Photography by Hedi Slimane, Styling by Panos Yiapanis
Issue 17
Autumn/Winter 2009
Kate Moss
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Panos Yiapanis
Issue 17
Autumn/Winter 2009
Katie Holmes
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Yanos Yiapanis
Issue 17
Autumn/Winter 2009
Natalie Portman
Photography by Hedi Slimane, Styling by Panos Yiapanis
Issue 16
Spring/Summer 2009
Tilda Swinton
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Panos Yiapanis
Issue 15
Autumn/Winter 2008
Scarlett Johansson
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 14
Spring/Summer 2008
Uma Thurman
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 13
Autumn/Winter 2007
Julianne Moore
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Styling by Beat Bolliger
Issue 12
Spring/Summer 2007
Christina Ricci
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 11
Autumn/Winter 2006
Kirsten Dunst
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 10
Spring/Summer 2006
Winona Ryder
Photography by Mario Sorrenti, Styling by Katy England
Issue 09
Autumn/Winter 2005
Jodie Foster
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Styling by Venetia Scott
Issue 08
Spring/Summer 2005
Drew Barrymore
Photography by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Styling by Alister Mackie
Issue 07
Autumn/Winter 2004
Natalie Portman
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 06
Spring/Summer 2004
Kate Moss
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 05
Autumn/Winter 2003
Gwyneth Paltrow
Photography by Mario Sorrenti, Styling by Katy England
Issue 04
Spring/Summer 2003
Nicole Kidman
Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Tabitha Simmons
Issue 03
Autumn/Winter 2002
Pamela Anderson
Photography by Mario Sorrenti, Styling by Alister Mackie
Issue 02
Spring/Summer 2002
Seth and Jaclyn Hodes
Photography by Nick Knight, Styling by Katy England
Issue 01
Autumn/Winter 01
Zora and Olivier
Photography by Nick Knight, Styling by Katy England
12 Emerging Designers on How Vivienne Westwood Inspired Them
Speaking in AnOther Magazine Autumn/Winter 2021, a new generation of designers reflected on the mother of punk’s enormous impact on their work, from Charles Jeffrey to Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena
Before she began her career in fashion, half a century ago now, Vivienne Westwood trained as a primary school teacher. It’s a mindset that has informed her work from the outset – occasionally, she still describes herself as a teacher, and has always created clothes that reflect that – to communicate a theory, to educate. Great teachers inspire: through her unparalleled creativity Westwood has tutored entire generations. For more than a decade her focus has been to draw attention to the plight of the planet through her clothes, of course, and also powerful graphics that trace back to her work in the 1970s. Her latest is a pack of playing cards that lays out a strategy to save the world. Across these pages, pieces by Westwood and her former pupil Andreas Kronthaler – today her husband and the creative director of her top-line collection – are joined by a new group of designers whose garments echo her working methods and draw infinite inspiration from her.
“We are looking through the lens of a changing world. If the human race does not turn the telescope around we face mass extinction. Climate change will reach tipping point. I’ve been trying to save the world from climate change since the foundation of Climate Revolution 15 years ago, and now I’m up to Card 37 – back and front – I’m nearly there. I’ve got my message across. We’re already working on it! Follow me” – Vivienne Westwood
Andreas Kronthaler and Vivienne WestwoodPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Inheritance
A new generation of fashion designers on how Vivienne Westwood inspires.
CHARLES JEFFERY
“There’s no denying that Vivienne and Andreas have paved the way for me and my work. I feel like I’m from the same planet as them and have my own little island on it. Matty, too. It’s like we are sending smoke signals to each other and sending ships across the sea, with good tidings.”
MATTY BOVAN
“Growing up I saw the world a bit differently, and I believe Vivienne did too. She doesn’t believe in conformity, and she and Andreas like to push the idea of what is acceptable. That is a great, great thing to do and why their work speaks to so many people world-wide. Vivienne has taught me to truly believe in myself and to gain knowledge of how and where things are made. To question.”
JUNTAE KIM
“For me, her clothes liberate the body. When I first designed menswear, I used to come up against the limitations of what men’s clothes should be. But Vivienne has helped destroy these stereotypes, the idea that certain clothes are only for certain genders and classes. That means freedom.”
MARVIN DESROC
“I love Vivienne’s resilience. I can’t think of one time that she’s bent to the rules of the industry – even the word ‘industry’ can’t be associated with her. When we talk about Vivienne, we talk about art, emotion, design – that’s what I’ve always loved about her. She’s an artist, yet has been able to last in this business without ever compromising who she is. Meanwhile Andreas’s energy and spirit are out of this world. It’s so refreshing to see – I love unconventional men.”
Charley is wearing GARETH WRIGHTON, ATSUKO KUDO and ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Michaela is wearing MICHAELA STARKPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Tom is wearing ALINA ISPAS, VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END, his own jewellery and VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Nicola is wearing VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END, CHOPOVA LOWENA, ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD and LAUREN PERRINPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
“I feel like I’m from the same planet as them and have my own little island on it. Matty, too. It’s like we are sending smoke signals to each other and sending ships across the sea, with good tidings” – Charles Jeffrey
Charley is wearing SS DALEY, FLINT J MCDONALD, PAULA MIHOVILOVIC and ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD. Tom is wearing FLINT J MCDONALD, ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, jewellery as before and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END.Photography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Charley is wearing HASEEB HASSAN, VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, ELISSA POPPY, LAUREN PERRIN and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END. Nicola is wearing MATTY BOVAN, PEBBLE LONDON and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS ENDPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Kyra is wearing CECILY OPHELIA and her own jewelleryPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
B is wearing ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD and ATSUKO KUDO. Taira is wearing ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD.Photography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
CECILY OPHELIA
“Vivienne is the first fashion designer I remember remembering. When I was 16, I found the phone number for the Vivienne Westwood office and rang up, asking if I could come to the studio for a meeting about an internship. I went the next day. Attending fittings with Andreas taught me so much – he is unpredictable yet meticulous, a very good combination. And Vivienne has helped me to recognise the importance of craftsmanship and sustainability. Valuing the process of time serves both as a therapy and a protest against the voracious cycle of the fashion treadmill.”
JULIAN CERRO
“My favourite show is Spring/Summer 1994, Café Society. Kate Moss, topless, licking a Magnum ice cream, wearing the shortest skirt ever, with 18th-century make-up. What more could you want?”
HASEEB HASSAN
“Growing up in Pakistan, I wasn’t really aware of fashion, let alone the idea I could choose it as a career. Vivienne and Andreas have helped me open up and explore ideas while also being unapologetic about my background. For me, studying fashion is going against the grain – Vivienne and Andreas’s work taught me to be myself and to believe in what you do if you feel passionately about it.”
STEVEN STOKEY-DALEY
“Vivienne Westwood represents the characterful unpacking and subversion of the British wardrobe – the art of dressing, of reappropriating content within garments, of reinterpreting that into fashion.”
Sakeema is wearing VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END, ALINA ISPAS and ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Nicola is wearing JUNTAE KIM and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END. Tom is wearing JUNTAE KIM, VIVIENNE WESTWOOD and jewellery as beforePhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Kyra is wearing ASAI, VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END, ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, jewellery as before and MATTY BOVANPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
B is wearing JULIAN CERRO, VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END and ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
“She paved the way for people like me – with courageous moves like opening a store with ‘SEX’ written out the front in giant pink letters. She helped open the door for provocative female designers” – Michaela Stark
Sakeema is wearing MARVIN DESROC, jewellery as before and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS ENDPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Charley is wearing SINÉAD O’DWYER and CHOPOVA LOWENAPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Taira is wearing CHIE KAYAPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Taira is wearing SS DALEY, ASAI, ATSUKO KUDO and ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD. Sakeema is wearing JULIAN CERRO, ALINA ISPAS, CHOPOVA LOWENA, and VIVIENNE WESTWOOD WORLDS END. Charley is wearing GARETH WRIGHTON, ATSUKO KUDO and ASAIPhotography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
A SAI TA
“What’s so special about Vivienne is her spirit, her attitude and the fact that she didn’t come from a traditional fashion-school education – you can see that she plays by her own rules. Vivienne taught me to do me, to speak my mind, to be brave and fearless. Education doesn’t only have to come from school – if anything, you must unlearn what education systems have taught and search wider.”
MICHAELA STARK
“It is, I’m sure, glaringly obvious how much Vivienne has influenced my practice as a designer. She paved the way for people like me – with courageous moves like opening a store with ‘SEX’ written out the front in giant pink letters. She helped open the door for provocative female designers.”
FLINT J MCDONALD
“It’s the appreciation of the past for me, how she translates that to the now. I’ve always been into history and historical garments – the construction and cut of those clothes is so interesting to dissect and play with. Westwood triumphs at that. Playing with British heritage as she and Andreas do is a real turn-on for me. And their appreciation of quality – I’m a sucker for a luscious fabric.”
EMMA CHOPOVA & LAURA LOWENA
“Westwood was a designer we always looked up to as kids. The combination of preferences, punk and historical dress has had a very strong impact on us and has shaped us so much as designers. The DIY attitude inspired us to get into fashion – to just try making stuff without the fear of everything [having to be] perfect.”
Photography by Casper Sejersen, Styling by Ellie Grace Cumming
Hair: Eugene Souleiman at Streeters. Hair for portraits of Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler, and Michaela Stark: Kei Terada at Julian Watson Agency using OUAI. Make-up: Janeen Witherspoon at MA and Talent. Models: B at Idal, Charley Dean Sayers at Premier Model Management, Nicola Dinan at Xdirectn, Tom Goddard at Contact, Kyra Kaur and Taira at Storm Management and Sakeema Peng Crook at Crumb. Casting: Nicola Kast at Webber. Casting assistant: Julia Gilmour. Set design: Amy Stickland at Webber. Digital tech: Nic Bezzina. Digital tech for portraits: Sam Hearn. Photographic assistants: Matt Moran, Bradley Polkinghorne, Sean Morrow and Jack Storer. Styling assistants: Isabella Kavanagh, Ioana Ivan and Cari Lima. Hair assistants: Claire Moore, Massimo Di Stefano and Carlo Avena. Hair assistant for portraits: Takumi Horiwaki. Make-up assistant: Elizabeth Owen Perry. Set-design assistants: Harry Stayt and Molly Marot. Set-design assistant for portraits: Lizzy Gilbert. Production: Artistry.
This article appears in the Autumn/Winter 2021 issue of AnOther Magazine which will be on sale internationally from 7 October 2021. Pre-order a copy here.
Alasdair McLellan’s Teen Horror-Inspired Story for the New Issue of AnOther
For AnOther Magazine Autumn/Winter 2022, Alasdair McLellan and Marie Chaix capture Mila van Eeten and more in a story titled ‘The Geminis’
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine:
Photography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
Mila is wearing a leather bomber jacket by LOEWE. Turtleneck matt jersey bodysuit with integrated heels (underneath, throughout) and soft denim jeans (throughout) by BALENCIAGAPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
Etienne is wearing a hooded denim jacket and coated denim jeans by BALENCIAGA. Long-sleeved vintage cotton top (throughout). And leather moccasins by JACQUEMUSPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
From left: Rubuen is wearing a vintage cotton T-shirt (throughout). Etienne is wearing top as before. His own earrings (throughout)Photography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
Mila is wearing a soft denim top by BALENCIAGA. Bodysuit and jeans as beforePhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
Mila is wearing a leather dress by CHANEL. Bodysuit and jeans as beforePhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Marie Chaix
See the full story in the gallery above.
Hair: Anthony Turner at Streeters. Make-up: Lauren Parsons at Art Partner. Models: Mila van Eeten at Viva Model Management, Etienne Maclaine at Select Models and Rubuen Bilan-Carroll at Supa Model Management. Casting: Piergiorgio Del Moro DM Casting. Photographic assistants: Lex Kembery, Simon Mackinlay and Andrew Edwards. Styling assistants: Arnaud Buisson, Tamara Prince and Letizia Maria Allodi. Hair assistant: John Allan. Make-up assistant: Eddy Liu. Production: Art Partner. Production assistant: Abbie Cockerell
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale internationally now. Buy a copy here.
John Galliano on the Personal Meaning of Maison Margiela’s Cinema Inferno
In the new issue of AnOther Magazine, John Galliano talks to Susannah Frankel about returning to the stage with the Maison Margiela’s Autumn/Winter 2022 Artisanal collection – and the show of the season
Susannah Frankel: Why did you choose to show in this format? To stage a play?
John Galliano: I was listening to my instinct, Susannah. Following the lockdown period, which pushed us all to investigate the possibilities of digital formats, I sensed a profound desire for physicality. But after everything we experienced during the pandemic – our collective discoveries and evolvements – it didn’t seem relevant to return to a runway. I wanted to create a proposal informed by the investigations made through our filmic work with Olivier Dahan and Nick Knight, a multidisciplinary format that would reflect the connectivity for which we all hanker, whether we’re on the front row of a show or watching it on a screen. Cinema Inferno was my way of embracing the cultures of fashion, performance and the virtual world through a construct at once digital and physical. It transcended the traditions of a play, but because geography required a space in central Paris, we chose to present it in a theatre.
SF: In some ways, a theatre with an audience is a more extreme return to physicality than a traditional runway show. Was the idea a reaction to not having shown physically for more than two years?
JG: If it were a reaction to the events of the past two years, it was a yearning to stay on the path of exploration that the lockdown period instigated. It didn’t feel natural to ignore those discoveries and return to what we once knew. Leave those runway glasses – those one-way glasses – at the door. Theatre played a part in that transition, but my intention wasn’t simply to stage a play. With Cinema Inferno I wanted to embrace and unite many different cultures and formats and propose a different way of seeing. It was narrative storytelling presented on a stage and captured in film but revealing – and integrating – all the makings and mechanics of theatre and filmmaking in a way true to the genetics of Maison Margiela.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John Galliano
SF: Although at Margiela, on the runway, the theatre has principally been in the clothes. You have always been interested in a theatrical element and over the past two years you have worked with the narrative of film. Why does that interest you? Why, perhaps, is the traditional fashion-show format not enough?
JG: The two are in symbiosis. They have been intrinsically linked from the day I left school. More than a theatrical element, it is a narrative approach – a way of mapping out the soul of a collection to guide one’s clarity of vision. To me, it’s instinctive. Dressmaking is in dialogue with storytelling and the two invigorate each other. In the past, the narratives I’ve worked with have unfolded on the runway, but at this moment in time, I felt from my surroundings a longing for a greater connectivity.
SF: How did you decide to collaborate with the award-winning theatre company Imitating the Dog?
JG: Over the past year, Kevin Macdonald has been directing a documentary about me. During one of our conversations he mentioned Imitating the Dog. Shortly afterwards, Alexis [Roche, Galliano’s partner] and I found out that the troupe was staging Dracula in Schaffhausen [in northern Switzerland], so we immediately jumped on a plane to see it. I was taken by their approach, and shortly afterwards I met with [Imitating the Dog’s co-artistic director] Andrew Quick to discuss my early ideas for the Artisanal show. It evolved into nearly 12 months of development, with rehearsals in Leeds with the principal cast before we relocated to Paris with the full ensemble.
