES MANOLO BLAHNIK rIngS CZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE
ROMPER AMERICAN APPAREL HAT CCD’$H$T RING KENNETH JAY LANE
professional versus personal. public versus private. the lifetime of a woman is decorated with dichotomies such as these, and designers are exploring when and what to restrict and to reveal in pre-fall collections that expose our increased attention toward intimacy and isolation—at odds, and together. lara stone sets the perfect tone photography harley weir fashion max pearmain V MAGAZINE 1 0 0
COAT PRADA TURTLENECK DIOR EARRINGS LAURA NASH BODYSUIT (THROUGHOUT) vINTAGE FROM THE CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE
COAT RAF SIMONS F/W ’15 DRESS AND RE WALKER S/S ’15 EARRING VINTAGE FROM GILLIAN HORSUP
COAT MAX MARA TANK MUGLER EARRINGS LAURA NASH
COAT AND SHIRT CHANEL
SHIRT GUCCI MEN’S F/W ’15 LAYERED BODYSUIT NORMA KAMALI BOOTS (THROUgHOUT) VINTAgE MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA
SHIRT AND JACKET GUCCI MEN’S F/W ’15 LAYERED BODYSUIT NORMA KAMALI
TANK RAF SIMONS F/W ’15 PANTS GIORGIO ARMANI
COAT GUCCI MEN’S F/W ’15 TANK MIU MIU S/S ’15 TABARD AND EARRINGS LAURA NASH
MAKEup pETROS pETROhIlOS uSING M.A.C COSMETICS (STREETERS lONDON) hAIR TINA OuTEN uSING FRéDéRIC FEKKAI (STREETERS lONDON) MODEl lARA STONE (IMG) Set deSign david White (StreeterS London) Photo aSSiStantS racheL Lamb and maxime imbert StyLiSt aSSiStantS Laura vartiainen and LouiS Prier tiSdaLL makeuP aSSiStant akari Sugino hair aSSiStant LaWrence WaLker Production JeSS Porter (mini-titLe) Location Street StudioS, London
BRA AND TANK (THROUGHOUT) CALVIN KLEIN UNDERWEAR SHORTS CALVIN KLEIN JEANS SHOES AND JEWELRY (THROUGHOUT) STYLIST’S OWN
what comes between kendall jenner and her calvins? a hashtag. as the face of the new #mycalvins denim series, the millennial muse takes a casual stride toward supermodeldom photography steven klein fashion matthew ellenberger text patrik sandberg V MAGAZINE 113
“my little sister also wears calvin, but i’m kind of claiming it as my own. okay kylie?”—kendall jenner
“The frst campaign that I recall was with Kate Moss and Marky Mark,” Kendall Jenner says of her introduction to the world of Calvin Klein. “Probably the most iconic jeans ad ever.” For those who lived through the ubiquity of that now-classic Herb Ritts moment, it may be surreal to comprehend that Jenner embodies a similar level of iconography for a new generation of American teenagers. Now the face of the new #mycalvins Denim Series, Kendall joins Justin Bieber in the post-recent pantheon of Calvin Klein billboard idols. But then again, from her frst go-see at V in the summer of 2013—for which she posed with Riccardo Tisci’s Visionaire 58 Spirit and set Instagram commenters into fights of hysteria—to her Alasdair McLellan–lensed #mycalvins advertisements alongside man-candy Simon Nessman, Kendall’s ascent in fashion has defed any and all assumptions. It’s something the young model attributes to shrewd calculation and blind luck in equal measure, especially having been known frst and foremost for her family and their reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. “You have no idea how many doors closed on me and how many adults were either initially reluctant to take a chance working with me or who outright laughed at me behind my back,” Kendall recalls. “It was kind of hard because all I was doing was going on go-sees, trying my best to break into this business as a teenager. I am so grateful to Marc Jacobs, Riccardo Tisci, Karl Lagerfeld, and Katie Grand, who took a chance on me that frst season and gave me an opportunity. My parents taught me that work ethic is one of the most important keys in life, and I believe it.” During the last month of Fall fashion shows, Kendall demonstrated a