Alexandra Ilyashov

Sarah Jessica Parker is synonymous with haute heels, so no wonder that her über-feminine, color-saturated foray into shoe design, SJP, is the real deal. (Getting Manolo mastermind George Malkemus on board didn’t hurt, either.) As the brand celebrates one year in business this month, we caught up with Parker about her NYFW debut, breaking into bridal and bags, and where she salvages her soles.

The Olsen twins’ illustrious canon of cinematic hits — Passport To Paris, anyone? — likely holds serious sentimental value if you were a late-‘90s tween. Or, perhaps, you were a bit younger than the intended demographic, but had a cool older sister or babysitter to clue you into the glories of all things MK & A. While we might be a bit fuzzy on the flicks’ PG-rated screwball sister-act plot lines, we certainly remember fawning over the matching ensembles Mary-Kate and Ashley wore both on-screen and in their adorable red carpet appearances. Well, you have stylist Judy Swartz to thank for every twinning tube top moment or lust-worthy spaghetti-strapped midi youso wanted to wear to that eighth grade prom. (Little did we know, the latter may have been some extensively-altered Dolce & Gabbana, so don’t worry, you definitely weren’t missing it on racks of the juniors section of Macy’s.)

Swartz, who styled a number of musicians throughout the '70s and '80s, was also instrumental in launching the Olsens’ first fashion endeavor, long before Elizabeth & James or The Row came about. Remember their Walmart line? Swartz created it — alongside her "great team," she's quick to point out — when she served as stylist, creative director, and senior vice president of the Olsens' Dualstar Entertainment. Along the way, she also played a part in the girls’ oversized, magpie, boho aesthetic, accessorized with a venti Starbucks cup, that defined their NYU years. (But more on that later.) Most recently, she worked with Melissa McCarthy, styling the actress’ red carpet appearances; she also served as creative director for McCarthy's eponymous, inclusively-sized fashion line that launched in 2015. (They aren't working together currently.)

Luckily, Swartz was more than happy to reminisce with us about dressing the Olsen twins in many of the get-ups we lusted after back in the day. 

Read the full story on Refinery29. 
 

Long before Comedy Central existed, or HBO and Netflix streamed a perpetual roll-out of comedy specials, a hit parade of household names from Jerry Seinfeld to Jon Stewart performed at Carolines on Broadway in midtown Manhattan. But the comedy club's founder isn't the type to deliver punch lines: Rather, Caroline Hirsch is a behind-the-scenes den mother of sorts, who for decades has offered a high-profile forum for standups and helped launch some of comedy's most notable careers.

She's one of the best in the male-dominated business. Hirsch has run her influential comedy clubhouse for 35 years by listening to her gut. "You get this small inkling that there's this special talent hidden in them," she tells ELLE.com. "The way they think about things, the way they tell a story in a manner that makes you go, 'Oh wow, I never thought about it that way'—that's what distinguishes someone. I can't tell you how I get that feeling; I just know." Hirsch expanded her reach beyond the storied walls of Carolines on Broadway by launching the New York Comedy Festival back in 2004. The 14th annual iteration takes place in New York this November. Ahead of the event, Hirsch chatted with ELLE.com about the moments that made all the difference in her career.

Where did your passion for comedy come from?
As a kid, I grew up watching a lot of sitcoms with Lucille Ball and Joan Davis, and I also watched Johnny Carson—he basically introduced every comic to American audiences. I was working in retail early on in my career at Gimbels [department store], and in 1981, the store was closing, so I was out of a job. My friends said, 'Let's open a cabaret,' so we did in 1982. It wasn't quite working, and I said, 'Let's hire Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman.' There was something happening at the time with these guys and observational humor, and I took the cue.

What was the comedy scene like at that time, and how did Carolines fit into the picture?
Carolines was the start of something very new: A group of comedians that started at the club were bringing in their fans–it was a cult-y little thing. Paul Ruben, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman, would come perform a few times a year; I remember the night Andy Warhol came in, wearing his pajamas, to see him, and he brought all the social kids at the time. One night when Howie Mandell was performing, while he was starring on St. Elsewhere, I turned around and Denzel Washington was sitting at a table with that big, beautiful smile of his. Meeting people early on in their careers was something that happened a lot at Carolines. Judd Apatow used to sneak into Carolines and "interview" people when he was in high school. He would tell people he worked for a radio station and would come in with a little fake microphone and recorder, but he actually used it for a book he was writing [Sick In The Head]. David Letterman came in to scout for talent. It was an interesting period, butI really didn't know the scope of where this was going to go. A few years after we opened, Comedy Central channel launched, as did Ha!, another comedy channel. In the late '80s, HBO used standup as cheap programming, and an hour-long special with Robin Williams or Steve White would do well. It proved there was an appetite for standup specials. Comedy was ready to explode, and Carolines was there before that all happened.

Read the full story on ELLE. 

Meet the influencers captivating us this season, and the behind-the-scenes talents orchestrating their success from all angles.

Originally published in the Daily Front Row Magazine, February 2020.

It’s been quite a whirlwind for WINNIE HARLOW. In the past two years, the model made good on nabbing a Vogue cover (or two!) and a VS show-a pair of high-profile dream projects she first told us about in 2018, the sort of goals that many catwalk stars spend far longer chasing, if ever accomplishing. So, what’s Harlow striving for next? Well, it’s sort of a plan to not have a plan, with all sorts of exciting surprise encounters and opportunities along the way.

Originally published in the Daily Front Row Magazine, February 2020.

Driven and intrepid, WENDY NGUYEN is using the massive platform spurred by her style blog, Wendy’s Lookbook, to speak out about the foster-care system, sexual abuse, and CBD’s therapeutic benefits to affect change, initiate difficult and crucial conversations-and even improve lives.

Originally published in the Daily Front Row Magazine, February 2020.

The Creed frontman offered a model of religious ostentatiousness for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Few things make me feel as invincible and alive quite like karaoke — namely, when my Creed requests get the top of the queue. Interspersed between the “Jagged Little Pill”-era Alanis, Weezer, and assorted tracks by angsty ‘90s morose female powerhouses like Fiona Apple that I torture my captive audience with, there is always “One Last Breath.” Always.

I love Creed. They’re a delicious junk food of a band, a truly guilty pleasure tucked in my most-played Spotify lists amid artists with far more critical acclaim and credibility. Specifically, I can’t get enough of the band’s frontman Scott Stapp, who reached spectacular, undeniable heights of commercial success while also inspiring intense vitriol from vocal haters — and then publicly unraveled. During Creed’s heyday, Stapp became synonymous with Christian rock, as he somewhat resembled Christ himself, long locks flailing as he belted lyrics about overcoming his struggles through faith. Tight tees barely concealed the massive crucifix tattoo on his bicep; beyond that, he had a penchant for extremely shiny shirts, like a plunging, nearly navel-deep lace-up stunner, or this flashy crimson version, and consistently accessorized with copious amounts of man jewelry.

