Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i ELLE

February 2 In The Queen of the Night, the muchanticipated second novel from Alexander Chee, a woman in 1800s Europe transforms herself from orphan to courtesan to legendary soprano. Basically the backstory of any opera singer worth her arias, right? February 5 Dark, powerful, and fearless: Blackbird, now on Broadway for the first time, explores the complex dynamics between a woman (Michelle Williams) and the man (Jeff Daniels) who sexually abused her 15 years earlier, when she was 12. February 5 The Choice, adapted from a novel by national cupid Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook), is a film about neighbors who fall in love (a car crash and dramatic hospital hand-holding also come into play). February 5 The complete zombification of the cultureverse continues with the feminist fantasy/horror flick Pride and…

Ambassador Jane Hartley was at dinner with her husband in Paris on the night of November 13 when her phone lit up with an urgent text. Within moments, her security detail had hustled her into a car, and by the time she made it back to the American ambassador’s residence near the Place de la Concorde, “everyone knew what was going on,” she says. Hartley sprang into action, working the phones with “our White House, our security people, [homeland security adviser] Lisa Monaco, Secretary of State Kerry.” Meanwhile, her team—about 1,000 people work for the embassy throughout France—fielded calls and e-mails from Americans seeking advice on travel and security, some 3,500 inquiries that first weekend alone. When we spoke six days after the attack—and minutes after CNN had confirmed that…

COLLECT THEM ALL! ON SALE NOW “[It was hard to adjust to] the difference between features and TV. You do one scene a day in a feature, and have time to work on the character and the scene. For TV, you do nine scenes a day.” —PRIYANKA CHOPRA On auditioning for HBO’s Vinyl: “I walked in and said, ‘If you’re looking for a housewife, I’m out.’ They were shocked and told me, ‘That’s not what it is—talk to Terry [Winter] and Marty [Scorsese].’ I did and realized that I was in for the thrill of my life.” —OLIVIA WILDE On acting: “How do you know what’s happening within anyone? That’s the job of the artist. Great artists tell the truth; crappy artists feed you the lie.” —VIOLA DAVIS On her…

With an anti-stiletto sisterhood of sorts— Rihanna, Hailee Steinfeld, Shailene Woodley— pairing Robert Clergerie lug-soled oxfords and raffia creepers with everything from denim cutoffs to cocktail dresses, the original maker of brogues for women finds itself firmly back in the spotlight. “Shoes carry you through life,” opines women’s-wear designer Roland Mouret, who’s done double duty as the French footwear brand’s creative director since 2011, and who first worked with its eponymous founder, on art direction and styling, in the ’80s. “They show the reality of how girls live fashion now.” And what’s a moment these days without an official hashtag? Mouret enlisted his friend, Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine—for whom the distinct pleasures of chunky footwear are very much onbrand— to host a #ClergerieGirls contest, inviting followers to share snapshots of…

MARTA JAKUBOWSKI AGE: 31 PROVENANCE: Toruń, Poland CV: After receiving her MA in women’swear design in 2014 from London’s Royal College of Art, Jakubowski was chosen to show her eponymous collection at NewGen, the British Fashion Council’s incubator program for emerging designers. Prior to launching her own label, she worked with Hussein Chalayan and Alexander Wang. LIQUID GOLD: Jakubowski plays on boudoir shapes with streamlined silhouettes cut from fluid, billowing silk and cotton. ELLERY NAME: Kym Ellery AGE: 32 PROVENANCE: Perth, Australia CV: After four years as a fashion editor at Sydney’s Russh magazine, Aussie designer Ellery has been a red-carpet fave since launching her brand in 2007. SUPERSIZE ME: In her spring 2016 runway show in Paris, Ellery’s architectural take on daywear—elongated, oversize proportions embellished with circular metal grommets…