current strategy of discernment. While some models strutted for 60-plus shows, she walked for only 14, but they were all top houses: Fendi, Chanel, Balmain, Marc Jacobs, and Michael Kors, to name a handful. Her high-fashion pedigree combined with her stratospheric social following (21.3 million Instagram followers and climbing) makes her, for Calvin Klein, a match made in commercial heaven. Just over a year ago, when she Instagrammed a beaming selfe, exposing a logo waistband as part of the viral #mycalvins underwear movement, she received over a million likes. “I have searched the hashtag, for sure,” says the avid social media user. “Funnily enough, there are a lot of great workout tips there…and shirtless guys.” “The logo-driven product was inspired by what we were already seeing from consumers on social media,” Calvin Klein Jeans global creative director Kevin Carrigan says of the limited range, which introduces another sartorial chapter to the #mycalvins narrative. For its frst launch, the series is selling exclusively at Opening Ceremony. “Iconic graphics and logos will always be a part of Calvin Klein Jeans,” he says. “This series is a new take on what was previously seen on Kate Moss years ago. That imagery still resonates with a whole new generation of individualists, so it was great to have the new pieces photographed on Kendall. She looks great in the line,” he adds. “These are the perfect wardrobe essentials for a modern, young lifestyle like hers.” And just like the classic white brief she frst Instagrammed, the range is marketed as unisex. “I’ve always been into blurring gender lines, especially the girls borrowing from the boys,” Carrigan explains. “In this line of streetwear and denim pieces, a unisex approach felt right. These are American, sporty pieces like the tee, the sweatpant, and the hoodie that really are designed for all.” “The best part about the collection is that it can be worn anywhere and anytime,” Kendall adds. “I can throw any of the denim on with heels to dress it up, or throw sneaks on with the crop-top hoodie and roll to the movies. The styling is so efortless. It’s really versatile.” Her only concern is some possible sibling rivalry when it comes to wearing the brand: “My little sister also wears Calvin, but I’m kind of claiming it as my own. Okay Kylie?” For her frst V editorial, Kendall met up with Steven Klein. “He is such an intensely talented person but he is cool and actually quite hilarious to work with,” she says. “We vibe very well. We have some sort of telepathic mojo. This shoot was particularly fun because he brought his three Great Danes. Everyone knows, but he has the most incredibly beautiful Great Danes. They’re huge and one of them even slightly bit my head, that’s how gigantic he was! My head’s okay though. All good! Any chance that I can work with animals, I’m in.” In a way, Kendall’s journey from reality TV to the world of high fashion modeling may, for her generation, best represent what she associates most strongly with the brand: “The American Dream,” she says. “I feel like it’s such a staple. I can barely remember a time, or underwear in general, before Calvin Klein. They’re O.G. I feel honored to be linked to something with such great roots. I can only hope that I’m around as long as CK has been.” As for her McLellan campaign, she is keenly aware of the magnitude when it comes to taking her career to new highs. “This will be my frst billboard on Sunset, which I’m ecstatic about,” she says. “It’s really humbling, and honestly, I am a pretty shy person, but being part of the Calvin campaign and seeing myself up there will be a dream come true. I might have to eat every night at the Chateau Marmont with that hanging over my shoulder. ‘Oh yeah, that little thing? I didn’t notice!’”
