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vMan 32 Editor-in-Chief / Creative Director StEphEn Gan Editor Elliott DaviD art Director Cian BrownE Senior Editor patrik SanDBErG Managing Director StEvEn ChaikEn Creative Services Director JEnniFEr roSEnBluM photo & Bookings Editor SpEnCEr MorGan taylor Design alExa viGnolES alEx McwhirtEr Market Editors MiChaEl GlEESon Mia Solkin online Editor nataSha StaGG

Contributing Fashion Editors niCola ForMiChEtti BEat BolliGEr JoE M C kEnna panoS yiapaniS oliviEr rizzo ClarE riCharDSon hannES hEtta roBBiE SpEnCEr toM van DorpE Senior Fashion Editor Jay MaSSaCrEt Fashion associate Julian antEtoMaSo

Contributing Editors / Entertainment GrEG krElEnStEin katE BranCh StarworkS associate publisher JorGE GarCia jgarcia@vmagazine.com advertising representative JEFF GrEiF 212.213.1155 advertising Manager viCky BEnitES vbenites@vmagazine.com 646.747.4545

advertising office, italy and Switzerland MaGazinE intErnational luCiano BErnarDini DE paCE +39.02.76.4581 magazineinternational.it Distribution DaviD rEnarD Communications SaMantha kain purplE pr 212.858.9888 Copy Editors traCi parkS JErEMy priCE

Editorial assistants wyatt allGEiEr ian DaviD MonroE

SaCha BrEitMan

Financial Comptroller Sooraya pariaG

Casting SaMuEl ElliS SChEinMan

production Director MEliSSa SCraGG

assistant Comptroller ivana williaMS

Editor-at-large DErEk BlaSBErG

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assistant to the Editor-in-Chief williaM DEFEBauGh

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advertising assistant

Consulting Creative / Design Direction GrEG FolEy

Contributors BruCE wEBEr StEvEn klEin hEDi SliManE riCharD BurBriDGE JaMES FranCo piErrE DEBuSSChErE JaMiE hawkESworth Max pEarMain DaviD arMStronG GuiDo palau DEBorah watSon Colin DoDGSon halEy wollEnS MEinkE klEin anna trEvElyan John SCariSBriCk oSCar lanGE DarrEn SylvEStEr avEna GallaGhEr CharliE EnGMan SCott trinDlE StElla GrEEnSpan DaniEl linDh Dan ForBES réMi laManDé rEto SChMiD JD FErGuSon niCholaS alan CopE thErESE alDGårD Jonny ColEMan EMMa allEn kEvin McGarry toDD pluMMEr DorothEa GunDtoFt kEvin CoBlE JoSEph akEl Special thanks little Bear inc. Jeannette Shaheen Gwen walberg Matthew richards art partner Giovanni testino amber olson Marianne tesler Candice Marks lindsey Steinberg adam Sherman kim pollock yann rzepka art + Commerce Jimmy Moffat philippe Brutus ian Bauman Becky lewis ziggy levin Becky poostchi Jessica Daly Caron lee Michaël lacomblez Carina teoh M.a.p Julie Brown kathryn Scahill lucie newbegin rEp ltd. George Miscamble Jed root Meghan Fitzgerald Claire Bourgeois rachel king india Gentile ClM Jasmine kharbanda Management artists Francesco Savi Sofie Geradin anne du Boucheron angelo Benkaddour art Department patrick o’leary walter Schupfer Management Simona Coppola Delphine del val ursula Sullivan unit nl Julian watson agency Julian watson Caitlin thompson the wall Group artlist paris philippe Saint-Gilles Streeters robin Jaffee See Management l’atelier nyC Malena holcomb D+v lucy kay linkDetails Camera link Celestine agency tomorrow Management ForD Sam Doerfler kati Brown Blake woods Dna iMG vny Elmer olsen Fusion re:Quest Soul Model Management Elisabeth Smith agency Elite paris Elite Denmark the Face paris hakim karin Models paris premium Success rebel Models 160g root Studios Milk lightbox Studios Box Studios output ltd. 254Forest Studio Jim alexandrou Feather Creative Gloss Studio kSM Chimera interns kerri arfa robyn arteaga Shayan asadi nicola Bernardini de pace Carolyn Binder David Cerami ava Chambers zoe Chodosh Eliana Epstein tania Farouki Madison Finley Bruna Fontevecchia patrick Galizio amanda Garcia lester Gibbs ron hartleben Bree Jackson zoe kahn Christina kwiek wynnie newton nikki refghi hussain Salahuddin Scott Shapiro isabella tunioli

on the Cover Colin kaEpErniCk in los angeles, Jacket and handkerchief toM ForD weight vest and shorts nikE necklace and underwear kaepernick’s own photoGraphy BruCE wEBEr FaShion DEBorah watSon

VMAN is a registered trademark of VMAN LLC. Copyright © 2014 VMAN LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. VMAN (BIPAD 96492) is published biannually by VMAN LLC. Principal offce: 11 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10013. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Speedimpex 3010 Review Avenue Long Island City, NY 11101. For subscriptions, address changes, and adjustments, contact Speedimpex 3010 Review Avenue Long Island City, NY 11101, Tel: 800.969.1258, e-mail: subscriptions@speedimpex.com. For back issues, contact VMAN, 11 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10013, Tel: 212.274.8959, vman.com.

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50 FaLL GOOD THInGs caTcH up On THe seasOn’s new reveaLs, reunIOns, anD musT-Have reaDs, aLOnG wITH new DesIGners TO knOw, pLaces TO GO, anD accessOrIes TO GeT InTO nOw 58 rOLL InTO THe wILD, wILD wesT GeT rOwDy In THe wesTern-sTyLe sTapLes TO sTOmp yOur bOOTs FOr 60 pack IT up, pack IT In sHOuLDerInG baGGaGe Has never LOOkeD sO FresH, THanks TO THe besT pIeces FrOm FerraGamO, burberry, berLuTI, anD baLencIaGa 62 DesIGner TO waTcH: waLI mOHammeD barrecH THe cOpenHaGen DesIGner GIves a reFresHInG new perspecTIve On makInG IT In FasHIOn wITHOuT pLayInG by THe TypIcaL ruLes 64 spLITTInG HaIrs In HIs new mOnOGrapH wITH cOLLabOraTOr DavID sIms, GuIDO paLau envIsIOns a sTrIkInG FOLLIcuLar FanTasy 66 bOrn TO kILn ceramIsT ben meDansky reInvenTs a TIme-HOnOreD FOrm wITH ObjecTs FIT FOr a HOme OF THe FuTure 68 sneaker Freaks waLk On THe wILD sIDe wITH THe weIrDesT kIcks TO cOme aLOnG In a wHILe 70 yOunG mOney wHeTHer yOu’re arT-DeaLer cHIc Or wOrkInG sILIcOn vaLLey– swaGGer, ImaGIne yOur IDeaL OFFIce In DeTaIL 74 wOrLDwIDe panTs THe runways OF THe FasHIOn capITaLs Have spOken: skInny Is Over. meeT THe massIve new panT pOIseD TO cOnquer yOur cLOseT 76 DesIGners aT wOrk GO backsTaGe aT THe bIG FaLL sHOws anD GeT an excLusIve GLImpse aT THe masTers OF menswear In THeIr eLemenT 82 seLF-InFLIcTeD sTyLe up-anD-cOmInG mODeL eIke wIenFOrT sHOws OFF HIs persOnaL sTyLe In sOme OF THe seasOn’s cOOLesT cLOTHes 38 vman

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88 BJarne MeLGaarD’s aBuse of ChiCness foLLowinG a perioD of proLifiC output, the norweiGan-Born artist LiGhts out for new territory—the worLD of streetwear 94 foX fire with yesteryear harMonies anD puBLiC DispLays of aGGression, L.a. BanD foXyGen has openeD a new Chapter for psyCh roCk 98 no LiMit soLDier JaMes franCo paints triBute to the fasCinatinG taLent of DireCtor werner herzoG, who iLLuMinates the struCture of storyteLLinG anD the art of BeinG unCoMproMisinG 102 hero with a thousanD faCes CharaCter aCtor wiLLeM Dafoe Continues to DazzLe in arthouse fiLMs anD suMMer BLoCkBusters aLike. the eniGMatiC Man of Many faCes taLks Craft anD avoiDinG typeCastinG 110 there is onLy 1 CoLin kaeperniCk photoGraphy BruCe weBer fashion DeBorah watson 126 the onCe anD future reiGn of haynes photoGraphy steven kLein fashion niCoLa forMiChetti 136 DanCinG aBout arChiteCture photoGraphy JaMie hawkesworth fashion MaX pearMain 146 suBMerGenCe photoGraphy pierre DeBussChere fashion toM van Dorpe 160 City LiGhts photoGraphy DaviD arMstronG fashion Jay MassaCret 168 arCtiC BLast photoGraphy John sCarisBriCk fashion osCar LanGe 174 BurninG ChroMe photoGraphy Meinke kLein fashion anna treveLyan we are the ChaMpions the 2014 vMan/forD MoDeL searCh photoGraphy riCharD BurBriDGe fashion niCoLa forMiChetti 42 vMan

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M A D I S O N AV E N U E, N EW YO R K M I A M I D E S I G N D I S T R I C T, M I A M I S O U T H C OA S T P L A Z A , CO S TA M E S A

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Typically, a September issue of a magazine is a celebration of itself, of fashion and mod-

eling and its own niche world. But as fashion and print publishing are fnding a return to growth after many years of diffculty, we know it’s not just because of our own industry that we’re back on the up-and-up, but also because of those other industries whose own thriving feeds back into our own. What is a lifestyle magazine if not a celebration of them all: flm, fashion, art, music, photography, sports.

There may be no bigger or more exciting sports star this fall than 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. When it was reported in the off-season that he signed a $126 million contract, shockwaves went through the NFL and all of sports media. But the deal wasn’t exactly as it seemed, as explained by our cover writer Jonny Coleman, who rapped out with Kaep over room-service burgers in his ftting room before the ESPY awards. But if we gathered one thing from the tattooed, biracial quarterback—he who favors Beats by Dre over Wheaties endorsements—it was that today’s captains of industry look a lot different than the ones previous generations grew up watching. And as he displays in his Bruce Weber photoshoot and accompanying interview, the sports star of tomorrow exudes a dapper nonchalance that escaped his more buttoned-up, straight-laced predecessors.