My affinity for a Jesus-tinged band is weird since I’m the reform, mostly-cultural, solely go to temple on the High Holidays, had a Bat Mitzvah, never say no to prosciutto kind of Jewish. But I can’t get enough of anything about cults and extreme religious sects, many focused on Christianity, from Mormon polygamy to Scientology to Jim Jones. Same goes for “hipper,” more slickly packaged interpretations of Christianity: Bieber-vetted, sneakerhead pastors preaching in head-to-toe streetwear, weed churches, The Righteous Gemstones, and megachurches.

Showier displays of faith — religious allegiance telegraphed by big, blingy crucifix necklaces, tattoos of Jesus, or prominently flaunted Bible verses on T-shirts, Instagram bios, Facebook updates, and more — always felt foreign to me. Sure, jewelry shaped like the Star of David and Tree of Life exists: I had a few pendants as a tween, and if you saw Uncut Gems, you might remember Adam Sandler’s chunky, diamond-paved pinky ring. But Jews like Sandler’s Howard Ratner were the exception, not the norm, for how loudly and overtly identifiable one was supposed to be about this particular faith. Judaism isn’t a missionary religion; while actively seeking converts is common in Christianity. Jews don’t proselytize, or at least we’re not supposed to. Plus, converting to Judaism can be notoriously difficult. We are the theological equivalent of playing extremely hard to get during courtship, as Charlotte York’s journey from shiksa to Park Avenue’s Shabbat hostess with the most aptly illustrated.

Continue reading on The Outline.

The ones to watch, ingenues, and names to know now. Meet Hollywood's next generation of screen queens.

Sarah Jeffery’s initial career ambitions would’ve likely lead her to hospitals, not Hollywood. “I actually wanted to be a nurse, of all things,” Jeffery says. That, or perhaps a dancer—she studied the craft seriously from her toddler years through high school. “It was my whole life; I spent all my time dancing, and I loved it very much,” the Vancouver native recalls. “I’ve always felt happiest entertaining.” Her father’s work as a voice actor also propelled her toward performance. “He was always really playful with me and my sisters and encouraged creativity,” she recalls. With nursing school in the offing, Jefferey’s early auditions were simply bids for spending money, but when she booked her first job at age 16, playing the role of Thandie Newton’s daughter on police drama series Rogue, it felt undeniably right.

“I thought, ‘Why would I go to nursing school when I can do this?’ It makes so much sense,” Jeffery says. “I realized acting was something I absolutely wanted to do, and I was hopeful that I could make a career out if it.” More than a decade of dance did, however, endow her with a body awareness that’s proven quite useful in acting, especially stuntwork—key to Jeffery’s current role on the Charmed reboot, Season 2 of which debuts October 11. Though she’s too young to have watched the original show, Jeffery jumped at the opportunity given her adoration for all things magic. “Harry Potter is my favorite series, and I’ve always loved that wish fulfillment, ‘anything is possible’ idea,” she explains. “It’s very current; those themes are resonant in these times. And the show has a powerful message about our political climate, about women being there for women.”

Following three sisters who use their magic to empower themselves and others, the show was all the more appealing given its diverse cast. “It’s pretty special to have three lead roles played by actresses of color. I was really happy to be a part of that,” Jeffery says.

She’s channeled her own experiences growing up in a big family around lots of women into her bonds with her on-screen siblings. Jeffery also tracks closely with her character, Maggie. “She’s girly and loves fashion, but is also funny, whip-smart, and cares so much; I mean, her power is literally reading minds, [so of course] she’s multifaceted,” she says. Short of her magical powers, Jeffery considers Maggie a much needed positive influence: “I think it’s important for girls to see you can be more than one thing — you don’t have to fall into one category.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

Finding the spotlight was always the M.O. of actress Victoria Pedretti, born in Philadelphia to academic parents. “I was one of those kids who demanded attention,” Pedretti says. “I tried dancing and singing, and I think through a lot of rejection in those [pursuits], I found my way to acting.”

Now she is poised to follow up her feature-film debut, in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, with a Netflix double feature— both returning to her breakout series, The Haunting Of Hill House and joining You for its second season. Playing one-half of the tormented Crain twins on Hill House was also her very first acting job. As an alumna of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, Pedretti was well aware of her chosen industry's narrow odds at success. “[I've known people] who worked their whole lives developing [a craft] that may never support them financially; people who are willing to compromise everything for their art,” Pedretti says. “I’d very much prepared myself for going years with never having the opportunity to work in my field.”

Next year, she’ll star in the Hill House's second installment, re-dubbed The Haunting Of Bly Manor. Meanwhile, You’s sophomore season drops this fall. “[The first season] of You was so intoxicating; I could not stop watching it,” Pedretti says of the thriller, in which Penn Badgley plays the most dubious of antiheroes—a stalker. “The style of the show just draws you in, and so much of that is [thanks to] Penn: you just want to keep watching him.”

In Tarantino’s Hollywood, she played Lulu, a member of Charles Manson's cult. “I'd never gotten that far in a film audition before... It was an insane experience,” she says, recounting the surreality of her callback: “They had already started filming, and wanted to see my proficiency on horseback. So one of the wranglers and I rode our horses onto set—and [there was] Leonardo DiCaprio, also on horseback! I’m just on a horse, watching them film a movie... It was completely immersive like I’d gone back through time."

Equestrianism aside, Tarantino's old-school methods ensured Pedretti's first filmmaking experience would also be a uniquely retro one: “I’m sitting there between takes, and someone pulls film out of the camera, and my jaw just dropped," Pedretti recalls. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I forgot [about film cameras!] Is everyone seeing this?!' Just knowing [some films are still shot that way]—that alone was very cool."

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The ones to watch, ingenues, and names to know now. Meet Hollywood's next generation of screen queens.

For Caroline Day, the itch to act came early. So early, in fact, that she must have been “pretty much pre-conscious,” she says. “I sort of feel like I came out of the womb in tap shoes kind of thing,” explains Day. “I think I knew that acting was what I wanted to do before I even knew you had to grow up and get a job.” Further evidence came at age five or six, when Day became obsessed with the wrenching dramatic climax of 2001’s Moulin Rouge—Nicole Kidman’s death by consumption in the arms of her lover. “I watched that scene over and over again,” Day says, laughing. “My parents were super disturbed by me reenacting her violent death, but I feel like that was a pretty good indicator of my future career.”

Day sang and danced extensively in childhood, but her passions flourished in high school when she moved to NYC. “I grew up moving all over the South, and always felt a little bit out of place or like a black sheep, because being a theater geek is just not cool below the Mason- Dixon line,” recalls Day, who moved to NYC to attend high school at Professional Children’s School (PCS). “It was totally the Island of Misfit Toys, but I automatically felt like I’d found my tribe, my people. It was so dorky: Everybody was feeling their feelings, 14-year-old boys were trying to dress like Bob Fosse, and I felt so at home,” she adds. “I saw so much more than you usually see at 12, 13, 14; my world got so much bigger.”