SMOOTH TRANSITION It’s that time again! As I pack for another season of shows, I’m hoping to include one of the travel-friendly transitional coats that popped up on spring runways at Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Burberry Prorsum. I adore the oversize trench, and this wallet-friendly option from Vince is just as chic as the runway version, non? A MOMENT WITH: CURLS Hairstylist Chuck Amos— who maintains the voluminous curls of Tracee Ellis Ross, Erykah Badu, and Alicia Keys—shares the secrets behind Taraji P. Henson’s ELLE cover look. Using a Hot Tools curling iron, Amos folded and pressed the hair into S-shape divots, a shape that “creates more volume and stays in the hair a lot longer than a normal barrel curl.” SUREFOOTED I was recently introduced to Malone Souliers, a…

“I don’t consider my childhood and teenage career as me,” says Gaby Hoffmann, who made her mark playing doe-eyed cuties in classics such as Field of Dreams, Sleepless in Seattle, and Now and Then. “I feel like I just came back to acting in the last few years as an adult who knew herself as best she could.” After a decade-long cooldown—during which Hoffmann, now 34, earned a literature degree from Bard College, apprenticed with an Italian chef, and went through doula training—her feistily feminist turns in tragicomedies like Girls, Louie, and Transparent have all but invented a new TV poster girl, one who is sexually, socially, and circumstantially liberated. Here, Hoffmann, who grew up fawning over the aproned suburbia depicted on Who’s the Boss? and Charles in Charge, sounds…

There’s a peculiar sensation that suffuses the upcoming Starz drama The Girlfriend Experience, about a law student, Christine (Riley Keough), who is enticed into the world of high-end call girls. You watch her walk down a long hallway—her eyes casting insouciant glances through evening shadows—before entering a door at the end. On the other side, she immediately straddles a gentleman suitor before revealing her own soft, slate-white body. And your heart races with…anxiety? Describe the feeling to Amy Seimetz, the show’s cocreator and the first call executive producer Steven Soderbergh made when he needed a woman to help guide the television adaptation of his 2009 experimental indie film, and one needn’t even finish the thought. It’s like watching…“a horror movie?” Seimetz offers. Seimetz, who directed the first episode and then…

The eve of the Oscars is the quietest time of the cinematic year, so we’re lucky this month to have Tumbledown to keep us company, a feature that’s comedic and romantic but adds up to something more than a straightup rom-com. It’s the kind of indie project that has clearly led something of a charmed life on its years-long way to the screen, as so many of its key elements appear to have fallen into place by serendipity. Written by Desiree Van Til and directed by Sean Mewshaw—a husband-and-wife pair of émigrés from Tinseltown who settled in Van Til’s native Farmington, Maine, some years ago—Tumbledown is locally set and incorporates various personae and scenery familiar to Van Til. Tumbledown’s first impressive feat is dodging a huge sinkhole that could have…

Fifteen ELLE readers choose their favorite among three promising new books—this month, memoirs of great escape 1 THE SOUND OF GRAVEL RUTH WARINER (FLATIRON) Despite having been raised in a culture where questioning faith was discouraged, Wariner impressed readers with her candor in this poignant (and often chilling) memoir of what it was like to grow up in a doomsday, polygamist cult in Colonia LeBaron, just south of the Texas-Mexico border, the thirty-ninth of her father’s 41 children. His violent death during her infancy, and the abuses she and her siblings suffered at the hands of her mother’s new husband, were what one reader described as “almost surreal.” 2 MY NAME IS MAHTOB MAHTOB MAHMOODY (NELSON) Almost three decades after the release of Not Without My Daughter (1987), Betty Mahmoody’s…

Ever longed to lob a coffee cup at your coworker who invariably passes meetings with eyes locked on her phone? If so, you’re not alone. We live in an age when it feels imperative to always appear intensely industrious at work—and this misguided belief stifles the cooperative, caring human interactions that help us (and our truly good ideas) thrive. This is the resounding message of two insightful new books—The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success (HarperOne), by Emma Seppälä, and Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Viking), by Adam Grant—that also kindly show us how to reclaim the joy and power of genuine connection on the job. According to Seppälä, science director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research, burnout and…

