800.929.DIOR (3467) DIOR.COM
800.929.DIOR (3467) DIOR.COM
©2016 COACH®
SPRING 2016
Glovetanned Saddle Bag in Black, Leather Roadster Jacket on Xavier
coach.com
marcjacobs.com
table of 50
SPRING THINGS Whether you’re in search of a pair of sunglasses or a new home security system, the essential buys of the season come in all the colors of spring
56
OUT OF THE WOODS If you aren’t yet acquainted with Moses Sumney, you will be soon. Hedi Slimane photographs the indie musician on the rise
58
X FAC TO R Ever since Bryan Singer started taking the X-Men back in time, the franchise has played host to Hollywood’s
most promising young talent. Meet the new class: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tye Sheridan, and Ben Hardy
62
T H E A L I E N AT O R By disassembling and reimagining equipment used to transport, aid, and/or analyze human bodies, Berlin-based artist Yngve Holen is enrapturing viewers by rendering them uncomfortably numb
66
STUFF From Jun Takahashi’s new retro to Jeremy Irons’s wardrobe, we’ve got your talking points covered
70
ENGINEERED GARMENTS Turn your favorite jackets and jeans into household furniture with the help of renegade design studio Thislexic
74
THE SKIN YOU LIVE IN Futuristic beauty treatments aren’t only for Real Housewives. Find out about the age-reversing procedures
men are actually focking to now
84
STILL HERE BY INEZ & VINOODH Zoolander’s back, and so is star and director Ben Stiller, who tells Tim Blanks why right now is the time to
get back into fashion—on the runway and at the movies Styled by David Vandewal
92
BOMBERS (A PORTFOLIO) Twenty-one photographers put their original spin on that seasonal staple, the bomber jacket
11 4
A H U N G A RI A N WA L K E D I N TO M Y L I FE BY B RU C E W E B E R Meet Bertold Zahoren, Bruce Weber’s new model muse. Speaking with the Budapest native, Weber recalls
meeting his Hungarian idol, famed photographer André Kertész
12 6
DOLPH BY TERRY RICHARDSON The global action superstar and former style icon weighs in on a career that’s anything but Expendable Styled by Simon Robins
13 2
SPY VS. SPY BY OLIVER HADLEE PEARCH The struggle to fnd the perfect trench coat or jumpsuit goes way beyond black and white Styled by Jay Massacret
14 6
LIGHTNING JACK BY HEDI SLIMANE Jack Kilmer never wanted to be a movie star like his parents, but as he tells it to Nice Guys co-star Matt Bomer, life intervened
15 4
RUSSIAN ROULET TE BY GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY Layer, mix, and match Spring’s knitwear and separates for a look that turns sportswear inside out Styled by Lotta Volkova
162
CURIOUS JONES BY BRET T LLOYD Kim Jones returns to the pages of VMAN to show off his standout collection for Louis Vuitton, a fun
exploration of Japan’s exotic interpretation of Americana Styled by Kim Jones
16 8
T R E N D I N G T R O P I C B Y B R U N O S TA U B Ready to get high by the beach? Follow our Miami Beach dress code for the latest in ultra-luxe, laid-back style Styled by Julian Jesus
17 6
R AISE THE RED FL AG BY SEAN & SENG Our standout look of the season is a totem of vulnerability and strength, in one unmissable look Styled by Tom Guinness
36 VMAN • CONTENTS
balmain.com
berluti.com
MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK - MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT, MIAMI - SOUTH COAST PLAZA, COSTA MESA
LETTER FROM
Did you ever think that maybe there’s more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking? The question, posed by Zoolander’s titular male supermodel, played by Ben Stiller, certainly rankled the beau monde at the time of the flm’s 2001 release. For an industry as rapturously cosmetic as fashion, it seems we still have a hard time being mocked. Are we just too easy a target? Fashion does have a tendency to breach the boundaries of self-parody on a revolving basis with no help necessary—whether it’s critics and designers calling each other “hot dogs” and “hamburgers” in trade magazines; Italian brands sending models down the runway in gowns depicting Cheetos wrappers; or in the case of famed Gucci murderess Patrizia Reggiani, a tabloid parole uniform (complete with her exotic parrot) that makes her look like the greatest Zoolander villain yet to be introduced. But then again, even in instances where the satire is brilliantly nuanced and operating on all cylinders, such as in Robert Altman’s ensemble murder mystery Prêt-à-Porter, the results have had a lukewarm response. In that ’94 flm, a trio of high-ranking international magazine editors competes to land an exclusive contract with a hot new photographer (to the point of personal, sexual humiliation), while one designer sends out a runway show of all-nude models in protest of materialism. The show serves as the fnale as well as the ironic “Emperor’s New Clothes” punch line for the movie, and although designers like Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix, Issey Miyake, and Thierry Mugler participated at the time—alongside a cast that included Julia Roberts, Sophia Loren, Forest Whitaker, Rupert Everett, Tim Robbins, Cher, and Lauren Bacall— they subsequently distanced themselves and the movie bombed at the box offce. Critically, it was panned. (It’s now a cult classic, well worth a revisit.) Perhaps the fashion industry felt so burned by that experience, it took 20 years to come around and play the part of the fool once more, but as Stiller tells fashion critic and contributing editor Tim Blanks, designers were more than happy to join the fun for Zoolander’s second act. So is it fnally okay to make fun of ourselves again, or is the industry just so selfe-absorbed that we all want in on the attention? Since the frst Zoolander, we’ve lived through everything from the Swedish garage invasion to the rise of grime, electroclash, and nü rave, to Ed Hardy and the Paris Hilton-led Juicy Couture revolution. Ugg boots came and stomped. We witnessed the rise of fast fashion, the social media explosion, and the birth of Instagram. Musicians are models are muses are moguls, and a premium has been placed on personal branding. Everyone’s a curator. Nobody’s nobody. Maybe the answer to Derek’s time-honored question about the meaning of life lies somewhere within. As in: maybe life is less about being ridiculously good-looking and more about just being ridiculous when the times call for it. With this in mind, we approached our Spring/Summer 2016 issue with a desire to play with punch lines and
44 vman • hello
stereotypes. Can a pair of jeans become the hot new coffee table? Is it time to embrace the practical purposes of Botox? Can a monkey model Louis Vuitton as well as anyone else? Notions of absurd beauty brought our minds back to Gianni Versace’s ’90s vision of the male model muse, resulting in our trend story shot in the sinking Valhalla of present-day Miami Beach. We also check in with the sexual emblem of 1980s New York, Dolph Lundgren. Bodyguard, black belt fighter, action star, He-Man, and cameo player in the new Coen Brothers film Hail, Caesar!, Lundgren is photographed by Terry Richardson for the issue and speaks openly on everything from his relationship with Grace Jones to his iconography eclipsing his equally exciting inner life—and why that’s not always necessarily a bad thing. With the success of his $800 million action franchise The Expendables heading into its fourth installment, it seems being ridiculously good-looking (or at least instantly recognizable) can still be enough to take you to the moon and back. Perhaps that’s what will happen to Bertold, the new Hungarian model discovered and photographed by Bruce Weber. In a story that expands on Weber’s singular aesthetic of capturing male beauty in its purest essence, we meet the new face who could send Zoolander into his belated editorial retirement. For his part, Ben Stiller sits for Inez & Vinoodh, who capture the director and star somewhere in the nexus of high fashion and the straight man he embodies to such hilarious effect in his work. We also pause to get to know the charming young star Jack Kilmer, born into acting and destined to leave his mark with a naturalistic quality reminiscent of a young River Phoenix, shot for us by Hedi Slimane. Whether he gets closer to mainstream attention with his new flm The Nice Guys is anyone’s guess—only time will tell. As we put this issue to a close, we were devastated along with the rest of the world to hear of the tragic passing of the magical force that was David Bowie. Never one to shy away from the absurd, Bowie was one of only a few megawatt cameos in the frst Zoolander flm. In a scene where Hansel and Derek prepare to face off on the catwalk, they ask for an arbiter of cool to judge them. “If nobody has any objections,” Bowie says, emerging from the crowd and removing his sunglasses, “I believe I might be of service.” It’s but one appearance in a long list of flms from Bowie, many of which were critically panned and fopped in their day, like The Hunger, Absolute Beginners, and Labyrinth, to name a few. Time has been kind to those movies—they’re now considered staples for generations of viewers and Bowie fanatics the world over. So if time is truly what determines a classic, perhaps there’s a reason Zoolander has remained potent in the cultural memory, far beyond scores of more outwardly chic titles that have come and gone—and even won Oscars—in its wake: maybe when the world becomes a bit too dreary, predictable, or frightening for us to face, it’s okay to be ridiculous. In fact, it’s the look. PATRIK SANDBERG
ATLANTA - BAL HARBOUR - BEVERLY CENTER BEVERLY HILLS - DALLAS - HOUSTON - LAS VEGAS - NEW YORK
shop at giuseppezanottidesign.com
LUKE GRIMES
5 7 G R E E N E S T, N E W Y O R K JEFFREYRUDES.COM
spring things
Don’t watch the season unfold like a fower, attack it like a weed with the essential items to harvest now. Photography Dan forbes fashion julian antetomaso
50 vman • essentials
so fresh, so clean wake up your look and say hello to the eternal sunshine of the spotless grind. from top: white king protea flowering plant belt giuseppe zanotti design ck2 eau de toilette spray calvin klein sneaker nike coasters versace home watch g-shock candy m&m’s alarm clock hello sense
shades of cool from foraging hikes to citi-bikes, embolden your look with this deep blue hue. from top: blue thistle bag berluti scarf louis vuitton desk fan dyson sneaker gucci moto Jacket key chain versace pocketknife victorinox swiss army
the green mile feeling fatigued? incorporate next-level accents that do anything but blend in. clockwise from top: shampoo ginger flower sandal adidas x rick owens bag burberry visor calvin klein collection phone case valextra sunglasses bottega veneta
52 vman • essentials
out of the inferno the devil is in the details with fashion’s blood red fixation. prepare to slaughter the street. from top: flaming sword bromeliad shoe j.w.anderson sunglasses linda farrow x jeremy scott bag gucci headphones beats by dr. dre hat bottega veneta pen and penholder hermès
From top: sunglasses kenzo leopard statue versace home purple maJesty millet backpack key chain fendi necklace versace security system canary lighter david yurman bracelet balenciaga
54 vman • essentials
prop stylist lisa gwilliam (Jed root) Florist audrey stipanovich (pastoral) digital technician maegan gindi prop stylist assistant Jack richardson location root (drive-in) catering monterone
the shining accessories are like people: some shine and some don’t. get your gleam on in the new heavy metallics.
OUT OF THE WOODS
Moses Sumney’s music is anything but safe, but after some sought after isolation, he’s ready to dive into the mainstream.