Studying art history at Columbia University, Day modeled and continued to act. “It felt really important to me to finish college and have a degree, especially because I knew I was going into this crazy career path,” she says. Recently, Day got to do much more than just reenact Kidman’s early aughts work—she co-stars with the statuesque actress in The Goldfinch (in theaters September 13), also featuring Sarah Paulson, Ansel Elgort, and Luke Wilson. “I read The Goldfinch on a train,” says Day of the film’s source material, Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel. “For anybody who hasn’t read it yet, I highly recommend reading it on a train, it’s very romantic.” When she saw a Deadline report saying that the film was being cast, she emailed her agents, saying “I have to go in for this!” A memorable encounter on set was a touching pep talk from Kidman. “At one point, I think Nicole could tell I was a little bit nervous, so she came up to me and talked about what it’s like to be a tall woman in Hollywood,” says Day, who at 5’10” is an inch shy of Kidman. “She was like, ‘It’s great, carry it, it’s exciting!’ It was so cool of her to go out of her way to make sure I felt comfortable going into my scene. I’ll never forget that. I was just really moved.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The ones to watch, ingenues, and names to know now. Meet Hollywood's next generation of screen queens.

It was a fateful plotline of the WB’s One Tree Hill that led Nesta Cooper to the teenage epiphany that she wanted to act. Namely, it was the romantic tiffs between Brooke (Sophia Bush) and Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) that imparted Cooper, who grew up on the otherwise sleepy Vancouver Island, with the acting bug: “I was very dedicated; I remember just sobbing because I was so sad for Brooke,” Cooper says. “It occurred to me, ‘Wow, I’m 14 years old, I’ve never kissed a boy, let alone been in a relationship, but I can feel the pain of this break-up.’ That’s [when I became] fascinated [with the power of] acting to strip [someone] to their emotional core.”

Cooper’s first gig was a two-line part in The Haunting Hour, the Disney Channel’s spooky-lite R.L. Stine adaptation. Four years and an assortment of TV and film roles later, Cooper landed her first leading turn, playing Carly, a tough, military-trained mother in the Netflix series Travelers. “That show was a really huge shift for me professionally and emotionally. It taught me a lot about playing toughness, and not just in a one-note [way]; that a woman can be super strong without being a bitch.” Cooper says. “I realized, ‘Okay Nesta, you don’t have to be angry and mean all the time [to play a resilient woman]. I could add layers to her. That was really eye-opening.”

Cooper plays a twin and Jason Momoa’s daughter in See, Apple’s upcoming epic drama set in the future, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and directed by Francis Lawrence. “In a time when there’s so much TV right now battling for viewership—so many different platforms, between streaming, web series, and even people making shows on their Instagram accounts, See still managed to stand out to me,” says Cooper. “I just had never read something like it before.” Her next film role is also streamable sci-fi: Bliss, an Amazon Studios drama co-starring Salma Hayek and Owen Wilson, directed by Mike Cahill, college pal and collaborator of Brit Marling.

After that, Cooper is game for anything that helps develop her acting chops, perhaps beyond her well-trod sci-fi territory, be it a head-turning thriller like Get Out or infectious comedies, which she’s dabbled with in The Edge of Seventeen and Reality High: “I liked doing those because they’re light and fun,” she says. “You’re just really trying to make everyone laugh. There’s [no] pressure to be [an] emotional, brooding artist all the time.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The endlessly versatile Sandra Bernhard—actress, stand-up, radio-show host, cabaret singer—has had just about every sort of gig that showbiz offers. But after decades of creating her own variety pack of a career, her role as Nurse Judy on Pose was one that came ready for the tackling: creator Ryan Murphy tailored a Season 1 bottle episode just for Bernhard’s Judy, a nurse in a New York City AIDS ward circa 1988.

“Anytime somebody creates a role for you in a project, now more than ever, it’s just incredible,” says Bernhard. Season 2, which premiered on June 11, saw Judy become a regular, lending Bernhard the kind of complex character she relishes, but for which she has often had to fight. “It’s a dramatic role, but there are elements of humor and humanity [to it] that a lot of people just have not offered me in roles before,” Bernhard says. “Now, my focus is back on my acting, and I really want that to take off after Pose.”

While nurse is one job title Bernhard hadn’t held, dramatizing the AIDS crisis onscreen wasn’t exactly a stretch. “It had a lot of resonance [for me],” she says. “I was in New York doing my one-woman show then, in the center of what was happening at that time. A lot of my friends were getting sick and starting to fade away.”

After moving to the city in the ’70s, Bernhard earned cult stardom at a clip, inhabiting bohemian performance circles. Having seen New York in all its shades, Bernhard served as a link between Pose’s young cast and the time period it’s set in. “It was a different world [back then] and yet, being around all of these young, fabulous trans actresses on Pose, it was fun to talk about how things were,” she says. And while she has the straight-talking perspective of a longtime LGBTQ-allied advocate and elder, Bernhard is quick to acknowledge the progress she has witnessed first- hand. “It’s very inspiring to see how far culture has come, that there’s a whole show built around a world that was totally marginalized and now is being celebrated in Pose, and in so many other shows and films,” she says.

Even so, as an alumna of the New York’s homegrown art and fashion scenes known for her appearances on Letterman’s Late Show and Isaac Mizrahi’s Unzipped, Bernhard nurtures a healthy case of nostalgia. “The authenticity, the rawness, the ability for people to live in the city, to afford to be right in the thick of it and be creative... Those are all things I really miss,” she says. “It’s a shame. There’s a bank or a nail salon on every corner.”

For all the changes and challenges Bernhard’s community has seen, Hollywood’s ebb and flow is one that doesn’t seem to faze her. “I didn’t go into the business with a plan of attack, and I’ve never had once since. You have your high tides and low tides,” she says (her Sandyland show on SiriusXM, for one, is still going strong). “I’ve always had other things to keep me busy. As you mature, who you are gets more authentic. That’s where I’m at right now.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

Dee Rees brings accounts of racism and prejudice to the forefront of film, earning a stamp of approval from disco-legend Nile Rodgers.

You MUST know about Pariah, Bessie (sensational!), and Mudbound,” Rodgers says of writer-director Dee Rees. With 2017’s Mudbound, an account of racism on the home-front in post-WWII Mississippi, Rees made history as the first black woman Oscars contender for Best Adapted Screenplay. She then pivoted to TV, directing a Trump-tackling episode of sci-fi series Electric Dreams, based on a Philip K. Dick novel. As full as it is diverse, Rees’s current slate spans untitled horror projects and 2019’s The Last Thing He Wanted, which adapts Joan Didion’s political thriller.