One night while Googling in bed, I came across something that genuinely shocked me. I’m pretty sure I was looking up Nicole Richie; I’m always looking up Nicole Richie—she’s my cool-mom inspiration for the future. Following Richie’s trail on her latest exotic vacation somehow led me, click, click, click, to Melanesia, a region in the eastern Pacific Ocean made up of four countries: Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea. Melanesia has some pretty crazy attractions—the most gigantic snail species in the entire world, boiling lava lakes, and acid rain formed by gases from thousand-year-old craters. But one of the most fascinating things about Melanesia is actually the Melanesians. Many of them have deep-brown skin like mine and the most unusual, most gorgeous, kinky, naturally blond hair. “Make…

Tapping Angela Dimayuga, executive chef of Manhattan’s Mission Chinese Food and one of the culinary scene’s rising stars, to devise a menu for the ultimate Super Bowl party might not seem the obvious game plan. For starters, she’s not exactly an expert on the subject. “Anytime the Super Bowl comes around, I get a little envious of people who actually care about it,” the 30-year-old San Jose–born Filipino American says. This year, though, Dimayuga has some skin in the game: The sports holiday falls on February 7, the evening before Chinese New Year (February 8). Not to say that nachos can’t be served with flair, but a banquet inspired by the arrival of the Year of the Monkey offers the home chef far more inventive and unexpected options. Creative riffing…

“Quick! Hide the cocaine!” a commanding woman in heels and fashion sweatpants shouts as I walk into the Empire writers’ room in Beverly Hills at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. It’s an open, well-lit space bordered by an inviting roof deck and a glass wall papered with big Technicolor Post-its: INT: RED LOBSTER; WORKING TITLE: MOMMA BEAR VS. SCORCHED EARTH. It’s surprising that they’ve even let me in: Most TV writers are too neurotic about the messy process (and too fearful of spoilers) to allow in outsiders. But the Empire writers’ room has more swagger than most. The ratings for FOX’s hip-hop family opera, spectacular from the start, crested with the first-season finale on March 18, 2015. With a stunning 17.6 million people tuning in to watch accusations of interfamilial…

Viola Davis, laid-back in fawn-colored sweatpants, descends the stairs of her unassuming San Fernando Valley house handin-hand with her five-year-old daughter, Genesis, who says hello and places a small plastic roast chicken on the coffee table. It’s late on the Sunday afternoon before Halloween, and the problem of Genesis’s costume remains unsolved. A few days later, on the set of How to Get Away With Murder, Davis tells me that after three trips to Party City, the kid finally put her foot down. She didn’t want to be Wonder Woman or Lagoon Girl. She wanted to be Viola Davis. She shows me a photo: Genesis beaming in a long white dress, curly wig, major lashes, a furry shrug, and a victoriously raised gold statue. And seriously, who wouldn’t want to…

Olivia Wilde does not put on airs. When she breezes into Walter’s in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—an unassuming café near where she lives with her partner, Jason Sudeikis, and their son, Otis, who will be two in April—with her faraway eyes, exquisite cheekbones, and the rest of her fabulousness, she also brings a welcoming gaze that says simply, Okay, let’s talk! As Hugh Laurie—with whom Wilde starred on the hit FOX drama House M.D., as the troubled doctor nicknamed Thirteen, in 81 episodes from 2007 to 2012—says, “Olivia is so much better and cleverer and funnier than she needs to be. She has all the equipment that a diva would require to be able to get away with murder— in fact, she might’ve killed people, I don’t know—but she shows up…

With a bevy of planets—including fiery Mars—exerting a positive influence early in the month, February opens with a bang. And by Valentine’s Day, romance will reach a fever pitch for all signs, thanks to Jupiter’s rosy presence AQUARIUS THIS MONTH FOR AQUARIUS: (JAN 20–FEB 18) Life will be anything but predictable this month when, starting on the 3rd, Mars, now in your house of fame and honors, contacts Pluto: Someone highly placed will help you rise in status. Then, on the 5th and 6th, your ruling planet, capricious Uranus, will be in conversation with the Sun, suggesting all surprises will be good ones. Another welcome development comes on the 8th, when the new moon in Aquarius ushers in a two-week period fortuitous for embarking on new adventures. Indeed, you could…