Photography hedi SliMane Text T. Cole RaChel
56 vMan • noiSe
music under it.”) Though he now occasionally plays with a full band, Sumney still shines brightest when performing solo—accompanied only by a guitar and his own arresting voice, which he loops and manipulates with an effects pedal to stunning effect. Seeing him perform onstage—building up a song using only layer upon layer of his own voice—it’s hard to imagine that there was ever any doubt that this is what he should be doing with his life. “Oh, I always knew that I would do music,” he says. “I always knew I would be a performer, an artist. I didn’t always make music, but I think I’ve known I wanted to be a musician since I was like seven and I started writing songs when I was 12. I was a very intuitive child, so I was writing songs, but I wasn’t sharing them with anyone. I didn’t really start performing my music until I was about 20 or 21. But I always knew that I would, which is kind of odd.” This year looks to be a big one for Sumney, who is eager to share with people the songs that he has spent the better part of the past 12 months toiling over. Though there is currently a laundry list of people eager to work with him, Sumney opted instead to retreat to the woods in order to write, eschewing the relative creature comforts of L.A. for some Thoreau-style introspection. The intensely inwardlooking nature of Sumney’s music is part and parcel of what makes it so fascinating—like listening in on someone’s most intimate thoughts. “It’s the thing that I fnd the most fulflling actually, to just go into the woods or go into the hills,” he says. “I was in a cabin in Big Bear [Lake] this summer alone for three weeks. I was really lonely at points, and at other times I felt really empowered. It is profoundly terrifying to be alone with your own thoughts and I suppose that’s why people, including myself, prefer to be distracted. I think that if you’re an artist, it’s necessary to be alone because that’s the only way that you can discover yourself outside of the external infuence that is always being pushed upon us. If you don’t ever go into isolation or just be alone, you’re not really going to fgure out what you have to offer.” SuMnEy WEARS JACKET AnD RInG HIS OWn
PRODuCTIOn KIM POLLOCK AnD yAnn RzEPKA DIGITAL TECHnICIAn MILK DGTL LOS AnGELES PHOTO ASSISTAnTS FRAnK TERRy AnD MATT HARTz LOCATIOn QuIxOTE STuDIOS CATERInG FOOD LAB
It would be a bit of a misnomer to describe 25-year-old singer and songwriter Moses Sumney as an overnight sensation, given that he has nothing in the way of hit singles and has yet to release a full-length album. Still, there’s no denying the fact that Sumney has managed to create a gentle storm of buzz, a description that might also be an accurate way to characterize the music he makes: quietly intense and held aloft by Sumney’s remarkably diaphanous voice. Since releasing a self-recorded EP, Mid-City Island, in 2014 he quickly established himself as someone to watch, snagging opening gigs for the likes of Dirty Projectors, Junip, and Sufjan Stevens, sharing stages with Erykah Badu and St. Vincent, and chilling with fan friends like Solange Knowles. For someone whose music often treads the same kind of ethereal and elliptical sonic terrain as Grizzly Bear or Beach House, the sudden fush of attention has been both affrming and surreal, not to mention distracting for someone who is desperately trying to fnish making a record. “It is a little bit daunting,” says Sumney, who, at the time of our chat, was holed up in Los Angeles putting the fnishing touches on what will be his full-length debut. “Just because making an album is something I’ve thought about and envisioned only, you know, my entire life. They say you have your whole life to make the frst album. It’s quite strange because it’s like you’re trying to make your life’s work without having lived the rest of your life. So yeah, I have this kind of internal clock that I hear ticking all the time. It’s just like, We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to fnish it.” Sumney’s life story, as it stands now, should already provide plenty of interesting fodder for song making. Raised by very conservative Ghanaian-born parents—who moved him and the family back to Ghana from his hometown of San Bernardino, California, when he was 10—his childhood did not necessarily provide an incubator for a life in the arts, but it was precisely this kind of creative isolation that informs the kind of songs that Sumney would eventually write. (“I didn’t know how to play any instruments and so I probably wrote about 100 to 150 songs that were a cappella,” he recalls. “Me singing melodies without any
THE x facTor
Superheroes may only exist in the realm of fantasy, but the lives of the newest stars of the X-Men franchise aren’t so dissimilar from those of the mutant misfts they play. Photography MAGNUS UNNAR fashion LESLIE LESSIN text kEvIN McGARRy
In each increasingly spectacular X-Men spectacular, the
song remains the same: young mutants are sprinkled across
all continents and mature as discontented diamonds in the rough. Found via psychic GPS, they are enlisted to join an ensemble earth-saving battle. Interpersonal and pyrotechnic havoc ensues. Minus the laser-laced melees and telepathy, a similar story could describe the real-life teenagers swept into the pandemonium of portraying these heroes on-screen. From child roles, bit parts, or comparative obscurity, they suddenly fnd themselves in a class among megastars. On set in a West Hollywood bungalow during a midSeptember heat wave, I chatted with three of the stars of X-Men: Apocalypse, who, like their characters, are still reeling from being plucked from relative normalcy and dropped into a labyrinth of green screens and sound stages. What’s next is a complex of red carpets and international fame. The two younger guys are no strangers to Hollywood. The exquisitely gangly Kodi Smit-McPhee, in the role of Nightcrawler, doesn’t ft the typical mold of a demonic brawler—though acting is in his blood. “I’m originally from Australia, where my dad is an actor, and I was eight when he asked me if I’d like to try it.” He went for it and it took off: to date his more memorable projects include Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Road. “I’ve grown into acting as my passion and I feel very grateful I’ve found it,” he says. Playing a young Cyclops, the blue-suited lionheart whose gaze is a crimson weapon of mass destruction, Tye Sheridan’s big break came early, as the son of Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt in Terrence Malick’s 2011 flm The Tree of Life. Now 19, Sheridan still toys with his downhome charm. His pedigree as an American action hero in
the making raised in rural Texas by a beauty salon owner and UPS employee is almost too good to be true. Ben Hardy, a blond and beefy Archangel, has a handful of years on his co-stars, and comes to X-Men from the insular world of British soap operas. His journey might be the most surreal. “It was 40 to 60 hours a week and it could get quite frustrating,” he explains, with an accented emphasis on “strate,” “getting sides the night before and not having much time to work on them.” But soap-opera actors are fairly accustomed to absorbing volumes of lines. What’s more foreign: “I was in a fight simulator at one point thinking, How did I get here?” Details of the latest chapter’s story line are protected like nuclear codes, but the setting has been announced with fanfare: the 1980s, the fashy chapter of neoliberal history immediately preceding the boys’s birth decade. With antique John Hughes masterpieces seared into modern psyche, Smit-McPhee comments that the genre they brought to life seems “a bit of an homage to ’80s teen movies.” “Personally,” drawls Sheridan, “I think Kodi and I were in similar places in our careers and our lives. I think it came to me at just the right time.” He goes on to recount a story ft for cinema that may suggest the opposite. “I remember I was driving to the audition, and I was borrowing my buddy’s car, and it was the most expensive car I’d ever driven, and I crashed it into the side of the 405.” Here, Smit-McPhee interjects with an intrigue I mistake for concern: “What kind of car?” Sheridan continues, “A 911. I know—I was really embarrassed.” Needless to say, though, by nonmutant powers he made it to the casting—and even snagged the part. X-Men: APocALyPse IS IN THeATerS MAy 27
kodi smit-mcphee JACKET IRO T-SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON
popcorn • vman 59
GRoomING KElSEy DEENIHAN (THE WAll GRoup) pHoTo ASSISTANT mARIANo C. DE lA ToRRE STylIST ASSISTANT JENNA REmy GRoomING ASSISTANT JENNA NElSoN CATERING FooD lAb
BEN HARDY
SWEATER IRO T-SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON JEANS CALVIN KLEIN JEANS
TYE SHERIDAN JACKET BLK DNM JACKET (UNDERNEATH) CALVIN KLEIN JEANS PAIGE DENIM
the alienator
Meet Yngve Holen, Berlin’s fastest-rising art star, whose work makes an uncomfortably vivid comment on the digitization of humanity. For his next trick, watch as he attempts to saw some of life’s most complex mechanical objects—and our perception of our own bodies—in half!
Photography Alex de BrABAnt text KeVIn McGArrY
62 VMAn • Art
Raised in Norway by a Norwegian mother and German father and now based in Berlin, Yngve Holen was tardy to contemporary art. It wasn’t until after four years in architecture school in Vienna that he dropped out and enrolled at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, arguably the best and certainly the most infuential of European art schools today. A background in architecture fts. A recent text in frieze magazine with the subhead “Reformulating the human body in the age of mass digitization” began with the observation that “the human body is conspicuously absent in Yngve Holen’s work”—conspicuous in the sense that, while not there, his forms and fnishes stand in as reminders for what’s become of the body when much of the world is reduced to immateriality. As with designing a house, even if absent, the body is always in mind. Holen has a lot in store for this year, from a church organ he’s building in Kassel to the Berlin Biennale in June, and
most signifcantly, a solo show at the Kunsthalle Basel, his largest institutional exhibition to date. Opening May 13, it’s titled Give them an inch and they’ll take all they can, inspired by a London anti-pickpocketing campaign. “The holder you get for your Oyster card has this printed on it—so on one hand the world is your oyster, but on the other, anyone at any time can take it away, take your pearl.” He likens it to New York’s “If you see something, say something” adage—“You know, campaigns that create fear of the hypothetical,” a new kind of energy economy in an age of terror. At press, Holen was deep in the process of editing down new works for the show, but a script had been set. One element is the title, the other is the layout: fve rooms aligned on a string. “It forces you to go through the exhibition twice. Once you’re through, you’ll have to go back. I’m trying to react to that and use it for the narrative of the show.” Two certain inclusions are the third edition of his ETOPS magazine,
which he edits with writer Matthew Evans, and the remnants of everyday objects sliced down the middle. “Forcing something in two is such a weird gesture. I started by cutting watercoolers and water appliances.” His frst solo show out of art school, at Johan Berggren gallery in Malmö, was called Parasagittal Brain, featuring bisected morning accoutrements as metaphors for the right and left lobes of grey matter to which contrasting qualities of thought are assigned. “So if the kettle is the brain, and it boils up the idea, then you’re trying to fnd the idea. But when you cut, it’s already gone. You’re too late: the fuid has already leaked out. So you’re cutting it in order to fnd that the idea is gone. It’s a forced gesture, and it’s always too late.” As for what might be a good thing to slice, or otherwise make into art, some of the questions Holen asks are, “Have you seen it before? Does it work materially as an
art object? Can you explain a concept or show through it?” As an example, he cites CT scanners, refexively cut into cross sections (pictured with Holen, above) as the de facto “face” of the body of work he produced last year for Berlin’s Galerie Neu. Onward to excitement: “I recently found a saw, a tool that can cut cars, and I’m dying to cut a Porsche Panamera into four cake slices.” While Holen’s work feels as if it endorses the supremacy of industrial design over the antiquated, organic vessels we walk around in, he’s neither a doomsayer nor an acceleration fetishist, at least not by self-declaration. Contoured, space-age appliances are the building blocks today, no longer a projection into what could be. “I’m trying to deal with the now and remain positive about the future.” THE 9TH BErlIN BIENNAlE WIll TAkE PlACE FrOM JuNE 4 THrOuGH SEPTEMBEr 18
stuff