The #mycalvins Denim series is available aT calvinklein.com anD selecT reTailers beginning may 15
BRA AND BRiefs CALVIN KLEIN UNDERWEAR JeANs CALVIN KLEIN JEANS MAkeup sAMMy MouRABit usiNg CHANeL CosMetiCs HAiR JiMMy pAuL foR BuMBLe AND BuMBLe (susAN pRiCe) MoDeL keNDALL JeNNeR (tHe soCiety MANAgeMeNt) Digital technician taDaaki Shibuya Set DeSign JeSSe kaufmann (frank repS) photo aSSiStantS alex lockett, mark luckaSavage, Jeff pearSon, calvin laSzakovitS (b2pro) proDuction ben bonnet (WeSty proDuctionS) Set DeSign aSSiStantS colin lytton anD zach lamming retouching Jim alexanDrou (1514) equipment rental (lighting) b2pro equipment rental (proDuction) Jack StuDioS catering polariS biteS
“Under the cherry blossoms none are Utter strangers.” —Issa FInd a natUral balance In sPrIng coUtUre’s organIc edges, as modeled by sasha PIVoVaroVa
PhotograPhy ben toms V MAGAZINE 1 1 8
FashIon robbIe sPencer
ARMANI PRIVÉ
Silk gazar top decorated with SequinS and jet in a bamboo motif, with celadon-green organza culotteS and organza Stole
MAISON MARGIELA ARTISANAL
antique linen bedsheet turned into a hand-painted jacket decorated with lacquered miniature cars, worn with embroidered silk stocking armbands hairpiece and tights stYlist’s own
GIVENCHY HAUTE COUTURE BY RICCARDO TISCI FLOOR-LENGTH Lamé dREss WORN WITH HEEL aNkLE bOOTs IN bLack TEjus LEaTHER
CHANEL HAUTE COUTURE
pleated chiffon top, worn with two pleated chiffon skirts, a patent leather and rhinestone belt, fingerless gloves in stretch tulle, leather and patent cap-toe sock boots, and a straw hat veiled in tulle face net stYlist’s own
GAULTIER PARIS
NOCES DE FER (IRON WEDDING) SIlk jERSEy DRapé DRESS WIth ONE-tO-ONE SIlk FRINGES aND CRINOlINE bElt WRappED IN SIlk jERSEy GlOVES StylISt’S OWN
DIOR HAUTE COUTURE
Multicolored jacquard-knitted bodysuit and printed plastic coat, worn with vinyl and Metal boots
Stylist assistants Louise Ford, Laura Page, Ioana Ivan Makeup assistant Yuko Murakami Hair assistant Ryuta Saiga Set design assistants Alice Kirkpatrick and Danny Hardman Hyland Production Julia Hackel (Intrepid) Postproduction Studio Private
L’Écuyère à La jupe fLeurie Linen suit embroidered with russian foLkLore motif, scarf (around head) styList’s own
VALENTINO HAUTE COUTURE
Makeup Hiromi Ueda using Sisley (Julian Watson) Hair Shon using Bed Head by TIGI (Julian Watson) Model Sasha Pivovarova (IMG) Manicure Mike Pocock (Streeters London) Set design David White (Streeters London) Digital technician Lee Whittaker Photo assistants Chris Rhodes and Jack Symes
Sapphire dreSS in Silk cady with Silk piping curving around the body, wrapping around the neck, and expoSing the back, worn with Matching ShoeS
ATELIER VERSACE
ALL ABOARD!
ON A MAGICAL NIGht destINed tO GO dOwN IN pArty hIstOry, KArL LAGerfeLd ANd hIs CLOsest frIeNds CruIsed dOwN the hudsON rIver, MArKING A MOMeNtOus trIp tO New yOrK CIty
Hailey Baldwin, Bella Hadid, Gigi Hadid
Cara Delevingne and Dakota Johnson
Paris Hilton
Charlie Siem and Tinashe
Gigi Hadid, Lily Donaldson, Cara Delevingne, Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin
Hudson Kroenig and Katy Perry
BANKS and Emily Ratajkowski
Lady Amanda Harlech
Katy Perry and Brad Kroenig
Kris Jenner and Katy Perry
Sebastien Jondeau and Lily Collins
Karl Lagerfeld, Hudson Kroenig, Cara Delevingne