From tech gurus to art dealers to studio chiefs to hedge funders, the style of the American executive is constantly evolving. We decided there’s no better time than now to examine today’s industry leaders and paint a comprehensive portrait of what it looks like to be in charge in 2014. The art world’s current force of nature, Bjarne Melgaard, is certainly atypical in image, lifestyle, and practice. In an exclusive interview with writer and curator Kevin McGarry, the Gavin Brown artist reveals his plans to embark upon work in yet another industry: fashion. California band Foxygen continues a legacy of punk, blues, and psychedelic pop music on their latest record, …And Star Power, that’s genuinely antiestablishment. See them lensed by fashion’s own industry kingpin Hedi Slimane, as they talk the ups and downs of entering the music business and fnally fnding their place within it. There is perhaps no director more risk-taking and enlightening than the legendary Werner Herzog. He speaks with a brand-unto-himself, James Franco, about conveying truth through constructs in his innovative flms of all varieties. Speaking of variety, there may be no other actor alive today whose range and diversity of work rivals that of the iconic Willem Dafoe. Writer Emma Allen spent an evening in New York with the consummate performer to fnd out where he continues to fnd his inspiration.

On the fashion front, the business of menswear is more optimistic than ever. Meet the up-and-coming designers giving us hope for the future, get a sneak peek at Guido Palau and David Sims’s new book project, and go backstage with the biggest men’s designers as they cap off their Fall shows. Steven Klein and Nicola Formichetti capture fashion’s current infatuation in the form of actor Colton Haynes. Once an Abercrombie star and then a TV teen heartthrob, Haynes is ready to step up his game with next summer’s action blockbuster San Andreas. See him here in the tough leather looks of the season. We also take a look at the new silhouette revolutionizing men’s style in a story

by Jamie Hawkesworth and Max Pearmain. The season’s top collections walk on water in an editorial by Pierre Debusschere and Tom Van Dorpe. And Romanticism is back, in a timeless and beautiful shoot by David Armstrong, styled by Jay Massacret. It wouldn’t be a Fall/Winter issue without taking it to the mountains. Catch a glimpse of some of Sweden’s top competitive downhill skiers as they show off the alpine accessories to race for come the colder months, in a fast-paced story by photographer John Scarisbrick and stylist Oscar Lange. Then hit the road with a Japanese biker gang, stylized by Meinke Klein and Anna Trevelyan.

Since our inception, VMAN has had the pleasure of dabbling in one of the most cutthroat industries on the planet: modeling. With our annual VMAN/Ford Model Search, unknowns are given the chance to achieve fashion stardom and often seize the opportunity with globally impactful results. This year, we believe we’ve discovered another superstar in the form of our victor, Luke Thorpe. Meet Luke and the two other fnalists, photographed by Richard Burbridge and styled by Nicola Formichetti. We expect big things from all three of these kids, each of whom rode an airplane for the very frst time in order to participate and pursue their dreams of making it. Stepping into the unknown in search of a better opportunity…Isn’t that what industries are built on? The ediTors

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in tel l igen t d anc e m usic If we had to name a modern-day master composer, Dan Snaith would certainly make our short list. First recording as Manitoba and for the past decade as Caribou, Snaith has created impeccable, inventive music that cannot be

relegated to any one genre. An electronic wizard of pastiche songcrafting, he has employed folktronica, avant-soul,

ste pp i n g f orwar d It comes as no surprise that the legacy bootmaker Berluti found a way to give its frst sneaker a high-end kick. Made from a single piece of leather, hand-sewn, and spruced

up with sporty details, such as metal eyelets, scritto detailing on the tongue and sole, and brightly colored lining, they combine traditional craft with new technology: designer Alessandro Sartori was always sure to follow the house’s guiding principle of breaking free from the pack. The sneaks are also performance-ready, equipped with shape-memory foam and an insole designed to absorb impact. You may not want to take them for a run, but count on a frst-class long-lasting stroll. MICHAEL GLEESON PHOTOGRAPHY THERESE ALdGåRd

trance minimalism, brit-psych, neo-shoegaze, and classical instrumentation to create his breathtaking arrangements.

Snaith’s work fnds consistency only in being universally adored. Each time the Polaris-prize-winning composer releases a new Caribou record (the last of which was 2010’s Swim), the music media’s heart skips a beat and in-theknow listeners collectively swoon. And Our Love, his sixth studio record (Merge/City Slang), is no exception. Snaith’s IDM is a refreshing departure from the brostep that has hollowed out the electronic landscape. For those who fnd that when the body’s busy dancing, the mind is free to explore, your cerebral dance party just got its soundtrack.

XAVIER CARdEW

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sw is s m o vem e nt For his latest range of watches, the esteemed Italian designer Giorgio Armani looked no further than his neighbors to the west. This season, Emporio Armani becomes Swiss-made, with two collections (and six design categories) of men’s and women’s timepieces boasting the craftsmanship and precision that Switzerland is known for.

With “Blue Supreme” (pictured), “Melting Gold,” “Glowing Rose,” and “Lady Color,” the watches fuse the elegance of the ’30s and ’40s with the future. They might be the most tasteful time-travel machines ever marketed. GIdEON FONG

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There are no monsters or zombies in the stories that make up Justin Taylor’s Flings. There is no apocalypse.

But there is a serious level of drama and tragedy in the connections between his characters: men and women, by turns brave and destructive, struggling with uncertainty and love’s chaos. There is empathy here. Taylor is a modern master of creating distinct voices; these are the people we live with. We are sitting in the room as they argue, as they chase after some kind of hope.

He is writing fictional people’s lives, but they’re also maybe our lives—or maybe just life. And when the writing is funny, it’s so disgustingly funny that I find myself texting line after line of magic and depravity to my friends, because I need someone else in this with me. KENNETH CObLE PHOTOGRAPHY THERESE ALdGåRd

thirty years of hard walking and candy talking Everything one needs to know about why the Jesus and Mary Chain remain one of the world’s most seminal bands

is pretty much summed up in an interview the band gave for British television back in 1985. When asked why people were so excited by the group and why they were often mentioned as the greatest thing to happen to rock and roll since the Sex Pistols, one of the two surly brothers who front the band barely missed a beat before responding: “Because we’re so good,” Jim Reid said. “Because we’re so much better than everybody else. Because so many other people are just complete rubbish. It’s pretty obvious, really.” In response to the same question, his brother, William, simply replied, “My favorite color is gold.”

Now is perhaps the perfect time to revisit the legacy of Scotland’s most notorious and unruly musical export.

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The Jesus and Mary Chain’s debut album—1985’s Psychocandy—turns 30 next year, and in advance of this anniversary, the band will be performing the album in its entirety at a series of select live concerts. It’s a rare opportunity to hear one of the ’80’s most deeply infuential post-punk records in its most perfect form: played live at an earsplittingly loud volume. Such is the charm of Psychocandy, a record that married the sweet simplicity of ’60s girl-group pop tunes and proceeded to bury them under thick layers of squalling guitar feedback. The glorious messiness of the Mary Chain’s songs was only amplifed by their image—a pack of skinny, frizzy-haired, leather-clad hooligans unleashing melodic noise with a heavy dose of black-hearted teenage ennui. The Jesus and Mary Chain created—or,

rather, perfected—a kind of discordant and sweetly disaffected aesthetic that continues to resonate with bands today. Still, few bands could ever write a song as caustic as “Never Understand” or as sweetly beautiful as “Just Like Honey” and have them make total sense together on the same record. For this—and for wrecking the hearing of a generation of angry young music lovers—the Jesus and Mary Chain are forever in our heads. T. Cole RaChelT THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN IN GLASGOW, 1985 PhoToGRaPhY aNDReW CaTlIN THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN PERFORM PSYCHOCANDY IN THE U.K. THIS NOVEMBER. FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION GO TO GIGSANDTOURS.COM

h ig h g lo s s Melinda Gloss is a Parisian menswear brand that just so happens to bear a woman’s name. “Both of our names together

would have been far too long,” says designer Mathieu de Ménonville, whose cofounder is Rémi de Laquitaine. Friends since the age of 15, the two studied philosophy together before leaving university to start a fashion line, which they named after a mutual childhood friend, Melinda. “She just had this way of putting lipstick on. And we wanted a name you could not only see but also feel.” Tactility is important to the brand: while the lines are clean and the shapes pared down, it’s the obsession with high-quality materials that has earned Melinda Gloss a legion of fans in the contemporary and luxury markets alike, from New York to Tokyo.

The brand opens a new Paris fagship this September, and there’s talk of a full shoe collection for later next year. But despite commercial growth, it all comes back to the relationship between two French friends, discussing philosophy and shaping their own aesthetic. “Each collection starts out as a series of mood boards,” says De Ménonville. “Then there is a lot of informal conversing between myself and Rémi. “Who is the guy? What are the colors and volumes?

Where is he going?” And [during] the four or fve months we discuss a collection, everything can change radically.”

TODD PLUMMER PhOTOgRaPhy SchOhaja

sh a d e s o f co o l “A tribe of Bedouin desert dwellers, maybe,” Tim Coppens says of the ideal customer for his new Linda Farrow Gallery collaboration sunglasses. “i bought a book by Naoki ishikawa, with pictures taken on Lhotse, the mountain next to Everest,” he says. The images partly inspired the utilitarian design of the frames, which are built of stainless steel with rubberized acetate and nylon-coated mirrored lenses— an extension of the athletic luxury of his menswear. “i wouldn’t recommend them for a hardcore summit expedition,” Coppens says. “These were a frst

exploration into eyewear and seeing how they complete the Tim Coppens look. The mix of materials is really all about the aesthetic.” Could a classic Coppens aviator be on the horizon? “i want to look into developing a pair with a longer lifespan, less seasonal, and loosened from collection concepts. Maybe in a smaller version.” gF TiM cOPPEnS by LinDa FaRROw gaLLERy SUNGLASSES ($485, LiNDAFARRoW.CoM)

To W eR o f P oWe R Valentino doesn’t do anything by half measures, so it makes sense that the brand’s New York Flagship is taking up residence in the monumental Fifth Avenue space formerly occupied by the Takashimaya department store. Boasting terrazzo and palladiana interiors in a postmodern renovation

by John Burgee and Philip Johnson, the 20,000-square-foot emporium will play host to the largest selection of accessories worldwide, as well as Valentino’s second men’s store in the U.S. Jaw-dropping atrium views included. gF

PhOTOgRaPhy ThERESE aLDgåRD VALENTiNo’S NEW YoRk FLAGShiP iS NoW oPEN AT 693 5Th AVE

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T h e S p R I n g S h O w S I n lO n d O n M a R k e d a n u p h e ava l Of expeCTaTIOnS In The fORM Of TwO TalenTed yOung deSIgneRS. MeeT MenSweaR’S new bIg naMe and The up- and-C OM eR we Can’T STOp waTChIng.