SF: People so often talk about a multidisciplinary approach to art and craft now. In some ways it characterises this age. How does the reach – and indeed any limitations – brought about by working in collaboration with artists from a different medium inspire you? Is it about employing a fresh approach to create something new?
JG: Fashion is driven by ideas and previously unexplored proposals, which are brought to life through collaborative efforts. Whether it’s the artisans in the ateliers, the muses, the hair and make-up teams, or the artists and craftspeople who help to build and frame those ideas, it is always inspiring to work with people with expertise different from your own.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
“In my process, I tap into emotions to create memories. It generates an intrinsic link between dressmaking and storytelling, which becomes the foundation for my approach to haute couture” – John Galliano
SF: There is something very new, too, about the seamless fusion of the elite – the limited number of people attending a fashion show or play – with the democratic, in other words showing to anyone who would like to watch online at the same time. How and why does that interest you?
JG: You always hope that all your audiences will be able to connect with what you create. This is what shapes the community that surrounds the maison, whether they’re sitting on the physical or virtual rows. In the digital age, footage from fashion shows new and old has become accessible with the tap of a finger. This evolution opens the doors to so many possibilities when it comes to formats and presentations. It’s something that invigorates me.
SF: How much does the story dictate the clothes and vice versa? Should clothes always tell a story?
JG: The story never dictates the clothes. In my process, I tap into emotions to create memories. It generates an intrinsic link between dressmaking and storytelling, which becomes the foundation for my approach to haute couture.
SF: And what is the story here?
JG: It is a story centred around the abuse of power. We follow our two protagonists, Hen and Count, who are on the run from events that are revealed to the audience through flashbacks and cinematic dream sequences. Each of these scenes portrays a different depiction of the abuse of power in patriarchal society, while also touching on experiences, emotions and situations rooted in fundamental fears we all can relate to.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
SF: There are so many echoes from the past in this performance – your professional past but also perhaps your personal past. Can you talk about that?
JG: As a dressmaker I am impacted by my own personal experiences, past and present, as well as the realities that unfold before my eyes. All these impressions are innately expressed in what I create, so if there are autobiographical elements to the story it’s because it’s driven by instinct.
SF: It feels all the more personal because of the reimagination of so many of your obsessions – Blanche DuBois, The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Pierrette, teddy boys, gunslingers, sailors, wicked stepmothers, zombies, nurses ... What is it about these characters that makes you want to revisit them?
JG: All these characters – these genres, these creations – exist within me. They are founded in memories and impressions that I express consciously or perhaps subconsciously. Sometimes they are communicated more heedfully than others, but they are always a part of my imagination.
SF: They are all, in entirely different ways, representative of otherness. Are you drawn to otherness?
JG: I am interested in spirituality and in finding ways of tapping into spirituality. It connects with ideas of instinctiveness and awareness, which are motivations and values I continue to draw on and express through my work at the maison.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
“The muses – the super-muses – are deeply personal choices. Their characters feed into the narrative and make it come to life during the creative process as well as the unveiling” – John Galliano
SF: You have always put one look on one model – you are one of the few designers to do that – which of course directs the emphasis on to character. Do you know who will wear the clothes while you are designing them?
JG: Yes, imagining which muse will be wearing the expression you’re working on often feeds into the symbiosis between dressmaking and storytelling.
SF: Can we talk about the casting, the amazing mix of supermodels you have cast in the past and your current casting ...
JG: The muses – the super-muses – are deeply personal choices. Their characters feed into the narrative and make it come to life during the creative process as well as the unveiling. They carry the shapes and volumes with authority. You develop a shorthand with them, a silent tongue through which you can communicate a silhouette through body language and gestures. I was taken with the dedication and craft of Leon Dame and Lulu Tenney and all the other muses who took part in Cinema Inferno. And I was happy to invite back the muses who have been there for pivotal points in my career and who have, likewise, actively taken part in my creative processes. They embody the story and inspire me to create. They are our community. Let’s hear it for the super-muses!
SF: Why is the past important to inform the present and the future?
JG: The memory of something leaves a trace of information, of know-how, of knowledge. I think all those things are integral to building a maison, or anything else for that matter.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
SF: Why did you choose to set the story in Southwestern US in the mid-Sixties? Why is that period interesting for you?
JG: The genre draws on literature and film related to the southern gothic style, which has its own associations when it comes to geography and time, but it isn’t about a specific period as much as it is a loop narrative that really transcends time. At the end of the story, Count and Hen realise they are stuck in an eternal loop, forever destined to relive the horrors of their past. Setting the story in the Arizona desert was a fragment of my own memory.
SF: Can we talk about the extraordinary sense of colour – canary yellow and violet, pale jade and blood red, coral and pistachio. Where does that come from, do you think? Is it something you are born with?
JG: The palette was informed by the work of Andrew Wyeth, a 20th-century realist who portrayed the American heartland. It triggered my own recollections of travelling through this dark, poetic scenery. In the flashbacks and dream sequences, of course, that changes. Those colours came from the realm of cinema.
SF: The guns, the blood, the sexual abuse, the alcohol ... In many ways it is all about taboos. We have talked before about the fact that there isn’t – and shouldn’t be – anything politically correct, or even political, about great fashion. Do you still believe that?
JG: This is make-believe, not reality. But to me these elements are not taboo. I believe we should have the ability to bring problems to the surface and face the world with consciousness and awareness. The imagery you mention is founded in concerns that are fundamentally challenging society today. The issue of gun violence has become a constant presence in our lives, and fashion is a reflection of our surroundings. Art evokes emotion. Only when things are brought to the surface can change begin to occur.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
All clothing by Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
“It’s true that I always choose to amplify the truth in the matter. That’s important to me” – John Galliano
SF: Of course all the above is treated in a deliberately plastic way but still ... It feels brave in the current climate.
JG: I can only say that it comes from the heart, Susannah.
SF: You are so brave, always. Where do you get that from, do you think? And why is it important to be brave?
JG: It’s true that I always choose to amplify the truth in the matter. That’s important to me. But I wouldn’t relate the motifs of Cinema Inferno to taboo-breaking bravery because I don’t think they are, or should be, taboo. It’s a piece that reflects on patriarchal society’s many abuses of power through dressmaking and storytelling, amplifying – or highlighting – very real circumstances and conditions that affect us all. I think it’s important that we try to be conscious about these issues rather than labelling them as taboo.
SF: In the end, this performance is a love story. A romance. And the clothes are so, so romantic. Again, where does that come from?
JG: If the story is romantic, it’s a decidedly dark romance. I think the love story of Hen and Count is more a framework for the themes that play out within it – traumas of the past, the abuse of power, escape and the inescapable. Every motif is expressed within the garments and accessories themselves, in the power cut of the Spectral Cowboy looks – where I evoke the memory of Geneva bands [formal neckwear worn by lawyers and members of the clergy] – or the classic haute couture volumes imbued with the grammar of surgical scrubs, or different techniques applied to the prom and communal looks – such as essorage ageing and splicing – to evoke a sense of the unsettling. Where does it come from? From a desire to connect with the consciousness.
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
All clothing Maison Margiela Artisanal designed by John GallianoPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Show creative director: John Galliano. Show artistic director: Alexis Roche. Adapted for stage by Imitating the Dog. Hair: Eugene Souleiman at Streeters. Make-up: Dame Pat McGrath. Manicure: Elsa Deslandes at Majeureprod Agency. Muses: Konrad Bauer, Malick Bodian, Jan Krivdic and Thomas Riguelle at Success Models, Frederic Bittner, Peter Frackowiak and Moritz Thoma at Tomorrow Is Another Day, Kit Butler at Bananas Models, Valentine Charrasse, Anna Cleveland and Olga Sherer at Select Models, Elise Crombez, Karlie Kloss and Mona Tougaard at Elite Models, Leon Dame at Viva London, Karen Elson at CAA Fashion, Beauise Ferwerda at Platform Agency, Mateen Ismail at The Claw Models, Kate McNamara at Premium Models, Hannah Motler, Puck Schrover, Lulu Tenney and Caroline Trentini at Ford Models, Sherry Shi at IMG Models, Adrians Smats at The Bro Models and Amber Valletta at Women Management. Casting: Jess Hallett at Streeters. Photographic assistant: Romain Dubus. Post-production: Stéphane Virlogeux
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale internationally now. Buy a copy here.
Rei Kawakubo on Black Roses and the Importance of Freedom
The Comme des Garçons designer talks to Susannah Frankel about her Autumn/Winter 2022 collection and wanting her clothes to speak for themselves
Susannah Frankel: Why did you choose to reference black roses in this collection?
Rei Kawakubo: As a symbol of freedom.
SF: Is there any significance to the fact that, in nature, true black roses don’t exist?
RK: The strength of the symbol lies in the very fact of its non-existence.
SF: Black roses are a symbol of mourning but also of anarchy. These are two recurrent themes in your work. Why?
RK: Always in an unreasonable world I feel anger at life.
Mica is wearing a long waisted polyester and wool jacket, nylon lace dress and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyurethane and fabric headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
SF: You have always been so passionate about freedom. Can you explain why?
RK: I need freedom to be myself.
SF: Do you feel that you would look at the notion of freedom differently if you were a man?
RK: Don’t understand the question.
SF: Do you feel that things have changed for women, that they are more free now?
RK: Don’t understand the question.
Photography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Rachel is wearing a voluminous wool jacket, nylon leggings and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyurethane and fabric headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Photography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Mica is wearing a multilayered polyurethane and polyester jacket, polyester wig and synthetic logo socks by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyurethane headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONS. And synthetic platform trainers by SALOMON X COMME DES GARÇONPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
SF: A fashion show can be banal, it can also be an expression of extreme emotion, provoking equally extreme reactions in the people watching it. Is it important to you to provoke, to express emotion and to cause an emotional reaction in others? Is that why a live show is important to you?
RK: The point of the live show is for people to see the clothes in real life. It is part of the business.
SF: Why is fashion important?
RK: It’s one way to express oneself.
SF: It is only recently that Comme des Garçons has started sending out notes immediately following collections. Is that to stop people like me sending you questions like these? Are you interested in talking about your work?
RK: I thought it was helpful to tell the theme to a few select journalists. And as you know, I don’t like talking about my work. I want people only to look at the clothes and feel something.
Luke is wearing a polyester headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Luke is wearing a long shaped wool and polyester jacket and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyester headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Photography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
SF: Our issue theme this time is Obsessed/Possessed. There’s a fine line between the two words. What are your obsessions and what does the word ‘possessed’ mean to you?
RK: I don’t have obsessions and don’t feel possessed. I just have never changed my sense of values about how I make clothes.
SF: You work in an essentially commercial industry, where possessions – with a slightly different meaning – are central. But how important are material possessions to you?
RK: I am not interested in owning anything.
SF: You have had huge influence – over other fashion designers and, more broadly, over what people wear. Do you feel a sense of pride, or if you don’t like the word ‘pride’, at least achievement?
RK: I cannot answer because it is not true.
Mica is wearing a multilayered polyurethane and polyester jacket and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyurethane headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Luke is wearing a long shaped wool and polyester jacket and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyester headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Jules is wearing a long wool jacket with tubes, wool dress and polyester wig by COMME DES GARÇONS. Polyester headpiece by GARY CARD for COMME DES GARÇONSPhotography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Photography by Harley Weir, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Hair: Shiori Takahashi at Streeters using WELLA PROFESSIONALS. Make-up: Thomas de Kluyver at Art Partner using GUCCI BEAUTY. Models: Jules Volfu at XDirectn, Mina Serrano at The Hive Management, Mica Kendall at Milk Management and Rachael Carruthers and Luke Clod at Storm Management. Casting: Julia Lange at Artistry. Set design: Alice Kirkpatrick at Streeters. Manicure: Lauren Michelle Pires at Future Rep. Digital tech: Jeanne Buchi. Lighting: Alexa Horgan. Laser operator: Mark Randall. Photographic assistants: Joe Reddy, Charlotte Ellis and Tamibé Bourdanné. Styling assistants: Isabella Damazio and Roshni Rai. Hair assistants: Yuri Kato and Cher Savoy. Make-up assistants: Abbie Nourse and Josh Bart. Manicure assistant: Amy Thomas. Casting assistant: Anna Pkhakadze. Set build: Tommy Aitcheson, Toby Morrison and Tris King. Set-design assistants: Columbia Williams and Sophia Wilcox. Printing: Sarah England. Production: Partner Films. Post-production: Output.
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale internationally now. Buy a copy here.
Collier Schorr Captures a Diverse Cast of New York Figures
In AnOther Magazine Autumn/Winter 2022, Collier Schorr presents a portfolio of artists, students, families and friends wearing jewellery by Tiffany & Co
This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine:
Owen Ley, 21, model and studentOwen is wearing a Tiffany Lock bangle in gold, Return to Tiffany wide cuff in sterling silver and Elsa Peretti mesh scarf necklace in sterling silver by TIFFANY & CO. Photography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Parker Kit Hill, 26, artist. Parker is wearing his own clothing. Tiffany HardWear link earring in sterling silver, Tiffany HardWear graduated link earring in sterling silver and Tiffany HardWear wrap necklace in sterling silver by TIFFANY & COPhotography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Aya Brown, 26, painter. Aya is wearing her own T-shirt. Tiffany HardWear wrap bracelet in sterling silver, Tiffany T T1 ring in white gold with diamonds, Tiffany HardWear graduated link earring in sterling silver and Elsa Peretti Aegean necklace insterling silver by TIFFANY & CO. Photography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Dara Allen, 30, stylist and model. Dara is wearing stylist’s own shirt, tie and belt. Leather trousers by HELMUT LANG. And Tiffany HardWear wrap bracelet in sterling silver, Tiffany HardWear link bracelet in 18-carat white gold with diamonds andTiffany Lock bangle in gold with diamonds by TIFFANY & CO. Photography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Angel Zinovieff, 39, artist. Angel is wearing her own clothing. Tiffany HardWear graduated link necklace in sterling silver by TIFFANY & COPhotography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Capri Jones, 24, model. Main: Capri is wearing stylist’s own track pants. Inset: Tiffany T T1 hoop earring in white gold with diamonds and Return to Tiffany heart tag necklace in sterling silver by Tiffany & Co.Photography by Collier Schorr, Styling by Katie Burnett
Hair: Mustafa Yanaz at Art and Commerce using ORIBE. Make-up: Yumi Lee at Streeters using CHANEL. Models: Dara Allen at Heroes Models, Aya Brown, George and Nicole Eisenman, Arta Gee at APM Models, Vas Halastaras at Stetts Model Management, Parker Kit Hill at IMG Models, Capri Jones, Joaquin and Santiago Knepp, Owen Ley at Ricky Michiels, Dede Mansro at Next Models New York, Bako Seville, Orion Sun and Angel Zinovieff. Casting: Nicola Kast. Digital tech: Jarrod Turner. Lighting: Ari Sadok. Photographic assistant: Dylan Garcia. Video: Steven Rico. Styling assistants: Shant Alvandyan, Alex Hall and Sage Johnson. Hair assistant: Karen Zamor. Make-up assistant: Yui Sakamoto. Production: Jemma Hinkly at Artist Commissions. Post-production: Two Three Two.