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The grunge goddess on segueing from Sonic Youth to Body/Head.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sonic Youth reigned supreme as a seminal alternative rock act—and has remained one of the most influential bands of the past few decades. Kim Gordon, one of its three founding members, endured as the face of the band for its 30-year run—from 1981 to 2011. These days, she’s not terribly sentimental, though. “We were together a long time, and I feel like we kind of took it as far as we could,” Gordon says. “We had a lot of good times, but I don’t really feel nostalgic for it.” She moved on rapidly, starting Body/Head with musician Bill Nace in 2012, just a year after Sonic Youth disbanded (the same year Gordon split from then-husband and the band’s guitarist, Thurston Moore). “When we started out, “noise” was considered a derogatory term, and we were unconventional in music,” Gordon says of Sonic Youth’s success. “It’s weird that we got as big as we did, being pretty unconventional.”

Gordon asked Nace to collaborate on a cover of ‘50s song “Fever,” and then, Body/Head, their new act—with its cinema-inspired moniker—emerged organically. “We just would hang out, watch movies, and talk about how we both really liked French filmmaker Catherine Breillat,” Gordon says. “I had a book of hers that analyzed all of her films in terms of sexuality, and the name Body/Head was in it. It was such a good name, we basically said, ‘We should just start a band.’ I had a big basement; we went down there, and started playing.” Between Body/Head’s first and second albums, Gordon released her melancholy, snarling first solo track, “Murdered Out.” She’s working on more solo music which will likely be released sometime in 2019.

Body/Head’s new album, which came out July 13, was recorded in 2017 in Western Massachusetts, where Gordon once lived. “We’re improv-based; we go in the studio, play it back for a couple days, then take time, step back, kind of sift through and see what seems interesting,” Gordon says of her process with Nace.

The otherworldly music is experimental, noisy, and demands to be mulled over. Rather than pleasantly ambient, it is filled with sometimes erratic sonic surprises. “I think we’ve gotten better at starting with a couple ideas and really letting them evolve slowly,” Nace says. “The connective tissue has gotten way stronger.” There’s more ease and spontaneity to Gordon and Nace’s music rapport. “When we do a show, we just get right down to it. In the beginning, we were still exploring each other’s sounds, and I think we’re more deeply connected now.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The '90s icons tackle a story set in the '70s.

Money, gender, and power define the narrative of American Woman, the juicy, addictive show co-executive produced by and based on the childhood of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Kyle Richards. When Alicia Silverstone first read the script—written by 30 Rock alum John Riggi—she was immediately drawn to her character Bonnie Nolan, a glamorous Beverly Hills housewife who leaves her cheating husband to raise her two young daughters solo. “She’s such a badass; she’s really fiery, yet also extremely vulnerable,” Silverstone says.

Bonnie, based on Richards’s mother, relies on her two best friends: Kathleen, an unmarried thirtysomething played by Mena Suvari, and Diana (Jennifer Bartels) who deals with workplace harassment. “I love that all three women are evolving and nding themselves; they’re not just trying to find boyfriends,” Silverstone says. For Bonnie, it’s about reinvention. “She’s like, ‘I’m gonna open my own bank account!’” Suvari says. “I’ve always had a bank account, never relied on a man, and I was like, ‘Holy shit, I can’t even imagine living like that.’”

The show takes place at a time Silverstone describes as a feminist juncture—after the relatively conservative ‘60s, but before Roe v. Wade. “Some women are like, ‘I can be sexy, I can be whatever I want,’ but not everyone gets that memo yet,” says Silverstone. To that end, Bonnie is a rebrand, or as Silverstone puts it, “an incredibly impulsive person, left with nothing, and has to slowly build up. I think that takes such courage and is so brave, because it’s so easy for all of us to stay stuck.” The show saliently explores pre-#MeToo society—when financial inequality, sexual harassment in the workplace, and reliance on a man were not only commonplace but received as natural. And while times may have changed, Silverstone says that modern-day parallels remain. “I’m sure everyone can relate to the idea that we all get stuck in our lives. Sometimes, it’s not even that bad. It’s just not quite good. It’s sort of hovering, so you don’t think it’s worth ending, exiting, or taking the leap to actually live your dream and live the way you want.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The seasoned actress talks her return to the silver screen, and starring in the Sundance 2018 Grand Jury Prize-winning film 'The Miseducation of Cameron Post'.

Having built an enormously successful career since age seven, Chloë Grace Moretz needed a break. So, in 2016, she took a hiatus from Hollywood to “re-evaluate my career: who I was as an actor, who I wanted to be, what I wanted to perpetuate, and what’s important to me,” Moretz explains. She vowed to hold out for a script that “lights a fire in me and makes me feel like it’s the right step forward.” The Miseducation of Cameron Post, about a gay conversion therapy camp in the ’90s, ended her acting intermission and went on to win Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize.

“I devoured the script literally within an hour,” she recalls. Meeting director Desiree Akhavan shortly after further convinced her, thanks to a shared objective: “To open the minds of people who don’t know gay-conversion therapy isn’t an archaic issue, it’s a modern issue—and something a lot of people aren’t even aware is a reality.”

The cast prepped for the film by meeting with survivors, like Mathew Shurka, an outspoken anti-conversion-therapy advocate. Moretz was surprised by the breadth of “god-fearing families” from vastly different situations and back- grounds who have opted for conversion therapy. “[They] crossed religions, and economic barriers; it wasn’t just rich, upper-class families,” she says. Moretz hopes the film can provide solace for survivors, and perhaps dissuade families considering “converting” a gay child: “There’s no ‘fixing’ someone. There’s only accepting and nourishing.”

Next, she’ll star in Party of the Century, about Truman Capote’s Black and White ball; The Widow, co-starring Isabelle Huppert; and the Luca Guadagnino-helmed remake of Suspiria, alongside Tilda Swinton. She’s also co-directing a short film with her brother and producing partner, Trevor Duke Moretz. “We don’t have to mince words; we can be incredibly blunt and real, and we’re like two halves of the same brain,” Moretz says of working with him. “It’s wonderful because you know you’re always safe."

Read the full article on V Magazine.

The '90s cult icon talks activism and her latest album 'Binary.'

Binary, fiery singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco’s 20th album, which dropped in June, has been in the works for three years: “I’m on baby time! I’m a mom of two, so there are lots of interruptions in my work,” DiFranco says. “In my 20s, I put out a record every two minutes, but I guess I’m more like other humans now -- a record every couple of years, instead of a couple a year.” Binary’s tour, dubbed “Rise Up,” just kicked off a few weeks ago. The Buffalo-bred, New Orleans-based artist also held the 2nd annual Babefest earlier this month, a daylong celebration of arts, politics, and activism to “ignite participation and inspiration about citizenship, community, and being accountable together to our society,” DiFranco says. “How do we get shit done? How do we get from here to a better place? It’s so overwhelming for all of us to begin to fix everything that needs fixing.”