CRaIg gReen The biggest story to emerge from the Spring men’s shows is undeniably the arrival of Craig Green. Having previously presented with Fashion East, Craig debuted his solo

runway show at London Collections: Men and the unthinkable happened: his clothes elicited cheers—and tears—from the fckle fashion pack.

“It’s amazing that people can have a reaction like that to something on a catwalk,” Green says from his new studio in Hackney. “We never really set out to make people cry. I think a lot of people are sort of mad and over-the-top. I don’t know if there was something in the air, there was a weird chain reaction going on. I think a lot of people who weren’t there were like, ‘Oh, shut up. It’s just clothes.’”

Not so fast. Combining grand shapes with utilitarian elements and a practically monastic, monochrome palette, those clothes were at once messianic and pagan, protective yet vulnerable—surprising contradictions that amounted to a refreshing study in purity. Venerable fashion critic Tim Blanks hailed it as one of the top two shows of the season—the other being Junya Watanabe—and closed out his effusive Style.com review saying, “The cult of Craig Green is about to explode.”

But the 27-year-old Central Saint Martins graduate remains grounded. “We were worried people would think it’s the most boring thing we’ve ever done,” he says with a laugh, referring to himself and collaborator Helen Price. “Every time we try a new collection, it seems to be a reaction to the one before. Last season was so heavy and layered, and kind of about this obsessive romance, so we wanted to do something that was loose and free.” The designer’s love of functional workwear was still present, but

in so straightforward a way that it was rendered deceptively simple. “There are lots of pockets, and not apologetic pockets,” he explains. “They’re on top or on the outside,

because they’re something to celebrate. It’s about escapism, restriction, and freedom.

Being tied up and undone and released at the same time.”

Green also fnds a chaotic element in his clothes. “The clothes look totally different standing still than when they are moving. From the very beginning it was about movement.” Green maintains that his breakthrough collection was a happy accident, but he expects it will inform the shape of things in seasons to come. “There’s a learning curve,” he says. “We didn’t set out to make it look the way it did, but it naturally formed into that, which is a good way to work. We didn’t think it would have the positive reaction it had. We wanted to challenge ourselves and prove that we can do this kind of work. It will defnitely inform what our brand can be.”

MaRTIne ROS e “Sometimes there is more value in being quiet.”

At London’s Fashion East presentation, when Martine Rose presented a solitary look in lieu of her full Spring 2015 collection, a few editors wondered aloud if it was some kind of accident or stunt. However, Rose explains, it was actually more of a statement, as well as an experiment.

“The look I showed was a preview to a full collection, which I’ll release in September,” she says. “I was exploring whether it’s enough sometimes to just be really stripped down and considered. I’ve had such an amazing response to the look, so it seems that sometimes it is!” Indeed, it was a hit with editors and Instagrammers alike, though it was no doubt helped by the fact that Rose has had a buzzy following for some time, thanks to her inventive juxtapositions of synthetic and luxury fabrics, usually rendered in a street-smart, post-rave silhouette.

“I really like fabrics that sit awkwardly together,” Rose says. “To me that awkwardness is really beautiful and interesting. I enjoy using what would otherwise not be considered a typical luxury fabric, and treating it like cashmere.” The collection has been a standout at stockists like GR8 in Tokyo, Browns in London, and Opening Ceremony and VFILES in the U.S., and her sensational solo ensemble portends brightly for the forthcoming Spring collection—though she hints that even that will come transmitted in an unusual way.

“I have felt for a while that it’s worth exploring other ways of communicating ideas,” she says. “It’s quite strange that the format of showing fashion hasn’t progressed in the same way everything else has around it: the consumer and the technology. There will always be a place for fashion shows, but there is also a place for new formats.”

PHOTOGRAPHY MEINKE KLEIN FAsHION ANNA TREvELYAN TExT PATRIK sANdbERG

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RUNWAY IMAGES COURTESY CRAIG GREEN AND MARTINE ROSE

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designer To waTch: wali mohammed barrech The mu lTieThnic designer says he doesn’ T be long anywhere. buT The scandinavian design scene F i T s h i m l i K e a g lo v e , T h a n K s T o h i s ava n T- g a r d e no-bu lls hiT worK eThi c. phoT ogra phy r eTo schmid Fashion wali moh ammed barrech Wali Mohammed Barrech is known for being extraordinarily honest. He dreamed of working at Givenchy Couture, but knew he wasn’t suited to the shut-up-and-work culture typical of the industry. “[In fashion] we are lying to ourselves,” the 29-year-old designer says. “You have to suffer for two years as an intern and spend so much money and investment time, then you receive a little raise and 15 years later your dreams are lost. Why should I do that to myself, just to hate fashion in the end? I have way too big of a mouth.”

Barrech tends to be placed within the category of Scandinavian fashion, but he considers himself an international avant-garde designer who just happens to really love Copenhagen. “It’s a beautiful city with very ambitious people,” he explains. “It made sense for me to be here and start something. I’m also supported by the government, which makes it possible for a young designer to focus on work and grow artistically.”

Wali was born far away from Denmark, in Karachi, Pakistan, where he was raised by his Croatian mother and Afghan father. He studied at a rural German school until the seventh grade and then was sent to high school in Cologne. The fashion scene lured him to Berlin, where he was later accepted into the prestigious but tough Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. “Antwerp was the craziest time of my life,” he recalls. “When I look back, I’ve never learned so much about other people, the fashion system, and myself. I met my best friends there, I met myself there.”

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Today Barrech teaches at two Danish design schools—something he thought he would

never do. “I know the feeling of not being good enough,” he says, “when all of your peers

are extremely talented and you feel mediocre.” Perhaps because of this understanding, he feels school is the place to experiment and fnd oneself…not to become a star or a people-pleaser. “I prefer when my students are humble, hardworking, and realistic,” he says. “It’s okay to be shitty, but be honest. Learn to play and disobey the rules.”

The outspoken designer sees fashion as an art form. “I have no money, just people willing to pour all their talent into my company. That is a luxury, and I’m so glad and humble regarding those willing to help me out; they are my family.”

When discussing the product lifespan of today, which is so short-lived that it’s practically nonexistent, Barrech concludes, “We live in an overachieving society where we travel and live on social media, but I believe we are just pretending. We all just want to be loved. I might choose far-out references, but I’m also pretentious, a phony, and a fake. We are all too self-aware.”

Currently working on his next collection, Barrech will launch accessories this summer and focus on ready-to-wear in the coming year. “I’m drawn to the darkness, the clinical, and close-to-death experiences,” he says, on a morbid note. “It makes your heart stop beating, and you start realizing that you are at the end. So get to the point.” Dorothea GunDtoft

splitting hairs in his first monograph since 2000’s heads, guido palau sculpts a fantasy world that gives us a glimpse of our dystopian digital future

photography david sims

hair and text guido

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I talk about Lee McQueen and his infuence on me, and he often played with grand proportions from different centuries, but it always came out looking punk. I hope the book has an anarchic feel to it as well.

The whole book is sort of asexual. We’re so used to looking at images of people in a sexual manner or a happy manner. I suppose David and I eradicated that from these people so they were more ambiguous. Whether they’re male or female, pretty or ugly, in the future or the past…I wanted all those things to mix. Is it meant to be sci-f? Or is it an old hairstyle you’d see in a Dutch painting, or is it more like Mars Attacks or Marie Antoinette? A lot of them are my mashed-up ideas.

It’s my comment on a time when young people are looking at their computers and digital images a lot—maybe it’s my projection of what people might become. Young people are more isolated on their phones now. They’re reacting to cute, computer-generated images, virtually immersing themselves in games and the characters in them. It might be a strange thought, but if people start relating to the perfected imagery from computers, after a while they’re going to want to refect that in themselves. If you keep looking at a screen and seeing digitalized imagery, then, in the end, that’s what will become your reality. AS TOLD TO PATRIK SANDBERG Hair: Guido is available September 23 from Rizzoli

IMAgE COuRTESY RIzzOLI

Hair is forever changing, and that’s what excites me about it. It’s a neverending kind of thing. You can never rest on your laurels, you always have to be on it.

I was conscious that the feeling of this book would be very different [from Heads]. Though I’m very proud of it, that book was very much about a period of time. It encapsulated an idea of street casting and, at the time, a new take on fashion and beauty. I thought, if I were to do another book, I’d have to be very careful not to delve into a thing that is a language people understand. That grungier point of view has been very much said for quite a few years now, so I didn’t know how I’d re-say that and make it look new. David [Sims] and I came up with this idea of doing something very opposite, so it felt as in-your-face as that undone thing might have felt in the ’90s. Even though the people are young and they still have their individuality, the look of the book is completely different. It’s an idea about a new generation looking forward and a perfected, almost computerized idea of people.

The characters feel quite sinister in a way. They don’t seem so sweet. Even though they’re these sort of angelic-looking people, there’s a darkness running through. I wanted it to feel like some period you couldn’t identify. Some are purposefully very artifcial, and I wanted to make a point of it being fake. I wanted to touch on my grunge thing as well…they’re all characters in a fantasy. The photo of Edie Campbell is a very strong picture, because it goes back to David’s and my roots in a way. But she could be friends with one of the grander people in the book, they could almost live in the same village or town, but they’re all different characters.

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Born to kiln CeramiC ist Ben medansky is reigniting inte re st in his own industry By integrating design elements from an other: aeronautiCs. Ph ot ogr aP hy niCholas alan CoPe teXt Jos ePh akel

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the likes of ’80s postmodern guru Peter Shire, the Haas Brothers, and San Francisco’s legendary Heath Ceramics. Elements of Shire’s stylistic irreverence and the renowned Heath functionality play out equally in several of Medansky’s creations, among them a tobacco pipe that would make Donald Judd swoon and a dildo that found its way onto the blog of a well-known porn star. Medansky, for his part, is unabashed by linking ceramics with vice. After all, sex sells.

That said, ceramics has in past decades been largely overlooked by mainstream culture. Now, however, as demonstrated by crowd-drawing shows, such as LACMA’s captivating Ken Price retrospective last year and Shio Kusaka’s exhibition at New York’s Anton Kern Gallery, ceramics is in vogue, and Medansky is one among a new wave of younger practitioners who have returned to the traditional form and infused it with contemporary themes. For him, the shared link between rocket science and ceramics is no great astronomical leap, but a recognition of the medium’s durability. After all, NASA used ceramic tiles for the protection of shuttles during reentry. Now put that in your ceramic pipe and smoke it.

PHoTo ASSISTANT NICK BErKoFSKY LoCATIoN LIGHTBox STuDIoS, LoS ANGELES

Working out of his Los Angeles studio, surrounded by smokestacks and electrical transformers, ceramicist Ben Medansky uses handmade techniques and heavy-duty machinery to create monochromatic, minimalist meditations on industrial forms. For his most recent series of housewares, Medansky appropriated fns, vanes, and foils—the kind you’d see on drones, missiles, and power generators.