February 1 Rizzoli’s Wallace Chan explores the jeweler’s myriad technical feats—his signature intaglios are carved underwater using a modified dentist’s drill (to dissipate heat and prevent damage)—which led to his being the first Asian artist to be invited to Paris’s prestigious Biennale des Antiquaires. It’s Super Bowl weekend and your team didn’t make the cut? You can still get sporty with artist/toy designer KAWS’s illustrated satin varsity jackets for whimsical ready-to-wear designer (and Beyoncé fave) Mira Mikati. February 7 February 14 This Valentine’s Day, celebrate a groovy kind of love (and style) with Groupies and Other Electric Ladies (ACC Editions). Among the iconic images of legendary “girls with the band”: the infamous Sanchez twins and Cynthia Plaster Caster. February 16 Multitasking Miranda July has partnered with Paris-based label Heart Heart…

YOUR COACH OF THE MONTH Marissa A. Ross was 22 with “hair down to my ass and heavy bangs” when she moved to Echo Park, Los Angeles, in 2008 to pursue an acting career. In her own words, “I wasn’t very castable.” With $400 to her name, a dearth of local friends, and a Craigslist roommate situation cribbed from every parent’s nightmare—alcoholic, heroin addict, hoarder—Ross took to spending evenings holed up in her shoebox of a bedroom, drinking Charles Shaw (aka Two-Buck Chuck) and writing sketch comedy infused with wine-related humor. Three years later, Ross’s comedy attracted the attention of HelloGiggles cofounder Molly McAleer, who asked her to start a weekly video series about wine. Actually, what McAleer said was, “Dude, you should review all those shitty wines you drink,”…

MEET YOUR TOUR GUIDES LAURA SOMOZA: When not conceptualizing fashion shoots or designing her jewelry line, Ouibyou (Gisele’s a fan), ELLE España senior fashion editor Laura Somoza, 39, can be found at one of the Spanish capital’s hot spots, many of which she writes about on Loving It, her blog on the magazine’s website. HINDS: An all-female Spanish garage-rock band (guitarists Ana García Perrote and Carlotta Cosials, bassist Ade Martín, and drummer Amber Grimbergen), Hinds earned comparisons to legendary groups like the Velvet Underground and the Ramones even before the release of their first album, Leave Me Alone, which dropped last month. Despite a hectic tour schedule that has Hinds playing from Iceland to Australia, Madrid— and particularly the vibrant, style-forward Malasaña neighborhood—remains home base for all. EAT/DRINK SOMOZA: VÁLGAME…

To introduce Tod’s Wave Bag—a chic top-handle with a removable extra strap— the Italian heritage brand’s creative director, Alessandra Facchinetti, assembled the ultimate international girl gang of daughters-of. Modeling or sitting front row for her spring meditation on Teddy Boy style: 15 creatives including musician Chelsea Tyler (as in Steven), illustrator Langley Fox Hemingway, and model Cora Corré, the teenage granddaughter of Vivienne Westwood. But Facchinetti says her casting choices were about more than just fashion lineage: “I was looking for characters who exude a certain emotion.”…

VIRGIN TERRITORY Ballet dressing takes a walk on the wild side with sheer fabrics and cheeky motifs FIT TO BE TIED Ribbon ties—around collars, waists, and more—toe the line between bondage and belle du jour AROUND THE FASHION WORLD IN FOUR LOOKS These buzzy labels put their cities’ unique style identities on proud display NEW YORK In the Big Apple, it’s all about the mix—high and low, structured and undone. Adam Lippes’s tailored tuxedo jackets and billowing pleated skirts will take you flawlessly from desk to drinks. MILAN Renowned for expert tailoring, Italian style tends toward the classic, but with mixed-media blouses and dresses, Gabriele Colangelo gives polish a jolt of intrigue. LONDON The latest edgy, inspiring talent to emerge from the birthplace of punk, Marques'Almeida roughs up exquisitely draped…

The fashion cycle dictates that spring clothes arrive in stores while it’s still wintry out, making shopping the new collections a literal game of hot and cold. With a strategic layering system, those warm-weather essentials you wish you could buy and wear now are actually within reach: Think shoulderbaring dresses under leather moto jackets, and cropped trousers with calf-height boots. Ever the master of Americana chic, Derek Lam played with this mantra in his spring show, pairing crisp shirting with plungingneckline tunics. More cool ideas—and scorchinghot fashion—ahead!…