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale internationally now. Buy a copy here.
How Ana de Armas Became the Most Famous Woman in the World
In an interview with Hannah Lack, de Armas discusses playing Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s much anticipated adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde, alongside her own fractious relationship with celebrity
The deluge of doorstop biographies, tell-all memoirs, rumour and conspiracy theory dedicated to the riddle of Marilyn Monroe’s life has never conclusively solved it.
But we know where it ends: in Brentwood, Los Angeles, on 4 August 1962, in a scantily furnished hideaway with a kidney-shaped pool, a clutter of pill bottles in the bedroom and listening devices planted in the walls. The star was buried in a peppermint-green Emilio Pucci dress four days later, and today her marble crypt is regularly covered in lipstick kisses from fans born long after her premature death. Ana de Armas made a pilgrimage to this quiet corner of Westwood Village Memorial Park on the day she began shooting Blonde, Andrew Dominik’s visceral, heart wrenching fictionalisation of the screen idol’s turbulent life. “We got this big card and everyone in the crew wrote a message to her,” de Armas says as we find a table in the restaurant of a downtown Manhattan hotel on a washed-blue summer morning. “Then we went to the cemetery and put it on her grave. We were asking for permission in a way. Everyone felt a huge responsibility, and we were very aware of the side of the story we were going to tell – the story of Norma Jeane, the person behind this character, Marilyn Monroe. Who was she really?”
For more than 15 years, de Armas has sought roles that swerve the domestic and push her outside her comfort zone.The 34-year-old Cuban-Spanish actor has played intrepid spies and femme fatales, a Dominican sex worker fighting for her life, even a hologram glowing in a neon-drenched, smog-choked dystopia. But it’s hard to imagine a more demanding role than the one Dominik offered her in 2018 – on Valentine’s Day, as it happened. Five years on from the #MeToo watershed, Blonde is an entirely 21st-century take on a 20th-century icon, a confrontational reckoning with the pitch-black stories of Monroe’s treatment by the Hollywood meat grinder. In many ways de Armas’s task was to play not one person but two: the clunkily named Norma Jeane Mortensen, the product of a traumatic and rootless childhood in multiple foster homes across the sprawl of Los Angeles County, and her alter ego Marilyn Monroe, the siren with the ingeniously murmurous moniker who swallowed her up.
Never mind the daunting logistics of stepping into the teetering Ferragamos of Hollywood’s still-undimmed goddess, whose grip on our collective dreamlife – and continued bankability – reached another apex this year when a Warhol portrait of her sold for $195 million. The hours of experimenting with fire engine-red lipsticks and wigs in platinum shades, the months studying Monroe’s swaying walk and megawatt smile might not have amounted to much without one, impossible-to-fake ingredient that happily de Armas has in abundance: the kind of charisma that changes the weather of a scene when she steps into it. Monroe’s own, strange, mercurial talent was legendary, rendering directors infuriated by her pathological lateness and inability to memorise lines awestruck by the alchemy she could work on camera. (Her acting coach Lee Strasberg named only Marlon Brando as having equal gifts.) De Armas’s indefatigable work ethic has little in common with the reported chaos of Monroe’s, but that internal light bulb is something they share. There is an electrifying moment in Blonde when a panic-stricken Norma Jeane is painted and powdered by her make-up artist to coax her bombshell persona from hiding. When the icon emerges from the depths of a dressing-room mirror – heavy-lidded eyes, candy floss hair, jingle-bell laugh – it’s like a match being struck. “She would shine from within,” says de Armas, who is looking pretty luminescent herself today, in a vanilla-coloured dress and loafers, her usually dark hair long and blonde, her eyes an impossible-to-pinpoint shade of both honey and green. Over the next two hours, as waiters come and go with grapefruit juice and coffee, it becomes clear that the months she spent inhabiting Monroe’s cryptic, interlocking selves still deeply affect her. “The more famous Marilyn became, the more invisible Norma Jeane became – Norma was this person no one ever actually met,” she begins. “And Marilyn was someone even she herself talked about in the third person. In some ways Marilyn saved her, gave her a life, but at the same time she became her prison.”
That cavernous split between public and private self is the focus of Blonde – “The story of an unloved and unwanted child who became the world’s most wanted woman,” as Dominik has put it. The director is known for layered explorations into male violence and its consequences, plumbing the psychological waters of gangsters, murderers and outlaws. His 2007 feature, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, shattered the myth of the Wild West and its cartoonish stereotypes, showing bloodshed that was blunt, grisly and inglorious. James was something of a celebrity too – the subject of breathless newspaper headlines and dime-store novels, who, like Monroe, was described as stopping time when he walked into a room. If that film questioned America’s preference for legend over history, Dominik’s latest, produced by Brad Pitt’s company Plan B, puts the myth of the screen goddess in its sights, peeling back its glittering surface to reveal the unspeakable truths that might lurk beneath. “It’s about the things we haven’t seen, the moments when the cameras aren’t flashing or rolling, when Marilyn is not ‘on’,” de Armas says. “It’s fiction. We don’t have proof this happened. But it fills the gaps in the things we already know with a version of events that we should at least consider.”
Traditional biopics might chronicle dates and milestones, but they can fall flat in capturing the messy, nebulous texture of internal lives. Based closely on Joyce Carol Oates’s masterful, Pulitzer-nominated novel of the same name, which imagined Monroe’s life as a macabre fairy tale of cursed princesses and gold-spinning Rumpelstiltskins, Blonde is more spectacular hallucination than faithful record. It mixes pieces of undisputed fact with hearsay to conjure a disorientating hall of mirrors. Much like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it drills into its protagonist’s subconscious and into the psyche of the City of Angels, digging beneath the chromed convertibles and plush leather booths to reveal a nightmarish underworld of reptilian moguls, carnivorous press and vampiric doctors all too generous with their prescriptions. “A place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul,” as Monroe herself once said. The story unfolds like a fever dream, from a childhood gripped by her mother’s frightening mental illness (a film-negative cutter on the fringes of Hollywood, Gladys was committed to an asylum when Monroe was eight; she never knew her father) to her insomniac final years, thoughts muddied by a glossary of chemical substances. Telephones shriek, flashbulbs splinter, the mouths of ghost eyed paparazzi stretch to monstrous proportions and a febrile soundtrack courtesy of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis only deepens the gnawing sense of dread. “So, this is a horror movie, right?” de Armas said, only half-joking, the first time she met Dominik to discuss the role.
For the director, Blonde has been a decade-long obsession: he began writing the script in 2008. Since then, potential Marilyns have come and gone – Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts included – but when financing finally aligned with Dominik’s vision, it was de Armas he wanted, no matter her Cuban accent. “It was pretty surreal I even got asked to audition, but that just shows how progressive Andrew is,” she says of the slice of history she’s making as a Latinx actor playing the most all-American of idols. “I grew up watching everything from Titanic to The Terminator, but I always knew that reality was so far from my reality. Kids in the US, they believe they can be princesses because you can buy a princess dress and a princess crown and become one. I never had that. I didn’t even know what an apple tasted like. Cuban actors were more relatable to me – Daisy Granados, Isabel Santos, Verónica Lynn – those were the actors I looked up to. I thought I’d be doing that, not Marilyn. But of course I went for it, because I love challenges, and I knew that emotionally I could get there. I didn’t know if the hair, the make-up would, but I understood what we were trying to say. Andrew called me after the audition and said, ‘It’s you. It has to be you.’ But then we had to convince everybody else.”
Ana is wearing an acetate and viscose pompom top by JW ANDERSON. Nylon tights by WOLFORDPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Convincing everybody else translated to months of work with a dialogue coach to capture Monroe’s breathy, marshmallowy voice, itself a creation by the star to overcome a stammer. “It just wasn’t working when I tried to imitate the sound or the pitch,” de Armas says. “Marilyn’s voice, her expressions, were a consequence of the speech classes she took herself, of her insecurities, of her not having any boundaries and letting people in, of playing this part of having to be rescued all the time. So I had to know what she was thinking and feeling every time. Because the way she rounded her lips for the ‘O’s, or how much of her lower teeth she would show, what her eyebrows were doing, all these expressions were a consequence of Marilyn in survival mode. They were tricks that she was pulling in desperate circumstances.”
“The whole [acting] process was overwhelming for me. Most of the time I thought I was doing it wrong. I was thinking, what are these American actors thinking of me?” – Ana de Armas
To climb inside her character’s head, de Armas devoured a cornucopia of written material: Oates’s immense novel, of course, each page read and reread two or three times, but also anything that offered a glimpse of Monroe’s energy off-duty – a favourite was Truman Capote’s gossipy jewel of a story, A Beautiful Child. Meanwhile, Dominik created a 750-page bible of Monroe photographs that mapped every emotion he wanted to conjure, scene by scene. Blonde is built on a trove of that iconography, much of it burned into our collective imaginations, stretching from early cheesecake pin-ups to Life magazine spreads to paparazzi shots – all while hypothesising what it might have felt like to be the mortal woman behind that mythical projection. “Almost the entire movie exists in photographs we were either recreating or referencing,” de Armas says.
“Almost every scene starts or ends exactly like an existing photograph.” The recreations are breathtaking, switching formats or from monochrome to colour depending on the source. Dominik was fetishistic about the minutiae, commissioning exact reproductions of Monroe’s outfits – more than 100 wardrobe changes – tailored to the last stitch. “It gave me goosebumps,” de Armas says, “and changed everything about the way I moved and felt. Andrew never stopped filming, so he dressed the sound person, the prop guy, my dialect coach, all in period costume too, so the camera could follow me anywhere. And anywhere I turned was ready to be filmed because we were shooting in her real houses.” Those homes include the peeling apartment block a young Norma Jeane lived in for a time with her mother; the orphanage on North El Centro Avenue with its fabled view of RKO studio’s lightning-bolt sign, which flashed through the night like a siren song during her two years there; and the final, hacienda-style home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, the modest and only house Monroe bought, at a time when studio magnates filled their gabled mansions with shrieking peacocks and priceless art. “It was a full immersion in her world, in LA, in those studios – spooky and beautiful,” de Armas says. “Andrew loves actors to improvise, so a lot of the time he was on his knees beside me and I was just reacting to what was happening around me.”
Moulded leather dress by LOEWEPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
When it came to replicating some of Monroe’s most indelible performances, though – including the moment a Manhattan subway breeze meets her white cocktail dress in The Seven Year Itch, and a snippet from Some Like It Hot – there was no straying from the script. De Armas is chillingly good in scenes that left her nowhere to hide. “Andrew had two monitors, the real Marilyn in the scene and me. And everything, every angle, had to be exactly the same. So that was me watching these films hundreds and hundreds of times.” In each recreation, the screen fantasy is stripped away to imagine its fallout. We see Joe DiMaggio’s violent rage, fuelled by the leering crowd who gather to watch his wife’s white dress fly into film history (the couple divorced soon after). And, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ effervescent musical number Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, a take is cut short by Monroe’s screams of anguish – she’s hustled into a dressing room and subdued with a needle. It’s well documented the actor suffered from paralysing stage fright during the making of that Howard Hawks film; on the set of Blonde, de Armas faced down her own spectres of self doubt. “I experienced a lot of fear and insecurity,” she says. “I felt in a very vulnerable position. Not just in specific difficult scenes – the whole process was overwhelming for me. Most of the time I thought I was doing it wrong. I was thinking, what are these American actors thinking of me? They know this person better than me, they’ve grown up with her. What are they thinking about my accent? Andrew could sense that discomfort and right away he told me, ‘That’s how she felt. Embrace it.’ She was feeling insecure and unprepared and judged and undervalued all the time. So I had to trust my emotions were adding to the layers.”
This year, a DNA test of a strand of Monroe’s hair indicated her father was Charles Stanley Gifford, her mother’s colleague at Consolidated Film Industries in Los Angeles. But during Monroe’s lifetime he was a blank space that bequeathed her a bottomless well of unfulfilled need. At first, de Armas struggled with Monroe’s inability to set boundaries between herself and others, finding her own instincts racing in the opposite direction. “In some early scenes I played it way too strong,” she says. “I got defensive and angry and Andrew said, ‘You’re not allowed to get angry. Ever. Anger is not something Norma can afford.’ Well, can you imagine what that does to a person? At its heart the movie is about her looking for an absent father. Part of the reason I think she became Marilyn Monroe was to be so visible there’s no way he could not find her. You see how a childhood of feeling unloved and unwanted led her to need love, attention, need someone with her always. So I thought, OK, if I can’t get angry, what are my options? How else can I survive? And I started to explore all these other feelings.”
If it was her childhood that set Monroe up for destruction, Hollywood swiftly saw to the rest. Both Oates’s book and Dominik’s film chart her vertiginous ascent as coming with an obligation to the casting couch. “I met them all,” Monroe wrote in her unfinished memoir, My Story. “Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you could get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes – an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” In Blonde, men treat her like a sexual party favour: there are harrowing scenes of assault by a sadistic tycoon and a certain doomed president. Those scenes, and a torturous abortion (it’s never been established she had one), are evidently the cause of tussles over the film’s edit, and its eventual NC-17 rating. De Armas is unflinching in her defence of them: “We tried to show the fight she had to put up, not just to be successful, but to survive,” she says. “What she went through was dark. So dark. When you know that, fuck, I love her more. So the whole point is not bringing down the myth, the point is humanising this icon and making her real, a real woman going through all these different kinds of abuses and situations. And as a woman today I can easily understand how you could find yourself in that situation. So, yes, there are scenes that are hard to watch. But I don’t think this movie has anything sensational or exploitative or gratuitous in it. In many of the scenes people are talking about, you don’t actually see anything. You just know what is happening and that it’s coming from a place of zero love. I do think the audience will feel uncomfortable – because she is uncomfortable. When she feels dirty, you feel that the scene is dirty. It’s all in the way it makes you feel.”
Halterneck washed viscose dress and leather pumps by BOTTEGA VENETA. Necklace in platinum and 18-carat gold with diamonds by TIFFANY & COPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
When Oates’s novel was published in 2000, it was feted for its rich imagining of Monroe’s inner world and its excoriation of the patriarchal society that snuffed her out. It also drew antipathy from those who saw it as another exploitation of a woman who has become more property than person. (See Kim Kardashian’s controversial Met Gala photo opportunity in the crystal-scattered nude dress Monroe wore to serenade JFK.) Blonde the film might prove as divisive as the book, but post #MeToo, its unvarnished take feels more relevant than the kind of melancholy tristesse so often attached to tellings of Monroe’s story. For her part, Oates has championed the film, describing it as “… startling, brilliant, very disturbing and [perhaps most surprisingly] an utterly ‘feminist’ interpretation … ”
“I was thinking of her so much, some days I would go home and have dinner and as I was washing the dishes I would just start sobbing, crying and crying, because I had this terrible feeling” – Ana de Armas
“And absolutely, I agree with her,” de Armas nods. “Inspiration is a very different thing from taking. If there’s a reason she’s still not resting, it’s that she’s been taken from so much. I knew as soon as I met Andrew that he was going to take care of her. So for the film to go places like the point of view of the abortion, a depressed mother and how a child deals with that, the desire of all these men over Marilyn, the way they look at her like meat – like a room service delivery – and, yes, the way she allows herself to fall in love and be disappointed again, it’s unapologetic and brave and feminist. Andrew shows pain and nudity and vulnerability and he doesn’t sugar-coat it. I’ve been told by people, oh my gosh this scene is so long! And I think, well, yes, and now you can imagine what she was feeling.”