Activism, be it for anti-war efforts, women’s reproductive rights, or LGBTQ issues, has always been essential to DiFranco’s life and career. “The current political climate is more dire than ever, although I felt like the George W. [Bush] years were equally dark,” DiFranco says, though she’s fairly optimistic now. “I actually feel a sense of possibility, and, dare I say, even hope. So much American hypocrisy that has existed all along is being exposed right now, which means we can address it together; I feel less alone than I ever have in my political activism,” she says.

Ahead, DiFranco explains how she’s evolved as a plucky, powerful singer-songwriter and deeply-committed activist.

Why did you decide to title your newest album Binary?

Basically, nothing exists except in relationship with something else, and to everything else – so the title Binary is kind of related to my feminism. I see relationships as being not just a priority, but actually the stuff of existence – only in relationships do we really come into being. You can find this not just in freaky feminist musings like mine, but also in science and quantum physics. I’m really intrigued by the idea that the universe is just an endless field of possibility until there is an interaction, and then reality is created through an interaction, whether it’s an interplay of masculine and feminine, or of positive and negative.

How did you come up with the concept for Babefest, which launched in 2016 and just had its sophomore iteration this year?

The idea is a yearly gathering that unites arts, politics, and activism, and trying to find other people to learn from, to resonate with, to inspire and teach each other. I’m just looking for ways to do more in terms of igniting participation and inspiration in myself and anybody who will listen to me. How do we get shit done? How do we get from here to a better place? It’s so overwhelming for all of us to begin to fix everything that needs fixing. The more we can get together and form relationships with each other, and take it one moment and one path at a time, the more doable it becomes.

For decades, you’ve been an ardent activist, and that’s reflected in your work. Has the current administration and perilous political state affected your advocacy?

I think I’m doing it much the same as I always have. Certainly, the current political climate is more dire than ever. I’m less alone in my political views, in that, “Holy shit, we have to do something!” approach. So many people are now saying, “Okay, enough is enough.” People are getting involved that never got involved before, speaking up when they used to be quiet, taking to the streets for the first time, and trying to help people and organizations that are doing good work. I think it’s a time of great possibility.

What’s making you optimistic, exactly?

There are so many examples; I live in New Orleans, and I have driven by Confederate monuments for 15 years, in my new hometown. I believe that it’s thanks to our current [political] regime and Neo-Nazis marching in the streets, those monuments are gone. Finally. There’s nothing like really exposing the underlying realities of inequality and oppression to motivate and activate people. I feel like there’s much more receptiveness for me talking about something like patriarchy these days. For most of my life, people have just eye-rolled, but at this point, there’s no more textbook-manifestation of patriarchy than fascism [of the current administration]. So, can we talk about it now? Because patriarchy doesn’t go away. Whether we choose to acknowledge and address it or not, more people are now willing to acknowledge and address things. I think that that’s very exciting.

Your current tour, “Rise Up,” clearly reflects that marked shift toward discussing, then doing something about, the enraging political climate.

Now is the time. There is momentum around us and inside us, to affect change in our society, so what better time to get up and propel it, to be a part of it? In 2016, my whole year was sort of dedicated to the message of “Vote, damn it,” and I was focusing on trying to encourage voter participation. That’s still definitely part of what I want to talk about, because step one of rising up is going to the voting booth, people. If we opt out of voting, the outcome can be excruciating and extremely dangerous, even, which is where we are now. So, Rise Up is an all-inclusive, “let’s be a part of our democracy and make it come alive again” tour.

How has your sound and your songwriting evolved throughout your lengthy career?

I’m a more patient person and writer than I used to be. My kids basically just prevent me from getting anything done, other than pouring my love and attention and creativity into them, so it’s been hard to adjust. I’m somebody who loves my work, is inspired by my work, and I’ve actually lived through my work my whole life – it was frustrating to put the breaks on all of that. After I got over the frustration, I realized it’s actually very useful for songwriting. I could write a good song as a young and impatient person in a moment if the stars align, but now, I only get scant moments to create something, so I chip away whenever I can, and it’s helped me to be a better writer overall.

Do you still enjoy touring nowadays?

It was hard to leave my little ones – that’s always a little heartbreaking. My youngest is four, so it hurts to leave each other. But I’m back on my horse, I love what I do, and I’m excited to be out playing music, engaging with people again.

What’s the most meaningful feedback you’ve gotten over the years?

People often bring that up how vulnerable I make myself onstage and through my songs. I’ve been told, “I appreciate not just your honesty, but also your vulnerability”. It’s really interesting to me, and it’s taught me how much we need that from each other.

Read the full article on V Magazine.

Margaret Qualley swapped out professional ballet's constant quest for perfection to instead tackle divinely imperfect roles on screen.

For Margaret Qualley’s breakout role as the lead in Novitiate, the Maggie Betts-directed drama about how the Catholic church’s radical reforms of the 1960s Vatican II era impacted nuns, preparations included studying scripture and a nunnery slumber party. “I’m not religious, so it gave me an excuse to learn about Catholicism and read the Bible for the first time,” Qualley says of depicting a young girl’s journey through the postulate and novitiate stages of becoming a nun. The film premiered to critical acclaim at Sundance and has since accrued Oscar buzz.

“One of my favorite parts about acting is the opportunity to learn about things that wouldn’t usually be a part of my life,” Qualley explains. She and her castmates slept over at a convent and adhered to their characters’ stringent practices, like vows of silence and 6 AM wake-ups, “just for fun, to see what it would be like following all of the rules, which was really fascinating,” she says. Costars include a gloriously formidable Melissa Leo as the Reverend Mother, Dianna Agron as the caring but conflicted big sister figure for Qualley and her fellow nuns-in-training, and Julianne Nicholson as Qualley’s agnostic mother grasping to maintain a relationship with her increasingly devout and detached daughter. A former nun taught the cast rudimentary sign language used during vows of silence and how to walk, “limiting all extraneous sensory experiences because you don’t want anything to distract you from God, which essentially means looking down while you’re walking,” Qualley remembers. “Also, you obviously don’t touch anyone. That was really difficult for me, because I’m a really touchy-feely person—I like to hug people!”

Qualley got her start in another relatively dark role, that of Jill Garvey in the HBO series The Leftovers. “It was my first-ever job and I was nervous as hell—I don’t think I slept before a day of work for the entire first season, and it was the best, most high-pressure acting school I could’ve dreamed of,” she says. Working with Liv Tyler made an impression on Qualley: “I really look up to her. She is so lovely, generous, and kind.” Even though both The Leftovers and Novitiate are decidedly somber and religious projects, that’s not by design, Qualley insists. “I audition and try out for happy roles all the time, but no one wants me to be a part of their happy stories. I’m telling you, I try.”