GIRL WONDER It started with a stroll. After wrapping her fifth season playing Britta Perry, an aspiring radical on Community, Dan Harmon’s comedy series that now airs on Yahoo! Screen, Gillian Jacobs was walking down a Brooklyn street when she caught sight of a film set. It turned out to be HBO’s Girls, and showrunner Jenni Konner waved her over. “Have they said anything to you about that part?” Konner asked. And just like that, Jacobs was booked for five episodes as Adam’s gratingly self-assured girlfriend Mimi-Rose, who became the focus of one of 2015’s most-talked-about TV moments when she informed him, matterof-factly, that she couldn’t go running because she’d just had an abortion. As recently as the late aughts, such a scene would have been almost inconceivable; but these…

Touched With Fire—named after Kay Redfield Jamison’s book about bipolar disorder and creativity, which helped director Paul Dalio turn his life around—originated as his NYU film school project under the tutelage of Spike Lee and was seen through production by his mentor’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks. It’s that good! But before that, Dalio, now 36, went through years of psychological hell that inform every frame of his debut feature. In it, Carla (Katie Holmes, in a bracingly convincing performance) and Marco (a preternaturally intense Luke Kirby) meet in a psychiatric hospital, bond over poetry writing, and become each other’s dream enablers—which seems unlikely to end well. If that setup sounds trite or twee, well, fasten your seat belt. Dalio’s script and direction, and the marvelously evocative score he…

“I was in love,” declares the narrator of Hannah Tennant-Moore’s debut novel, Wreck and Order (Hogarth), “meaning I was addicted to a specific body.” Elsie Shore, a relentless self-examiner at age 16, 24, 30, has a complicated relationship with the men (and their bodies) in her life, for whom she feels a primal mix of jealousy, desire, and hostility. To Elsie, a man’s orgasm is “perfect selfishness”; her own, a salve that “separated my longing from the man who had aroused it.” Being human, Elsie also has a complicated relationship with herself. When she is with a man, she’s hyperaware that “my arousal came from knowing my body aroused him.” Tennant-Moore—in this antidote to Fifty Shades of Grey, Hollywood’s beloved simultaneous orgasm, and those personal narratives that treat feminine sexuality…

With swaddling coats and cocooning scarves de rigueur in most of the country, and the sun dwindling to a few sparse streaks after 5 p.m., may we suggest one surefire way to transcend general dreariness? “I think winter is the season when makeup can be ramped up a bit, for both eyes and lips,” says Andrew Gallimore, who created the seasonal affective disorder–dispelling looks on these pages. “Colors can become much darker and richer without feeling heavy.” Oxblood, vermilion, brazen cranberry—these deep, sultry shades exude confidence and poise: This is a woman, they tell us, who takes pride in looking put-together (even if she’s wearing mukluks). “A strong lip for me is the exclamation mark on a face,” says Gallimore, a global makeup artist for Nars. Here, he used bold…

About six years ago, a friend looked at my forehead with as much worry as her well-Botoxed brow could muster. Her eyebrows endeavored to meet, like the fingers of Adam and God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, sending ever-so-gentle undulations across her forehead. “What’s wrong?” I asked, frowning and no doubt animating the San Andreas–like fault line between my own brows. “You overuse your forehead muscles. Your brow is very active,” she told me. “You need Botox.” At 33, this was a first: I had never been accused of hyperactivity. While the rest of my body had long demonstrated a gift for leisure, apparently my histrionic brow had been busy in a compensatory frenzy of activity. Initially, I decided to reject my “friend’s” suggestion. After all, my frown…