De Armas isn’t a method actor, but grappling with that darkness inevitably spilled into her life off set; the experience still seems raw. “Don’t get me wrong, I had so much fun. I wasn’t by any means in character for nine weeks, not between takes, not in my lunch break. I was Ana,” she says. “But emotionally? The weight of it stayed with me for sure. There was no way to unplug because I’d get home and study for the next day and then Andrew was on the phone until midnight. I would go to sleep and dream I had long conversations with her, or little things – like once we were choosing which colour vase we’d put flowers in. I don’t want it to seem like I’m saying, ‘Marilyn and I were connected’ – not at all. But I was thinking of her so much, some days I would go home and have dinner and as I was washing the dishes I would just start sobbing, crying and crying, because I had this terrible feeling – I knew I couldn’t fix it.”
Ribbed wool crew-neck jumper by LOUIS VUITTON. Tiffany Victoria mixed cluster drop earrings in platinum with diamonds and Tiffany & Co Schlumberger Fleurage Stitches bracelet in platinum and 18-carat gold with diamonds by TIFFANY & CO. And polyamideand elastane mesh suspender belt and stockings (both worn throughout) by MAISON CLOSE. Photography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Stretch denim dress with sequin embroidery by RICK OWENS. Metallic leather stilettos by GIANVITO ROSSIPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Paloma, the deceptively wide-eyed CIA agent de Armas played in last year’s No Time to Die, the film that closed the era on Daniel Craig’s brilliantly disgruntled take on James Bond. De Armas went straight from shooting Blonde under the stars on Santa Monica beach onto a red-eye, arriving at London’s Pinewood Studios to break more ground as the first Cuban actor to play a leading Bond woman. Her first takes, though, came out in Monroe’s whispery flutter. “I wasn’t ready to let her go,” she says. “In my heart I wish I’d had a few more days to say goodbye.” Still, she went on to deliver a firework of a performance, dispatching at least ten Spectre villains in the space of 12 minutes on a lavish replica set of Havana, Cuba.
De Armas, of course, was born in the real Havana, Cuba, in 1988, before moving aged three to Santa Cruz del Norte, a small, palm-filled town on the country’s northern coast where her father worked in a government office. Minus internet and social media, her childhood played out in the street. “You’re in a country where you don’t have much contact with the world, you’re kind of in a bubble,” she says. “But in some ways that makes you focus on life and friendships instead of all the noise. I grew up barefoot, running on the rocks by the beach, swimming. Me and my friends performed plays for the neighbours. I had a thing for climbing lamp posts and trees, and I was obsessed with rescuing cats and dogs from the street – every day I’d come back with a new animal and drive my mom crazy.”
When she was ten the family returned to Havana, a move that alerted her to the capital’s prestigious, and rigorous, National Theatre School, an arts complex with soaring architecture. De Armas badgered her parents to let her audition, but they tried to dissuade her at first from a dream with such slim chances of success. “Big mistake!” she says with a laugh. “I became determined.” After six long days of improvisation-based auditions she was among the handful of candidates who won a place, enrolling at 14 and often hitchhiking to get there each day. By 16 she had landed a lead role as a teenager longing to escape pre-revolutionary Cuba in the feature Una rosa de Francia – much to the irritation of her school, who disapproved of their students juggling acting studies with acting jobs. “But I didn’t care,” she shrugs. “In my opinion there was no better school than a movie set. So I did both – I would often fall asleep in class but I would catch up with what I missed.” Even at that age, her ambitions were reaching beyond the shores of her homeland; a few months before graduating, she made the decision to uproot her life and relocate to Madrid alone, courtesy of a Spanish passport through her maternal grandparents. It was a tactical move – had she graduated, she would have faced several years of national social service while watching her career stall. “My heart belongs to Cuba but I knew I had to get out of there to grow,” she says. “I was always aware of the very low ceiling that unfortunately Cuban artists and people in general have. I knew I had more to do, more to learn.”
Ribbed stretch cotton vest and denim-printed leather trousers by BOTTEGA VENETAPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Compact viscose body and thigh-high leather boots with cotton ruffles by ALAÏAPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
When she arrived in the Spanish capital aged 18, de Armas barely knew anyone except her agent, but the gamble paid off: two weeks later she won the role of a fearless schoolgirl in the homegrown television series El Internado. Set in an elite boarding school teeming with murky secrets and ghoulish happenings, the show put her on the covers of teen magazines and made her famous nationwide overnight. At two series a year, it was an acting bootcamp, but also provided the still-adolescent actor with a surrogate family to assuage her homesickness. “Thank God I had that support network,” she says. “Being alone in Spain was really tough. It never crossed my mind to go back, but it was hard. I’d never been anywhere else before and it was a huge culture shock. To be honest, I just started eating candy, chocolate and donuts – everything I’d never had when I was younger.” She stuck with the series for three years, “and then I was like, OK, I’m not learning anything new”. By then, though, the financial crisis was biting in Spain and new film productions had ground to a worrying standstill. (“If no solutions are found, it could spell the end of many a promising career,” wrote the Spanish newspaper El País in a 2012 article entitled No Money, No Movies.) De Armas, already conscious of being typecast in teen roles, was getting restless. In 2014, an opportunity arrived that she grasped with characteristic tenacity. She was shooting Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone, playing the wholly undutiful wife of the hell-raising Panamanian boxing champ Roberto Durán, a part that transformed her into a hot-pink-Lycra-wearing mother of five. “De Niro was in it, and his agent came one day to a table read when we were shooting in Panama,” she remembers. “Afterwards they called up and said they wanted to represent me. I went back to Madrid, gave away all my stuff, packed a suitcase and left for Los Angeles.”
“Acting is my passion and what makes me happy, but it’s not who I am. That’s one of the reasons I left LA. I want to go there, see my friends, see my industry, but it’s not my life” – Ana de Armas
It was another roll of the dice: when she touched down at LAX, she had none of the profile she had built in Spain – instead she now faced auditions in a language she didn’t yet speak. “When I had my first meeting with my agent, I couldn’t say anything,” she says. “I just nodded and smiled. It was starting from scratch.” And yet she kept winning roles, showing up to auditions with her lines learnt phonetically. There was Eli Roth’s horror Knock Knock, in which she schools a beleaguered Keanu Reeves in stranger danger, then Todd Phillips’s black comedy War Dogs, based on the true story of two coke-fuelled Miami hustlers who made millions brokering shady arms deals for the US military in Iraq. As the girlfriend at home with the baby, de Armas made far more of her role than was on the page, but the language barrier was suffocating her usually expansive range: “In one of the scenes the director wanted to change the dialogue. It was one of the worst moments of my career. In front of the entire crew I tried and tried and just couldn’t do it. Todd went, ‘Forget it, just say it the way it was.’ I was so sad and frustrated because I couldn’t be myself, and I had no freedom as an actor. But it was a great reality check. I was like, ‘I have to do better. Work harder.’ And I did.” She signed up to a four month crash course in English and plunged back into auditions, continuing to make a name for herself – occasionally in films that didn’t deserve her – as an actor capable of rearranging our emotions with lived-in performances brimming with humanity.
Her breakthrough, though, came by way of a nonhuman role. In Denis Villeneuve’s ravishing, perpetually raining neo-noir Blade Runner 2049, she morphed from manga to geisha to Fifties housewife at the touch of a button as AI projection Joi. Despite her hologram’s ability to vanish inside a handheld console or stretch into a building-height advertisement, de Armas invested Joi with three dimensions and found tangible chemistry with Ryan Gosling’s sad-eyed, replicant-hunting gumshoe. The film won a couple of Oscars, put de Armas on genuine billboards and then on the red carpet, between Gosling and Harrison Ford. So it must have been a little exasperating when soon after, she was asked to provide an audition tape for a secret project that described her character in two words: “‘Latina, caretaker’,” de Armas says, rolling her eyes. “I was like, I do not have the energy, what is this?” She was in the midst of a gruelling threemonth shoot for Greg Barker’s biopic Sergio, pinballing from Thailand to Brazil to Jordan as the partner of peace-broker and human rights crusader Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN diplomat who was killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad in 2003. “I said, you either tell me why this is worth it or I can’t. I passed on it twice because of that description. In the end, they sent me the whole script and I thought, oh shit! Right away I did an audition.” The film was Knives Out, Rian Johnson’s sly Cluedo game of a murder mystery, and her pivotal turn as the nurse to a millionaire crime novelist wove a critique of Trump’s immigration policies that subverted that cliché of a character description. It won her a Golden Globe nomination and the admiration of co-star Daniel Craig, who engineered the role in Bond that transformed her into one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors.
Ruffled polyester top by MAISON MARGIELA. Tiffany Victoria earring in platinum with South Sea pearls and diamonds by TIFFANY & CO. And nylon and spandex mesh gloves (throughout) by WHAT KATIE DIDPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Silk cape and corseted silk skirt with train by OLIVIER THEYSKENS. Pleated silk bandeau bra by MISS CROFTON. Suspender belt and stockings as before. Satin and nylon underwear by WHAT KATIE DID. And bracelet in platinum with diamonds by TIFFANY & COPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Today she has a home in Havana (“My friends come over, we cook and play dominoes and what starts with some pork and rice and black beans ends up in a huge music jam session”) and an apartment in New York, shared with her boyfriend, Paul Boukadakis, and her two dogs, Salsa and Elvis. The latter canine is also now a movie star: when Dominik met Elvis, he was struck by his uncanny resemblance to Monroe’s own Maltese terrier, Maf (short for Mafia), given to her by Frank Sinatra the year before she died. And so Elvis was hired to play him – you can see the silky white terrier in the spectral, hazily lit scenes depicting Monroe’s bleary final hours behind the bougainvillea-laced walls of Fifth Helena Drive. When I mention struggling to sleep post that haunting ending, de Armas nods and her voice drops a little. “Those final scenes at her house – I know she was there with us,” she says. “We all felt it. And I think you can feel that in the movie.”
During her lifetime – and even her afterlife – Monroe was reduced time and again to a caricature of herself, despite her formidable talent and ambitions. Blonde’s intricate, knotty portrayal of her, de Armas says, sets out to reconstruct that diminishing narrative. “It’s the story of the double standards and hypocrisy of the culture we live in,” she says. “People obsessed over her body and shamed her for it. They criticise you for the same things they celebrate you for. There’s no way of winning. Marilyn was one of the first actresses who broke her deal with the studio and created her own production company, to make her own films. This was massive at the time. She wanted to be taken seriously. But no one was listening. They just wanted her to keep repeating the same thing forever.” In some ways, though, Monroe might help de Armas avoid that impossible trap herself. With Blonde, the actor who has already shapeshifted from lamp-post-climbing kid to Havana theatre student to Spanish teen star to Hollywood action heroine looks poised for another reinvention. “So many action roles have come my way from those few minutes in Bond,” she says. “If Blonde now brings me all these intense, dark roles, I will be happy. Blonde was hard on my head and hard on my heart, but I want to confront these issues. I want to talk about taboos and uncomfortable things and figure out how we really feel about them. And I think telling stories is a beautiful way to do that.”
Hair: Orlando Pita at Home Agency. Make-up: Francelle Daly at Home Agency. Set design: Piers Hanmer. Manicure: Megumi Yamamoto at Susan Price. Digital tech: Tadaaki Shibuya. Photographic assistants: Nick Brinley, Alex Hopkins and Shri Prasham. Styling assistants: George Pistachio, Molly Shillingford, Rosie Borgerhoff Mulder and Cornelius Lafayette. Tailor: Eliz Diratsaoglu at Lars Nordensten. Set-design assistant: Louis Sarowsky. Producer: Gracey Connelly. Post-production: Gloss.
This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale internationally now. Buy a copy here.
The Ethereal Beauty of Fran Summers
The British model is shot, covered in Swarovski crystals, by Elizaveta Porodina and styled by Katie Shillingford for the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Crystal mesh bandeau, hood and Mesmera crystal and rhodium plated cocktail rings (throughout) by SWAROVSKI. Polyamide and elastane mesh body customised with Swarovski crystals by MAISON CLOSE. Stretch tulle bra by YASMINE ESLAMPhotography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Mesmera crystal and rhodium plated breast plate by SWAROVSKI. Polyamide and elastane mesh body customised with Swarovski crystals by MAISON CLOSE. Stretch tulle bra by YASMINE ESLAMI. Polyamide and elastane mesh body customised with Swarovskicrystals by MAISON CLOSE. Polyester thong skirt by SUPRIYA LELE. Cotton underwear by BASERANGE. Photography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Constella metal and crystal dress, necklaces (worn as necklace and bracelet) and cuff by SWAROVSKI. Stretch tulle body and bra by YASMINE ESLAMIPhotography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Somnia metal and crystal bra, Lucent crystal stud earring, Harmonia metal and crystal choker, bangle and bracelet, and Gema necklaces and motif ring by SWAROVSKI. Stretch tulle body by YASMINE ESLAMI. And crew neck stretch nylon bodysuit by SKIMSPhotography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Astrologia palladium and crystal bra and ear cuffs, Millenia crystal and rhodium plated cross-body chain, Dextera rhodium and crystal chain bracelets, Harmonia crystal and mixed metal rings and Millenia rhodium and crystal necklaces (worn as a belt)by SWAROVSKI. Mesh body customised with Swarovski crystals by MAISON CLOSE. Stretch tulle high-waisted underwear by YASMINE ESLAMI. Photography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Polyamide and eco-lycra gloved body by ROOM 24. Millenia crystal and rhodium plated ear cuffs and Constella metal and crystal earrings by SWAROVSKIPhotography by Elizaveta Porodina, Styling by Katie Shillingford
See the full story in the gallery above.