25 years of anarchy “It’s nice to be stoic about a single subject, but I admire peo- sculptural Atari relief prints, twisted takes on tracksuits ple who live a little more recklessly.” So says Jun Takahashi and cargo pants, and the brand’s famous printed T-shirts. in an interview that opens his new book, Undercover. (Many of these landmark designs make a return in this Celebrating 25 years of Takahashi’s idiosyncratic and season’s Greatest Hits collection.) While his couturelike anarchistic Japanese fashion label, the Rizzoli-published shows border on the beautifully grotesque, his collabostreetwear bible (out May 17) serves as an illustrated man- rations with brands like Nike and Supreme have kept him ual for reckless souls such as his. Known for his exces- popular on the streets and at the gym. With mood board sive and avant-garde designs, Takahashi has consistently collages, personal archive photos, press clippings, runway brought a playful, punk spirit to all of his endeavors under show invitations, and campaign and catwalk images, the the cover of Undercover. It was certainly there in Nowhere, book is a perfect primer for any oblivious anarchists runthe Harajuku shop he opened with NIGO® in 1993. It was ning wild in need of a lesson in subverting branding and also there in his frst fashion show, dedicated to Kurt Cobain style. As Suzy Menkes says in her dedicated introduction, and called Last Show, the following year. And the disruption “It is rare for a fashion editor to say that there is a designer has also been in the details, from the rubber-and-leather who never disappoints. But Jun Takahashi deserves that workwear in season one, to his three-dimensional cutting, description.” PATRIK SANDBERG
k i c k- a s s ! From Jonathan Anderson’s manga– and Disney Princess– inspired line for Loewe to Miuccia Prada’s latest 1960s comic strip references and the fuzzed-out acid trip seen at Romain Kremer’s Camper, Spring’s footwear is bound to put a little pow, ka-zam, wizz, and blammo in your step. SAM FINE PhOTOGRAPhy ThERESE ALDGARD FAShION JULIAN ANTETOMASO
66 vman • news
IMAGES COURTESY RIZZOLI
FROM LEFT: LOEWE POLY GALAXY SNEAKER ($750, DOVERSTREETMARKET.COM) CAMPER VULCANIZED SNEAKER ($130, CAMPER.COM) PRADA SNEAKER (PRICE UPON REQUEST, PRADA.COM)
ГОША РУБЧИНСКИЙ gosharubchinskiy.com
stuff CORRESPONDENCE BIAS Jeremy irons’s character in giuseppe tornatore’s englishlanguage italian film Correspondence—now making its way to the States—is the kind of guy to whom we’re endeared despite our best efforts. ed Phoerum is an astrophysicist in love with a much younger Ph.d. student (olga Kurlyenko), and his costume reflects the character’s passionate yet controlled attention beautifully: he wears a personalized brioni su misura wardrobe. And ed is in similar company: the confidently blasé Swiss banker played by Jean dujardin in The Wolf of Wall Street wears a bespoke brioni suit, as does richard gere’s robert Miller in Arbitrage. tornatore’s The Best Offer dressed geoffrey rush (playing an art auctioneer) in brioni, and Morgan freeman’s character in Wanted, the head of a fraternity of Assassins, wears his brioni custom as well. Seeing a correlation? in fact, the cleverest of all fictional agents himself, James bond, usually wears the classic italian suit. between 1995 and 2006, brioni created over 300 pieces for 007, played by Pierce brosnan and daniel craig. Correspondence is riddled with plot twists, providing much more action than the average May-december romance drama. And if the clothing is any clue, there is more to irons’s ed than first meets the eye. SF Film Still courteSy Brioni
Shirt And ringS WAleS Bonner
PRECIOUS ONE
PhotogrAPhy SeAn & Seng FAShion tom guinneSS
68 vmAN • NEwS
Model Alex King (Select) Production ryAn cutling (roSco Production) lighting Prolighting Photo ASSiStAntS StefAn ebelewicz And dAniel lebreton StyliSt ASSiStAntS hAMiSh wirgMAn And iSAbel buSh Production ASSiStAnt ellA Moore locAtion the Vow Studio
when it comes to discovering and nurturing new british designers, nobody has a track record like lulu Kennedy. director of the nonproft fashion east program, which discovers and supports emerging talent in fashion, Kennedy is responsible for designers like Kim Jones, Jonathan Anderson, and craig green ascending into fashion’s center of gravity. All three of these guys came up through the seasonal MAn collections showcase, with Jones eventually landing at louis Vuitton and defning its entry into menswear, and Anderson revamping the Spanish house of loewe (craig green arguably exists in a class of his own, and has found support from rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe, among hordes of obsessed devotees). Alternating between runway show and presentation format, MAn has therefore morphed into one of the most watched shows in london, as the impatient industry awaits the arrival of london’s next hot thing. And in Spring 2016, grace wales bonner arrived. After building a strong amount of buzz and quite a few editorial tear sheets with her ornately embellished men’s separates a season before, central Saint Martins b.A. graduate wales bonner emerged last summer as the industry’s next meteoric talent to watch. delivering a collection both regal and fanciful, wales bonner took inspiration from the life of a 17th-century ethiopian former slave, Malik Ambar, who relocated to india and became a respected military commander. the result refects a combination of African and indian cultures into garments that evoke grace, playfulness, freedom, and prestige: embellished crushed velvet two-piece suits, wide-leg top-stitched denim trousers, white linen suits, pooka shell anklets, and hairpins. At press, wales bonner’s f/w ’16 collection proved the standout in the MAn lineup once more, cementing her arrival and the introduction of an aesthetic at once astonishingly original, exceptionally researched, and altogether precious. lorettA St. Vincent
publicschoolnyc.com
engineered garments Thislexik is an experimental design studio that creates modern furniture marvels out of classic wardrobe staples. After a process involving dips in resin, these new designer collaborations can truly stand on their own. Photography AdriAn gAuT
70 vmAn • nesT
denim end TABLe
CLOTHING CALVIN KLEIN
trench chair
CLOTHING BURBERRY
denim-and-glass COFFee table CLOTHING DIESEL
THISLEXIK FOUNDER AND HEAD OF DESIGN VEDAT ULGEN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT MARy CHIMENTI
shirt lamp
SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON
TO WATCH THE MAKING OF THIS FURNITURE IN A VIDEO, GO TO VMAN.COM
the skin you live in
Think you deserve special treatment? Put in face time with these high-tech, state-of-the-art skin savers revolutionizing the grooming game now. Photography sharif hamza fashion clare byrne Text nicole caTanese
“LED red light is anti-infammatory, reducing the environmental trauma that ticks the aging clock.” —Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D. JACKET YOHJI YAMAMOTO
“Collagen and elastin fbers are the infrastructure in the second layer of skin that keeps it plumped up, and as we age, becomes diminished.” —Francesca Fusco, M.D. ON SKIN InnIsfree INteNSIve AMpOule MASK
Glam • vman 75
“Facial oils help restore the protective barrier of skin, which is important for men who regularly traumatize their facial skin with daily shaving.” —Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D. on skin Tom Ford For Men skin revitalizing ConCentrate on liPs Tom Ford For Men HyDrating liP treatMent sHirt JEFFrEY rÜdES
“My clients love the hydration and glamour that my gold facial provides.” —Bella Schneider ON EYES Chanel HYdra BEautY MicrO GEl YEux iNtENSE SMOOtHiNG HYdratiON EYE GEl SWEatEr DaMIR DOMa t-SHirt (uNdErNEatH) BURBeRRY
“Botox inhibits the release of sweat where it’s injected, so it can be used to keep skin dry in the underarms, soles of the feet, and palms.” —Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D. SHIRT RAF SIMONS FROM DAVID CASAVANT ARCHIVE
“Activated charcoal has the ability to absorb one to two hundred times its weight in impurities.” —Ling Chan ON SKIN Clinique POre refININg SOLutIONS ChArCOAL MASK tOP 3.1 PHilliP liM ShIrt AND tOP (uNDerNeAth) PRADA
“[My signature Diamond Peel] causes cell division and stimulates fbroblast activity, which leads to...a decrease in the appearance of superfcial photo-damage, fne lines, and shallow acne scars.” —Sonya Dakar TOP MAISON MARGIELA
PRECIOUS METALS At her Palo Alto spas, facialist Bella Schneider offers gold everything—from Caviar and Carat gilded facials ($195) to Bella Schneider Beauty Golden
LED LIGHT Skin pros have long looked to lasers to stimulate brand-new, spring-y skin. The downside? The downtime required to heal. Enter light-emitting
diode (aka LED) treatments, which, like the name implies, emit colored light to turn back the clock, but without any harsh aftermath. Blue light is shown to help banish bacteria, making it ideal for keeping acne at bay. Red light can help reverse the telltale signs of aging. “LED red light is anti-infammatory, reducing the environmental trauma that ticks the aging clock,” explains Paul Jarrod Frank, M.D., a cosmetic dermatologist in NYC. Dermatologist Dendy Engelman is pro LED for her male clientele. “It has many benefts for skin rejuvenation: it penetrates the skin and increases circulation, which allows for enhanced blood fow and delivery of nutrients to the skin, while also increasing collagen and elastin production,” she says. “And it’s anti-aging, but without the cream.” How it works: in the offce, sit in front of a red light panel for 10 minutes once a week for a month. Or opt for an at-home version such as NuFace Facial Trainer Kit with the Trinity Wrinkle Reducer red LED attachment ($429, beauty.com).
COLLAGEN
GROOMING GEORGINA GRAHAM USING M.A.C COSMETICS (MANAGEMENT ARTISTS) HAIR SHINGO SHIBATA (THE WALL GROUP) MODEL MATHIAS LAURIDSEN (IMG) PRODUCTION ASHLEY HERSON DIGITAL TECHNICIAN MARY FIx PHOTO ASSISTANTS MATT HAWKES AND EVGENY POPOV STYLIST ASSISTANT LUCAS DAWSON GROOMING ASSISTANT LARAMIE GLEN HAIR ASSISTANT SHUHEI KADOWAKI CASTING BEN GRIMES LOCATION ROOT BROOKLYN
“Collagen and elastin fbers are the infrastructure in the second layer of skin that keeps it plumped up, and as we age, becomes diminished,” explains dermatologist Francesca Fusco, M.D. Aggressors that can dramatically accelerate collagen degradation include the sun, smoking, and pollution. To get a boost of the necessary component of youthful skin, look to treatments that spur production (such as retinoid and peptides) as well as those laced with the ingredient. We like Innisfree Intensive Ampoule Mask ($4 for one treatment, innisfreeworld.com), which contains collagen coupled with fermented soybean extracts. Increase levels from the inside out with foods that can help your body’s collagen production naturally, such as those rich in omega-3 and -6 like wild salmon and nuts. For an extra shot at turning back the clock, take a daily collagen supplement, like BioSil ch-OSA Advanced Collagen Generator ($29 for 60 capsules, iherb.com), or add a scoop of collagen-rich powder to your AM green juice—try Raw Complexions Skin Balance Beauty Food ($35, raw-complexions.com.au).
NATURAL OILS “Facial oils help restore the protective barrier of skin, which is impor-
tant for men who regularly traumatize their facial skin with daily shaving,” explains Dr. Frank. And while the word “oil” may procure visions of slicked-up skin, the opposite is true. Think about it: the reason a thick cream feels occlusive is because it is just that. But an oil, made of smaller particles, can seep into skin, leaving it hydrated yet soft to the touch. L.A.–based celebrity facialist Sonya Dakar says that reaching for a face oil like her Organic Omega Booster ($52, sonyadakarskinclinic.com) post-shave is non-negotiable. (And never, ever use an alcohol-based aftershave.) “You need to soothe the entire area with calming facial oil while skin is still slightly damp for maximum absorption,” she says. Dr. Frank recommends it as a pre- and post-shave ritual. “Using a face oil before helps lubricate hair and skin to minimize trauma, while using it after reestablishes the protective barrier to skin.” Try Kiehl’s Since 1851 Daily Reviving Concentrate ($46 for one ounce, bergdorfgoodman.com), Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum ($185, vintnersdaughter.com), or La Mer The Renewal Oil ($240, bloomingdales.com). Give facial hair some TLC, too, with the almond, jojoba, and grape seed oil–based Tom Ford for Men Conditioning Beard Oil ($50, tomford.com/beauty).
Under-Eye Patches ($30 for eight, labelledayspas.com), which contain .0001mm of the luxe metal. “My clients love the hydration and glamour that my gold facial provides,” she says. That’s because the natural mineral may have the ability to help skin hold onto moisture as well as slow down the degradation of collagen and elastin. Dakar’s signature skin-renewing Diamond Peel Treatment ($350 for a single session and $2,100 for a series of six, sonyadakarskinclinic.com) uses a diamond-dusted wand that sweeps over the skin. “The exfoliation causes cell division and stimulates fbroblast activity, which leads to collagen production and therefore frmer skin, as well as a decrease in the appearance of superfcial photo-damage, fne lines, and shallow acne scars,” says Dakar. Go for gold with our top picks: La Prairie Cellular Radiance Concentrate Pure Gold ($645, laprairie.com), Peter Thomas Roth 24k Gold Pure Luxury Lift and Firm Hydra-Gel Eye Patches ($75, peterthomasroth.com), and Forever Flawless Diamond Infused 24k Gold Serum ($799, foreverfawless.com).