JENNIFERGATE DEAR E. JEAN: I’m in love with the man of my dreams. He’s perfect in every way. He respects my opinions and ideas, he’s very understanding— and we’ve often discussed marriage. Yesterday, out of the blue, he dumped me. After six years! I’m devastated. I can’t focus on anything because now I’m hearing through friends that he’s been cheating on me with three women, all shockingly/weirdly named Jennifer. He denies it all. However, friends assure me that he’s bragged to them about having sex with these Jennifers, and worst of all, he’s been using hotel rooms for these assignations. And I’m the one paying his credit card bills! This morning he asked if I’d like to get back together in three months. What does that mean? What could he…

Growing up the only child of divorced parents in rough southeast DC, Taraji P. Henson remembers that “my mother would be sitting at the table crying over a bill, and I’d walk in and be like, ‘Mom, don’t cry, I’m going to be rich one day!’” What she describes as “extreme optimism” has served Henson well during a two-decade career marked by distinctive highs—the unforgettable Shug, the doe-eyed, pregnant prostitute she played in the indie hit Hustle & Flow (2005); the fun-loving but deceptively wise girlfriend to Don Cheadle’s shock jock in the critically adored Talk to Me (2007); and her Oscar-nominated turn as Queenie, foster mother to an aging-backward Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)—unjustly punctuated by not-so-distinctive slow periods. Fincher, a Taraji…

THE FIGHTER In the opening scene of NBC’s action drama Blindspot, fall’s highest-rated new network show, JAIMIE ALEXANDER unfurls from a duffel bag in Times Square like a twenty-first-century tattooed manifestation of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—a moment she would later call “the most epic scene I’ve ever done in any project I’ve ever worked on.” This from a woman who’s wielded swords on horseback as Thor’s Lady Sif, played a human lab experiment on Kyle XY, and acted opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the pyrotechnic-peppered The Last Stand. When it comes to highly physical roles, “I’m like a magnet,” Alexander says, noting that only twice has she played something approximating an ordinary person. “Everybody else has been a butt kicker. Or, like, an alien or a superhuman.” Thirty-one-year-old Alexander grew up…

Hair by Charles McNair at Jed Root Inc. for Kérastase; makeup by Lisa Houghton for Diorskin; manicure by Emi Kudo at Opus Beauty for Dior Vernis; casting by Sisi Chonco at Zan Casting; model: Kai Newman at Elite New York; production by Kendall Stewart for Portfolio One, Inc.; fashion assistant: Ahmad Francois…

When Trevor Noah was named host of The Daily Show last year, the Internet responded with a collective “What the…?” Jon Stewart was being replaced by…the most famous comedian out of South Africa? But Noah, 31, has been defying characterization (and expectations) his whole life. Born during apartheid to a white father from Switzerland and a black mother from Soweto, Noah, under the law, wasn’t allowed to live with his dad. Nor could he hold his mother’s hand in public. If nothing else, his childhood gave him something to talk about onstage; in his early act, he often joked that he was “born a crime.” These days, he simply kills it on Comedy Central five nights a week. In the midst of perhaps the most absurd election cycle ever, Noah—who…

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK FEBRUARY 11–18 Get into a Fashion Month state of mind with Apple TV’s new channel M2M (Made to Measure). With regular screenings of style flicks—we love Versailles ’73 (1), director Deborah Riley Draper’s documentary on the legendary Battle of Versailles show that pitted 10 top designers (including Halston and Yves Saint Laurent) against each other in a Franco-American battle royale—it’s the perfect way to brush up on fashion’s past before diving into the Big Apple’s sea of talents, from Taylor Swift fave Jonathan Simkhai to living legend Marc Jacobs, whose always-highlyanticipated extravaganza wraps up the week on February 18. One round of lychee martinis, please! Now that most of the shows have moved downtown to Spring Studios and Skylight Clarkson Sq, so has the in-crowd: Mr.…

Late last year, I became a target of a letter-writing campaign started by a website that gave out my personal information, including my phone number and details about my background (as well as my father’s), to an e-mail list of people who were asked to write to me to complain. They questioned ELLE’s fact-checking standards, ELLE.com’s editorial standards, and my sanity, among other things. At issue was a claim in a 1,000-word first-person post on ELLE.com about one of the more politically charged issues of our time, written by a young woman describing mostly her feelings, but also citing particular facts and situations to support her point of view. I received e-mails, phone calls, and Twitter insults that wished me death by cancer and suggested that someone would come to…