Hair: Olivier Schawalder at Bryant Artists. Make-up: Aurore Gibrien at Bryant Artists using GUCCI BEAUTY. Model: Fran Summers at Elite. Casting: Noah Shelley at Streeters. Set design: César Sebastien at Swan Mgmt. Manicure: Eri Narita at Artists Unit. Lighting: Josef Beyer. Photographic assistant: Valentine Lacour. Videographer: William Nixon. Styling assistants: George Pistachio, Juliette Dumazy and Claire Thorn. Seamstress: Pryscille. Hair assistant: Damien Lacoussade. Make-up assistants: Claire Laugeois and Christine Hubert. Set-design assistants: Frédérick Asséo and Ilan Aksoul. Production: Kitten. Postproduction: INK
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Luis Alberto Rodriguez Photographs Dancers as Human Sculptures
For the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, Luis Alberto Rodriguez and Robbie Spencer imagine a series of abstract sculptures in a fusion of fashion, choreography, and the human form
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Lea is wearing a cotton jersey neck-pillow top with back pillow by CHA MYUNG. Linen rayon petal dress by WED. Layered silk and wool socks (worn throughout) by FALKE.And suede sandals (worn throughout) by PACO RABANNE Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Akti is wearing a link rings polyester skirt (worn as dress) and nylon and polyurethane body by ISSEY MIYAKE. Chenille socks (worn throughout) by JASMINE BROADHURST. Wool leg warmers (worn throughout) by DSQUARED2.And wooden clog sandals (worn throughout) by MAISON MARGIELA Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Lea is wearing a vest and shorts by SALVATORE FERRAGAMO. Hand-macramé dress by CHLOÉ. Cotton body by WOLFORD. Silk hood (worn throughout) by ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD.Akti is wearing a dress by CHLOÉ. Spandex body by MELITTA BAUMEISTER. Lambskin leather shorts by LOEWE. Loden wool hood (worn throughout) by MAISON MARGIELA. Socks by JASMINE BROADHURST. Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Lea is wearing a PVC cloud dress with boned bodice by AMBER HEALEY. Socks and sandals as before.Akti is wearing a PVC cloud dress with boned bodice by AMBER HEALEY. Socks and clog sandals as before. Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Lea is wearing a double-breasted tailored wool jacket with bomber sleeves in poly faille by ALEXANDER MCQUEEN. Wide-ribbed knit rayon dress by TOGA. Akti is wearing a draped satin bustier dress by SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO.Cashmere cardigan by CHANEL. Bonded double crepe scuba body by MAXIMILIAN. Cropped cotton shirt (worn as hood) by PATOU. Embellished stretch leather and gathered satin gloves by MING LIM. Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
Loli is wearing an elongated draped Venetian wool jacket with signature sleeves and layered patchwork dress with smocking and tulle hip by SIMONE ROCHA. Pleated tulle collar and draped tulle blouse with bateau neckline by SCHIAPARELLI.Silk cotton cello dress and silk cotton boots with kitten heels (worn throughout) by CONNOR BAXTER. And Juste un Clou yellow gold hoop earrings by CARTIER. Photography by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Styling by Robbie Spencer
See the full story in the gallery above.
Hair: Mari Ohashi at LGA Management using BOUCLÈME. Make-up: Ammy Drammeh at Bryant Artists using CHARLOTTE TILBURY. Models: Loli Bahia at Women Management, Akti-Magdalini Konstantinou at Crumb and Lea Orož. Casting: Mollie Dendle at Mini Title. Set design: Afra Zamara at Second Name. Photographic assistants: Alessandro Tranchini and Cameron Williamson. Styling assistants: Met Kilinc and Isabella This page, from left: Lea is wearing a silk tulle minidress and satin and tulle minidress by DSQUARED2. Spandex body by MELITTA BAUMEISTER. Recycled cotton blend shorts by SALVATORE FERRAGAMO. Hood and socks as before. Beaded cashmere gloves by SIMONE ROCHA. Tulle gloves (underneath) by YUHAN WANG. And leather loafers by PROENZA SCHOULER. Akti is wearing a cotton blazer by SPORTMAX. Patchwork knitted cardigan with pearl and crystal embellishment and tutu dress with rickrack trim by SIMONE ROCHA. And hood, leg warmers, socks and sandals as before. Akti is wearing a denim bomber jacket by DSQUARED2. Reflective waxed cotton trench dress by RORY TOWNSEND. Opposite: Loli is wearing a cotton trench coat with metal plate by LOEWE. Leather bonnet by ELLA MORRIS. And leg warmers, socks and sandals as before Damazio. Hair assistant: Nao Sato. Make-up assistant: Rina. Set-design assistant: Anderson Asteclines. Printing: Sarah England. Producer: Noot Coates at Town Productions. Production assistants: Simon Biu and Jess Chant. Post-production: Dtouch Creative
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
A Personal Portrait of Vincent Rockins, by Alasdair McLellan
Alasdair McLellan and Alister Mackie combine forces to capture the young musician, designer and model for the cover of our Spring/Summer 2022 issue
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Printed knitted wool top and skirt (just seen) by ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD. Gold paper-clip earring (worn throughout) by HILLIER BARTLEY. Silver and pearl necklace by VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Alister Mackie
Photography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Alister Mackie
Embroidered leather jacket with appliqué detail by JEAN-LOUIS SCHERRER from STEVEN PHILIP STUDIO. Silk shirt, embellished velvet trousers and velvet bow by GUCCI. Leather platform boots from THE CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE COLLECTIONPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Alister Mackie
Embroidered leather jacket with appliqué detail by JEAN-LOUIS SCHERRER from STEVEN PHILIP STUDIO. Silk shirt, embellished velvet trousers and velvet bow by GUCCI. Leather platform boots from THE CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE COLLECTIONPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Alister Mackie
Polyester track vest and trousers by ERL. Earring and necklace as before. Leather platform boots by NATACHA MARROPhotography by Alasdair McLellan, Styling by Alister Mackie
See the full story in the gallery above.
Hair: Syd Hayes at Art and Commerce. Make-up: Miranda Joyce at Streeters. Model: Vincent Rockins at Kate Moss Agency. Photographic assistants: Lex Kembery and Simon Mackinlay. Styling assistants: Vincent Pons and Brian Conway. Hair assistant: Ryan Wood. Make-up assistant: Faye Bluff. Producer: Alice Kasinather-Jones. Production assistants: Ed Conway and Arthur Millier. Post-production: Output. Special thanks to Spring Studios
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Craig McDean Captures the Season’s Most Magnetic Looks
In a series of dancerly portraits, Craig McDean and Katie Shillingford capture the highlights of the Spring/Summer 2022 season
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
Giselle is wearing a cotton vest, pleated cotton shorts with lace detail, antique metal ring with enamel and Swarovski crystals and thigh-high stretch leather boots by GIVENCHYPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Crepe chiffon minidress with velvet bow, latex corset, tulle bra and knickers with GG star embroidery, felt cowboy hat, tulle suspender belt, cotton stockings and leather platform sandals by GUCCIPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Maty is wearing a corseted draped chiffon dress and leather belt by ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOODPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Ribbed jersey swimsuit, cotton T-shirt, resin and strass earrings, metal, resin and strass necklaces, metal and resin belt and leather ballerina flats with metal ankle straps by CHANELPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Maty is wearing a chiffon cape, lacquered stretch denim bodysuit and cotton top with chiffon cape sleeves by RICK OWENS. Crystal bracelet by SWAROVSKI. And varnished leather platform stilettos by SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLOPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Giselle is wearing a leather jacket, satin skirt, jacquard skort and leather slingback pumps by PRADAPhotography by Craig McDean, Styling by Katie Shillingford
See the full story in the gallery above.
Hair: Eugene Souleiman at Streeters. Make-up: Lynsey Alexander at Streeters. Models: Giselle Norman and Majesty Amare at Premier Model Management and Maty Fall at IMG Models. Casting: Noah Shelley at Streeters. Set design: Andy Hillman at Streeters. Manicure: Lorraine Griffin. Digital tech: Nicholas Ong. Photographic assistants: Nick Brinley, Margaux Jouanneau and Tomo Inenaga. Styling assistants: George Pistachio and Joseph Bates. Seamstress: Anissa at Chapman Burrell. Hair assistants: Massimo Di Stefano and Carlo Avena. Make-up assistant: Phoebe Brown. Set-design assistant: Saskia Wickins. Props assistant: Lizzy Gilbert. Production: North Six
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine which is on sale now. Head here to purchase a copy.
“I Want to Bring a Sexuality Back”: Inside Pieter Mulier’s Alaïa
For the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, Pieter Mulier – the Belgian designer helming the house of Alaïa – speaks to Alexander Fury on passion, Picasso, working with Raf Simons, and the spirit of fashion’s most maverick maison
Pieter Mulier seems at home at the house of Alaïa. It’s an early winter evening, dark by six, almost a year since he began as creative director. We are in the backstage area for his January 2022 show, normally the Alaïa boutique at 7 rue de Moussy, with its panels of glass and bare brick walls, gargantuan artworks just leaning against them. As you walk in from the street, you ascend a small flight of stairs, directly facing a monolithic colour-daubed canvas by the artist Christoph von Weyhe, Azzedine Alaïa’s partner. In the cabine to the left there’s a Julian Schnabel smashed-plate portrait of Alaïa that, thanks to the angle of the shattered porcelain around the mouth, appears to be staring beatifically. When the light shifts the face seems animated, alive.
Mulier is sitting at a glass-topped table between two rails of the clothes that he’s about to show. I ask him what the collection is about, a hackneyed question. “The beginning of the collection was a sense of family,” Mulier says, softly. “It’s a love song, for Azzedine. And it’s everything I find important for Azzedine. Everything he loved.” As he says this he’s flanked by body-conscious dresses, their bombastic shapes squiggling even on their hangers. There’s a bit of animal print behind him, and a full skirt in featherweight poplin, the kind Alaïa adored, but here attached to leather thigh-high boots. He’s playing with a pair of sandals that have brackets of red metal bolted on as their heels. They’re based on the work of Jean Prouvé: Alaïa was a passionate collector, a statement that understates his fervour entirely. He slept in a glass petrol station Prouvé designed in 1953, one of only three remaining. I often feared leaning back on a chair chez Alaïa, because most of them should have been in museums. Behind Mulier are shelves stacked with bangles. “Techno Nancy Cunard,” Mulier says, picking one up. It’s a polished-brass, small-scale recreation of the Alaïa Diabolo waist-cincher belt from Spring/Summer 1992. In leather aerated with punched designs resembling broderie anglaise and with serrated edges, it’s a favourite archival piece of Mulier’s. It’s one of the first he reissued, full-size, in different leather finishes, including one that resembled blown glass. In miniature, in metal, that belt-bangle looks almost industrial, a small cog for a big machine.
Mulier was an unexpected appointment to Alaïa, announced about three and a half years after the founder’s death in November 2017. He was a relative unknown outside tight-knit fashion circles, having worked as right-hand man to Raf Simons from 2002 – when he began as an intern in that designer’s company – until 2018. By that point, Mulier had been appointed creative director of Calvin Klein, alongside Simons’s chief creative officer role, but was still a low-key figure even though he took a bow with Simons at their debut Calvin Klein 205W39NYC show for Autumn/Winter 2017, and regardless of his role in Frédéric Tcheng's 2015 feature documentary Dior and I, which charted his work alongside Simons on their debut haute couture collection for the label.
That did raise Mulier’s profile, granted – and gives something of an insight into both his working processes and the inestimable importance of his innate ability to enthuse and engage a team of highly trained and, perhaps, slightly jaded technicians to make his dreams a reality, to excite the same passion in them that he feels himself. You observe Mulier working with Simons to manipulate pieces from the Dior archive, dusting off cobwebs to try to give a new relevance to the house’s storied but sometimes staid history. And you see the delicate pas de deux between Mulier’s mind and the ateliers’ hands. “Pieter, j’adore,” said Florence Chehet, the formidable première of Dior’s flou atelier, to camera. She’s blushing. And eliciting that kind of emotional reaction – joy, loyalty, devotion – is arguably more Alaïa than any curvy leather jacket or spiral-zipped knit dress.
When I first speak to Mulier, four months after he was appointed to Alaïa and two and a half weeks before his debut show for the label, he’s excited, enthused. He lights up when talking about Alaïa’s ateliers, and understandably so. They are known as some of the best in fashion – as other houses closed their haute couture operations, Azzedine Alaïa employed the best of the best, with impeccable pedigrees. His retinue of staff included seamstresses trained by Cristóbal Balenciaga and 15 former members of Yves Saint Laurent’s couture workrooms, employed after the cessation of that line in 2002. Many are still with the company today – including Alaïa’s first assistant, a shaven-headed Hiroshima-born artist and designer named Hideki Seo. Mulier only brought one collaborator with him – Frenchwoman Clémande Burgevin Blachman, who headed Calvin Klein’s home division and who is an Alaïa obsessive herself.
In June 2021, over one of those glitchy Zoom connections that have become the defining audio of our time, Mulier’s reverence for the craft of the Alaïa ateliers – and their point of view – is paramount. “I ask the two heads of the atelier, when we see pieces, ‘Is it Alaïa?’ Always. At the beginning they didn’t answer me. I said, ‘I really respect you, I really want to know. Is it Alaïa?’ In three weeks they started to answer.” He smiles. “They’ve been here 25 years, they know.” And the outcome? “Last week, when we did the selection for the runway and the showroom, they were both crying. That’s even more important than the collection.” He takes a breath. “The ateliers are alive again. It’s a human thing.” It’s clear why he was chosen.
Cotton dress and hand-painted iron earrings by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Cotton dress and hand-painted iron earrings by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Jump forward to this year, back inside the bare brick walls of the Alaïa backstage-boutique space. The January 2022 show marked Mulier’s second catwalk collection for Alaïa, but his fourth overall. There was a swim capsule but, first of all, a pre-emptive series of pieces, unveiled in a digital campaign photographed by Paolo Roversi, an old friend of Alaïa’s and a new collaborator for Mulier, as a kind of preview before his first show in July 2021. They consist of what the house calls archetypes but what Mulier, privately, calls Alaïa icons – and they’re the rare fashion pieces today that truly deserve that often-hyperbolic moniker. There’s that Diabolo belt, alongside leggings and a coeur croisé halter top, a flared skirt, and another laced tight down the thigh and constructed of horizontal strips of fabric, from Alaïa’s famous 1986 Bandelette collection. “I remade each icon in a reflective yarn from Japan,” Mulier says. “It’s all the shapes that I think are diehard. It sets the tone.” As shot by Roversi, they became silhouettes of pure light, almost ethereal. Maybe spiritual.
It’s difficult not to feel the spirit of Alaïa in the house he built, because it isn’t just a house in that fashion sense. Azzedine Alaïa’s idiosyncratic bedroom is perched on top of the building; von Weyhe, whose relationship began with the designer in 1959, still sleeps a few hundred feet from where Mulier and I are talking, in an apartment in the warren-like complex. Monsieur Alaïa famously hosted friends in the space, with multiple bedrooms for them to stay in, and held dinner parties and lunches around his kitchen table for an eye-popping mix of his atelier workers, artists, writers and general devotees. I once failed to recognise Monica Bellucci, seated opposite me. Because who has Monica Bellucci in their kitchen?
Maison Alaïa was always more home than house – Alaïa’s first fashion shows, in the early 1980s, were held in his own tiny flat on rue de Bellechasse on Paris’s Rive Gauche, audiences crammed into the living room, some sitting on the floor, Alaïa pressing clothes in the kitchen. The house in the Marais is much bigger – 750,000 square feet, or thereabouts. Alaïa moved there in about 1988, and began showing his collections there the following year. Yet the man himself always seemed omnipresent – startled shoppers often caught a glimpse of him crossing the boutique floor, as his studio was just overhead. Physical then, his presence is ideological now, almost five years after he died.