According to Medansky, his inspiration can be traced back to the time when he shared a studio space with several motorcycle mechanics. “Seeing those elements made me want to reproduce them on a soft material, like a bowl,” he says, recalling the gears and fanges found on bikes. Since moving to his new studio, Medansky has produced creations that make reference to the likes of early V-2 rocket diagrams and Cold War–era space race propaganda. For a multi-fnned, matte-black bowl (pictured above), he chose the name Laika, taken from the Soviet canine who was the frst living creature to orbit the planet.

An artist quick to embrace the motifs of industry, Medansky also believes in usability.

After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, he made his way west, apprenticing with

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d r aw at t e n t i o n b e lo w t h e k n e e s with the weirdest and waviest rubber-soled wonders the street wil l ever meet.

Ph ot oGr aP hY dan fo rbes fashion jul ian anteto maso

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: guiseppe zanotti design y-3 prada marc by marc jacobs raf simons x adidas

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9, rue madame VI

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the adorned desks of today’s new tycoons PhotograPhy daniel lindh

the he d g e f un de r CLOCKWISE frOm rIght: tIE and gLOvE Brioni POrtfOLIO CoaCh fLaSK alfred dunhill (avaILabLE at mrPOrtEr.COm) WatCh GuCCi KEy rIng louis Vuitton PEn PorsChe desiGn Car KEy PorsChe CayEnnE gtS CUff LInKS huGo

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fashion michael gleeson

t he art de ale r CLOCKWISE frOm LEft: trAVEL OrGANIZEr ANd WALLEt Louis Vuitton GLASSES thom Browne eyewear WAtCh Dior timePieCes BrACELEt Dior homme CArd hOLdEr marC JaCoBs frAGrANCE tom ForD COStA AZZurrA SCArf Brioni KEy rING FenDi tIE CLIp LanVin

CLOCKWISE frOm LEft: AShtrAy AND tEASPOON Versace Home CAr KEy maserati GrANtUrISmO WAtCh Bulgari WALLEt Jimmy cHoo BrACELEt AND SUNGLASSES tom Ford SCArf roBerto caValli PEN PorscHe design PEN trAy Bottega Veneta Home

PrOP StyLISt GG-LL PhOtO ASSIStANtS NEAL frANC AND DAvID ChOW PrODUCtION BO ZhANG (mANAGEmENt ArtIStS) rEtOUChING GLOSS StUDIO LOCAtION rOOt StUDIOS CAtErING mONtErONE

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the sil icon ce o clockwise From leFt: sPeAkers Beats BY DR. DRe sunglAsses Gucci stylus PoRsche DesiGn scArF heRmès wAllet BalenciaGa wAtcH samsunG geAr liVe witH AnDroiD weAr

worldwide pants at t h e e n d o f a 1 5 -y e a r r e i g n , t h e s k i n n y j e a n and the stovepipe trouser have breached the event horizon of relevance. behold the bold new breadth ushered in by the fall collections: b i g , b i l l o w y, b r i l l i a n t. photography scott trindle fashion stella greenspan From leFt: pants marc jacobs shoes y-3 clothing and shoes giorgio armani clothing and shoes comme des garÇons clothing and shoes calvin klein collection clothing and shoes givenchy by riccardo tisci

production dayna carney and Justin rose (management artists), chelsea stemple production assistant Bruna Fontevecchia retouching Ksm chimera location milK studios, ny catering mg FoodstuFF

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Digital technician neil Pemberton Photo assistants alexei toPounov, ryan bailey, luis jaramillo stylist assistant arizona Williams

D E S I G N E R S A T W O R K ThE mOST mAjOR mOmENTS IN pARIS AND mIlAN h A p p E N E D A f T E R T h E m O D E l S WA l K E D T h E f I N A l E S . fEAS T yOu R EyES ON ThE mASTERS Of fAll m ENSWEAR .

ph OT OGR Ap hy jD fERGuSON TEXT mIChAEl G lE ESON This season, designers joined forces in defning the progressive traveling man. Collections left behind nostalgic tributes and made way for a celebration of immaculate fabrics assem-

bled in consideration of functionality, dynamism, and taste. Inspired by fantasies ranging

from a space-viewed voyage through the Atacama Desert, at Vuitton, to a Kenyan safari, at Balmain, to an entourage of self-ruled biking cowboys, at Versace, to a cosmic quest for the origins of Earth, at Ermenegildo Zegna, the shows were suited and booted in an entirely new way. Alpaca was seamed with nylon to form reversible jackets, and layered

with foor-sweeping vicuña coats that concealed alligator hiking boots. It’s a season of undaunted mix, in which fur was paired with Polartec, at Emporio Armani, and cashmere suits were worn under tradesmen’s work shirts, at Calvin Klein Collection.

Backstage, we had the joy of witnessing the maestros of design obsessing over every last detail to ensure their iconic elements were well-rendered, each look transforming

models into different versions of luxe-shielded nomads, who hit the road, or at least the runway, in the name of innovative fashion.

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EMPORIO ARMANI “For this collection I imagined a metropolitan scenario in a range of mineral hues, which highlight the connection with the city, experimenting with refractions and illusions.”

—Giorgio Armani

GUCCI “This collection is bold, bohemian, and sensual.

The essence of the Gucci man.”

—Frida Giannini

BALMAIN “There’s something authentic, masculine, and, yes, sexy, in the style of those great ’70s athletic icons.

Inspired by them, I worked to incorporate bold contrasts in color and ft into this collection.”

—Olivier Rousteing

JOHN VARVATOS “The Fall 2014 collection was inspired by Kiss and the

idea of the superhero —the man in disguise with incredible powers. I wanted to add a dash of fantasy to the Fall line, while keeping tailored fnesse and elegance.”

—John Varvatos

VERSACE “I wanted this collection to be a celebration of individu-

ality and the freedom to be whoever you want to be in the face of all the oppression in the world right now.”

—Donatella Versace

SALVATORE FERRAGAMO “The precise architecture of tailored construction, a defning trait of the Ferragamo lexicon, suggests the move from an urban dimension to create more intimacy. Through a process of morphing, the softness inspired by domesticity dilutes metropolitan rigor without eliminating it.”

—Massimiliano Giornetti

ReToUchIng FeaTheR cReaTIve

CALVIN KLEIN “Urban, luxe workwear with a hint of the ’90s.”

—Italo Zucchelli

BOTTEGA VENETA “The collection is about versatility and ease, continuing the exploration of how a look can take you both here and there. I am always thinking about what a man would need and what would work for him, whether in the city or the country—these are the questions we answer.”

—Tomas Maier

LOUIS VUITTON “Our collections have always been about travel, but the idea this time was technical travel, digital travel, the implications of the fact that we can now see the world through a screen.”

—Kim Jones

ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA “I am very intrigued by the new generation of masculine power through the way men dress and how they present themselves. I wanted to emphasize a new attitude through a studied nonchalance by using broken suiting and After-Six as an avenue to express this new contemporary elegance.”

—Stefano Pilati

this page: sWeatshiRt GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI paNts EMPORIO ARMANI shOes CAMPER Bag LOUIS VUITTON hat aND BOXeRs (thROUghOUt) eiKe’s OWN

s e l f - i n f l i c t e d s t y l e t h e fa n ta s y o f fa l l fa s h i o n l i e s i n i t s r e a l- l i f e application. here, model eike wienfort shows off his no-sweat personal style and takes the season’s surefir e hits to the streets of paris.

photoGra p hy r Ém i lamandÉ sittin Gs ed itor julian antetomaso 82 vman

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bjarne melgaard’s a b u s e o f c h i c n e s s through inexhaustible mining of the dePths of h u m a n c o n s u m P t i o n , b e h a v i o r , a n d wa s t e , a rt i s t bjarne melgaard has shined a sPotlight on the u n d e r b e l ly o f m o d e r n i t y. f r e Q u e n t ly h a i l e d a s t h e a rt w o r l d ’ s e n fa n t t e r r i b l e , m e lg a a r d t e l l s K e v i n m c g a r ry h e ’ s r e a d y t o m o v e i n t o e v e n d a r K e r t e r r i t o ry — fa s h i o n .

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New York’s standing as a pillar of the art world is just about undisputable, but over the past fve years of post-recession boom, the city’s life as an art capital has been somewhat at odds with its evolution into a capitalist utopia: a gleaming shopping mall is a great destination for buying art, but it’s not an especially hospitable place for the artists who make it. Maybe something about New York’s bohemian grit going on life support explains the meteoric rise of Norwegian-born artist Bjarne Melgaard. A sculptor, painter, and novelist who arrived in Manhattan in 2009, Melgaard, 47, has since emerged as a kind of folk hero, emphatically melding pop culture, subculture, abjection, and expressionism into an unstoppable one-man art movement.

Quintessentially foreign, Melgaard is also a true New Yorker in the sense that he is a workaholic who came to town to win. He’s certainly no stranger to controversy: earlier this year the Evening Standard dubbed him the most famous Norwegian artist since

district, it wasn’t the hulking artist who answered the door, but his mother, visiting from Oslo. Half his size, with a warm and inviting disposition, she politely excused herself to walk his tiny dog. As Melgaard produced a coconut water from an array of Juice Press products in the fridge, he quickly confded that after a couple of colossal years in art, change is imminently afoot. “I want to do new things, some new stuff with my life,” he said. “I’m kind of bored with the art world.”

The art world hardly seems bored with him, however. In the past year he mounted seventeen solo exhibitions and institutional installations all around the world. “Doing show after show becomes really meaningless after a while,” he continued. “There’s just a limit to how much you can put into the idea of a show. I want to expand and try new territories.”