Winnie Au PROVENANCE: Rockford, IL NOW: Brooklyn PROFESSION: Photographer THIS MONTH: “Game On!” (page 180) READING: Portrait of a Killer, by Patricia Cornwell. “Everyone has their Jack the Ripper theories, but this book accuses a famous artist of being the killer. It caused an uproar in the art industry.” SCREENING: Return to Oz. “It’s one of those dark and creepy movies from the ’80s that I saw in my youth. I still dream about it all the time. It’s the darker version of The Wizard of Oz. And visually, it’s fantastic.” FAVORITE TV CHARACTER: “Buffy Summers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer came at an interesting point in my life. I’d broken up with my boyfriend and I had all this free time. I basically sat and, for a year, watched Buffy…

When jewelry designer Isabel Encinias met ready-to-wear designer Mark Kroeker at a fashion party some two decades ago, the pair quickly bonded over their nomadic upbringings: Kroeker grew up between Istanbul and Tehran before moving to the States as a teen; Encinias bounced between New Mexico and Paris. Fast-forward to 2014, when despite the logistical challenges—Encinias was based in Paris, where she had worked as a designer for Boucheron, Louis Vuitton, and Fabergé; and Kroeker in New York, where he had launched his own brand, Mark Kroeker/Lost Collective, and served as creative director of Donna Karan’s philanthropic lifestyle brand Urban Zen—the two launched Tejen (the ancient Egyptian word for “needle of stone”), a fine-jewelry line rooted in obelisklike forms. “We’re both fascinated with ancient architecture,” Kroeker says. “And we loved…

COLLAGE TRY Designers take a page out of Matisse’s playbook with graphic decoupage details MIRROR, MIRROR Go for Baroque in the season’s intricate silver add-ons THE BRAIDY BUNCH Old-school artisanal handiwork gets an update with the help of a ROYGBIV palette…

JULIE KLAUSNER, DIFFICULT PEOPLE “When I was writing Difficult People, I rewatched all of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was just in total awe at the symphony that Larry David was able to orchestrate in every episode.” WATCHING NOW: “I love my Housewives and Last Man on Earth. Will Forte is great.” ALI ADLER, SUPERGIRL “Angela Chase’s messy, complicated emotions on My So-Called Life really inspired me. She wasn’t so much heroic as she was flawed, and [she] had to make tremendously difficult decisions.” WATCHING NOW: “The Good Wife. It fits into that cluster of driven, empowered women who don’t apologize for having emotional needs.” ERIKA GREEN SWAFFORD, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER “The scene in The Wire when Bunk and McNulty are figuring out how a woman was murdered…

AMY SCHUMER WRITER/ACTOR/COMEDIAN/PRODUCER HOT STREAK Emmy-winning Inside Amy Schumer, 2015’s $138-million-grossing comedy Trainwreck, HBO special Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo, reported $8 million book deal (expected pub date is fall 2016), and planned feature film cowritten with Jennifer Lawrence. THE MAGIC TOUCH On Inside Amy Schumer, Schumer and her femaleladen writers’ room dissect the challenges of modern womanhood, tackling body image, sex, religion, and ageism, all with Schumer’s brand of raunchy, funny feminism. NO FEAR “Our show sheds light on some dark subject matter through humor,” says Schumer’s sister and IAS writer/producer, Kim Caramele. “We set out to write the funniest stuff possible, which makes what we convey more palatable.” JILL SOLOWAY CREATOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRANSPARENT CURRICULUM VITAE Six Feet Under (writer/producer) and United States of Tara (writer/executive…

MIXED DOUBLES Not your mother’s—or even your big sister’s—chick flick, How to Be Single serves up a posse of randy women, as Rebel Wilson’s professional party girl instructs a newly unattached friend (Dakota Johnson) on up-to-the-minute, uh, dating etiquette, while another swingle (Alison Brie) tries on an actual relationship. As ever, Leslie Mann steals the show as a soulful older sister. CUBAN CONUNDRUM Surely the most improbable (but entirely justified!) Irish entry ever for best foreign-language Oscar, Viva gorgeously and poetically immerses us in the repressed and besieged dragqueen demimonde of Havana, Cuba, where a lonely boy (Héctor Medina) has to face down the homophobic rage of his father (Jorge Perugorría) in order to find his own version of freedom. TWO-WAY STREET When the elite, private Avenues: The World School…