HAND BOTOX Similar to how it can iron out wrinkles around your eyes and the furrowing between your brows, Botox can temporarily immobilize your sweat glands’ ability to pump out moisture. As a result, many men are looking to the wrinkle reducer to give them a Sahara-like handshake. “Botox inhibits the release of sweat where it’s injected, so it can be used to keep skin dry in the underarms, soles of the feet, and palms—without affecting sweat glands anywhere else on the body,” explains Dr. Frank, who says that typically treating both hands costs around $1,000 and lasts six months. Dr. Engelman notes that many men are opting to focus injections on their dominant hand only. “Approximately 50 injections are required per palm to completely deactivate the sweat glands for several months,” she says.
CHARCOAL Charcoal’s stellar detoxifying power is cutting-edge in skincare, but it’s been harnessed for decades to clear out unwanted impurities in everything from tap water to your intestinal tract, making it a staple in your Brita flter as well as the emergency room. Specifcally, activated charcoal is carbon that’s heated up to create porous holes in it that act like a Dyson for dirt, debris, and toxins. That’s why it’s now in products like Clinique For Men Sonic System Deep Cleansing Brush ($90, clinique.com) and Dermalogica Charcoal Rescue Masque ($46, dermalogica.com). “Activated charcoal has the ability to absorb one to two hundred times its weight in impurities, allowing it to effectively remove dead cells from the top layer of skin and leave the surface smooth and radiant,” explains skin expert Ling Chan, who created a charcoal mask to fnish off her Triple Peel Facial ($265 at her namesake spa in NYC). “We hand-mix a fresh charcoal mask during the treatment, which naturally detoxifes sticky impurities and oil buildup, then use our Imperial Chinese Jade Roller to massage it into skin,” she says.
CRYOTHERAPY Cold plunges are nothing new—they’re used in both ancient baths and NFL locker rooms—but the next generation is cryotherapy beauty treatments (cryo comes from a Greek word meaning icy cold). The Skintology Skin and Laser Center’s 45-minute CryoCure Facial ($155 at their NYC location) begins just like any other facial—with cleansing and massag-
ing skin with cream (note: you will need to be facial hair–free). Next, their CryoWand gives the face, neck, and scalp an icy-blast of “controlled beam” vaporized liquid nitrogen. “You’ll notice immediate tightness of the skin because of the vasoconstriction from being cooled, followed by vasodilation from warming up,” explains Christopher Johnson, M.D., a plastic surgeon at the spa. He adds that it’s particularly benefcial for men who are prone to infammation from shaving. “The anti-infammatory trigger response activates the skin to heal and repair itself, stimulates collagen production, improves blood fow, reduces pore size, and decreases wrinkles and fne lines over time,” he says. After a few weekly sessions, “the activated collagen will produce even more cells, causing skin to become more elastic, and with continued use, the results are everlasting,” he says.
good
very
ZOOLANDER CONQUERS ALL BOMBERS ARE FOREVER
THE GRAND BUDAPEST MODEL THE LAST ACTION HERO
A SPRING FASHION FACE-OFF
TINSELTOwN’S BRAND NEw jACk kIDS OF ST. PETERSBURG
kIM jONES’S ANIMAL INSTINCT MIAMI IS TRENDING
AND THE STANDOUT LOOk OF THE SEASON THIS IS VMAN SPRING 2016 VMAN 83
this spread and next: JaCKet and hat GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI
BEN STILLER IS, AT 50, AN AccompLIShEd AcToR/WRITER/dIREcToR/pRoducER pLAYING ThE pART of A pREcuRSoR To ThE SELfIE-oBSESSEd AImING foR A comEBAcK—ANd ThE IRoNY doESN’T EScApE hIm. phoToGRAphY INEZ & VINoodh fAShIoN dAVId VANdEWAL TEXT TIm BLANKS VmAN 85
Why are hand models smarter? Ben Stiller has had the 15 years since the release of the frst Zoolander movie to think of a response. “They couldn’t rely on their good looks to get through life.” The other pressing issue raised by male supermodel Derek Zoolander in 2001 isn’t so easily addressed, however: If God exists, then why did he make ugly people? Derek’s search for an answer to that question—and a dozen other conundrums that cloud his challenged intellect—has carried him into a follow-up. But Zoolander 2, aka 2oolander (call it “two-hundred-lander”—Derek does) is a much stranger beast than the sequel as we know it. For one thing, the original was loved by neither critics nor public on its debut. In the interim, Stiller has become the linchpin of three billiondollar movie franchises, but it is the gormless Zoolander who has evolved into his most famous creation. In one of those po-mo life-imitating-art tropes, Derek’s signature look, “Blue Steel,” has become something that models actually do. Inadvertently, hilariously reaffrming and skewering fashion cliché after cliché (“Blue Steel” is exactly the same as all his other “looks”), he is fnally back, much older, and not a scintilla wiser. And this time the world can’t wait. You could see it already last March at the fnale of the Valentino show for Fall 2015. The audience hollered with glee as Stiller and Owen Wilson, in character as Zoolander and his bromantic catwalk rival Hansel McDonald, did a slow, glad-handing lap of the venue, Stiller grabbing a proffered phone so he could snatch some selfes on the way around. It was the kind of screamfest you never see at a fashion show, a fabulous incongruity that became even more so seconds later when the designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli took their usual bows. Such was the Zoolander halo effect that the audience extended its standing O for the twosome, a rowdy reaction that their exquisitely detailed, sumptuously textured collections has never elicited in the past. I couldn’t help feeling it was a kind of “thank-you” from the crowd—thank-you for being so serious about what you do, but for not taking it so seriously that you can’t spread a little joy when you’re given the chance to. Stiller had the same sensation. “I think there was such a reaction because it was so unexpected in such a serious arena. The fact that Maria Grazia and Pierpaolo actually did that was what people appreciated most.” But this second coming has been tough. How do you restart such a story, especially when the very nature of its main character and his profession dictates no second acts, even more so when the parade has well and truly passed him by? Stiller tried more than once over the years. “Whenever we got back into it, more time had gone by.” And time, as we are
often told, is the enemy of all things fashion-related. What’s
magic today is marked down tomorrow. Besides, in Derek’s years out of the spotlight, fashion has been consumed by social media, guaranteeing that his has-been status is cast in Luddite iron. “For me, it’s a very natural thing that Derek would do selfes,” Stiller valiantly insists, “once he fgures out how to fip the camera around to take the picture. I’m probably as uncomfortable as anyone trying to fgure out how to be a part of that, but Derek Zoolander has to fgure out how to exist in that world, because if it had existed 15 years ago it would have been a big part of the movie.” And, come to think of it, Derek Zoolander was defned by a look, a readily identifable (lack of) fashion expression that slots perfectly into the narcissistic, pouting roundelay of Planet Selfe. Stiller wittily nods to such a notion in Zoolander 2. Someone is assassinating social media superstars (a fendishly clever way to inject Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato et al. into proceedings as shorthand for now) who die with Blue Steel frozen on their faces. Wait, I digress. Before all of that came Stiller’s exposure to Valentino: The Last Emperor, Matt Tyrnauer’s 2008 documentary about Valentino Garavani’s imperial retirement. The closing sequence—the designer’s spectacular send-off at the Colosseum—was the catalyst that Zoolander 2 had been waiting for. “Whenever I would go to different places in Italy over the years, I felt a connection with Zoolander. And then I saw the Valentino documentary, and it occurred to me that Rome would give us the opportunity to add a crazy Italian movie vibe to the flm: Ancient Rome, the mythology of models, the legend of the frst model, the pure-blood model. We wanted it intentionally overcomplicated, like The DaVinci Code. So putting it in Rome seemed to make sense and it lent itself to the tone of the humor.” Tone—or maybe a-tone—has always been Stiller’s secret comic weapon. Tad Friend described him in a 2012 New Yorker profle as “the put-upon Everyman striving for dignity as the mayhem escalates.” And doomed to failure. That is why our frst cruelly human response is laughter. Buster Keaton mined the same comic seam to cinema legendhood. But there was also a sardonic distance in Keaton’s dignity, and it’s that same discord, that same skeptical edge, which makes Stiller the one you’re watching in every scene he’s in. It’s a natural offshoot of the satirical sensibility that infuses his flms, whatever their subject matter. (Yes, even Night at the Museum.) Stiller gets his sense of humor from his mother, Anne Meara, the queen of droll, he says. “My father [Jerry Stiller] enjoyed stand-up comedy and my mother came at it as an actress frst, and then became a comedian and worked with my father that way. She had a very satiric-minded sense of
SWEATER BERLUTI HAT SIKI IM
humor as opposed to the broad comedic thing. She didn’t like the Three Stooges, but she loved George Carlin: not
necessarily political, but a point of view about the world. And I guess I’ve always leaned that way myself.” It would seem to be an ideal outlook with which to approach fashion, which is so widely held to be a subject that is crying out for satire. I mean, just look at what Stiller did to the movie industry in Tropic Thunder. So why don’t more people have a go at fashion—and why is it that the ones that do fail so miserably? (This includes the 1994 satire Prêt-à-Porter. Robert Altman, take a bow.) Stiller’s response is refreshingly pragmatic. “It’s almost necessary to take yourself seriously in fashion because that’s your stock in trade, because what you’re really saying is, ‘This is what we think is fashion, what we think is cool, what we think is the next thing.’ And if you don’t take that seriously, no one else will.” It’s hardly like fashion is alone in that self-regard. Stiller agrees. “We’re all guilty of it in show business. Anything that involves ego, where you think the world revolves around you. It’s all in the same world of entertainment, as opposed to doing things like being a heart surgeon or a freman, jobs that are life and death. Anything that’s not that is very easy to confate.” But before you conclude that gimlet-eyed outsider Stiller has gone soft, you need to know that it was those crazy Valentino kids Maria Grazia and Pierpaolo who took him to “serious” school. “They were willing to let us walk their show in March, because they were like, ‘Hey, we have to take ourselves seriously, but we also see how ridiculous it is.’ That’s something you don’t see so often in this world, but I get it. Every four or fve months, they have to come out with a new show. That’s their business. And it’s a business like any other business. That’s what I liked about The Last Emperor.” The difference being, of course, that fashion measures itself in spin cycles, months rather than the years that movies take to make, books take to write, or albums, increasingly, take to record. And Stiller’s experience of the fashion world has warmed him to it for that very reason. “Having a point of view as an actor, or a musician, means expressing yourself creatively to the world, and critics will love it or hate it. But in fashion, you have to go through that cycle every few months. That was something I totally came to appreciate. You have to say, ‘This is good.’ And I imagine that is a very lonely thing.” Stiller’s identifcation hints at seduction. “No, not seduced,” he counters. “It was more an appreciation of the hard work—and an empathy too. We had such a great connection with the Valentino people, and to see Pierpaolo