The arena that he has his sights set on is one even more generally reviled than that

Edvard Munch, following the uproar over his work “Chair,” in which a mannequin of a of snobby curators and collectors: fashion. This September, during Paris Fashion Week, topless black woman in a leather fetish get-up is bent over backwards to provide a seat Melgaard will debut his line, BJARNE, for buyers. Developed in collaboration with creative for its owner, Russian billionaire, art collector, and beautiful young white woman Dasha director Babak Radboy, of Bidoun magazine and Shanzhai Biennial fame, the idea, in a Zhukova. Scintillating as all this was, Melgaard hardly needed putting on the map. The nutshell, is “streetwear for people who don’t like streetwear,” and its intent is to tap into the artist slowly but surely began showing in New York in 2000, and stepped up his pace metrics of consumer desire a little more directly than is possible with art. Catherine Breillat over the years to the point that he has been making entire exhibitions in matters of weeks. is the unauthorized spokesmodel for the line, which is something the French director may Killer shows at the 2011 Venice Biennale and later that year at Maccarone Gallery paved or may not know. Ironically, Melgaard hasn’t even seen her latest flm, Abuse of Weakness, the way for a 2012 stunt at the then-fedgling Lower East Side gallery Ramiken Crucible: which is as central a motif to the line as are the initials C.B., recurring throughout. Titled a pen containing two white Bengal tiger cubs, named Sonia and Tanya, modeling collars “the casual pleasure of disappointment,” BJARNE’s frst collection is already set to split and tiger-print capes alongside racks of opulent adult diapers and graphic Richard Kern into two diffusion lines: “Housewife” and “Disappointment.” “Housewife is only black-andphotos. More recently, Melgaard was a standout at the 2014 Whitney Biennial, presenting white,” he says, “and Disappointment is really regular clothing, streetwear, like sweatpants, a big room containing sex dolls, anthropomorphic furniture, a video loop of gay lovers tracksuits, sweats, and hoodies.” With ten e-commerce Web sites and nearly two dozen who hate each other, and an explosion of other crafts and housewares that combine to branding campaigns shot by “the world’s most disillusioned photographers,” BJARNE create a vibrant, nightmarish scene. is primed to explode as forcibly as its namesake, not as an ironic artwork donning the Melgaard is easily recognizable by his steroidal swell and craggy, brutishly hand- mantle of a clothing line, but as a fully functioning brand whose prodigious volume of comsome jaw. But earlier this summer, at his high-rise apartment in Manhattan’s garment modity stands parallel to Melgaard’s own relentless rate of production. KEVIN McGARRY

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left: sam france above: jonathan rado

PRODuCTION YANN RzePkA

Last year, when Foxygen released its third album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors the record maintains the much-loved shimmering pop songcraft of their last LP (lead of Peace & Magic, the critics went nuts. A decidedly glam update of the psychedelic single “How Could You Really” and “Coulda Been My Love”), they also venture further sounds of the ’60s, imbued with a devil-may-care attitude toward tempos, lyrics, and toward anarchy, with freewheeling jam sessions (“Wally’s Farm,” “Cold Winter/Freedom,” genre constructs, the album garnered unanimous praise, reached number 76 on the “Freedom II”). “We sort of mastered writing our own versions of pop songs,” France Billboard album charts, and earned lofty comparisons to legends like Lou Reed and the says. “I mean, they wouldn’t get into the Top 40, although we’re working on that. It’s Rolling Stones. But while reviving a sound long deceased, Foxygen also managed to never a challenge for us to write catchy melodies. But I wanted to foray into something resurrect rock and roll’s penchant for excess and interpersonal melodrama. more visceral, more immediate, more modern, more avant-garde, more punk, and more “It’s a cliché, of course,” front man Sam France acknowledges, from his home in aggressive.” True to the album title, this Foxygenated elixir of chaos and melody amounts southern California’s West Lake Village. “We’ve always worked in clichés.” With on- to the type of magic that rock stardom is made of. Maybe the band’s sound has fnally stage diatribes perceived as tantrums, bodily injuries, canceled tours, social media caught up with its rambunctious reputation. fghts, rumored arrests, and passive-aggressively promoted solo releases, France and “Our live shows can become improvised and sadistic, fucked-up, and weird,” France his bandmates—Jonathan Rado, Shaun Fleming, and Justin Nijssen—earned a devoted says. “I wanted to take that energy and put it onto the record, because people just don’t audience, but one as eager to see how the plot would twist next as to hear their music. know about us. On our last record, people walked into shows wanting to hear songs like “It was diffcult for us,” France explains. “We kind of just got thrown into the indie ‘San Francisco’ and then we would play some crazy noise jam for 20 minutes and I’d be music circuit. We didn’t know what to do, we felt out of control of our image, we didn’t screaming about random shit and people were completely freaked. I wanted to actually like the way we were being promoted, we didn’t like the way we were coming off in the introduce the listeners to that energy as well.” press—we felt very out of control. Our own personal relationships were becoming out When they gave a triumphant performance at Coachella this spring, France sashayof control, so things became very meta. It was bizarre becoming those characters and ing and yowling across the stage like Iggy or Mick before him, the crowd was transfxed. then realizing that we didn’t have to do that anymore.” He breathes a sigh of relief and “I have a Dionysian philosophy,” he says. “I believe in the hysterical body. You can really says, “Things are really great right now.” only have something entertaining happen if you’re in the heat of that moment of craziThe proof is in their fourth full-length LP, …And Star Power. Following an incident at ness. You have to completely let yourself be enveloped by another energy, it’s the only a show in Minneapolis that left him with a broken leg, France retreated to his parents’ way anything real is going to happen.” But if fans are afraid of another spontaneous house to recover, and found himself healing in more ways than one. “I went through a meltdown, they can rest assured. “We’re actually really grateful to be doing what we’re lot of personal changes and started working on the record with Rado in his house, in doing,” France says with an air of calm. “We’re so happy to be able to do this music Woodland Hills, in the analog studio he put together buying all this crazy old shit,” he stuff. We were really immature and we didn’t appreciate it. We thought we were selling says. “We just kind of chipped away at the album, the way you would chip away at a out or something. We had a really weird view of everything. But now things are better sculpture. We had this big vision, and slowly we made it happen.” than they’ve ever been.” ...And Star Power, a double-disc epic consisting of 24 songs, takes its name from an alter-ego punk band France and Rado felt they were sometimes playing in. While ...And Star Power is out this fall from Jagjaguwar

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Filmmaking icon Werner Herzog is a selF-described “ s o l d i e r o F c i n e m a , ” a n a p p e l l at i o n a l s o a d o p t e d b y t H e s ta r o F H i s n e x t F i l m , J a m e s F r a n c o. H e r e , Herzog gets tHe FUll Franco—tribUtary p ortraits a n d a c r e at i v e i n q U i s i t i o n , i n W H i c H t H e s t o r i e d d i r e c t o r s o U n d s o F F o n t H e F i l m i n d U s t ry, t H e nat Ure oF trUtH, and t He imp ortance oF reading.

artWork a nd intervieW James Fr anco Godhead of cinema and universally beloved lunatic Werner Herzog has spent half a century making flms that inspire one to self-question orthodoxies such as truth-as-fact, bear-as-enemy, and life-as-meaningful. His flms—narrative features and documentaryshaped alike—can be as heavy as they come. But unlike those of some of his contemporaries, they’re never unendurable—it is often at their darkest or most disturbing that they’re at their most engaging.

For ffty years, Herzog has remained unpredictable, prolifc, and consistently excellent— a rare feat for any artist, if not the ultimate goal of a creative mind. He rides a bizarre wavelength of the psychosphere all his own, and has a devoted fanbase who trust him to illuminate otherwise existentially annihilating notions of humanity. All this despite his enthusiastic copping to scrapping facts in his documentaries in order to communicate a “deeper stratum of truth” through storytelling. Many of Herzog’s contradictions are similarly well-executed, coming off more like transcendent dualities than inconsistencies. Take, for example, his anti-flm school sentiments being propagated via his flm school, Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School. Or that the longtime detractor of industrial moviemaking made a rare foray into corporate shilling that became a tasteful, moving, and important anti-texting-and-driving short flm, fnanced by telecom’s big four: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Herzog is also an author, a screenwriter, an actor, a director of Opera, and, most recently, a fne artist—his frst video art installation, Hearsay of the Soul, debuted at the 2012 Whitney Biennial. His life as an iconoclastic visionary and “soldier of cinema” paved the way for future generations to follow. And if there’s someone who’s certainly inspired

by Herzog, it’s borderline-compulsive self-expressionist James Franco.

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Franco and Herzog are currently flming Queen of the Desert, about the life of Gertrude Bell, a renaissance woman at the dawn of the 20th century, played by Nicole Kidman.

Franco painted some portraits and sat down with his director to get the storytelling

legend’s backstory. ELLIOTT DAVID JAMES FRANCO So, I want to discuss the flm we’re doing now, but frst I want to talk about the very beginning and how you got into flmmaking.

WERNER HERZOG I have to give you the shortest shortcut of how I got into flmmaking. I grew up in the deepest, remotest valley in the Bavarian mountains, because [my family was] bombed out when I was two weeks old, in Munich. We had no running water, hardly any electricity, no cinema, no telephone. I made my frst phone call when I was 17.

Can you imagine that? By coincidence, I saw two short flms when I was in this village school, which was four classes in one room, under thirty kids, and the same teacher taught all four grades. A traveling projectionist arrived and showed some flms. [So] I never knew flm even existed until I was 11. And it didn’t really fascinate me—the flms looked bad to me.

Then we moved [back] to Munich and I saw Zoro and The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, and I realized—I was 14 or so, still in puberty—that I had to do flms, that I was a poet in a way and I would do this. And also [at that time] I started traveling on foot and I had a dramatic religious phase and converted to become a Catholic, in a household of militant atheists. It dwindled away, but it was a dramatic few weeks of deep insights into my own destiny.

“I stylIze documentarIe s, I Inve nt.

I e v e n I n v e n t pa rt s o f t h e s t o ry w h e n e v e r It ’s necessary, whenev er It ’s good, I do that. so I am not an accountant of truth.”

—werner h erzog

FRANCO Tell me, what did your parents do?

HERZOG They were both academicians, Ph.Ds. My father left the family very early, I have hardly any knowledge of my father—I mean, I know who he was. My mother had a Ph.D and had studied biology as well. We were not peasants, although I grew up among peasant kids. I knew when I was 17 there was no other way to make flms but [to] become self-reliant and become my own producer. [While] I was still in high school, for two and a half years I worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory and earned money.

When school was over, at age 19, I made my frst featurette and used 35mm right away.

I was never at flm school, never assisted, never had seen a studio from the inside, never touched a camera. But I knew I was going to do it right.

FRANCO On set today, you brought up the welding days and said, “Usually if I get one good take, I’m happy, because back when I was a welder I only had scraps of flm and every foot was valuable.”

HERZOG Yes, every foot of flm, of Rostock, this is great value. And sometimes I made flms where I shot one or two takes, [I still do that] today. A flm like Into The Abyss, which is almost two hours long—and digitally shot video, which doesn’t cost anything— I flmed something like six, seven hours of footage. For a two-hour flm. That was it. I

and as an old man wrote it all down. An unbelievable report, and the vividness in it—just great storytelling and poetry.

FRANCO Why the emphasis on reading as opposed to watching flms?