Silk and wool velvet knitted ensemble with gloves and hand-crafted glass and brass bracelets by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Silk and wool velvet knitted ensemble with gloves and hand-crafted glass and brass bracelets by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Mulier doesn’t shy away from the legacy of Alaïa, one many would find overwhelming or overpowering. Indeed he seemed giddy at the thought of it when we first met at the house last year, bubbling over with references to Alaïa’s greatest hits – which were also present, all around. Burgevin Blachman was darting about wearing a leopard intarsia skirt, from Alaïa’s Autumn/Winter 1991 collection. It would be tempting to say that Mulier’s collection featured a checklist of Alaïa-isms – but that would be lazy, which Mulier isn’t. What it felt like was an instinctive, even gut reaction to the potential sucker punch of taking up one of the most formidable mantles in modern fashion. Mulier went with what he loved. “I played around with what I thought was Alaïa,” he told me, just before that first catwalk collection was presented. “The base was in the Eighties, that’s when he began to build. The sense, the essence.” It was as direct as the curvy corset-belts, body-defining knits and leopard prints, and as subtle as a meandering fagoted seam defining the erogenous zones of the bust and waist on brief dresses and bodysuits.
“Full-on” is how Mulier described that first collection, a recalibration of those Alaïa greatest hits, reimagined for a new audience. “I want to bring a sexuality back,” he added. “Alaïa is the only house that can do sexuality without being vulgar. Here in the atelier, from the moment they do something sensual – nearly explicitly sexual – it’s just beauty. That’s the strength of this house.” He even switched the labels back – in the 1980s and 1990s they were bold black on white typeface. “It’s a small thing, but it’s an important thing,” he says. “You know, most of them were stitched all the way around. So you could never take it out.” He laughs. “Very Azzedine.” Mulier also chose to make his debut outside the boutique on the aforementioned rue de Moussy, a doubly loaded act. Firstly, it recalled a famous Arthur Elgort image of statuesque Alaïa models in the street after one of his shows in 1986, and an Ellen von Unwerth film that includes scenes of Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington cavorting around the Marais after another in 1990. Those images loaned a reality to Alaïa’s fantasies – and the same to Mulier’s. It was also, Mulier says, about humility and respect. “You must respect Alaïa,” he says. Mulier smiles a great deal, but he isn’t smiling now.
If that first collection was something of a mark of that respect, it was also a communiqué of Mulier’s intent as well as a palimpsest demonstrating his knowledge of Alaïa’s past. Mulier – like Azzedine Alaïa – is a passionate collector of vintage clothing. He and his partner, the designer Matthieu Blazy, who is now creative director of Bottega Veneta, have a vast archive of vintage pieces at their home in Antwerp, spanning from Twenties Lanvin through more obscure names such as Norman Norell to modern masters like Martin Margiela. Since his appointment last year, Mulier has – understandably – been buying vintage Alaïa pieces in a frenzy, turning them inside out, examining their cut and construction. He’s especially drawn, he says, to early Eighties pieces, which are the rarest.
Silk and wool knitted lace dress with shearling tail and matching gloves by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Silk and wool knitted lace dress with shearling tail and matching gloves by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
There’s a magic in objects that images often cannot convey – especially in work like that of Alaïa, devised as three-dimensional pieces with a sculptural quality. Moreover, many contain tricks and traits that can only really be appreciated in the physical handling – skirts tugged into position by belts, dresses whose surfaces are composed of a multitude of interlocked pattern pieces, giving them a unique physical tension, like stroking your hands over a living body, feeling the give and take of muscle and skin. Alaïa once described one of those dresses, intricately seamed in wool jersey, as like a racehorse. And he certainly believed in the magic of objects – his quietly amassed archive, held by the foundation established after his death, is now regarded as probably the most significant private collection of fashion in the world. It includes pieces by Balenciaga and Charles James, Madeleine Vionnet and the Hollywood costume designer Gilbert Adrian, all of which influenced his own designs. The archive holds more than 22,000 examples of those, too.
Many designers accumulate fashion collections – vintage pieces are valuable reference points, after all. But the manner in which both Mulier and Alaïa collected has a certain kinship – a value given to pieces from the past, an innate appreciation of fashion, a love of and fixation with craft, and an urge to protect. It’s miles from the slavish copying of archival pieces, and luckily light years from the hopefully apocryphal tales of fashion designers torching vintage garments to hide just how closely they were ‘inspired’. Alaïa once told me a story of a rich family he knew, former clients of Vionnet. They lived next door to a convent and, at the end of every season, gave their cast-off couture to the nuns to chop up and sew into habits. Alaïa looked aghast when relaying that story. That idea of cherishing fashion, the value of its history, isn’t something everyone has.
There are other connections between the two. How about the fact they’re both kind of outsiders in Paris? Alaïa was born in Tunisia, coming to Paris in 1957, Mulier is Belgian, although his accent is soft. Both began quietly, in the shadows – and, actually, worked in some of the same ateliers. Alaïa’s career began at Christian Dior – although he was only employed for four days because of issues with immigration papers. Mulier was there for three years, from 2012 to 2015, alongside Raf Simons, who was then the artistic director of womenswear. Alaïa, incidentally, attended that first couture show, and all the ones that followed. It was Simons who first encouraged Mulier, as a student, to pursue fashion instead of his intended vocation of architecture, in which he originally trained at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels after a brief foray into law. Another parallel: Alaïa studied sculpture, not fashion, yet he referred to himself as a bâtisseur, a builder, although his clothes were neither stiff nor heavy. Indeed, Alaïa’s breakthrough in 1980 was to create a collection entirely in leather, studded with eyelets. He gave the hitherto unyielding material a new softness and suppleness, pulling it tight around the body. The clothing collection was originally designed for the shoe manufacturer Charles Jourdan in 1979 – the company freaked out at the strident, powerful sexuality of his garments and nixed the collection, but Alaïa presented it under his own name, his first ready-to-wear collection.
Wool blazer and matching jacket, cotton ruffle volants and leather boots with hand-painted iron heels by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Wool blazer and matching jacket, cotton ruffle volants and leather boots with hand-painted iron heels by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Sex is something Mulier is interested in – who isn’t? And sex was Alaïa’s leitmotif. “The iconic part, for me, was from 1980 to 1994 – the heyday,” Mulier says. “It wasn’t lady – although I do love that aspect. But that is when the Alaïa revolution really happens. Timeless simplicity, sensuality and sexuality. That’s the most important.” His first collection showed both sides of sexuality: a python top and skirt, composed of snakeskin, were laced tight, gaps showing the flesh underneath. Another floor-length dress covered a model entirely, a hood smothering her scalp, gloves her hands, but the dress clinging close, which reminded me of those violated Vionnet nun’s habits. In his second collection, there were vestal virgin shirt dresses that were cocooned in the back, drawn in at the knee and kicked out into a pooling mermaid skirt.
If the first show was, by necessity, demonstrating Mulier’s agility with and understanding of Alaïa’s codes and, indeed, his respect – “A beautiful word,” he says – the second seemed like he was relaxing, stretching a little. “Clients are coming. Couture is working extremely well. I feel confident,” he says. While Mulier doesn’t want to impose his vision on Alaïa, he hastens to add that Alaïa cannot be purely referential. “Don’t change it, but push it,” he says. “Bit by bit.” It embraced more of Mulier’s own loves. The soundtrack was classical music – “I was raised with classical music,” Mulier says, commenting that it reminded him of his mother. There is a sequence of dresses created in close collaboration with the Picasso Administration that marry Alaïa’s body-clinging knit with motifs drawn from Pablo Picasso’s sculptural porcelain female figurines of the late 1940s, called tanagras after their reference to antecedents from the Hellenistic period. “An ode to Azzedine, who was the greatest sculptor of fashion,” Mulier says. “The idea behind it is to put Azzedine – as the greatest sculptor of fashion – with the greatest sculptor in the world.” He smiles. “And also, everybody talks about collaboration … but you cannot go higher than Picasso.” He shrugs.
There’s also history there: Mulier was able to call Claude Ruiz-Picasso, son of the artist and the painter Françoise Gilot, and one of the heads of the Picasso Administration, to ask for permission. “We worked together at Jil,” he says. That is of course Jil Sander, where Raf Simons and Mulier collaborated with the administration in 2011 on a series of knits inspired by ceramics. “There’s some Raf in there too,” Mulier allows, of these dresses. “It’s a nod to Raf, what he means in my career.” Simons is, of course, part of Mulier’s community – his family, even. After more than 15 years working side by side, the two are still close – they speak constantly, and Simons was a prominent front-row presence at Mulier’s debut. For this second show, he was referenced in a letter addressed to Azzedine that Mulier placed on each seat: “Raf, who taught me the love of art and how to mix it within my creations.”
“The idea behind it is to put Azzedine – as the greatest sculptor of fashion – with the greatest sculptor in the world … everybody talks about collaboration … but you cannot go higher than Picasso” – Pieter Mulier
Their continued synergy is interesting: Mulier shows me a dress where fullness is created by nylon crin (or horsehair) knitted into the structure itself. “They normally apply it after,” Mulier says. “This is the first time.” A week before, Simons had enthused to me about sweaters in the Autumn/Winter 2022 men’s collection he had created alongside Miuccia Prada. Their swaggering shape was created by nylon thread similarly knitted into the shoulder line. “It’s actually all people, on a personal level, that gave me a chance,” Mulier continues. “It’s the house of Alaïa, I cannot talk of Azzedine like that” – he and Mulier never met. “But still, yes – it’s his house. It’s Raf, who still plays such an important role in my life. And sculpting and fashion and architecture is the concept. It’s about how to sculpt beauty.” He stops again, smiles. “Sounds very pretentious, and I don’t mean it pretentiously at all.”
It is interesting that instinct leads Mulier back, somehow, to Azzedine Alaïa, who referenced ancient Greece also, in his artfully draped and bound dresses; he adored the Musée Picasso, which opened in the Marais a few years before Alaïa moved to the rue de Moussy. And the Picasso family were intimates. “He was very close to Claude Picasso,” Mulier says. “We called him, and he said yes to the collaboration in a minute.” Then his voice rises. “Because he used to come here and sit next to Azzedine when he was pattern-making.” The Picasso Administration was included in every step – the resulting dresses, a half-dozen, combine intarsia knit with hand embroidery, and will be limited edition. “They’re very involved, and that’s what I like,” Mulier says. “It’s this sense of community – almost like a Bauhaus.”
Mulier jumps up. He wants to show me the space where the show will be held, an enormous double-height atrium with a vaulted glass roof. “We are showing in Azzedine’s heart,” he says. “I always call it the cathedral.” The Alaïa complex is so big, it straddles an entire city block, and technically the entrance to this space is at 18 rue de la Verrerie, through a pretty courtyard with a giant hammered-bronze female breast incongruously plonked in the centre. It’s a 1966 sculpture by the French artist César – a friend of Alaïa’s, of course – and its full title is Le Sein d’Hélène Rochas, modelled after the embonpoint of that fixture of French high society, a doyenne of haute couture and artist’s muse.
Knitted wool lace bodysuit with matching gloves and patent leather and PVC shoes by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Knitted wool lace bodysuit with matching gloves and patent leather and PVC shoes by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
The cathedral betrays the origins of the Alaïa building – built in the 19th century, it was latterly a warehouse for the Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville department store around the corner on the rue de Rivoli, and formerly a factory that, during its time, created clocks and mattresses. That feels ironic: Alaïa was rarely on time – during the 1980s, his shows not only famously ran hours late, but were presented weeks after the rest of the fashion industry had wrapped up their seasonal presentations – and given his passion for his work, he didn’t really sleep much. Alaïa himself presented collections here from 1989 onwards – unless, perhaps, he decided to cancel a show because the clothes weren’t up to his exacting standards, or because he didn’t want to force his beloved dogs out of the space. “In its present, unfinished state, a chill rain dripped through the cracks, showering press and buyers during the 1½-hour wait,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, of Alaïa’s first show at rue de la Verrerie in May 1989. “The models got wet, too.” The models at Mulier’s debut got a little wet also – Paris decided July 2021 was a time for rain.
It brings a wry smile to my face that, to many eyes, the Alaïa headquarters still doesn’t seem finished: when I walk through in January, that exposition hall is a building site. Although, credit where due, that was because the space is also used by the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa to stage exhibitions. They were taking one down, juxtaposing Azzedine Alaïa’s clothes with those of Cristóbal Balenciaga, to allow Mulier to use the place for his sophomore show. Showing there “was my dream, in the beginning”, he says. “But I’m happy I didn’t do it the first time.” Mulier enthuses about a wrought-iron staircase off to one side, normally boxed in and rarely revealed to public view, and by a series of enormous maps painted onto raw plaster walls, again usually hidden. The vaulted ceiling had also been shrouded in cloth that blocked out the sky, Mulier said, for almost 20 years. Stripping Alaïa back to its bones – its foundations – excites him.
What do those constitute? This collection, it seems – it’s the unexpected, the extreme. “It’s big fashion this time,” Mulier says. “It’s about shoulders, about volume. It’s about proportion and sculpting. It’s very simple, really.” There are knitted bodysuits in wool, in black or nude – Alaïa offering nine shades of ‘nude’, reflecting the inclusivity that was one hallmark of its namesake. “You’ll buy it in a box – and it looks like a Sarah Lucas!” Mulier laughs. Sculpture again, I guess. “But on the body it’s sublime.” He sounds just like Simons when he says that word. As with Azzedine Alaïa’s own collections, conventional seasons are eschewed – Alaïa has named them Winter/Spring and Summer/Autumn, reflecting when clothes will actually arrive in stores, and chooses to show them just outside the official haute couture weeks. The collections themselves include a mix of couture pieces and ready-to-wear, which Alaïa himself initiated. “The beauty here is that even ready-to-wear has a couture feeling, the construction, the finishing,” Mulier says. “It’s not important to put it in a category.” The finale of the show, entirely haute couture, features ball gowns made in calfskin and Japanese velvets – all the fabrics, Mulier says, are made especially for Alaïa, including specially treated leathers.
Cotton velvet dress by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Cotton velvet dress by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Some details are more esoteric: several dresses, and those aforementioned bodysuits, are held in place with moulded metal frames around a deep, undulating décolletage. Reflecting Mulier’s love of community spirit, they were shaped by the husband of one of Alaïa’s premières. “He makes staircases,” Mulier says. “She’d go home in the evening and send videos of him manipulating it.” That neckline is an echo of a dress Alaïa called the Carla, after Carla Sozzani. It wasn’t because she wore it: in 1987 she put the dress on the cover of Italian Elle – she was then its editor – shot by Roversi. The publication was devoted to championing Italian fashion only, and Sozzani was promptly fired. I love that story.
Azzedine Alaïa was a storyteller, a raconteur par excellence. Those stories have outlived him. Mulier is delighted by one account of him spending an exorbitant amount on a coat by Paul Poiret – an inspiration for bloused backs on dresses and coats, with a 1911 feel, caught in low around the thigh. They’re influenced by a coat from 1985, which not only shapes the gently curved tailoring but also appears in the show. It nods to another famous story, of Alaïa creating a coat for the actor Greta Garbo in the 1970s. By then Garbo had become a reclusive figure. “They told me she was waiting outside with Cécile de Rothschild. I said, ‘Sure, who else?’” Alaïa recalled, with his typical humour, in 1990. He made her a dark blue cashmere coat – “Big, bigger, biggest! And a huge collar to hide.” He kept the patterns until the day he died.