and Maria Grazia, who are my generation, working in that world, to see what they have to deal with…I feel I learned a little more about it this time around.” This all rather sounds like an antidote to the laughs that audiences will come to the new Zoolander 2 in search of. Empathy? We want more of that poodle-haired fashion fapjack Mugatu, the Blofeld/Lagerfeld hybrid so memorably essayed by Will Ferrell. “The frst time, no one really knew what we were doing and they were all like, no, we don’t want to get involved,” says Stiller. “This time has been great, because the fashion world really embraced the movie and we had a lot more cooperation. We were able to get great cameos from real designers—and Mugatu interacts with them. He was an effective way to have fun with the fashion world, rather than simply making fun of the clothes.” So there was an agenda after all. What did you expect? Stiller is much too savvy a flmmaker not to understand what ultimately helped Zoolander survive the indifference with which it was originally met. “Not because of the commentary on fashion,” he says sagely, “but because of the characters. That was what people really connected with, and that’s what I tried to focus on in the second movie, while still giving a nod to what we needed to acknowledge in the fashion world.” That nod is a major concession. “In the broadest comedies, there’s always a connection to reality,” Stiller notes. “I don’t know if we think about it consciously, but we’re always infuenced by what goes on in the world. That’s constantly the line you’re walking when you’re making a movie like this. How far can you go? What’s okay in this reality?” The topic of fatherhood might be an interesting place to start. Derek Zoolander has sired a child, a boy now 12 in the new flm. He’s a pure-blood model, the DaVinci-style holy grail. He’s also overweight, which grieves body-conscious Derek intensely. “He has to fgure out how to deal with it,” says Stiller. “I think people might be surprised that we go into that.” The frst Zoolander came out a couple of weeks after 9/11. The second one obliquely incorporates the reality of the world since. “This one is superlight, but there is a darkness under it. We deal with people dying. I feel like in any comedy you have to take some risks that aren’t politically correct. You have a very clear point of view of what you’re trying to say when you take those chances. Today we have to be willing to make fun of ourselves and our own political correctness. Nowadays there’s a group that’s ready to react on any front and you can’t allow that to guide you when you’re making something that’s funny.” You might imagine that a man who has proved his sense of the ridiculous to be as fnely honed as Stiller’s would fnd
CLOTHING TOM FORD
GROOMING FuLvIA FAROLFI FOR CHANEL (BRyAN BANTRy AGENCy) HAIR NATALIA BRuSCHI MANICuRE DEBORAH LIppMANN FOR DEBORAH LIppMANN (THE MAGNET AGENCy) ExECuTIvE pRODuCER STEpHANIE BARGAS (THE COLLECTIvE SHIFT) DIGITAL TECHNICIAN BRIAN ANDERSON (vLM STuDIOS) LIGHTING DIRECTOR JODOkuS DRIESSEN (vLM STuDIOS) STuDIO MANAGER MARC kROOp (vLM STuDIOS) pHOTO ASSISTANT JOE HuME STyLIST ASSISTANTS DANIEL GAINES AND TAS TOBEy GROOMING ASSISTANT ROBERT REyES pRODuCTION ASSISTANT EvA HARTE LOCATION pIER 59 STuDIOS CATERING DISHFuL
contemporary America a banquet of lunatic inspiration. He is so spot-on, it says so much about Hollywood as a microdoes, after all, compare the country to a Rorschach test, with cosm for the world. I would love to make it as a period movie.” millions reading their own meaning into ambiguous inkblots. But, according to Variety, it’s been nearly 15 years since But Stiller also recognizes the climate that fosters such free- DreamWorks acquired the movie rights for him. In that time, dom of thought also allows for freedom of creative expression, he’s become utterly ingrained in the public’s conscioussomething he feels is taken a little bit for granted. Call me ness as Gaylord Focker, Larry Daley, Tugg Speedman, and, crazy, but I fnd a suggestion of equanimity there, maybe even of course, Derek Zoolander. He remade and starred in The a mellowness, that goes with his status as—so he says—a Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which, despite its scale, ended recovering obsessive. New York Times flm critic Elvis Mitchell up playing out as a personal project. And he also employed wrote, in his 2001 review of Zoolander, “[Stiller] understands his talents to tellingly subtle effect in Noah Baumbach’s how pop culture has infantilized those who worship it.” Now Greenberg and While We’re Young. Stiller has just turned Stiller says, “I wouldn’t make any grand statements about 50, so it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that he’d be it except to say it has overtaken us in the amount of media looking for more of that subtlety in his roles. “I do feel as I there is to absorb. I fnd myself distracted all the time by my get older there are different things I want to explore as an phone. Everybody’s looking for a distraction and we’ve pro- actor and director,” he agrees, “but I don’t feel I need to vided an incredible distraction for ourselves. The danger is make any big statements about not wanting to do broad that it’s much easier to spend time doing things that don’t comedy anymore. It was fun to be Zoolander again. He’s relate to anything other than looking at other things. I feel such a unique character.” it’s an individual’s responsibility to make the choice where One natural asset that will always allow Stiller to skate you turn your attention.” between comedy and drama—and comedy/drama—is his As far as his own responsibility extends with something lack of vanity as an actor. But if it’s the key to his range (and like Zoolander 2, it’s quite simple: “First and foremost to while we’re on that subject, attention must be paid to Justin hopefully make people laugh. That’s why people come to a Theroux, co-writing Zoolander 2 while he was grappling comedy, and what I learn every time I screen a comedy, no with the metaphysical angst of HBO’s The Leftovers), it’s matter what you do, if people aren’t laughing…” His voice also the source of molto mirth. “It is just because there’s trails away, an abyss of box-offce catastrophe yawning. something funny about seeing guys who are obsessed “But hopefully it’s a movie that has the world we’ve created with themselves,” Stiller acknowledges, “and it’s probably that feels consistent, that takes you to a different place. And even funnier to see Derek and Hansel 15 years older in the hopefully it’s the characters that people loved from the frst fashion world and see them deal with that issue, which is flm doing things they haven’t seen them do.” a very real thing. The bottom line is that people don’t want I think of Stiller as being a student of the “clenched hair” to see people get old in that world.” school of acting. (Tad Friend called his face “an unmade bed Still, don’t go thinking that Zoolander 2 is striking a of comic distress.”) What it bestows on an actor is the abil- blow for anti-ageism. “No, but hopefully at the end of the ity to inject a disquieting intensity into comedy, but also to flm there are little messages about redefning what we cross convincingly into the heaviest drama (with addiction think is beautiful. But it’s through the lens of Derek and a specialty). Jack Lemmon was its greatest modern propo- his incredibly self-absorbed narcissism, and he can’t see nent, with an award-draped career that ran an impressive beyond those things until he’s able to.” gamut from Some Like It Hot and The Odd Couple to Missing And—Derek’s own bête noire—If God exists, why did he and Days of Wine and Roses. Stiller’s personal favorite from make ugly people? He doesn’t fnd an answer in Zoolander his own repertoire is tellingly Permanent Midnight, the one 2. “Derek doesn’t change that much as a character,” says where he’s a heroin-addicted screenwriter. And he dreams Stiller. “He has some kind of arc, but one of the great things of adapting Budd Schulberg’s coruscating 1941 satire What about him is he’s always going to be as not-smart as he Makes Sammy Run?, with himself as Sammy Glick, again a is.” So he’ll still be looking for an answer in Zoolander 3? screenwriter, whose rise and rise offers a vision of Hollywood Stiller laughs. “I’m surprised we actually got to the point as venal and amoral as anything Nathanael West ever con- where we made a second Zoolander. I never made this jured up. The novel is “anti-Hollywood and should never be one with the thought of having it become part of a trilogy.” flmed,” no less an authority than Steven Spielberg apparently C’mon, Ben, 300lander? If Ancient Rome got a look-in in once opined. “When I lived out there, I used to think about 2, then that threequel title surely introduces the Spartans. that story all the time,” Stiller counters. “Schulberg’s writing “Hmmmm,” Stiller muses. “It would be a great poster.”
bombers: FROM FRANCE’S BLOUSON AND JAPAN’S SUKAJAN TO AMERICA’S MA-1 FLIGHT JACKET, TEDDY, AND BASEBALL VARSITY, TOP DESIGNERS AGREE ABOUT MAN’S MOST ESSENTIAL OUTERWEAR ITEM. HERE, 21 TALENTED TEAMS OF PHOTOGRAPHERS AND STYLISTS CAPTURE THIS UNIVERSAL STYLE STAPLE IN SHOOTS THAT SPAN THE GLOBE.
92 VMAN
photography thomas giddings fashion clare byrne Lucas ucedo (Ford) wears JacKeT DIOR HOMME PaNTs CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION scarF LONG XU
HaIr Tamas Tuzes (L‘aTeLIer NYc) seT desIgN IaN saLTer sTYLIsT assIsTaNT Lucas dawsoN
Lazaro rivera WearS JaCKeT GUCCI TaNK CALVIN KLEIN JeWeLrY HiS oWN
GroomiNG STepH GimSoN DiGiTaL TeCH DaviD DomiNiCK (DiGiTaL DeCaf) STYLiST aSSiSTaNT LaureN CoNSTaNTiNe proDuCTioN BeTH KLeiN proDuCTioNS proDuCTioN aSSiSTaNT KeveN popp
photography bruno staub fashion julian jesus
photography sandy kim fashion natasha newman-thomas Lucky BLue Smith (Next) WeARS JAcket VERSACE t-ShiRt, JeANS, BRiefS hiS OWN
retoucHing BaSia HrYMoWicz
PhotograPhY Benjamin alexander huseBY Marcelo alcaide (option) WearS JacKet POLO RALPH LAUREN turtlenecK RAF SIMONS HenleY, pantS, earringS HiS oWn
garrett neff (img) WearS JaCKet brioni HenLeY and SWimSuit katama
grooming CaroLina daLi uSing CHaneL LeS BeigeS (tHe WaLL group) pHoto aSSiStant Sam evanS-ButLer digitaL teCH dereK neLSon LoCation SHio Studio
photography anthony maule fashion julian antetomaso
CASTing edWArd Kim (The ediT deSK) produCTion hArBinger
PhotograPhY rémi Lamandé FaShion mark Jen hSu Trevor Signorino (re:queST) WeArS JACKeT DIESEL BLACK GOLD T-ShirT And pAnTS DRIES VAN NOTEN hAT jj HAT CENTER neCKlACe hiS oWn
GrooMInG FederICo GHezzI
photography alessio boni fashion ketevan gvaraMaDZe Jordan Barrett (IMG) WearS CLotHInG VALENTINO
GrOOMiNG rEN NObuKO
photography benedict brink fashion mac huelster Ola (MajOr) WEarS jaCKET aND SWEaTEr BOTTEGA VENETA PaNTS TIM COPPENS
GroomiNG mari oHaSHi (LGa) STyLiST aSSiSTaNT JorDaN DUDDy GroomiNG aSSiSTaNT emma Broom proDUCTioN ryaN CUTTiNG (roSCo proDUCTioNS)
photography sean & seng fashion tom guinness Leo TopaLov (SUpa) wearS JaCKeT BALENCIAGA paNTS DRIES VAN NOTEN HaT aND BeLT THE CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE
Joe W (ToMoRRoW IS ANoTHeR DAY) WeARS JACKeT ALEXANDER McQUEEN SHIRT GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY TURTLeNeCK PIETER PANTS RAF SIMONS SHoeS HIS oWN
GRooMING CeCILIA RoMeRo (THe WALL GRoUP)
photography nicole Maria winkler fashion aDaM winDer
stylist assistant luCas DaWson
photography mel bles fashion jason hughes Finnlay Davis (ElitE lonDon) WEaRs JaCKEt HERMÈS Pants vintaGE nECKlaCE His oWn
Malik WinsloW (Major) anD Dilon EyrE (rE:QuEst) WEar ClotHinG PRADA snEakErs CONVERSE BiCyClEs CHARGE BIKES
GrooMinG PasCalE PoMa PHoto assistant sEBastian Montalvo stylist assistant siMon nasCHBErGEr ProDuCtion lisa rEnEE (BiG aliCE ProDuCtions)
photography alexander neumann fashion julian antetomaso
photography jeff henrikson fashion john colver AlexAnder BArnA (re:Quest) weArs Clothing marc jacobs
photography chad moore fashion clare byrne John hein (Ford) WeArS JACKeT SALVATORE FERRAGAMO ShirT GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY PAnTS TOMMY HILFIGER SCArF (Worn AS BeLT) LONG XU
hAir BlAKe eriK (Jed root) GrooMiNG ZeNiA JAeGAr (the WAll Group) photo AssistANt pAolo stAGNAro stYlist AssistANt oliViA KoZloWsKi
photography dario catellani fashion jay massacret Christopher F (red NYC) WeArs JACKet LOUIS VUITTON t-shirt ANd pANts ViNtAGe eArriNG his oWN
photography fumi nagasaka fashion john colver Julien Bouguennec WeARS JAcKeT AnD PAnTS EMPORIO ARMANI SHiRT KAPPA SocKS AnD SneAKeRS ADIDAS
Photo aSSiStant oliveR KRugeR RetouChing linn (notion) PRoduCtion RoSe Clayton (We FolK)
photography pieter hugo fashion ulrica knutsdotter Sanele (BoSS ModelS) WeaRS Clothing coach
photography roger deckker fashion Way perry Jackson (supa) WEaRs cLoTHInG CARVEN HaRnEss VInTaGE HELMUT LANG
photography charles frÉger fashion laurent dombrowicz Pierre-Adrien drAcon WeArS JAcKeT And PAnTS JUUN.J JAcKeT (UnderneATH) DAMIR DOMA
photography columbine goldsmith fashion nicolas klam Max D’aMbra (FOrD) WEarS JaCKET aND T-SHIrT LANVIN JEaNS HIS OWN
photography felix cooper fashion anders sølvsten thomsen Lucas satherLey (IMG) Wears JacKet SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE sOcKs aND brIefs UNIQLO
PHOTOGRAPHY BRUCE WEBER 114 vman
COAT BURBERRY SHIRT VINTAGE PANTS DIESEL
“When Bertold Zahoran walked into my studio, we started talking about his native city of Budapest. I asked him if he had ever heard of the photographer André Kertész. Of course he hadn’t, because he’s so young and his life before this seemed to be wrapped up in basketball. As we sipped coffee, I told him about when I met Mr. Kertész a long time ago in his Lower 5th Avenue apartment, which overlooked a snowy Washington Square Park. I told Mr. Kertész that afternoon how discovering the early photographs he took of his brother Jeno running along and diving into the Danube made me want to take pictures for the rest of my life, even though I didn’t own a camera. Kertész talked about his early days, how as a young Jewish man he was forced to leave Europe when the Nazis came to power and found his new home in America. But when he arrived, no one would give him an assignment—his reputation suffered when he didn’t get commissions. Then as life and luck would have it, someone discovered his old negatives in ‘a house in the country’—as I was told to believe—and once again, he was internationally recognized as a great photojournalist. John Szarkowski, then the photography director at MoMA, gave him a solo show. Mr. Kertész was reserved the day I met him, and as the sunlight disappeared and his apartment became dark, he didn’t move to turn on the lights. He showed me some of the photographs he had taken of Jeno years before, and asked if I wanted to buy one. I was just starting out then, and I couldn’t afford one—they had become very expensive. But I did have the thrill of meeting the man who took them, and knowing that one day I would fnd my own Hungarian to photograph.” —Bruce WeBer, NeW York citY 2016