The 23-year-old was born on a Montana ranch, spent her formative years in North Carolina, and moved to NYC as a teenager. She studied ballet professionally until age 16 and didn’t harbor any acting aspirations, despite the family connection, as her mother is Andie MacDowell. (“I had a pretty normal childhood, and she was just my mom,” Qualley recalls.) After taking an acting class at her then boyfriend’s suggestion, Qualley “just fell in love” with the craft. “A big reason why I quit ballet was that I wasn’t doing it because I loved it anymore; I was just doing it because I wanted to be perfect,” Qualley muses. “Acting is so appealing because imperfections, messiness, and mistakes are often the greatest parts. I think I’m kind of a control freak sometimes, but reckoning with the fact of being out of control is actually great.”

Nowadays, Qualley is based mostly in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood, crashing with Rainey, her musician older sister and “best friend in the whole world.” There’s little overlap between dancing and acting for Qualley, but the mediums work well in opposition: “Ballet is black and white—there’s a right and wrong way to do things—and acting is way more grey. The harder you try, it actually kind of backfires,” Qualley explains, though her rigorous dance background was relevant for Novitiate. “The ballet world has a lot of similarities to young postulates’ experiences and to the convent,” she notes. “There’s discipline and yearning for perfection in both, and you’re following a certain path in order to achieve what you think is perfection.”

This spring, Qualley danced again for the first time in years, in a Spike Jonze-directed Kenzo short film: “After I quit ballet, I didn’t really dance at all, because I was so hard on myself. It was painful to go to class and not be as good as I used to be since I wasn’t training the same way,” she says. The exuberant Kenzo dance sequence starkly contrasts with her classical ballet training. “The point was not to be perfect; it was about allowing yourself to be messy and goofy and fucked up, and it reminds me of what I initially loved about dancing,” Qualley points out, raving over working with Jonze. “He just has this way of making everything feel so spontaneous, alive, fun, and playful, and you can feel that in his movies.” These days, the Qualley sisters take dance classes in L.A. and Margaret gets moving solo, albeit in private. “I spend a lot of time lately in hotels, and if I’m feeling sad or lonely, I’ll put on music and make myself dance around my hotel room and jump on the bed,” Qualley reveals.

She recently starred in the psychological thriller Death Note, and this fall, Qualley shot Adam, a “really tiny movie” that addresses LGBTQ identity politics and activism. Part of the plotline involves “Camp Trans,” a group that protested the exclusion of transgender individuals from the erstwhile Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. “It’s a comedy, and it’s lighthearted and funny for a great portion of the script, but it’s also about stories that really matter,” Qualley explains. Next, Qualley starts filming “another really light story where I play a meth dealer who is prostituted out by her brother,” she says with a laugh. “I just like things that scare me and make feel uncomfortable.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

Girls creators and serial collaborators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner launched Lenny Letter less than two years ago as an intimate home for long reads. The talented duo’s twice-weekly “issues” tackle a breadth of topics through a candid, intelligent, feminist lens. Dunham and Konner explain how personal stories and a commitment to an honest, empowering dialogue have made Lenny a must-read across generations.

How did you come up with the Lenny Letter concept?
Lena Dunham: It really started to feel very, very important that we have a platform to talk that was more than 140 characters, and a way to express ourselves that was not as short-form—and often frustrating—as Twitter.
Jenni Konner: …And not as long and fictional as Girls.
Dunham: Exactly. And there were things we couldn’t touch on on Girls, politically and personally. We also wanted to connect with, and expand on, our [Girls] audience.

Why did a newsletter feel like the right format?
Konner: It felt like the right length, and contained. We could pay enough attention and control it.
Dunham: It’s manageable and personal—we enjoyed that people could connect with it outside of the constant “refresh” culture of moving between windows on a computer. We liked that you could take a moment and really absorb it.

Why does the newsletter concept, which has been around for years, resonate in 2017?
Konner: It feels really intimate. A lot of stories, 80–90 percent of them, are focused on personal narratives. When it goes into your in-box it feels special, and like it’s from a friend.
Dunham: Jenni and I talked a lot about how we wanted it to be in the spirit of our friendship. We constantly share personal stuff, advice, and cultural documents. Jenni has always served as the voice of reason to the Girls cast, so we wanted to create that voice for a newsletter: your older, flawed but delightful sister.

How did you want to distinguish Lenny Letter from existing media brands?
Dunham: We wanted feminism and feminist commentary that wasn’t snarky. There’s a reason we don’t have comments, or any place for people to argue with each other.

Ever considered expanding Lenny Letter into a full-fledged site, comments and all?
Konner: I’m always terrified to say never, but this is the closest I’ll come to saying never.
Dunham: Jenni always says that my gravestone will read, “She read the comments.”

Which publications did you want Lenny’s tone and readership to emulate, to a degree?
Dunham: All my references were Sassy meets George—all from, like, 1994, pre-Internet.
Konner: We saw a hole, so there wasn’t a ton to compare it to when we launched. I mean, there were specific essays we loved in other publications, and the political ideals of Teen Vogue, something like that. But we wanted to fill this void.
Dunham: Gwyneth Paltrow has been incredibly generous with us. Jenni and I both love Goop, and Gwyneth has given us a lot of her time and friendship in building Lenny Letter. She said something in an interview about wanting Goop to be so great that people forget she’s involved; I think about that a lot. I’d like people to forget that it came from the creators of Girls.

Why did you want Lenny to have an unapologetically feminist tone?
Dunham: We both self-identify as feminists and were raised as feminists, and feminism is lifeblood that pumps through Lenny. A lot of T-shirts say today, “Feminism is the radical belief that women are people,” and it’s much more complex and simple than people give it credit for. It informs what we talk about and what we do, just the way feminism informed Girls on a deeper level, even when it wasn’t overt.

How big is the Lenny Letter team currently?
Dunham: People often think there are 15 or 20 people on our team, but we currently have six employees, including us and a CEO. We wanted people who shared our goal, of creating a wealth of personal and political content that makes life feel a little more manageable, but also brought something totally new to our vision. We’re constantly learning from the people we hire.

Has the readership changed since you started Lenny Letter? Any surprise fans?
Dunham: We’re both excited whenever a man tells us he likes something, since we’re so women-focused.

How about unexpected celebrity Lenny loyalists?
Dunham: I got a compliment from Bono; he loves Lenny—it shouldn’t surprise us, because he’s somehow in every country, doing aid while on tour and reading Proust, so, of course, he has time to read everything on the Internet. At first I was like, okay, someone briefed him [on Lenny Letter], but then he referenced a specific article, and I was like, “Well, well, well, Bono!”

How did you get involved with Hearst, and did you have any reservations about working with a huge, corporate publishing company?
Dunham: We really wanted as much reach as we could, that was our dream. Whether it’s connecting with ad or publishing partners, working with big corporations doesn’t scare us because we have confidence in our voice and confidence that these partnerships can bring more to women.