In 2012, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri moved with her family to Rome, where for a year she spoke and wrote only in Italian, a language that had bewitched her since she first visited Italy in 1994. The result of Lahiri’s adventurous, obsessively disciplined, and discovery-laden exercise in linguistic ardor is In Other Words (Knopf), an unconventional autobiography that has the Dionysian drama of a quest saga and the Apollonian tidiness of a primer. It allows you to witness a beloved, hugely successful scribe—her four books include The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies—give birth to a new, untested, uncertain yet determined authorial self. Writes Lahiri, “In Other Words is different. Almost everything in it happened to me.” The book “began as a sort of diary, a personal text,” she adds.…

It’s a warm autumn day in the northern California town of San Carlos, and when Lucy Kalanithi comes to the door of her condo, she’s dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, but her feet are bare. She and her husband, a brilliant young neuro surgeon named Paul Kalanithi, picked the place partly because of its proximity to Stanford University, where they both worked as doctors, but mainly because it backs up onto a beautiful park, redolent of eucalyptus in the fall and saucer magnolias in the spring. At 36, Lucy is tall and lanky, very pretty. Her twin sister is Joanna Goddard, who writes the blog A Cup of Jo. She comes from British stock, and Lucy looks like an English rose, with porcelain skin and cornflower-blue eyes. An…

“It was miserable!” Priyanka Chopra announces in that should-be-trademarked Indian-Anglo–accented husky voice of hers. “It was brutally cold and apparently winter’s not even here yet, but we braved it and did lots of pull-ups and push-ups in the rain.” The “globalization of popular culture” is a mouthful, and it’s a theme that has doubtless inspired a million high-minded essays. But know that its most perfect real-world manifestation may be ABC’s Quantico, one of three breakout hits on network TV this season (along with Blindspot and Supergirl), which not incidentally features the ravishing 33-year-old Bollywood star Chopra as a driven FBI recruit going through basic training at the bureau’s academy in Quantico, Virginia—and which is filmed, for reasons of network economy, in chilly Montreal. Her character, as we learn in an…

Not long after she learned to walk and talk, Julia Louis-Dreyfus mastered the fine art of physical comedy. “I was about three years old, and I made my mom laugh by sticking raisins in my nose, after which it was very gratifying,” she recalls. “Then I inadvertently snorted them, and we had to go to the emergency room and get them out of the upper regions of my nasal cavity. I guess that was the beginning of something.” It’s the kind of small moment that decades later Louis-Dreyfus could balloon into hilarity on any one of her hit shows: Seinfeld or The New Adventures of Old Christine or HBO’s Veep, where her wordless Charlie Chaplin-ish antics as now President Selina Meyer—walking through a glass door; nodding off during a morning-show…

COVERS Priyanka Chopra: Embroidered-lace dress by Valentino, $11,950, visit valentino.com. Taraji P. Henson: Calfskin jacket by Marc Jacobs, $3,200, at Marc Jacobs stores nationwide, visit marcjacobs.com. Cotton T-shirt by Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh, $300, visit off---white.com. White gold and diamond necklace by Bulgari, price on request, call 800-BULGARI or visit bulgari.com. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Sheer panel dress by Stella McCartney, $1,115, at Saks Fifth Avenue (Beverly Hills). Diamond, black emerald, and white gold earrings by Nikos Koulis, $5,330, collection at Bergdorf Goodman (NYC). Olivia Wilde: Appliqué-embroidered cashmere coat, $3,995, lace skirt, price on request, by Burberry, visit burberry.com. Lace bra by Eres, $355, collection at net-a-porter.com, barneys.com. Rose gold and diamond earring, $11,500 (for pair), gold chain, $725, by Tiffany & Co., call 800-843-3269. Diamond and pink sapphire ring by Jean…