The Garbo collar inspired Mulier to pull turtlenecks over the mouths of his models, an echo of her mystique. Edie Campbell, daughter of Sophie Hicks, had a Picasso pulled over hers – Hicks was a friend of Alaïa, and is currently redesigning the brand’s boutiques (new ones are set to open in New York and Shanghai). “I think he loved Garbo because cinema in Egypt and in Tunisia when Azzedine was growing up was a copy of that. He was obsessed with Hollywood, and the Egyptian copies,” Mulier says. “I asked Christoph [von Weyhe] and he agreed. Christoph told me the stories of Garbo, because he was there. He fitted the coat and everything. He said it was such a big moment because Azzedine was obsessed with her. Obsessed.” He seems obsessed too. “Can you imagine,” he knocks loudly on the glass table. “Garbo?!” Mulier’s infectious obsession, it seems, is with Azzedine Alaïa – the man, his myths.
Embroidered silk and wool jacquard knitted Picasso dress by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Silk and wool velvet knitted ensemble with glove and hand-crafted glass, Plexiglas and brass bracelets by ALAÏAPhotography by Willy Vanderperre, Styling by Olivier Rizzo
Mulier’s Alaïa show takes place in the “cathedral”, atop a polished black lacquer floor that reflects the night sky. The moulded metal necklines make dresses appear suspended, magically, around the body; the skirts buttoned to boots seem to be hovering; and the models, walking on platform shoes with Plexiglas heels, look like they’re floating a few inches above the ground. Four days later the space has been transformed to all white, for an exhibition of archival Alaïa clothing. Fittingly, after the second show of Alaïa after Alaïa, this is titled Alaïa Afore Alaïa, and looks at the made-to-measure clothes created for his private clientele. There’s another Garbo coat – she was a repeat customer – but it isn’t navy blue. An exhibition-goer said the space looked “heavenly”, and it did.
Mulier is calm after the storm. I ask him what he wants to convey with his work for Alaïa, and he takes a moment. “Emotion,” he says, and his voice cracks a little. “I hope that comes through, that emotion. And I hope that emotion will be the same in the people who see it. It’s driven by emotion. It needs to make the heart beat. If it doesn’t make your heart beat … ” He pauses. “I mean, we’re at Alaïa.”
Hair: Duffy at Streeters. Make-up: Karin Westerlund at Artlist using DR BARBARA STURM. Model: Mariacarla Boscono at Women Management. Casting: Ashley Brokaw. Manicure: Eden Tonda. Digital tech: Henri Coutant. Lighting: Romain Dubus. Photographic assistant: Corentin Thévenet. Styling assistants: Niccolo Torelli, Ewa Kluczenko and Kevin Grosjean. Hair assistant: Lukas Tralmer. Make-up assistant: Noa Yehonatan. Producer to Willy Vanderperre: Lieze Rubbrecht. Production: One Thirty-Eight Productions. Producer: Ashleigh Hayward. Production assistants: Arthur Debriffe, Félix Biton and Julien Fernandes. On-set retoucher: Stéphane Virlogeux
The Full Shoot: Jodie Turner-Smith for AnOther Magazine Spring/Sumer 2022
In a dawn-to-dusk shoot located in the Californian desert, Jackie Nickerson and Katie Shillingford capture Turner-Smith and a cast of supporting characters wearing Gucci’s decadent Love Parade collection
Jodie Turner-Smith: “Everything I Do Is Political”
In our Spring/Summer 2022 issue, the history-making actor speaks to her friend Jeremy O Harris about transformative love, motherhood, and her role in Kogonada’s offbeat sci-fi film, After Yang
In 2021, Jodie Turner-Smith made history as she played history, becoming the first Black actor to take on the role of the doomed Queen Anne Boleyn. In Turner-Smith’s hands the most troubled and controversial of Henry VIII’s six wives was as fierce as she was tender: as believable in her unbridled ambition and overwhelming grief as she was dignified – majestic. That is a quality Turner-Smith seems to have been born with, one that elevates her characterisations, giving a nobility to her Angela “Queen” Johnson – the criminal defence lawyer turned outlaw in Melina Matsoukas’s 2019 film Queen & Slim – and, last year, to her unexpected appearance as part of Alessandro Michele’s Love Parade show for Gucci. Back then, an uplifting display of both fashion and the people who wear it best – stars – played out on Hollywood Boulevard; here, we move that diverse parade of beautiful people to the desert outside Los Angeles, shooting Turner-Smith and a cast of supporting characters over the course of a day – dawn to dusk – clothed in Michele’s designs. Alongside this, Turner-Smith talks to writer, actor and director Jeremy O Harris about transformative love, motherhood, the responsibility of storytelling and her role in Noah Baumbach’s upcoming adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
Jeremy O Harris: This is such a crazy year for you. You have so many new things on your plate, but the first thing I want to talk to you about is, what’s it like having your daughter? As your friend, who’s watched you grow up over the past decade and become the woman you are now, I feel like every day as a mom changes you in significant ways. How do you feel seeing your daughter grow every day?
Jodie Turner-Smith: It’s incredible to watch a person gain an understanding of the world and be beside them as they conceive of every single thing. It’s like experiencing life again, because you are seeing them discover a tree, the ocean, a shark. We were looking at sharks in the water today – we’re in the Bahamas. One of the best parts about parenting is that you get to learn everything again because you see the world anew through innocent, fresh eyes. It’s humbling and beautiful and exciting – and it’s really emotional.
JOH: I think about some of the projects you’re doing this year and realise that it’s only really just now that people are interacting with your Anne Boleyn. It’s this great story about a young woman, a complicated mother and someone who had a really difficult life. Your lens on Anne Boleyn is the thing I was most excited about when it was announced and you did not disappoint. What was that like, stepping into that role and also stepping into so much history?
“As a dark-skinned Black woman, my body is politicised. Everything I do is political. My existence is political” – Jodie Turner-Smith
JTS: Well, when I accepted that job, I was so raw with motherhood. And I use the word raw because I feel like it is such a raw-feeling experience. The transformation that you go through internally, while it is incredible and epic and beautiful, birthing this living creature that you held inside your body, your body grows an entire organ to feed this child. And then when that child is born, that organ detaches itself from the inside of your body and you birth that out too, the placenta. And it leaves a huge wound that takes time to heal. And five months out from that, I was still extremely raw.
JOH: Oof.
JTS: People have asked me, “Did you have any worries about taking it on?” Anytime something creative comes across your path that excites you and lights you up, the first instinct is to be like, “Fuck, yeah.” You say yes. And then you’re like, “Oh fuck.” There is also the rest of the world and their opinions and how they’re going to respond to this. That is also going to affect me. I am not creating inside a bubble, which would be really nice sometimes. One thing I admire about theatre is that there’s so much more freedom to portray others. And maybe it’s because you are so connected to the audience that they’re willing to drop the veil, whereas in film and television, people are thinking that they’re meant to be presented with an imitation of reality – they’re less willing to make those allowances. But this project is cool – symbolically. This idea of Anne as an outsider because of her upbringing, the way that she was a disruptor. It was interesting to tell her story in a different way, because I saw The Other Boleyn Girl [2008], which I loved at the time. I thought Natalie Portman was amazing in that, but it was a very specific portrayal of Anne that goes with that negative history that people have sometimes recorded about her. And at this point in my life as an adult woman, I think about any woman in history who was super powerful and who is written about as this horrible person, I take it with a grain of salt – men were recording that history and were threatened by that power.
Oversized embroidered silk crepe de chine coat and patent leather glove by GUCCI. Yellow gold and gemstone earrings from the Hortus Deliciarum collection by GUCCI HIGH JEWELLERYPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Trumpet sleeved silk muslin gown with teardrop neckline and sequin embroidery and leather high-heeled sandals by GUCCI. White gold, spinel, sapphire and diamond brooch and white gold and ruby ring from the Hortus Deliciarum collection by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
JOH: Yeah. Anyone that was married to Henry.
JTS: Henry was a sociopath.
JOH: You’ve been in America for a really long time. Were there any Britishisms you had to relearn to become Anne?
JTS: Well, first of all, unless you have really practised received pronunciation [RP], you have to work on that. I started acting in the US, Anne Boleyn was my first job in the UK. For me having never worked in the UK, having not gone to drama school, I definitely needed to work on the RP. I worked with this really amazing coach who was there on set to make sure everything sounded how it needed to, because it’s just very particular to sound like you come from that class. And although Anne may have had more of a French accent, we decided to go with something that felt more like RP.
JOH: It was so jarring and exciting to see you speaking in RP for the entire show, because it’s so rare to see a Black performer, even a Black performer who grew up in the UK, get to use that tool in the toolbox. Did you feel a responsibility? Like, “If this is something that works really well it means so much for other Black girls coming up after me.” I feel like you’ve done such significant roles and at a time when people are asking a lot about representation, especially representation of dark-skinned Black women, you have come to the forefront as one of the first names that’s consistently called. What do you feel about that responsibility?
“Every project I go into, I think, who’s the woman that I’ll be on the other side of this? That is the goal and the focus” – Jodie Turner-Smith
JTS: It’s impossible for me to not think about it every time I go into something and not as if it’s some kind of burden, but for the simple fact that being who I am, I know how much it means to see someone who looks like me on screen. I’m so honoured to have the opportunity to portray someone on screen, to create a woman who looks like me on screen and to fill her with life. It’s something I think about in every project I do. Obviously the goal is to create wonderful three-dimensional characters but every time I go into a job, I always think about that because as a dark-skinned Black woman, my body is politicised. Everything I do is political. My existence is political. I wish I could exist in a vacuum but I have an understanding of the systems and the social mores and everything that’s going on around me. And I know that I’m a part of all of that. I also think about my daughter and the fact that I want her to be able to look at the things I’ve done and the women I’ve played and see something powerful and interesting and beautiful and ... complicated.
JOH: I love the punctuation of complicated.
JTS: Yeah. Because sometimes there are certain spaces where people that look like me aren’t expected to be seen. And that’s what I love about a project like After Yang.
JOH: Yes. That’s what I was about to get to. Because After Yang is the definition of complex and moreover it’s this amazing meditation on motherhood. And on top of that, it has this thing happening inside it, because of [the writer-director] Kogonada’s beautifully open imagination. There’s this real opportunity there for this casting to be a model for how we see families in movies going forward, especially speculative fictions. What was it like crafting this family with Colin [Farrell] and Kogonada?
JTS: Kogonada is just an incredibly talented, gentle, amazing spirit and he created that energy on set, held such a safe space for us. The movie’s only coming out now but that was my second film, the movie I did after Queen & Slim. It was my first time playing a mother on screen, and then I became a mother shortly afterwards. And the thing is, even the way that he writes his scripts, he doesn’t write a lot of stage direction. He doesn’t write a lot of things that would indicate to you what your character is going through internally. He just presents the story and he trusts you as the actor to come in and infuse that with life. The film meditates on very specific themes but we all got to add our own specificity to what was happening in our characters’ internal lives. And I love the world that he built, that conception of a future world. If the future world looks like that, I think we would all be in a really good place.
Silk chiffon caped gown with turtleneck and plissé detail and leather high-heeled sandals by GUCCI. White gold and diamond necklace and white gold, sapphire and diamond necklace from the Hortus Deliciarum collection by GUCCI HIGH JEWELLERYPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Silk chiffon caped gown with turtleneck and plissé detail and leather high-heeled sandals by GUCCI. White gold and diamond necklace and white gold, sapphire and diamond necklace from the Hortus Deliciarum collection by GUCCI HIGH JEWELLERYPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
JOH: Yes. What was the mood on set like? I’ve seen all the interviews post-Sundance and there seems to be so much joy on these Zoom calls among the cast – but as exciting and beautiful as the film is, there is also so much heaviness there. How does one navigate that?
JTS: The reason we’re all a fucking love fest every time you see us together is because it was just so supportive and so loving and so generous. The energy felt so good. And it’s interesting because in terms of my relationship with Colin, we are in a marriage where we’re not really hearing or seeing each other and there’s frustration and there’s stress and there’s distance, but there was so much love on that set. We shot most of it in this little house. And just around the corner there was a house that we used as our base camp and everybody had a bedroom and anytime someone was making food in the kitchen, you’d smell that through the house. It always smelled like incense and we’d play with hair and make-up in the front room. It was just this lovely, delicious, warm atmosphere. And honestly, I thrive in that kind of environment. It doesn’t work for me to be dark all day in order to play dark shit. It actually stresses me out more, it’s better for me to feel loved and held by everyone in the crew every time the camera cuts. You’re not always going to get that. And I know that, but when you can create that kind of environment, for me, I feel like I thrive – like I can go deeper into whatever darkness I have to go to when I feel that safety when the camera’s not rolling.
JOH: I love that. I think that’s so true. I feel like we make best with our families. Even if these families are sort of quickly put together – but put together with love. If things feel sterile, it’s so hard to make it work. Looking at your career so far, you’ve led a lot of projects already. You’ve jumped through a lot of genres. We’ve mentioned your first film, which is like an amazing modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, a romantic getaway film that takes place across America. And then you have Anne Boleyn, this historical drama, a television series. You have After Yang, the speculative fiction. And one of the things you’re doing next is White Noise by Noah Baumbach, which is the Don DeLillo adaptation. What fuels how you choose the projects you want to do? Having had such significant work happen at such an early part of your career and being in such a pivotal moment, where the type of actress Jodie Turner-Smith is starts to solidify itself. What helps you decide which direction you want to go in?
“I don’t want to get cancelled for saying this but I feel like there are still so many directors who are creating all-white worlds” – Jodie Turner-Smith
JTS: Honestly, there are different deciding factors every time. Mainly it’s about the story and then there’s who’s telling the story. For Anne Boleyn, I wasn’t necessarily that familiar with Lynsey [Miller]’s work as the director, but I knew that I wanted to tell that story. I was like, “Yes, this resonates with me. It lights me up.” With White Noise, I didn’t really have any script until the very last minute – when I auditioned, I didn’t have a script. It was 100 per cent about who was in the project and that I wanted to work with Noah, who is so talented and amazing. I really consider White Noise to be my first comedy because Noah makes comedies. Everyone’s like, they’re dramas, but they’re actually comedies – in my humble opinion.
I make these choices – I would love to work with that person. And then I jump in and maybe that was a good decision or maybe it is, “OK, what did I learn here?” But every project I go into, I think, who’s the woman that I’ll be on the other side of this? That is the goal and the focus, because you never know how something’s going to turn out. I don’t have any control after I do my bit. It’s really about, “What did I come here to learn? Can I expand from this experience and be better?” The goal is that I just want to get better. And I really hope it never solidifies, what kind of actress Jodie Turner-Smith is, because I want to do so many different things and I don’t want to end up in a box.
JOH: I love the idea that part of what fuels you is a thirst to get better. One of the things I enjoy so much about watching many of my friends who come from so many different backgrounds start to be seen in this industry is that I get to watch them grow on screen in front of me. Not just age-wise, but talent-wise. It’s like watching someone work out from afar over a year or two years and seeing how their body changes and what muscles develop. I’m seeing all my friends develop on screen in front of me right now in their first significant roles on screen. It is exhilarating watching someone learn the muscle of being a lead and then taking what they learnt there to go to the back and work as a supporting actor and build that muscle. And you see that their understanding of how to stand with a scene partner has changed significantly. I’m so excited to see what the Jodie Turner-Smith I meet in four or five years is going to be.