The Bateaux Celestial
Cara Delevingne
V-BUY
ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER ALEXANDREVAUTHIER.com AmERIcAN APPAREL AmERIcANAPPAREL.NET AND RE WALKER DoVERsTREETmARKET.com BALENcIAGA BALENcIAGA.com Boss HUGoBoss.com BURBERRY PRoRsUm BURBERRY.com cALVIN KLEIN coLLEcTIoN cALVINKLEIN.com cÉLINE cELINE.com
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cHANEL cHANEL.com cZ BY KENNETH JAY LANE cZBYKENNETHJAYLANE.com DEREK LAm DEREKLAm.com DIEsEL DIEsEL.com DIEsEL BLAcK GoLD DIEsELBLAcKGoLD.com DIoR DIoR.com DIoR HommE DIoR.com DoNNA KARAN DoNNAKARAN.com EDUN EDUN.com ELLERY ELLERYLAND.com EmPoRIo ARmANI ARmANI.com FENDI FENDI.com
Nicobine, Perrier-Jouët champagne, and a delicious dinner featuring Nobu’s miso cod. After heartfelt welcome speeches from Captains Delevingne and fve-year-old Hudson Kroenig, V89 cover star Katy Perry introduced world-class violinist Charlie Siem to serenade the guest of honor. Siem followed his solo performance with a stunning rendition of “Empire State of Mind,” sung by V93 cover star Tinashe. Shortly thereafter, special guest DJ Paris Hilton hit the decks for a set that had the whole crew on their feet—even the man of the hour. The most memorable part of the evening, however, was when the yacht pulled up to New York’s leading lady, and history was made when Karl met the Statue of Liberty for the very frst time.
GILLIAN HoRsUP GILLIANHoRsUP.com GIoRGIo ARmANI ARmANI.com GIUsEPPE ZANoTTI DEsIGN GIUsEPPEZANoTTIDEsIGN.com GIVENcHY BY RIccARDo TIscI GIVENcHY.com GUccI GUccI.com IcEcREAm BBcIcEcREAm.com IssEY mIYAKE IssEYmIYAKE.com J.W. ANDERsoN J-W-ANDERsoN.com JEAN PAUL GAULTIER JEANPAULGAULTIER.com JENNIFER FIsHER JENNIFERFIsHERJEWELRY.com JUIcY coUTURE JUIcYcoUTURE.com JUsT cAVALLI RoBERTocAVALLI.com
KENNETH JAY LANE KENNETHJAYLANE.com LoUIs VUITToN LoUIsVUITToN.com mAIsoN mARTIN mARGIELA mAIsoNmARGIELA.com mANoLo BLAHNIK mANoLoBLAHNIK.com mAX mARA WoRLD.mAXmARA.com mIcHAEL KoRs mIcHAELKoRs.com mIU mIU mIUmIU.com mUGLER mUGLERUsA.com NoRmA KAmALI NoRmAKAmALI.com omEGA omEGAWATcHEs.com PAco RABANNE PAcoRABANNE.com PRoENZA scHoULER PRoENZAscHoULER.com
PRADA PRADA.com RAF sImoNs RAFsImoNs.com RALPH LAUREN RALPHLAUREN.com REsURREcTIoN REsURREcTIoNVINTAGE.com sALVAToRE FERRAGAmo FERRAGAmo.com THE coNTEmPoRARY WARDRoBE coNTEmPoRARYWARDRoBE.com TIFFANY & co. TIFFANY.com VALENTINo VALENTINo.com VERsAcE VERsAcE.com VETEmENTs VETEmENTsWEBsITE.com
Production Benjamin Bonnet and Mike Williams, Westy Productions Images courtesy Billy Farrell Agency/BFAnyc.com
It was anchors away when V’s Stephen Gan, CR Fashion Book’s Carine Roitfeld, Chanel muse Lady Amanda Harlech, and longtime friend and trusted right hand Sebastien Jondeau toasted Karl Lagerfeld with an evening not soon to be forgotten. The tone of the night was immediately set when It Girls Cara Delevingne, Kendall Jenner, and Gigi Hadid spotted one another and gleefully screamed before embracing and climbing aboard the Bateaux Celestial, where they met fellow beauties Anna Ewers, Lindsey Wixson, Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski, and Bella Hadid. Inside, Lagerfeld’s close friends Geraldine Chaplin, Patti Smith, Baz Luhrmann, Linda Evangelista, and Stella Tennant enjoyed personal vapor devices from