PANTS VINTAGE BRIEFS CALVIN KLEIN
THIS SPREAD, FROM LEFT: BERTOLD WEARS JEANS DIESEL SWIMSUIT VINTAGE RITCH WEARS JEANS ARMANI EXCHANGE SWIMSUIT VINTAGE
JACKET VINTAGE L.L. BEAN JACKET (UNDERNEATH) ARMANI EXCHANGE HAT VINTAGE
grooming regine Thorre hair gerald deCoCk using oribe hair Care models berTold Zahoran (soul arTisTs managemenT) and riTCh Fabian (Chase models nY)
from partying with grace jones and andy warhol to becoming one of the most recognizable action superstars on the planet, the icon formerly known as he-man is hitting a bold new stride with the expendables franchise and a coen brothers role to boot. but as he tells it, it’s been no easy road. these are the pains and gains of dolph lundgren.
Dolph Lundgren paces ever-so-slightly to and fro, in a white button-down and grey khakis, speaking in Dolby Digital
surround sound through a headset microphone. He’s giv-
ing a TED Talk. “I think I remember the frst time my dad hit me,” Lundgren says, beginning the lecture. A look of nostalgic pain glimmers over his face. “I was around three or four, I think, and I was walking in front of the TV and he kicked me and I few into some bookshelves. And I remember there was blood and my mom was screaming.” He goes on to describe a pattern of abuse that lasted years during his childhood. Violence wasn’t always entertaining for the imposing Swedish action star, but a fght was born into him at a young age. “He was kind of abusive,” Lundgren later tells me of his father. “It’s why I became a fghter, like some young men who end up in contact sports. That’s something called post-traumatic stress. Basically you can hide it, or you can use acting or sports, or get hit or beat people up in order to get away from it.” Lundgren is speaking via phone from his latest flm set in Mississippi, a low-budget horror movie called Don’t Kill It. “It’s about a demon that possesses people,” he explains. “The way it transfgures and moves from person to person is that if you kill the thing, it then becomes you. So that basically complicates things.” For the veteran actor who’s headlined more than 60 flms (most of them action flms of the B-movie variety), it’s a rare frst. “I’ve never done a horror movie,” he says, “but I really liked the script.” His synopsis is succinct: “Everybody more or less gets possessed in the whole picture. Everybody kills and gets killed by each other, and it just transfers that damn demon around until I get it at the end.” For 30 years, since his debut in the 1985 James Bond flm A View to a Kill, Lundgren has been fghting—demons, street gangs, rebel war commanders, Yakuza leaders, an android Keanu Reeves, a cyborg Jean-Claude Van Damme, Skeletor, etcetera—in flms like Masters of the Universe, Johnny Mnemonic, Universal Soldier, and Red Scorpion. “That role in A View to a Kill happened just because I was on set and somebody didn’t show up for work,” Lundgren recalls. “The director, John Glen, knew that I was going out with Grace Jones. She was in the scene so he asked me if I would step in there, and I said ‘I don’t know.’ And he says, ‘All you’ve gotta do is stand here and point the gun at Christopher Walken. Mm-hmm. That should be alright.’ [Afterward] he said, ‘That was very good, my boy. Maybe you could be in the movies.’” Within the year, Lundgren would earn his big break as Drago in Rocky IV. “I had no clue whatsoever that 30 years later I would be sitting here talking about a career in the movies. No, no, no idea.” Lundgren’s résumé has earned him a global iconography, if not critical acclaim—something he can now appreciate with age. “I kind of stand out even if people don’t know my movies,” he says. “Some actors are very famous, but in life they blend in more. I’m recognized most in Russia and Eastern Europe because I played a famous Russian character. Rocky IV was one of the frst flms I guess a lot of people could get their hands on over there. They didn’t have any Russian actors who were famous internationally, so they’ve kind of adopted me. In Africa and in third-world countries there is a lot of fan interaction because they like strong male characters. At any kind of valet parking in L.A., any of those guys...they’re the primary audience. I realize that I inspire a lot of people in some strange way because
dolph
photography terry richardson fashion simon robins teXt patrik sandberg
On a blackened stage painted with a red box, inside a state-
of-the-art architectural landmark in Santa Monica, 6'5" actor
vman 127
COAT HELEN YARMAK JACKET AND SHIRT CALVIN KLEIN CoLLECtIoN
JACKET SALVATORE FERRAGAMO SHIRT AND BOW TIE DOLCE & GABBANA
Hollywood is a dream factory. It makes people dream away their mundane lives and aspire to bigger things and some of those characters I’ve played are a part of that.” He might not be curing cancer, but in an odd sidebar, Lundgren is possibly the only action flm star on earth who might have a shot at trying. Originally brought to America on a Fulbright scholarship to M.I.T., the karate black belt studied chemical engineering at several universities, obtaining three degrees before meeting Jones and Andy Warhol and fnding his accidental way into the movies. Today, academia is something he fnds beckoning him for the frst time in years. “The TED Talk I did was through TEDx and the Fulbright organization,” he explains, for one. “I also deal a little bit as a mentor at my old school, The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. I’m getting more involved in that now that I’ve been in Hollywood for so long. I see that I am sort of a contradiction because I am a scholar and that’s how I frst came to America. That’s how I saw myself and I still do, to some extent. And then I have this other side, this super physical guy who’s hurting people—he can be your hero or maybe the bad guy. But having gotten through some of the trauma that I’ve talked about, I can use some of these other layers a little bit more as an actor now.” Six years ago, Lundgren’s repressed post-traumatic stress boiled to the surface and he reached a period in his life he now refers to as “rock bottom.” “I was drinking too much, messing around, and my marriage was crumbling from me messing around too much and acting crazy,” Lundgren says. At the time, he was living in Spain with his wife and his two daughters. “It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t get a job anymore, but the flms were not getting any better. On a personal level, I was really kind of lost.” It was then that he received a call from an old friend: Stallone ex Machina. Lundgren suddenly switches on a dead-ringer impersonation of Sylvester Stallone. “He says, ‘Hey, how ya doin’, y’know? Check out this script and see what ya think.’” The script was for the flm The Expendables, which would go on to become one of the biggest action franchises of all time, uniting Stallone and Lundgren with generations of the industry’s most high-octane blockbuster asskickers, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Chuck Norris, Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Liam Hemsworth, Terry Crews, Mel Gibson, and—well, the list keeps going and going. (In 2014, The Expendables 3 even marked the feature flm debut of mixed-martial-arts megastar Ronda Rousey.) Combined, the three flms have earned nearly $800 million at the box offce. When Lundgren signed on to the frst installment, he began therapy to pull himself out of the emotional crater into which he had dug himself. “I kind of knew inside that if the movie was a success, I’d be back down the path that I didn’t want to be going down again. So I ended up working on myself and getting over a lot of that pain that I had from those experiences in my childhood. That’s why ‘rock bottom’ coincided with getting this picture, on a personal level. Now I’m divorced, and so forth, but I have a much better relationship with my kids and my ex-wife.” This experience of career redemption, he says, is what inspired his TED Talk to be about healing and forgiveness. Last year, Grace Jones released her memoir to much fanfare, in which she detailed a few of the more dramatic experiences she and Lundgren had while together. He has yet to pick it up, but speaks fondly of Jones. “It’s like all relationships where you’re in love with somebody,” he says. “They’ll always have a special place in your heart, and she does. I don’t regret any of it.” This spring, Lundgren crosses over into another careerfrst when he pops up in Hail, Caesar!, an old-Hollywood caper directed by the Coen Brothers. “They were looking for a Russian character, as a matter of fact,” he says. “I guess they tried to get a Dolph Lundgren lookalike frst but
then they came to me and I was available. I didn’t want to do it because I thought I would be making too much fun of myself, but when I looked at the script it wasn’t like that. It’s a moment in the picture where they needed someone diffcult-looking and kind of iconic to be in a situation. It was very quick, a two-day job. They have a lot of these roles in the picture. But for me, the biggest thing I walked away with was that it was so fun to work with those two guys and to meet some of the other actors like Channing Tatum. It was also shot in an interesting way: they shot it like a Hollywood picture from the ’40s or ’50s on 35 millimeter, with a lot of special lighting effects, the cameras quite static or on a dolly like in the old days. It was fun to see how they were so true to that process.” If Lundgren comes across as savvy, it’s because he’s also a director—another profession he came into by proxy. When the acclaimed director Sidney J. Furie fell ill, Lundgren was asked to step into the director’s chair for the 2004 flm The Defender. The stakes may have been low (the flm co-starred Jerry Springer as the President of the United States), but that and other early Lundgren flms primed the actor for a future at the helm of his own projects. “I realized that if you want to direct and star, you might as well produce, because otherwise someone will yank the picture away from you at the end and they’ll recut it,” he says. Today, Lundgren is using his recently resurged profle to get more personal projects off the ground. Skin Trade was a 2014 action flm aimed at shedding light on the global crisis of human traffcking. The upcoming drama Without You I’m Nothing, written by and about a female stripper, takes a hard look at the world of exotic dancing from the female perspective (Lundgren has a supporting role). He also mentions a budding project based on his early years in New York with the Warhol crowd. “It has to do with the underside,” he says. “It has to do with transsexuals, to tell you the truth—experiences I had in New York in the ’70s that have stuck with me, and I always thought it would be interesting to illuminate that side of society a little bit in some project.” You guessed it: it’s an action comedy. “Before, I would just fow from one thing to another: make a movie, go to Paris, hang out and party, have a good time, and then go make another movie. But that was 20 years ago. Now I’m a little more focused. When I fnd a project where the character is very different or I can do something I’ve never had the chance to do, then I strike while the iron is hot and try to learn something that I can use. It goes back to being an engineer. I’m a little more organized.” If there’s any business that loves a second act, it’s Hollywood. “I used to feel a little split about it, but I see my public image as positive,” Lundgren says. “I think it’s great to feel the appreciation when someone comes up to me, and they don’t give a shit if I’m a director or a chemical engineer, they care about Masters of the Universe or Rocky IV, or something else they’ve seen that made them want to go to the gym, or whatever it is. And I think that’s wonderful! Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to bring a little more comedy and a little more depth, a little more emotion or some part of the other side of me to my characters, and hopefully people will enjoy that too.” As in any good action movie, longevity in show business boils down to survival. At the time of our interview, Lundgren had just returned from the premiere of Creed, the Oscarbaiting descendant of the Rocky franchise. “I liked it,” he says. “There’s something in the message from those Rocky movies: it’s not how hard you get hit, it’s how hard you can get hit and get up and keep going. You don’t have to understand boxing to appreciate it.” So, I ask, does that mean Dolph will be getting back in the saddle for Expendables 4? He laughs. “I’m part of the original team and I do like working with those guys. I mean, if a guy doesn’t get his ass shot and killed in these movies, he still has to come back and get killed. So I suppose...I will be back.”