HERZOG Many of the nouvelle vague flmmakers were watching two or three flms a day at the cinémathèque and they watched [flms] in Portuguese and in Mandarin and in Hungarian and whatever, without subtitles. They had to develop the intelligence of the illiterates. Many of them came from that [process]. Even if you watch a lot of flms, if you do not read you will be lost somewhere irretrievably. If you do not read, forget about making a good or very good flm.

FRANCO One more question about the past. So, when, what they called the “German New Wave,” when you guys were all coming up, did you know these other flmmakers?

HERZOG Yes, but we were never a real group, that is a myth of the media. We had no common subject, no common style. Like, let’s say, Neorealism in Italy, not something like that, but solidarity. And I remember when I did Aguirre in Peru, in preproduction time, I took eight flms with me, eight celluloid 35mm prints, a heavy load, and showed them for free in Lima, in Peru. I rented a cinema and showed it, and it was a phenomenal success, a sensation for South America. [They were] our very frst flms. Three of

shoot very little.

FRANCO And you think that comes from your early days of having very little flm?

HERZOG No. In seeing, in having such a clear vision of what I’m going to do. And you do remember, today, a key shot in the flm, a kiss, where the camera fies away from the two lovers—how many times did I shoot it? Twice. I shot two shots and that was it. And it’s one of the pivotal moments of the flm. Two takes. That was that.

FRANCO Yeah, right, I like that.

HERZOG No coverage, there’s no coverage. Zero coverage.

FRANCO You mentioned that a lot of the time producers on your flms will be worried because you don’t shoot coverage, or you don’t shoot a lot.

HERZOG If I really need it, I will shoot coverage. But I didn’t even know what coverage was until on the set of Bad Lieutenant. My team got nervous—I always fnished the days of shooting at 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, and I wanted to continue onto the next set, [but] no, the set wasn’t ready or the actor hadn’t arrived yet. So I said, “Let’s call it quits,” and everybody said, “But what about coverage, what about coverage?!” And so I took my frst assistant director to the side and said, “I do understand what coverage is for my car insurance policy”—if I drive with you, James, in a car, and I run into a tree and you are injured, the insurance policy covers your injuries up to a quarter of a million bucks.

So I asked him to explain it to me. He said, “Yeah, well, a master shot, shot ultra closeup, and from left to right, and from the bottom and reverse shot, and this and that and the other.” And I said, “This is a very strange concept, it never occurred to me.” Yes, I do some additional footage [now], because I know I should, in the decisive moment, consider really closer, but I have covered it in a two shoot, [so] now I should really cut closer and I would do a closer shot. So, that is coverage, in a way, but it never occurred to me, not in my entire life as a flmmaker, that it even existed.

FRANCO Now tell me this, because I’m a teacher and I know you give these seminars— HERZOG Yeah, at the Rogue Film School.

FRANCO Yes. And you didn’t go to flm school.

HERZOG No, and I dislike flm schools.

FRANCO So give me a few things that you try to emphasize in the seminars that you teach. What is the essence of what you are trying to convey to these people?

the flms I took from Fassbinder. I just walked into his production offce and said, “What flms do we have here? Do you have a print here?” I took them. A year later, Fassbinder confronts me and he says, “Werner, tell me the truth, did you really take three of my

HERZOG It is complete guerilla-style flmmaking, trying to become self-reliant, knowing how to pick locks, how to forge a shooting permit without a forger—a massive forgery.

I would never have done Fitzcarraldo, because the military stopped my ship, [but] I presented them, four days later, with a fantastic, fabulous permit to do almost everything in the jungle, and it was signed by the president of the republic [laughs]. It was beautiful, and the colonel saluted at the paper, but of course I [had forged] it. It’s more like a way of life. If you want to learn anything about the techniques of flmmaking at my Rogue Film School, you’re better off applying to your local flm school. I insist, for example, on reading. Read, read, read, read, read, read, read. If you don’t read, you will never be a great flmmaker. You won’t be even a mediocre flmmaker if you don’t read. And, among other hurdles, I have a mandatory reading list. Nothing about flmmaking. Roman antiquity, Virgil’s The Georgics. It’s old Icelandic poetry, a short story by Hemingway, The Warren Commission Report on Kennedy’s assassination, which is a phenomenal text. Unbelievable density and conclusiveness. And Bernal Díaz del Castillo about the conquest of New Spain. [He was] a footman of Cortez who was 19 when he joined the conquest of Mexico

flms and show them in Peru?” I said, “Sure, I took them and I returned them,” and he grabbed me and hugged me so hard, I have never had a hug as hard as that in my life.

FRANCO What was he like?

HERZOG I have tried to describe him. A grunting wild boar that would break through the underbrush in an unruly manner but would open gaps for others to follow through—a wild boar, but with phenomenal sense of style, phenomenal sense of storytelling. Quite often he made weak flms, and I almost lost confdence, and then he comes up with a great flm. A man of extraordinary intensity of what he did. I really liked him, but we didn’t speak much, we never spoke about cinema, hardly ever spoke about cinema.

FRANCO Okay, so now we come to today and now. Your documentaries are as highly regarded as your fction flms. Do the documentaries make you look at your fction flms in a different way?

HERZOG No, no, they are all movies for me. I’ve never really cared much about the distinction between documentary [and features], because I stylize documentaries, I invent.

I even invent parts of the story whenever it’s necessary, whenever it’s good, I do that. So I am not an accountant of truth. I am somebody who is not believing in facts.

FRANCO So what are you looking for?

HERZOG Illumination, an ecstasy of truth, a deeper stratum of truth that you have in poetry, for example. Cinema verité believes wrongly that facts constitute truth, and it is not so. Facts have something powerful about them, they create norms, but poetry creates illumination. And that’s what I’m after.

FRANCO What do you think about developing technology? Because in some ways you’ve used it for your own purposes—3-D, now, on this flm, we’re shooting on video, digitally, so what are your feelings about that?

HERZOG I welcome it. Although I still like celluloid very much. The way you approach a flm when you use celluloid is different, but I am glad that I can do it with state-of-the-art digital equipment. Editing goes much faster. Editing a flm like Grizzly Man in nine days.

And other flms, feature flms, in two, three, four weeks—it goes faster.

FRANCO You like to edit fast?

HERZOG No, [but] I can edit as fast as I am thinking, almost as fast as I see things and envision [the flm], and it goes fast because of that. And I like digital effects. We have

dinosaurs, credibly on the screens, so it’s a fantastic tool. Although I personally do not use it, or hardly ever use it. [But] I’m not nostalgic at all and I do what the necessities are.

FRANCO I see. As long as it helps you make the flms.

HERZOG Yes, but now it’s bigger than that, much bigger than that. I can explain it, although the comparison is a limping one. In Greek antiquity, human beings were subject to the whims and the jokes of gods and to what was, in a way, preordained to them. But the gods themselves were quite like humans. They fought and they drank and they fornicated and they were blacksmiths hammering on anvils—even the gods were subject to a much, much higher principle, an all-pervading principle of everything, of the universe, of humans, of destiny, of necessity. Necessity—Ananke in ancient Greek—even the gods were subject to necessity. I am not unfamiliar with that concept, made known [to me] with my own destiny early on in my adolescence. And that’s what I do.

h e r o w i t h a thousand faces considering the range willem dafoe has displayed in his hundreds of roles, performed over more t h a n t h i rt y y e a r s o n B o t h s c r e e n a n d s ta g e , i t ’ s d i f f i c u lt t o i m a g i n e a n a r c h e t y p e h e h a s y e t t o emBody. one evening in new york, we get a glimpse int o the man who fits all myths. photography colin dodgson fashion haley wollens text emma allen Almost the entire staff of Barbuto, a West Village restaurant in a converted garage, is huddled around an iPad one balmy evening, gasping and yelping. “The chef, the manager, everyone,” explains the lone bartender out front. The U.S. is in the process of losing to Belgium in the quarterfnals of the World Cup. “We’re a musical theater bar usually,” he says, “so this is strange.” Longing glances from waiters awaiting their big Broadway breaks do not fall, as they otherwise would, on the wiry man with a craggy, angular face, wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and New Balance sneakers, who ambles in, unnoticed.

Willem Dafoe, the 59-year-old actor, selected the spot because he has an apartment nearby, but, he clarifes, it isn’t a regular haunt. “There’s no such place as a hangout for me,” he says, a mournful whistle escaping through the gap between his front teeth as he speaks. “New York is flled with ghosts and memories of me, but these days there’s nothing habitual about what I do.”

Habit hasn’t steered Dafoe’s career, either. To square the quarter-century-plus he spent with the Wooster Group, a lawsuit-inciting experimental theater company, with the more than 80 movies he was simultaneously churning out can be a challenge. These flms include several by celebrated auteurs—Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Oliver Stone, Werner Herzog, and Lars von Trier—as well as two that scored him Oscar nominations (Platoon and Shadow of the Vampire). Then there are the other ones, like Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Spider Mans one through three, and John Carter, in which Dafoe voices a thark, a hard-bodied Martian with tusks.

The waitstaff lets out a collective wail, and Dafoe squirms in his seat, trying to see what has happened. “I was just in a bar and it’s so strange to see Americans watching

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football—soccer,” he says. Dafoe is from Appleton, Wisconsin. “But it’s also beautiful—out on the street, they have a monitor set up! Not since 9/11 did I feel such community.” He lets out a gruff, ironic laugh. He’d been rooting for Italy, who had failed to advance from the group stage. His wife of nearly ten years, the director and actress Giada Colagrande, is Italian.

Dafoe met Colagrande when he was flming The Life Aquatic, in Rome, where he now has a home. “I wasn’t looking for nothin’, but sometimes that’s when Cupid draws back the bow!” He throws his hands in the air, revealing a thin silver wedding band, and fngers stained with black ink.

“A pen exploded,” he explains, sheepishly. “It’s those damn—my favorites are Pentels.

But if you carry them on a plane…” Since his early 20s, Dafoe has written in a journal every day. “Some of it’s, I did this, I did this. But it’s also phone numbers, things that strike me, all kinds of shit, drawings, everything.” Many of the volumes were stored in “a very dry basement, upstate,” he says. “But even when a basement is dry, the temperature changes and the ink runs! So 70 percent of all those writings melted.” He tugs at his scruff of hair (brown, with incipient gray), then pulls on his lower lip—the very image of agony.

The staff cheers. Dafoe’s eyes light up and he springs from his chair. Ecstasy! “I wanna see what’s happening,” he says, striding away. Dafoe, who has been developing a “hardcore” Ashtanga yoga practice for decades, has a style of acting that is markedly physical. In the Robert Wilson theater piece The Old Woman—which came to BAM from Europe in June, and is heading to South America next—he bops all over the stage, with Mikhail Baryshnikov. The duo engages in precise, vaudevillian sparring, while repeatedly

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“new york is filled with g hosts and memorie s of me, but these day s the re ’s n othing habitual ab ou t what i d o. ” —willem dafoe

The Boondock Saints. for middle-aged men, Platoon. middle-aged women? The Last Temptation of Christ or The English Patient. “then another one is obviously Spiderman,” in which dafoe plays the deliciously nefarious Green Goblin, “because that was just widely, widely seen,” he explains. “it’s played a lot on cable.” dafoe bristles at the notion that he’s often associated with villainous roles. “it’s kind of a lazy perception,” he says, ominously fngering his butter knife. “i think i’m not normal. And that’s the good news, for me! Because no character should be normal. you’re playing a character, the only decent thing is to humanize him, become his defender.” one recent non-normal role he took on is that of tommy Brue, a slick yet sympathetic, three-piece-suited British banker, in the upcoming thriller A Most Wanted Man, based on the leCarré novel and starring Philip seymour hoffman. “it’s really addressing the west’s relationship to islam in the post-9/11 era, and the stress of trying to be vigilant of dangers but remembering the laws of culture, innocence,” dafoe says. he has also just fnished shooting Pasolini, about the fnal 24 hours of the italian flmmaker’s life, in which he plays the titular protagonist and his wife plays a cousin. “Pasolini was prolifc, prolifc, prolifc, sometimes perverse,” he says. the waitress comes over. “we scored! it’s two-to-one,” she says. “if they win, we really would’ve missed a good match,” dafoe says, with an accusatory tone, before distracting himself with a précis of the state of the movie industry: “there’s a whole generation that grew up with games more than flms. in the united states they’re making fewer flms, and the flms that they’re making are bigger, and all the independents have been swallowed up by the studios, and then they’ve tightened their belts.” he begins breaking his tea stirrer into little bits. “Everybody heralds television as the new medium—i don’t buy it. it lacks a certain kind of poetry and maverick spirit that you just can’t have when you’re thinking so much about an audience. on the other hand, if we weren’t doing this interview i’d be glued to the game. let me check, real quick.” it’s all over. he sinks back into his chair. “you know, there’s a part of me that’s not wild—i’m very disciplined and hardworking.” he takes a restrained sip of his tea and demonstrates a discipline-rich pause. “But there’s another part of me that knows that we have to shake it up in order to do interesting things and that likes to raise hell.” the ensuing smirk falls short of a goblin-snarl, but it comes as something of a surprise when, rather than slowly zipping up a leather jacket, mounting a hog, and peeling away with laura Easy riding pillion, he strolls out into the dusk and heads home.

GroominG Amy KomorowsKi for AXE (CElEstinE) stylist AssistAnt luCy BErmudEz ProduCtion AssistAnts shAyAn AsAdi And dAvid CErAmi EquiPmEnt rEntAl root studios

reciting, mantralike, a text by the soviet subversive daniil Kharms. This is how hunger begins: / The morning you wake, feeling lively, / Then begins the weakness, / Then begins the boredom; / Then comes the loss / Of the power of quick reason. the score is zero-zero. dafoe orders green tea, and sums it all up: “in my heart i’m a guy from wisconsin that always knew there was a bigger world out there.” his father was a doctor, his mother a nurse. “so my sisters brought me up.” he has fve of them, and a brother. “the house was chaos. All the middle-class rituals of middle America, we didn’t have. A little part of me died from envy when i’d hear everyone say that at six o’clock, it’d be ‘Jooohnny! Diiiinner!’” he looks mopey, then that elastic face snaps back into a grin. what he did have in Appleton were girlfriends, with great names: wendy witt, “very sweet”; sandy haring, “can you believe it?”; and laura Easy, “she did have a signifcance”—the grin turns roguish—“well, never mind.” having escaped Appleton, dafoe did a stint at the university of wisconsin-milwaukee, before landing in new york, in 1976, and joining richard schechner’s Performance Group. that troupe, after a coup, became the wooster Group, led by Elizabeth leCompte, who became dafoe’s longtime romantic partner (another sort of coup: after her then-boyfriend, spalding Gray, encountered leCompte and dafoe naked in his bed). leCompte and dafoe have a son, now in his early 30s. After being fred from the infamous fop Heaven’s Gate, dafoe broke into flm with Kathryn Bigelow’s moody motorcycle movie, The Loveless, which Janet maslin of the Times called “a pathetic homage to the 1950s,” wherein dafoe “spends a lot of time zipping and unzipping his jacket expressively.”

Back then, he lived in the East village, on 10th street between first and Avenue A, “and it felt dangerous, a little dicey. the only reason why you would go past Avenue B was to go score some drugs.” he ponders where an equivalent scene might be found these days—red hook? queens?—“but that’s the beauty of new york, because it remakes itself, and it’s a city that follows the money, you know?” one of dafoe’s recent roles was that of a reclusive alcoholic writer idolized by the protagonist of The Fault in Our Stars, the young adult novel turned hollywood blockbuster. “the other day some very young girls came up to me and said, ‘oh my God! it’s van houten!’” he mock-squeals. “it was probably the frst movie they’d ever seen me in, because i don’t do movies that kids see, normally. (in von trier’s Antichrist, Charlotte Gainsbourg smashes dafoe’s character’s penis with a cinder block onscreen.) But, he says, different demographics associate him with different roles. for young boys, it’s

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In h Is fIr s t two seaso ns as startIng q uarte rback, c o l I n k a e p e r n I c k l e d t h e s a n f r a n c I s c o 4 9 ers t o a super bowl and conference champIonshIp. now, wIth a $126 mIllIon performance-based contract a n d t h e m e d I a’ s f u l l at t e n t I o n , h e ’ s lo o k I n g t o prove hIs worth, not to the world, but to hImself. photographY bruce weber fashIon deborah watson text jonnY coleman “But you could never see if you sit behind the light And you don’t have to pick me to win the title fght But I’mma wear that championship belt so tight And if I’m wrong there is no right I’m trying to be polite” —Lil Wayne, “Gossip”

Football is commonly called a game of inches. But it’s also a function of time. Seconds,

minutes, hours, days. Time equals opportunity. Controlling time of possession usu-

ally means victory.

I’m ffteen minutes early, waiting for Colin Kaepernick in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in downtown Los Angeles. Kaepernick is the 26-year-old quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, and this September he enters his third season as a starter. In his frst two seasons—well, technically season and a half, since he took over midway through 2012—he led his team to the Super Bowl and the NFC Championship Game, in both cases coming up just one play short of victory. Right now, however, he’s running late, stuck in traffc on an unseasonably overcast Tuesday evening in mid July.

Kapernick is in L.A. to present “Best Female Athlete” at the ESPYs, ESPN’s pansports awards show, and we’re meeting in the hornets’ nest of the American sportsmedia industrial complex: L.A. Live. It’s like Blade Runner, but clean.

I’m called up to Kaep’s room. On the way, I pass guests arriving and checking in.

It’s obvious which ones are active athletes and which are media. I try to guess what sport the athletes play, based on their body shape. I see Richard Sherman nonchalantly check in, the opposite of his onscreen persona.

Kaepernick emerges from the ftting room, and he immediately comes off as collected, cucumber-cool, relaxed. His 6'4" frame is lean and defned, his chiseled torso covered in ink. An aquiline nose, short hair with a new squiggle shaved in, a charming smile. He’s wearing a tanktop with a graphic of Tupac from the flm Juice, and, like Tupac, he is full of beautiful contradictions. He’s devoutly religious, but by no means shuns the extracurriculars of sports-star bachelordom. He’s a capitalist who decries the love of money. He fearlessly barks out cadence on the feld, but is soft-spoken in person. A hero to his fans, a villain to everyone else. Depending on whom you ask, Colin Kaepernick is either a Millennial wunderkind, overrated and unproven, dynamic and exciting, a vision of football’s future, a fash in the pan, a thug, a victim, selfsh, selfess, a work in progress, all of the above, none of the above, some of the above, it’s complicated.

Factually speaking, he’s a biracial man adopted by a Milwaukee family who moved to Turlock, California, where he grew up, a few hours outside of San Francisco. A twosport athlete in college, at the mid-major University of Nevada, he was drafted a modest thirty-sixth in the NFL (he was also drafted to play baseball, by the Chicago Cubs, but declined). Entering the league, Kaep played backup to Alex Smith for a season and a half before Smith got sidelined by a concussion. Kaep kept the job even after Smith was cleared to play, igniting a QB controversy that he ultimately won. Kaepernick holds NFL rushing records and boasts a lucrative sponsorship portfolio. Everyone has an opinion on him, and he’s no stranger to being in the headlines.

Kaepernick’s other team—publicist, manager, agent, stylist—clears the room, and we sit down to eat room service. Kaep is a documented diehard hip-hop fan (who calls Beats By Dre one of his sponsors), so I ask if there’s any rapper or song that he really identifes with on a personal level. As he digs into a cheeseburger and Caesar,

he thinks for a moment before answering, in a leisurely drawl, “I think one song that I relate to now—I loved the song when it came out, but especially in the last year and a half, since I’ve been put in the spotlight—is Lil Wayne’s ‘Gossip.’ I think a lot of people in the spotlight or limelight kind of feel that way, even players who are in the NFL that don’t necessarily have a big spotlight on them. I’m like, Man, where are some of these stories coming from? At some point, you just accept them, because you think, I can’t change them, so go ahead and just talk.”

During the season, in interviews and at press conferences, Kaepernick talks in a near-perfect sports-speak: He gives very little and is as vague as possible, like, say, a politician. “Unless I have a sit-down conversation like this,” he says, “and we can actually talk and you can start to understand some of the reasons I do the things I do, or understand how I think about things—I’m not gonna give you anything to use against me. I’m not gonna give you anything that you could put into the media and say ‘he said this’ and make it negative, because that’s gonna be your story.” But he’s quickly learned that even when he’s said all the right things, like heaping praise on his teammates, there’s still an endless supply of spin. “I could sit there and say ‘Frank Gore is a great player, and Anquan Boldin is amazing, and Crabtree is thisand-that, and I love my linemen.’ They’ll say, ‘Well, he didn’t talk about any of his defensive players, so he must be just a selfish guy and he doesn’t care about them.

He’s an asshole now.’”

In Kaepernick’s breakout days, the media investigated the private lives of his adoptive parents and estranged biological parents, which he would prefer to keep private.

Today, if any news items break and he’s involved, he’s still unlikely to get the beneft of the doubt. He’s been called disrespectful for wearing a hat with a Milwaukee Brewers logo—a baseball team from his hometown—or wearing sunglasses indoors at 2013’s ESPYs. Non-stories that somehow became stories. Anything that deviates from the norm is perceived as hostile.