You two have collaborated on many different projects. How is working on Lenny Letter different than, say, Girls?
Konner: Our relationship remains the same, but what’s amazing about Lenny is we really don’t have to micromanage everything. Because of our editors and CEO, it’s incredibly independent. We have a call once a week, but then we can check out and leave them to mind the store.
Dunham: I remember one week when we were working on Girls, I was acting and directing the entire time, and it was just too much, so I decided not to look at the newsletter. It was sent out into the world and I read it at the same time as everybody else, and I was like, “I should do this more often!”

Which particular pieces on Lenny Letter are you proudest of?
Dunham: Jessica Knoll, the author of Luckiest Girl Alive, a great thriller everyone should read, disclosed her experiences as a sexual assault survivor and how it influenced her book [in Lenny Letter]. It’s an incredibly beautiful piece, and The New York Times then profiled her about her experience and what it meant to other survivors. As a sexual assault survivor and a lover of beautiful personal essays, I’m just in awe that we had anything to do with bringing that into the world.
Konner: I loved our Hillary Clinton interview. She showed such a fun playfulness, and she had a really good time doing it.
Dunham: I remember looking at Jenni as we were waiting to meet with Hillary, and I was so scared to go on camera, and I said, “I can’t believe we’re getting to do this together.”

Which contributors are you particularly surprised and excited to have featured?
Dunham: It’s been sort of a surreal list—Jane Fonda, Michelle Obama, Gabourey Sidibe, Alicia Keys, Brie Larson. These amazing women, constantly being so generous with us, is pretty wild.

Who’s on your dream list of future contributors?
Konner: I really want Mary J. Blige. I saw her in concert years ago, and she stopped in the middle of the show to tell women to get their own bank accounts. So I really want her to write about money in the newsletter. That’s a work in progress.
Dunham: If we could get someone into Joni Mitchell’s house to have a conversation, that would be the greatest thing in world. If you want to know what I want for my birthday, Jenni, I would love an invitation to Joni Mitchell’s house.
Konner: I’m already working on your birthday present, and it’s really good.
Dunham: What?! My birthday is really far away, and Jenni always gives great gifts.

Any topics you want Lenny Letter to tackle that haven’t been addressed yet?
Konner: We’re open to everything.
Dunham: We want it to be a full dictionary of experience of what it’s like to be a female-identifying person—that’s why we love historical pieces, fiction pieces, personal pieces, because it’s going to become this awesome encyclopedia of voices.

Have you toyed with the idea of compiling Lenny Letter’s greatest hits into a book?
Konner: Maybe! That’s a good idea.
Dunham: That is. We have our book imprint with Random House, and we just published our first book, Sour Heart, by Jenny Zhang. We have a few books in the works, and some that we’re chasing now. To us, it’s almost like a Lenny Letter library.

How did the idea for a book imprint come about?
Dunham: We were working on Lenny Letter for six months when we started talking about a book imprint. I talked to my editor at Random House, Andy Ward, about how great it would be to do the longest form content—a book—and to champion writers who matter to us.

Have you heard any great anecdotes about how Lenny Letter has impacted readers?
Dunham: I had a really meaningful experience when a woman came up to me on the street to tell me our endometriosis [a disorder where uterus lining tissue grows outside the uterus] newsletter allowed her to self-diagnose. She’d been suffering for years without a name, and how it had given her her life back.

Have you dealt with much criticism, and if so, has any of it surprised you?
Konner: If we have, we don’t know, because we don’t have a comments section, and that’s the whole point of not having a comments section.
Dunham: Every time I do hear criticism of Lenny Letter, it’s usually someone who hasn’t read it, and has opinions about it because I’m involved, or because of Girls. But I’ve had a lot of people tweeting at me, “I hate you, but I like Lenny Letter,” which I always love.

The disco star's four decades in Italy haven't just been a chianti and pasta-fueled idyll.

Amii Stewart shimmied onto the disco scene in the late 1970s in dramatic headpieces and outré outfits. The D.C. native trained professionally as a dancer before arriving in London in the late ‘70s, where she starred in and helped choreograph a Broadway show on the West End. After seeing the show in ‘77, a record producer approached her and asked if she wanted to record. The next year, she released “Knock On Wood,” her hit cover of Eddie Floyd’s 1966 song.

Her gloriously out-there costumes were created by a woman named Miranda in the English countryside: “Everyone would ask who did my costumes, and I wasn’t giving that name up for anything in the world!” Her fantastical looks and hefty headpieces were pioneering at the time. “Cher stole some of my stuff—I came first and she came after,” Stewart says. “But I thought it was the greatest compliment ever, so I wasn’t mad; I was quite pleased.”

Her disco career lasted for a few brief, raucous years. “There were these huge shows, with Tina Turner, Sylvester, Sting and the Police, Boney M., everyone was there—backstage was like a big party, we were so happy to see each other,” Stewart recalls. However, she disliked the genre’s reliance on covers, like her successful version of the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” As she explains, “I didn’t want to get stuck in the disco scene. When you’re labeled like that and the fad is no longer there, you die along with the fad. I didn’t want that to happen to me.”

Click here to read the full story on VMagazine. 

There’s a new player on the plus-size fashion scene, and she knows her demographic very intimately: The Gossip singer Beth Ditto just dropped her namesake fashion line yesterday. 

“I always have an event to go to or something to do, and I don’t have the beautiful privilege of being able to walk into a store and be like, ‘thatdress, that’s the one,'” Ditto tells Refinery29 of the impetus behind starting her own line. “I’m always having to rush around or get creative, get someone to make me something, or wear something old.” 

“I know it sounds like fancy problems — and it is a fancy problem! — but the truth is, if you don’t have the luxury of just walking into a place and finding something you can feel good about buying, that’s made ethically and of extremely high-quality... ” she adds. “There’s just a huge gap: quality, ethics, love, consideration, and passion, because this is [a collection] made by a fat person, for fat people.” 

Read the full story on Refinery29. 

After swapping legal caseloads for fashion shows, this market editor by day thrashes around on the drums at night for NYC’s Vomitface. 

It’s a late summer afternoon in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and block after block there’s brunching, shopping, and day drinking going down. But not for Vomitface—the self-described sludge-pop trio has been practicing for hours in a subterranean studio in preparation for some upcoming high-profile gigs, including their CMJ festival debut this month. The eye can’t help but land on Preetma Singh behind the drums, her bright, grassy-hued strands raked into a high pony, and her ensemble of navy shorts and a matching tee borrowed from the boys (literally). It’s a far cry from her usual getups while on duty as WSJ. Magazine’s market editor, an even farther cry from the suits she donned during her corporate lawyer days. In 2007, the Toronto-bred Singh, then a law student at Vanderbilt, met her future Vomitface bandmates, Tennessee natives and childhood pals Jared Micah (vocals, guitar) and Keller McDivitt (bass), at a JEFF the Brotherhood show. Singh attempted to give Micah her digits: “I wrote my number down wrong on a beer bottle. Very classy,” she recalls. They managed to reconnect “through the wonders of Myspace,” she adds, and have dated ever since, including a long distance stint while the guys were doing experimental noise projects in Nashville, and Singh was “being a lawyer and being miserable” in New York City.

“I did everything right, I went to a good school, and the end result didn’t make me happy,” she says. Successful partners at the firm told her: “If there’s anything else you love, try it before you need the money because you’ve got kids.” So, after two years of lawyering, Singh started a style blog in 2010 called The Working Girl, Esq. An internship at Refinery29 followed, then jobs at Vogue and Marie Claire, all leading up to her current gig as WSJ.’s market editor. Somewhere in there—Singh estimates it was while working as a fashion assistant at Vogue—she saw that Guitar Center was having a deal on drums. “The goal wasn’t to be in a band,” she says about her decision to buy a kit. “But we goofed around, came up with songs, and dug it!”

The less-than-savory band name came about before the band did. “At a party we facetiously, tipsily told someone that if we had a band, we’d name it Vomitface,” says Singh. The moniker stuck. Partly because “it encapsulates us as people—we’re sick of nostalgia and repetitiveness in pop culture,” she says. She smiles before admitting part two: “I get food poisoning quite a lot.”

As one might guess from the name, Vomitface shows are wild, raucous affairs—“You shouldn’t be able to read a book or have a conversation while we’re playing,” says Singh. Her typical stagewear includes sneakers—“to absorb the shock”—and a dress or skirt with bike shorts underneath. “It gets sweaty; it’s hard to look cute playing drums,” she says. But do her daytime cubemates ever make appearances? “They do! And I thought it would be a lot weirder than it is,” she says. “It’s not the type of music they’d usually listen to, but they genuinely have a great time.” Singh’s former Vogue colleagues have also come to shows, and her lawyer pals as well. “Lawyers have a reputation for being square,” she says. “But trust me, lots of them are pretty crazy.”

Since Abbey Lee made her Hollywood debut in Mad Max two years ago, the Aussie talent has racked up an impressive spate of roles.

A familiar face to many in the fashion industry, Abbey Lee made a totally accidental foray into acting a couple of years ago. “It was a freak sort of thing—I was asked to self-tape for Mad Max: Fury Road with no experience or interest in acting, and a few months later, I was on set in Africa,” Lee recounts.

However, it’s a career path for which Lee might have always been destined: “As a child I had a wild, acute imagination and was highly sensitive,” Lee says. “I think I spent my entire childhood edging towards being an actress without fully realizing it, until [Mad Max director] George Miller invited me to take on his epic project. I remember him saying to me, ‘Abbey, are you willing to give up everything for six months and come to Africa with me?’ and it was like something in my gut shifted. My body answered for me.” For the 2015 installment of the dystopian action franchise that made its debut in 1979, she got to work with Charlize Theron. “She’s the embodiment of a woman who has pushed against the grain to find her strength and voice, and it’s inspiring,” Lee enthuses.

Since her first Hollywood film two years ago, the 30-year-old Australian has honed her acting talents along the way with each subsequent project. “I have only a few years of experience, with no formal training, so each set I manage to make it onto, I’m like a deer in headlights,” Lee says. “I find it fascinating what acting can expose about yourself, your capabilities and limits, your relationship to your surrounding environment, and your emotional instability.” In 2016, Lee starred alongside Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon, a horror flick helmed by Drive’s Nicolas Winding Refn about the perilous, cutthroat modeling world. “Elle is a star: She exudes a very electric, youthful energy,” Lee describes. “I don’t think I was born that sweet.”

Read the full article on V Magazine.

Old pals Chloë Sevigny and Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim have been collaborating for six years on Sevigny’s collection for the retailer-and they’re broken bread frequently in the process. Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport joined Sevigny and Leon at Opening Ceremony’s HQ to discuss all sorts of dining and dressing matters.

Originally published in The Daily Front Row magazine, September 2014.

Thanks to the fashion industry’s top set designers, the best runway shows become performance art. Here, three of these talents, Nian Fish, Stefan Beckman and Alexandre de Betak, divulge their essentials and inspirations.

Originally published in Wall Street Journal magazine, March 2019.

These exceptional female artists have amassed devoted fans throughout their decades-long careers thanks to distinctive sounds that continue to captivate.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 110.

Originally published in The Daily Front Row magazine, Issue 111.

Jean-Paul Goude is an O.G. multihyphenate: For decades, the creative force has indelibly impacted the fashion and advertising realms with his work as an illustrator, graphic designer, photographer, and filmmaker for esteemed brands like Chanel, Alaïa, and Hermès, as well as via his creatively fruitful relationship with Grace Jones. He’s also dabbed in lively fare like lensing Kenzo’s riotous, pattern-packed collaboration with H&M in 2016 and reinventing Lacoste’s signature alligator logo. But rejiggering the aesthetic of an entire fashion house is one of the very few roles he hadn’t taken on over the course of his lengthy career-until now, thanks to his recently appointed position as artistic director at Desigual.

Originally published in The Daily Front Row magazine, Issue 111.

Singer-songwriter Moses Sumney crafts his soulful, wistful tracks in precisely the sort of environs his sound portends: as off-the-grid and remote as possible. “I’m most inspired by being in nature, [like] the mountains in North Carolina or Big Bear outside L.A.-those are the places where I wrote most of my album,” he says of his debut LP, Aromanticism, which dropped in September.

Originally published in V Man, Issue 39.

Ross Lynch rose to fame on the Disney Channel’s Austin & Ally, a saccharine tween comedy that wrapped after four seasons in 2016. A year later, he starred as the titular character in My Friend Dahmer, a strikingly different role and his first serious film project.

Originally published in V Man, Issue 39.

The endlessly versatile Sandra Bernhard-actress, stand-up, radio-show host, cabaret singer-had had just about every sort of gig that showbiz offers. But after decades of creating her own variety pack of a career, her role as Nurse Judy on Pose was one that came ready for the tackling: creator Ryan Murphy tailored a Season 1 bottle episode just for Bernhard’s Judy, a nurse in a New York City AIDS ward circa 1988.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 120.

X Shore is the first electric luxury boat to ever cruise the high seas. For a test drive, V follows the Swedish company to the waters of Mallorca. Life vests and Fall/Winter energy advised.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 120.

These rising stars have genre-defying sounds and the ambition to make it big. We’re all ears.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 109.

For nearly two decades, V has shone a spotlight on some of music’s most iconic artists. Here, we hit repeat and catch up on our greatest hits.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 109.

The legend intimately reminisces about his ebullient style journey and getting Guccified.

Originally published in V Magazine, Issue 112.