TANK PUBLIC SCHOOL GroomING JeNNy SANderSSoN PhoTo ASSISTANT mIchAel PremAN STylIST ASSISTANT roberT chrISmAN ProP STylIST colIN doNAhue TAIlor KArINA mAlKhASyAN ProducTIoN Tommy romerSA (Joy ASbury ProducTIoNS)
spy THE SEASON’S SNEAKIEST REVERSAL BLOWS UP PROPORTIONS AND BOMBS OUT BRIGHT COLORS, BUT AS IN ANY GAME OF ESPIONAGE, THE RULES ARE NOT QUITE BLACK AND WHITE.
spy
PHOTOGRAPHY OLIVER HADLEE PEARCH FASHION jAY MASSACRET
132 VMAN
FROM LEFT: LOUIS WEARS JACKET AND T-ShIRT CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION PANTS FENg ChENg WANg ShOES ACNE STudIOS JOhN WEARS JACKET AND T-ShIRT CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION ShIRT (UNDERNEATh) Y/PROJECT PANTS PATRIK ERVELL
LOUIS WEARS ShIRt AlexAnder WAng PAntS rAf SimonS ShOES Acne StudioS JOhn WEARS ShIRt AlexAnder WAng PAntS dior Homme SnEAKERS rAf SimonS x AdidAS
Jacket Jeffrey rüdes top Balmain SHIRt (undeRneatH) y/ProJect pantS J.W.anderson
JOHN WEARS CLOTHING Comme des Garçons SNEAKERS adidas
THIS SPREAD: JACKETS Brioni
Jacket AlexAnder McQueen Pants PAtrik ervell sneakeRs rAf SiMonS x AdidAS
CLOTHING ErmEnEgildo ZEgna CouturE SHOeS CommE dEs garçons
Jacket DSquareD2 SHIRt Y/Project PantS raf SimonS SneakeRS raf SimonS X aDiDaS
Jumpsuit Fendi shirt (underneath) Calvin Klein ColleCtion sneaKers RaF SimonS X adidaS
GrOOminG FranKie BOyd (tim hOward manaGement) hair BlaKe eriK (Jed rOOt) hair cOlOrist lena Ott FOr suite carOline mOdels JOhn crOss and lOuis BuBKO (cOacd) prOductiOn ashley cOnsiGliO (clm) phOtO assistant JasOn actOn stylist assistants Olivia KOzlOwsKi and Jermaine daley hair cOlOrist assistant malcOlm cuthBert lOcatiOn dean street studiOs
Jumpsuit Dickies shirt (uNDErNEAth) Jil sanDer sNEAKErs raf simons X aDiDas
HOW THE FRESH-FACED, HOLLYWOOD-RAISED, MUSIC-CRAZED JACK KILMER IS TAKING THE FILM INDUSTRY BY (QUIET) STORM. PHOTOGRAPHY HEDI SLIMANE
In the coming-of-age genre, many young actors have broken through with the type of auspicious performance that foreshadows a career to be watched and obsessed over. Who can forget River Phoenix in Stand by Me, Corey Feldman in The Goonies, Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, or Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High? For 20-year-old Jack Kilmer, it was the Gia Coppoladirected Palo Alto that introduced his guileless talent as a then-teenaged actor—achieved at least partially due to the fact that he’d never aspired to perform. “I love the flm, and his performance in it is so incredibly natural and unforced,” says Matt Bomer, the comparatively experienced flm and television star, appearing with Kilmer in this season’s ’70s crime caper The Nice Guys. “He’s open and charming. I’m massively jealous because there are actors who train their entire life to get the kind of naturalistic performance he gave in that flm. The fact that it was his frst acting job is really incredible.” Co-starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, The Nice Guys moves Kilmer further center in terms of mainstream cinema fare, closer to the stardom that appears to be zeroing in on him like a drone on the heels of his performances in The Stanford Prison Experiment, Len and Company, and the Kristen Wiig miniseries The Spoils Before Dying. As he prepares to promote his frst studio picture and to begin his frst sci-f flm (EXO, also starring Bella Thorne), Kilmer pauses to talk with Bomer about fnding passion in the last place he ever thought: the family business. MATT BOMER How did you go from being a carefree musicand art-loving teenager to a flm star? JACK KILMER How I got into acting was through my friend Gia [Coppola], who cast me in Palo Alto. I’d never studied acting before, but both my parents [Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley] are actors, so I was used to the schedule. This curiosity and this enthusiasm was born from Palo Alto. I’m so lucky; a lot of people don’t get to do what they want to do. MB You fell in love with it from the experience of it. Almost an inside-out kind of way. JK And it’s really helped me understand what my parents have been doing their whole lives. When you grow up you always wonder why people devote themselves to things. I’m starting to understand what my parents have been obsessing over. MB It’s going to be a rite of passage for you, initially, that people ask you about your parents because they’re both really fantastic artists. Do you feel like your upbringing was pretty removed from the business, and kind of standard, all things considered? JK Both of my parents live in their own bubble of…they live in their own world. For example, when my mom or my dad takes on a role, they’ll spend a lot of time doing research— character research, if you will—hours reading, sometimes late into the night. There’s no real time limit; you never know when inspiration’s going to hit you, you know what I mean? It was diffcult as a kid to understand that my parents were working when they were at home studying for a role. But they really are. You’re working all the time when you’re preparing for a role, I think. Even when you go out with friends, it’s in the back of your mind. MB And do they offer you counsel in terms of your career? JK Their guidance is more concerning etiquette, or the manners that you should have on-set. They know I learn best on my own—I was always kind of quiet in class, at school. I wasn’t, like, participating in the group discussion.
146 vMAN
But, yeah, they’ve given me great advice. They want me to not be so concerned with fame and success, and to just focus on making captivating art. MB You know, there’s so many flms and shows that I’ve been a part of that are not age-appropriate for my kids. I used to feel guilty about it, and then I had a great actor tell me that my kids will ultimately respect me more when they grow up if they knew that I was choosing projects that I was passionate about. Was there a great deal of transparency about that in your home? JK I remember seeing a bit of this movie on TV that my mom was in when I was a kid, this London Cockney-thug kind of flm. My mom was slapped, and I remember being so horrifed at seeing that. That was an early thing I had to get my head around—that it’s fake. How old are your kids, may I ask? MB My oldest is 10, and then I have twin seven-year-olds as well. And they’re all boys. So they’re very curious. They like to watch me go over my lines and ask questions. JK And I guess there’s a whole other conversation that, if you’re in the public [eye], you have to have with your kids. When someone at school says to one of your sons, “I saw your dad on TV, doing something or other…” MB Yep, I’ve defnitely had that one; that one has begun. You remember seeing the marketing as well. You remember seeing your parents on a billboard. JK Well, my mom is from Manchester, England. She’s a very working-class woman. She always approached the press very coolly, and very businesslike. She says, “That’s what I do. That’s work. And when I’m at home, this is my place where I relax.” My dad actually had a bit more fun with it. He and his friends would come up with fun ideas to promote flms. He did this one movie called Wonderland, and he created this entire installation and then he put that on tour with the press. For the flm, he took this massive art installation to Japan with him. MB Alright, now I want to talk about you. One of your flms that I really enjoyed is The Stanford Prison Experiment. I know that was a project that was gestating for a really long time, so it was nice to see it come together at the right time, with this amazing cast. JK I’ll tell you about the frst day of the shoot. I’d never met any of the cast before, and you know how you think, Who are these people I’m about to spend the next 10 weeks with—in a prison cell? But I ended up making these awesome friends. I mean, for Palo Alto I worked with a lot of young people as well, but a lot of them were nonactors. I mean, I learned so much from Emma Roberts, and Nat [Wolff], but Stanford was like…I kind of found this group of kids that were as weird as I am. The weirdness that went on behind the camera really added some great onscreen camaraderie. MB It’s palpable. Was it an intense set? Were people staying in character between set-ups? JK Everyone defnitely had their role in the prison. As I would imagine you would in like, San Quentin. We were actually in a blank room with each other for a month straight. We were literally chained—our ankles were chained. It kind of drove everyone a bit mad. MB Did working with these actors affect the way you dive into a role? JK Yeah. I was actually talking about this with a friend the other day, about Ezra [Miller], and how he can walk—roll—up to a flm set. When he’s not in character, he’s his own person, such an individual, and then he can completely stop. He’d
KILMER WEARS CLOTHING AND EARRING (THROUGHOUT) HIS OWN
PRODUCTION KIM POLLOCK AND YANN RzEPKA DIGITAL TECHNICIAN MILK DGTL LOS ANGELES PHOTO ASSISTANTS FRANK TERRY AND MATT HARTz LOCATION QUIxOTE STUDIOS CATERING FOOD LAB