This past spring, TMZ reported that the Miami police were investigating Kaepernick as a suspect in the sexual assault of a woman named Jayniece Prichette. Long story short, there was no sexual assault and no fles were charged. But that didn’t stop bogus stories from circulating. Surprisingly, Kaepernick has not fled suit against TMZ, choosing to move on and turn his cheek.

There are also other, more nefarious media narratives lurking in broad daylight, specifcally the ones that use racial coding to malign and stereotype. Kaepernick is half black, but, in this country, we still round up to black. This plus the fact that he has tattoos and listens to hip-hop is a problem for some pundits, scouts, and reporters, who’ve espoused garbage like he has “character” or “discipline” issues. They have questioned his composure, on and off the feld. They’ve questioned his intelligence, wondered if he’s smart enough to run a complex West Coast offense. It’s somewhat reminiscent of basketball writers in the ’80s who tried to paint Larry Bird as a clear example of textbook intelligence and Magic as a naturally gifted street-style player, even though the inverse may have been closer to the truth.

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This might not be the case for all black athletes, but it’s certainly true of black athletes who are excelling at and redefning the historically white position of quarterback, players

like Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, RGIII, and Kaepernick. If these QBs had entered the league a decade or so ago, the NFL may not have been ready for them at all.

“When [Michael] Vick and Vince Young frst came into the league, it wasn’t necessarily accepted,” Kaepernick says. “It wasn’t thought of as a successful way to run an offense or that it could be part of an NFL offense. I almost feel like they suffered from it. You possibly took the most explosive part of their game away from them and said, ‘Don’t do this. You’re not supposed to. You’re in the NFL. You’re supposed to stay in the pocket. Maybe in college [you could run], but not here.’”

Barring the occasional short-yardage sneak, running was considered a last resort for QBs. But the game of professional football is constantly mutating, a veritable arms race between offenses and defenses. Old-school blowhards often criticize running QBs because they view their gameplan as simple, as lacking elevation. But, in reality, the offense Kaep leads is byzantine. It’s still a variation on the aggressive pass-happy West Coast Offense. But most of these so-called experts, Kaep insists, “don’t know what it’s like to be a quarterback. They haven’t been in those shoes. They don’t know the demands.

They don’t know the difference between my offense and Peyton Manning’s offense.”

In late 2012, stereotypical media hack and self-unaware writer David Whitley had the following to say about Kaepernick’s tattoo in a race-baiting column: “NFL quarterback is the ultimate position of infuence and responsibility. He is the CEO of a high-profle organization, and you don’t want your CEO to look like he just got paroled.” Kaep responded on the feld. He started kissing his tattooed bicep every time he ran for a touchdown, spawning Kaepernicking, which became not just a meme but a self-refexive pose, an owning and reinterpretation of criticism. To make a negative into a positive. To turn a criticism into a compliment. Simultaneously undermining the media and provoking it further.

The objective truth is that Kaepernick is an entertaining player to watch, which is probably why he’s number three on the all-NFL merchandise sales charts. He turns broken plays into rushing yardage and improvises passes that shatter the game’s order. He takes big hits and looks like he’s having fun doing it. He’s willing to take chances and live or die by the outcome.

While most football writers might think twice before bringing race into the conversation, the media has by no means given Kaep a break. If anything, the target on Kaep’s back keeps getting bigger, in direct proportion to his net worth. In June, when Kaepernick signed a new contract, effective through 2020, initial reports claimed the deal is worth $126 million. Fans and writers initially freaked out at the big round numbers, and the skewed news went viral, typical of sports megadeals in the Twitter age. But as the days went by and details trickled out, it was clear that, if anything, the contract protects the organization more than Kaepernick.

The deal, described by many as “team-friendly,” guarantees $13 million for this season and base-salary increases each season to come. Most importantly, Kaepernick will lose money if he doesn’t get to the Super Bowl or make the frst or second All-Pro Team, and he can be cut any season before April 1 if he isn’t up to management’s snuff.

His yearly income and whether or not he is on the team is completely dependent on his performance, a rare instance of pure meritocracy in today’s professional sports industry.

Fortunately for the 49ers and their salary cap, Kaepernick personally values long-term winning over short-term fnancial gain. The fact that he didn’t fght for the most money upfront in his contract means his team had more cash in the off-season to spend on fully weaponizing his offense. Essentially, he’s happy to put the team frst and take the gamble on himself. “I shouldn’t get that money if I don’t go to the Super Bowl,” he asserts. “Growing up around my dad, who was a business man, [and] being a business major in college, I understand that if I don’t perform to the level that you expect me to, I shouldn’t get the same money that you expected to pay me if I was there. I understand that completely.”

I ask him what his fnancial plans are now that he has more money than he knows what to do with. “Growing up, I said if I ever get rich, I’m gonna get a Ferrari, a Lambo, a Bentley, my dream cars growing up. [Now] I’ve been in the league three years and just got a big contract, and those things would be awesome to have, but not quite as exciting now that I’ve seen other people that have them.” Kaepernick actually doesn’t even own a car—he hasn’t had the need for one in San Francisco and feels reluctant to blow a ton of cash on an asset that depreciates so quickly. Instead, his post-contract splurge was a new tattoo that took 27 hours—three nine-hour sessions— that says “MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.” The ink is a permanent caveat to help him stay grounded. Perhaps, like Kaepernicking, it’s also trolling the media, regardless if he intends it to. But mostly, Kaep seems genuinely leery of what money can do to a man. “If money is what’s important to you, and you went from having very little to, Hey, you got $100 million! —shit, you better watch out, because you just got everything you’ve ever wished for. And you can buy anything you ever wanted. As much as you wanna get paid as much as possible, and do as well for your family as you can, you still have to keep things in perspective. At what point is enough enough?”

Coat Ralph lauRen Suit, Shirt, tie John VaRVatos

Now that contracts are signed and delivered, the real work can begin. The off-season in football is the longest in professional sports and thus represents the biggest opportunity to grow. “I don’t like feeling like someone’s catching up to me or that I’m giving someone an opportunity to get closer or become better than where I’m at. I also feel by not taking time off that I’m gaining ground on other players. I feel like that’s where I get some of my advantage, not taking that time off, not resting a lot.” Part of improving is recognizing you aren’t perfect, and Kaepernick has that humility in spades. He admits, “I don’t feel like I’ve played my best football yet.”

The last time Kaepernick took a live snap, it didn’t end well. His last play from scrimmage could’ve sent the 49ers to the Super Bowl. Instead, it was tipped by Richard Sherman and intercepted in the end zone. Game over. Season over. For 31 of 32 teams in the league, the last series never does end well, but the idea that Kaep can’t close or can’t read defenses still reverberated in the sports-media echo chamber for months to follow.

The oversimplifcation is that he’s the guy who can’t go through his progression and make the proper read. While many claim he can’t win the big one, it’s more that he hasn’t. Keep in mind, he’s only started 23 regular season games; the sample size isn’t really big enough to draw any defnite conclusions. But getting to the Super Bowl and the Conference Championship Game in one’s frst two seasons is practically unheard of. Most quarterbacks never make it to the Promised Land. Kaep was one play away from doing it twice, in his only two seasons.

Moving forward, the narratives you’ll see will probably come in three forms. If Kaep plateaus, he could be labeled a bust, because of such a promising start. If he gets hurt, the narrative will be that running quarterbacks aren’t long-term investments. If he wins a Super Bowl, though, none of this will matter. We’re willing to forgive almost anything if someone wins a Super Bowl.

If nothing else, Kaepernick has proved his adaptability. Whatever is required of him, he’ll modify himself accordingly or fail trying. He’s fuid, liquid, evasive. Maybe you can attribute it to his youth or millennialesque optimism operating in a cynical culture, but that’s perhaps too tidy. Life, like the play call, is more complex than it appears on TV. What is clear is that Kaepernick is committed to doing the work and seems positive about the future, despite the challenges and losses he’s already had to endure.

Intentionally or not, he’s helping transform the game and challenge our expectations of what a quarterback—the purest symbol of masculinity in our culture—can be.

He’s got miles and miles to go, but time is still on his side. And the more we try to pack him into a narrative box, the more likely he is to explode out of it. It’s like Wayne raps in “Gossip”: Drag my name through the mud, I come out clean. Cast away stones, I won’t even blink. Young money, baby.

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t h e o n c e a n d f u t u r e r e i g n o f h a y n e s a decade ago, colton haynes quit the modeling business to become a sci-fi s up erstar on television. now he’ s forging his way to the big scree n with next s ummer’s earthqua ke epic san andreas , with dwayne “the rock” johnson. here, the actor shows off the bad boy leathers of the season, and the results are equally groundbreaking. ph ot ogr ap hy steven klein fashion nicola formichetti 126 vman

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d a n c i n g a b o u t a r c h i t e c t u r e w i t h p i n c h e d wa i s t s , w i d e pa n t s , a n d e x p e r i m e n ta l m i x i n g o f t h e traditional and the feminine, a new mode of masculinity has stepped int o me ns wear—and what a leap it has bee n.

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surrender your senses to the splendor of autumn in the essential collections of now, and find yourself reacquainted with the purest elements of style.

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w h e n ta k i n g t h e s e a s o n ’ s s p o rt i e s t a c c e s s o r i e s f o r a t e s t ru n , wh at bette r terrain than the mountains of Åre, sweden? join the region’s competitive downhill skiers as they hit the slopes in style a n d p r o v e t h at e v e n i f i t ’ s b u i lt f o r l u x u ry, i t c a n s t i l l w e at h e r the extr eme elements.

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known for customizing their bikes, running red lights, and causing mayhem with savage weap onry, japan’s bosozoku motorcycle gang provides mythic inspiration for tossing a molotov cocktail at the e s ta b l i s h m e n t — w h e t h e r i t h a p p e n s i n t h e s t r e e t o r yo u r c lo s e t. forge t all the rule s, be cause the only rule is the in evitabil ity of death . now suit up and face it in b rave fash ion .

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Cole wears Clothing Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci Necklace Gasoline Glamour

LUKE WEARS clothing DIESEL

Hair Shon (Julian Watson) Grooming Sammy Mourabit (Streeters) Models Luke Thorp, Cole Farr, Logan Flatte (FORD) Digital technician Kevin Kunstadt (Capture This NYC) Photo assistants Kim Reenberg and Erico Brunetti Stylist assistants Daniel Cingari, Ian Milan, Derek Murdock, Kei Furuichi Hair assistants Ryuta Saiga and Gregory Alan Grooming assistant Kaya Hall Production assistants Shayan Asadi and Bruna Fontevecchia Videographer Ryan Bair (See Management) Retouching Box Studios Location ROOT Studios Catering Smile to Go