JTS: Me too, Jeremy. Me too.
Jodie is wearing an oversized light silk organza cape with feathers, ruffled silk scarf and tulle gloves with crystal rhinestone detail by GUCCI. White gold, spinel and diamond necklace from the Hortus Deliciarum collection by GUCCI HIGH JEWELLERYPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Oversized silk organza cape with feathers, ruffled silk scarf and tulle gloves with crystal rhinestone detail by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
JOH: Are there any projects you want to do that you haven’t yet? I feel like there’s going to be someone reading this, looking to see if you’re right for this thing they’re doing and you just might tell them right now – “This is where I want to grow next.”
JTS: I feel like I always mis-answer this question, because I guess in a way it is your opportunity to say, “Hi, so-and-so, I’d love to work with you.” Like, “Denis, put me in the next Dune, I’m here.”
JOH: Exactly.
JTS: Listen, when I watched Dune I didn’t stop thinking about it for four weeks. I think it was just so incredibly beautiful and poetically done. But you know what else I think about? Other than working with Denis Villeneuve ... And I don’t want to get cancelled for saying this but I feel like there are still so many directors who are creating all-white worlds. I constantly have this conversation with my team, “OK, well, who do I want to work with?” And I realise that these directors I would really love to work with, I’m like, “Well, I don’t really see a place for myself in their world.” But honestly before White Noise, you could have probably said that about Noah Baumbach and here we are.
JOH: Yes, absolutely.
JTS: You know something else? I’m really wondering when I’m going to be working with Jeremy O Harris and Janicza Bravo.
JOH: Well, when you said that White Noise is your first comedy – I was like, well, you were really funny in Lemon too. But yeah, we need to do a comedy together. Before we go, I want to talk about your mom, Hilda, who I had such a great time with when we were shooting.
“There is a legion of women inside me – I think all of them should get to come out and play” – Jodie Turner-Smith
JTS: Shout-out to Hilda. My mom. Don’t you just love her? Isn’t she everything?
JOH: I love her to death. And you have been such a great daughter to her and that was so evident when we were there. Such a great model for how daughters give back to their parents and how parents can stay so integrated in a family’s life if you choose to have them there. I think so many people make excuses for not having their family be involved in their lives, and seeing your family as a model, I was just like, “There are few excuses, right?” I would love to be someone who has integrated a family as you do in the sense that your mom is there with your daughter. She’s there helping you out on long trips and you’re there helping her out, sending her on bougie trips like in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, talking about boys together.
JTS: I feel so lucky that I have my mom with me to not only just be there for my daughter, but to teach me how to be a mom. My mother is a really, really good mother. And now I have her teaching me how to mother my daughter. I never had a close relationship with my grandmas. So the fact that my daughter is really close with her grandma literally makes me cry every time I think about it. To me, the concept of someone being close to their grandma was like a movie and TV thing. It wasn’t real life. I’m just happy to create that world for my daughter. It really does take a village. And I have so many people helping me make it happen.
JOH: That’s so beautiful. I’m so excited that we got to do this conversation together. There’s no one I’d rather wake up to talk to. How is the Bahamas for your family?
JTS: We decided last minute to come here. It’s just me, my husband and my daughter. I’m playing a Bahamian in this TV show, Bad Monkey. I thought, let me come to the Bahamas and be around the people.
JOH: What kind of Bahamian are you playing?
JTS: Anyone who’s read the book will know some of the characters but I am playing a woman who is an Obeah woman, which I love because it just feels witchy and interesting. It’s funny because her name is Dragon Queen and I don’t know how this keeps happening to me, that I keep playing people that are named queen or are a queen, but if this is the way I’m being typecast, I’m down with it.
Cici is wearing a polyamide furry crew neck cardigan and knickers, cut-out headgear with metal chain and sequin embellishment, suspender belt and cotton net stockings by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Lex is wearing a faux-fur coat, tiered cotton lace dress with corset bodice, suspender belt, cotton net stockings and palladium-finished metal and crystal tiara (throughout) by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
JOH: Oh my God. I love that. I mean, you give off queen shit, you know what I mean? You give off “Don’t fuck with her.” Do people know who you are in the Bahamas yet?
JTS: I don’t think I’m, like, Jen Aniston famous, where everywhere I go people are crowding me. It’s just the kind of thing where people might look at us twice and say, “Is that ... ?” We just go about our business. And we always go to places that are more remote and not too intense, so that we can live a quiet existence anyway because that’s what we prefer. And obviously with a young child, that feels safer. I love my life and I’m so grateful for all of the bounties that it provides. It definitely is a little bit unnerving, fame, especially because a lot of my fame comes from the fact that my husband’s been famous for a long time and I’m a Black woman married to him. As I said, political body. That is a story for people. And that is not what my daughter chose. I want to protect her from that for as long as I can and not let the more negative elements of that affect her. I just want her to feel like a grounded human being, as grounded as one can be when you grow up wealthy.
JOH: Exactly. And I mean, given the fact that she’s with an actual queen every day, queen on and off screen, it’s going to be really hard for her not to realise that she’s a princess.
JTS: And her father treats her like she is a goddess walking on Earth. The Bahamas have a really special history for me and Josh, because this was the first place we came together. You know how it is, when you meet someone, it’s like, are you going to take me on holiday? That’s how I know you’re serious.
JOH: Yes, exactly.
JTS: But we were both working, so we had to wait a little bit. And then we went to the Bahamas and it was this really special trip because we were falling in love with each other but not wanting to say that yet. And I remember he rented this boat and took me on a tour of the Exumas. That’s why we came straight to the Exumas this time. And when we were on this boat ride, the captain kept saying, you guys are going to make a baby out here and you’re going to call it Exuma.
JOH: Oh my God. That’s you guys.
JTS: And we did less than a year later. And now we’ve brought our daughter here. It’s really special to be here together.
JOH: Can I ask you something quickly? I watched you walk in the Gucci Love Parade show on Hollywood Boulevard. I was there screaming. Was there any anxiety about jumping back into the space of fashion after you’d made this transition into acting and even after motherhood, being on a catwalk, walking a Gucci show – did that feel like a daunting thing to do? Or were you just like, “You know what, this is another classic Jodie challenge”?
JTS: First of all, that was a long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and those shoes we were wearing, I was just like, “Oh my God, bitch, do not fall down.” But it was a little bit of both because I feel like the catwalk is a kind of performance, it’s sort of like being on stage. It’s why I loved it when I did it for the first time – I didn’t realise at the time, but I think it was the performance element of it that I loved so much. I loved re-entering that world as an actor, because it’s different when you do it as an actor versus as a model. I mean, it’s why you didn’t see me all over billboards everywhere. I was never a successful model. But as an actress to now model, I can take everything that I’ve learnt from that and put it to great use. I can come with my personality and everything that I am. And there is a legion of women inside me – I think all of them should get to come out and play.
Quannah is wearing a sequin-embroidered gown by GUCCI. Her own nose ring and ruffled silk scarf (both throughout)Photography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Cici is wearing a beaded silk chain top and GG star embroidered tulle bra by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Justin is wearing a belted duchesse silk jumpsuit, leather flower motif brooch and felt cowboy hat with grosgrain band by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Lex is wearing a faux-fur coat and tiered cotton lace dress with corset bodice by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Lex is wearing a plissé satin velvet gown by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Lex is wearing a plissé satin velvet gown by GUCCIPhotography by Jackie Nickerson, Styling by Katie Shillingford
Jodie Turner-Smith: Hair: Ursula Stephen at A-Frame Agency using ORIBE. Make-up: Sheika Daley at Day One Studio using Gucci Beauty. Manicure: Sigourney Nuñez using OPI
Models: Hair: Jenny Kim at Frank Reps using ORIBE. Make-up: Zenia Jaeger at Streeters using SUBMISSION BEAUTY. Models: Lex Peckham at Kollektiv Mgmt, Quannah Chasinghorse at IMG Models, Cici Tamez at New Icon Models and Justin Thomas at Next NY. Casting: Noah Shelley at Streeters. Set design: Bette Adams at MHS Artists. Manicure: Sigourney Nuñez using OPI. Digital tech: James Weir. Photographic assistants: Gregory Brouillette, Milan Aguirre and Carolin Schild. Styling assistants: George Pistachio, Bota Abdul and Megan King. Seamstress: Katie Casey at 7th Bone Tailoring. Hair assistant: Sol Rodriguez. Make-up assistant: Katie Mann. Production: Tiagi. Executive producer: Chantelle-Shakila Tiagi. Producer: Mica Kossakowska. Local production: Arzu Kocman at Productionising. Production assistants: Turner Fair and Brett Goldberger
The Full Shoot: Willem Dafoe for AnOther Magazine S/S22
Joshua Woods and Ellie Grace Cumming capture the chameleonic actor
This editorial appears in the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of AnOther Magazine, which will be on sale internationally from 24 March 2022. Pre-order a copy here.
“I Don’t Want to Be Nostalgic”: Willem Dafoe Is on a Roll
As he hits his seventh decade, one of the world’s greatest actors is burning brighter than ever. In AnOther Magazine Spring/Summer 2022, Willem Dafoe speaks with Hannah Lack about the value of fear, and playing everyone’s favourite supervillain
In 1979, tiny New York theatre The Performing Garage had 60 seats, a tin collection box and some of the most radical ideas in a grimy, broken-down city pulsing with creative energy. That year, Willem Dafoe was playing a foul-mouthed oil-rig worker, a heroin-addicted mother and a nun – all in the same play – when Kathryn Bigelow took a seat in the audience one night. The experimental works staged at the scrappy space in SoHo had more in common with the no-wave shows happening around the corner at the Mudd Club than with polite theatre uptown. Plundering all genres, they were loud and freewheeling, incorporating looping video projections, actors shouting over pre-recorded audio, technicians in full view, occasional nudity and, once, Dafoe in the role of a living chicken heart.
After seeing him onstage, Bigelow called the actor to ask if he wanted to be in a film. “I was still in the phone book then,” Dafoe says today, over Zoom from his home in central Rome. “I had to call up friends to find out what to ask for as a salary. I had no idea – I had no representation. My identity was totally as a downtown theatre actor living hand to mouth.” Bigelow cast him as a delinquent, leather-clad antihero in The Loveless, the tale of a nihilistic biker gang who ride into a Georgia backwater and set fire to its simmering tensions. It became Bigelow’s debut film (co-directed with Monty Montgomery), Dafoe’s first starring role, and today an artful cult oddity that makes one thing overwhelmingly clear: whether he’s dodging a shotgun or pouring ketchup over congealed scrambled eggs, Dafoe’s screen presence has been intact from the start.
Even over an imperfect Zoom connection it’s easy to see how journalists get tangled up describing his face, its angles and hollows and meme-generating expressiveness: “a demiurge as rendered by a cubist” (The New York Times); “the pallidly beautiful embodiment of pure evil” (The Village Voice); “the boy next door, if you live next door to a mausoleum” (that was Dafoe himself). None of those descriptions captures his amiable charm in interviews – and as singular as he looks, in the four decades since his debut, the 66-year-old has carved one of the most versatile careers in cinema, uprooting his audience’s expectations again and again. His staggering 120-plus roles to date have encompassed oddball detectives, drug lords and unhinged hitmen, a giant alien and a manga god of death, Pier Paolo Pasolini and TS Eliot, a tropical fish and Jesus Christ. Dafoe’s versatility shows not just in his chameleonic powers, but his willingness to take a gamble and work outside his comfort zone. “I’m always nervous on my first day, but that’s good news,” he says in the ridged, textured voice that has become as distinctive as his elastic features. “It motivates you, fear. It’s what keeps you curious, keeps you trying to find new ways. If you accept fear, that’s a good practice for an actor to have – it’s a good practice for a person to have. You get used to being a little off balance. I don’t know whether I enjoy it – I’m like anyone, I like to be lazy and comfortable. But you know, that can kill you too.”
“Comfortable” is not a word often associated with Dafoe’s choices, but it might be a good description of Appleton, Wisconsin, the small paper-mill town he grew up in, a hundred miles north of Milwaukee. Pre Dafoe, Appleton’s two most famous residents were Joe McCarthy, ringleader of the communist witchhunts of the Fifties, and the magician and escapologist Harry Houdini. (A possibly unfair joke goes: “What was Harry Houdini’s greatest escape? Getting out of Appleton.”) Houdini was indeed long gone and Eisenhower was in office when Dafoe was born there in 1955, into an already-crowded family. The seventh of eight children, he was christened William, soon known as Bill, and later nicknamed Willem. His nurse mother and surgeon father both worked long hours, resulting in minimal supervision and family mealtimes – Dafoe credits his elder sisters with raising him. There’s a revealing childhood story he tells of shutting himself in a closet for two days to mimic the conditions of the Gemini astronauts orbiting Earth at the time: nobody noticed. Clearly attention would have to be sought elsewhere. “My place in this large family of eight kids definitely contributed to me becoming an actor,” he says. “It shaped me very much. I’m married to an only child [the Italian director Giada Colagrande] of a single mother – you have a totally different sense of your place in the world.”
Fittingly for someone who has played monsters better than anyone, Dafoe’s earliest film memories were the Frankenstein and Dracula reels his father brought back from work trips to Chicago. “We’d get these Super 8 edited features and I’d play them over and over in slow motion on a little Bell & Howell projector,” he says, “and charge the neighbourhood kids to watch.” You could argue that Dafoe’s first performances were surreal pranks – he once dressed up in a gorilla suit to picket Planet of the Apes at the local cinema. Appleton’s community theatre provided a more structured outlet for that mischievous energy, and brought him his first review – “This is a lad with a promising future on the stage,” announced the local paper of 13-year-old Dafoe’s turn in A Thousand Clowns. But in a family of medical professionals there was little thought that that afterschool hobby might become a career. “No, not at all,” he says. “Having said that, my family was very lively, great singers and dancers. The irony is, and it sounds a little coy but it’s sort of true, they’re all more talented than I am. I just worked on it.”
In 1977, after a few semesters at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a stint with experimental troupe Theatre X, his ambitions led him to the logical destination for an aspiring stage actor. When Dafoe arrived in New York wide-eyed from the Midwest, the city was plunged in some of its darkest years. Virtually bankrupt, it was decaying and weed-ridden, with broad-daylight muggings and night-time blackouts (and a serial killer, Son of Sam, who took advantage of those blackouts). But its febrile atmosphere was causing an outburst of creative, cross-genre collisions, and after assuming he’d try his luck on Broadway, Dafoe found himself drawn instead to the grittier scene downtown. “I don’t want to be nostalgic, it was a rough time,” he says, “but I’m 20 years old, a kid from Wisconsin, not very sophisticated, not much of an education. I was living in tough areas, with people who had different problems and world views than I had grown up with. So it was a radical time for me. When I moved to SoHo it was a no man’s land, there was a bunch of old factory buildings gone belly-up. New York was in such bad shape people were taking over spaces to make their own work. So many musicians, painters, dancers that later became successful were all in the same room together then – at clubs, at the Kitchen or La MaMa. We were young and we weren’t thinking about tomorrow.”
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