have these crystals and wear these big headphones and just be in his own crazy world and then as soon as he had to get into character, he’d just snap his fngers and become this completely different person. It inspired me to make my own process because his is so radical. MB It is such a gypsy lifestyle, being a working actor. You know, you travel from set to set, and you have to really drop your guard, and make yourself available to these people that, at the time, you don’t really know that well. And then you work really intimately with them, and then you have to move on to the next thing. So, sometimes it’s hard to make friends in that process—substantial friendships—that last outside of that. JK What was it like for you as a young—I mean, you’re still young… MB No, I’m not. JK You’re not? You look… MB No [laughs]. I remember at one point I was working with an actress who was quite young, but had already been around the world multiple times as an actor. And I remember complaining to her that I was never home. She said to me, “Listen, the career you signed up for is a gypsy lifestyle. It is not going to change. So you can complain about it, or you can embrace it. It’s one of the two.” And from that point on, my mindset really changed, and I was able to make peace with having to be away from home for long stretches of time, and also just to give myself the creative space I needed—like you said—to have the character in the back of my head at all times, even when I’m sitting with my family, or out with friends. Because like you said, you never know when inspiration is going to strike. I want to talk to you about The Nice Guys, where you play this great character, Chet, who’s really integral to the plot of the movie. And I think we flmed our scene together at about three o’clock in the morning, but I remember how you were so composed and relaxed and prepared. So much of the flm work you’d done up until then was independent flms, and now you’re on the set of a movie where I saw more people at craft services and video village than I saw on the entire set of some indies that I’ve done. JK Well, I’ll tell you, I’d been in a hotel room for like a week and a half in Atlanta before we met. On the night that we met, it was a scene where something really crazy happens to my character and I’ve never done this crazy thing before in any facet. And the flm set is massive. There’s a new DP everywhere I look. Anyway, I was just thinking about my lines, thinking about staying focused, but there was a darkness—I had to do something pretty dark that night and so I was just thinking about the dark side. Weirdly enough, even though it’s a big flm set, it shrinks pretty fast. Once you just talk to anybody, anyone, and you realize you’re on planet Earth, everything is okay. It was overwhelming at frst, and then you were really nice to me and that helped me relax. MB When you’re working with a talented flmmaker, you’re able to shrink that big world down. I think Shane Black did a good job of that on [The Nice Guys]. One of the reasons I wanted to work with him was the flm Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which is one of my all-time favorites. As a gay man, Gay Perry [played by Val Kilmer] was one of the all-time great flm characters for me. Did you get to meet Shane at that time? JK When I met Shane I might’ve been 10 years old. What I do remember from that movie is my dad having these meetings…the preparation for that role was so much fun
for him. There’s gonna be some really funny moments in Nice Guys, and Shane has a lot to do with that. MB Oh my god. I had never laughed aloud as much as when I read that script. JK I love detective stories a lot. Working with Russell Crowe after watching L.A. Confdential was like a dream. That’s one of my favorite movies. MB So, now you’re an indie darling, you’re working on big studio movies, and you’re a fashion icon. You were just named one of Toronto Film Festival’s Most Stylish Men, and I personally think Hedi Slimane is a genius. JK He’s a really sweet dude, really nice and kind. When you frst meet him he doesn’t really talk that much. But we just had this conversation about music, and at the time he was working on this line for Saint Laurent called Psych Rock. We bonded over our interest in psych rock. Then he invited me to walk in the show and be a part of the campaign. It was wild—it was great. I met a lot of like-minded people through that. He hired a lot of musicians to walk in the show. MB I understand music is a really big infuence in your life. Do you want to perform as a musician some day? JK Yeah, I do. I have some musical projects that are always going. I’ll kind of drop them and pick them back up, but I’m always playing. I just want to write the best possible songs I can write, and then later I’ll think about sharing it with people. It’s actually helped me with acting a lot. I like a lot of musicians that tell stories, like Tom Waits or Bob Dylan. MB Do you ever create playlists for your characters? I do. JK Yeah, hell yeah. That’s cool that you do that, too. MB Who are the bands that really inspire you? JK I listened to a lot of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Rolling Stones growing up. All of that revolution stuff. I sort of branched out from there and discovered bands like My Bloody Valentine. Nine Inch Nails was a big one for me. MB I was at the Golden Globes last year, and it’s a, you know, pretty star-studded affair. I was doing fne and then I saw Trent Reznor. I mean, he must’ve been like, How did one of my stalkers get on the carpet? Because I think I just stopped and stared and he was like, Hey man, what’s up? I couldn’t even speak. We didn’t even converse, obviously, because he realized very quickly that I was a freak and he should go the other way. I wanted to ask: you skate, too, right? JK Yeah, but in skateboarding if you don’t skate for a month, you lose the muscle. MB I grew up skating in the suburbs and it was just such a great way to escape. It was mostly just ollying up curbs, and fnding a place where we could smoke a cigarette away from everybody. I loved it. Do you have any curiosity about going to college? JK Absolutely. It’s a strange time to do that, though. I think a lot of young adults who are undeclared are fnding out these days that college is harder to navigate than it was for our parents’ generation, especially if you’re involved with the arts. For example: Say you get a B.A. in Visual Arts. You’re kind of limited to what you can do with that degree. But it really just depends on how you work, how you learn...I’d like to do another history class, biology, physics, math. All the things that I didn’t think were as important growing up are seeming really cool to me. Now I’m thinking, Wow, physics…that’s really trippy. MB Listen, I’m a huge fan and I can’t wait to see all the many things you’re going to bring to us as an artist over the years. Count me in. JK Ah, Matt, it’s really been a pleasure.
roulette
big, small, inside-out, layered, or stripped: gosha rubchinskiy and the boys of st. petersburg prove that anarchy rules the style of summer. wear whatever, however you want. photography gosha rubchinskiy fashion lotta volkova
SWEATER MARC JACOBS T-SHIRT (UNDERNEATH) LANVIN SHORTS PRADA SHORTS (UNDERNEATH) BALENCIAGA BELT SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE
SHIRT AND T-SHIRT LANVIN SHIRT (UNDERNEATH) FAITH CONNEXION SHORTS PRADA SHORTS (UNDERNEATH) BALENCIAGA BELT SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE
vman 155
JACKET PRADA T-SHIRT GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY
SWEATER MARC JACOBS SHORTS BALENCIAGA SOCKS UNIQLO SHOES ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUtURE
this spread: t-shirt aNd paNts SALVATORE FERRAGAMO sOCKs NIKE sOCKs (UNderNeath) PRADA saNdaLs MAISON MARGIELA jeweLry (thrOUghOUt) MOdeL’s OwN
JACKET AND JEANS VETEMENTS TANK PRADA
JEANS KENZO SHOES ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA cOutuRE BELT SAINt LAuRENt BY HEDI SLIMANE
phOTOgraphy breTT LLOyd faShION kIm jONeS
CURIOUS
LOUIS VUITTON’S creaTIVe dIrecTOr Of meNSwear, kIm jONeS, aLSO SerVeS aS The braNd’S gLObaL expLOrer-IN-chIef. ThIS SeaSON, The deSIgNer fUSeS SOUTheaST aSIa aNd The amerIcaN weST fOr a raNge ThaT emITS a ferTILe beaUTy aNd a frISky pLay ON amerIcaN cLaSSIcS. IN a weLcOme reTUrN TO The pageS Of VmaN, jONeS STyLeS SOme faVOrITe LOOkS frOm The cOLLecTION.
JONES
ClOTHING, SHOES, ACCESSORIES (THROUGHOUT) LOUIS VUITTON
vman 163
Hair Teiji UTsUmi (D+V managemenT) moDels DaViD TrUliK (Prm) anD KiT BUTler (nexT) PHoTo assisTanTs nicK riley BenTHam anD simon WellingTon sTylisT assisTanT marc seBasTian Hair assisTanT WaKa aDacHi animal HanDler TreVor smiTH (animal WorKs) locaTion sPring HoUse
SHIRT BURBERRY PANTS ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE SHOES PRADA
168 vman
trending
photography bruno staub fashion julian jesus
rt opic
the sand dunes may be sinking, but artists and architects continue to dream big in the 100-year-old city of miami beach. inspired by the liberation of neighboring cuba, these are the four trends to run away with this summer.
JACKET BOSS HAT GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI RINGS (THROUGHOUT) DAVID YURMAN
T-SHIRT LANVIN PANTS GIORGIO ARMANI WATCH (THROUGHOUT) OMEGA
into the White JACKET AND TANK GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI PANTS ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA COUTURE NECKLACE (THROUGHOUT) MODEL’S OWN
INCORPORATED IN 1915, MIAMI bEACH HAS PLAyED HOME TO SOME Of THE WORLD’S MOST GLAMOROUS INDIvIDUALS, INCLUDING GIANNI vERSACE, GLORIA ESTEfAN, AND bURT REyNOLDS. NOTHING SAyS “I’vE MADE IT” LIKE AN ALL-WHITE LOOK.
CLOTHING MARC JACOBS
LET IT BLOOM
CLOTHING DOLCE & GABBANA
IN 1941’S moon over miami, bETTy GRAbLE DECLARES, “RICH mEN ARE AS PLENTIfUL AS GRAPEfRUIT AND mILLIONAIRES HANG fROm EvERy PALm TREE.” SHOW yOUR WORTH IN bLOSSOmING PRINTS PERfECT fOR A DAy IN THE SHADE.
JACKET VALENTINO PANTS CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION NECKLACE (WITH PENDANT, THROUGHOUT) DAVID YURMAN
SHIRT BURBERRY PANTS GUCCI
SHIRT PRADA PANTS BOTTEGA VENETA
CLOTHING VERSACE
JACKET JEFFREY RÜDES SHIRT BOTTEGA VENETA
SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON PANTS GIORGIO ARMANI SANDALS GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI DESIGN
CUBA liBre THE mariel BOATLIfT Of 1980 BROuGHT OVER 100,000 CuBANS TO THE SOuTH Of fLORIdA, AROuNd TIME SOuTH BEACH’S ART dECO dISTRICT WAS REGISTEREd AN HISTORIC LANdMARk. STOP ANd SEE THE SIGHTS ON yOuR WAy TO HAVANA IN THE NEWEST CuBAN-INSPIREd dESIGNER dudS.
SHIRT LANVIN PANTS GIORGIO ARMANI BRACELET DAVID YURMAN
duRING THE BEATLES’ FIRST WORLd TOuR IN 1964, THEy FAmOuSLy FRATERNIZEd WITH FANS IN mIAmI. SHAGGy-HAIREd BEACH BumS HAvE BEEN A STAPLE EvER SINCE. SOAK uP THE SuN RAyS IN THE NEW dELuxE SuRFWEAR.
CARdIGAN SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE SHORTS JIL SANDER SANdALS GIUSEPPE ZANOTTI DESIGN
SWEATER COACH PANTS DSQUARED2
GROOmING STEPH GImSON mOdEL LANdON mcNAmARA (FORd) PROduCTION BETH KLEIN PROduCTIONS dIGITAL TECHNICIAN dAvId dOmINICK (dIGITAL dECAF) STyLIST ASSISTANT LAuREN CONSTANTINE PROduCTION ASSISTANT KEvEN POPP
ocean drive
SHIRT SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE PANTS JEFFREY RÜDES
CLOTHING CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION
YOU ARE HERE
“This piece was inspired by colored markers on a map,” designer Craig Green explains, “almost like fag posts so you don’t get lost. The opening focuses on the most vulnerable part of the body.” Raise the red fag and let your whereabouts be your window to the soul. Photography sean & senG Fashion Tom Guinness 176 vman • vision
MOdEL JACk L (TOMORROW IS ANOTHER dAY) PROduCTION RYAN CuTLING (ROSCO PROduCTION) LIGHTING PROLIGHTING PHOTO ASSISTANTS STEFAN EbELEWICz ANd dANIEL LEbRETON STYLIST ASSISTANTS HAMISH WIRGMAN ANd ISAbEL buSH PROduCTION ASSISTANT ELLA MOORE LOCATION THE VOW STudIO
CLOTHING CRAIG GREEN SHOES VINTAGE FROM THE CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE