Vogue July 2019

THIS MONTH WE BRING YOU the stories of two very different women: our cover star, actress Margot Robbie, and Dr. Jill Biden, an English professor whose husband, Joe, currently leads the ever-more-crowded race for the Democratic nomination. Despite their dissimilarities, though, Margot and Jill are united by the fact that both are leading authentic and admirable lives while currently experiencing moments of profound—and, quite possibly, ongoing—change. This is hardly surprising, given the current realities of both politics and moviemaking. Margot’s ascent in Hollywood comes at a time when an entire industry is being challenged on its past behaviors and attitudes, deifying women on-screen while too often doing precious little (and worse) to enhance their experiences behind the camera—something brought into sharp and shocking relief by the #MeToo movement. As writer…

In the spring of 1983, I returned to my dorm room one day to find a note scrawled on the college message board: CALL THE WHITE HOUSE. At first I thought it was a joke. It was not unusual to get prank messages: MATT DILLON CALLED or PRINCE WOULD DIE 4 U, left by the work-study receptionist who also happened to be my roommate. I ignored it until several days later, when I remembered the woman from the Reagan administration who had come to speak at my college the year before about professions for women in politics and her work as the head of the Office of Congressional & Legislative Affairs. After her lecture, I had approached her to ask about a job. At that time I was a sophomore…

JULIE DE LIBRAN FASHION When Julie de Libran’s five-year run as artistic director at Sonia Rykiel ended in March, she wasted no time starting a new project: In Paris—a city chockablock with languishing creative directors in holding patterns between big jobs—de Libran is launching a label of her own. The project—a small collection of dresses, for starters—is not only right for de Libran; it jibes nicely with our current moment, in which the fashion industry has finally begun addressing its environmental impact. The very first piece de Libran designed, at the age of fourteen, was a black velvet dress with a boatneck, tight long sleeves, and a bubble skirt for a school dance. (“It was the eighties!” she says, laughing.) And though later, during her days in the backrooms of…

1. “Soft-tissue mobilization gets the body moving correctly, and that’s when great things happen,” says Holder, who starts every workout with clients such as Bella Hadid and Naomi Campbell with 5 to 10 minutes of foam-rolling to stretch quads, calves, hamstrings, and glutes. 2. Holder’s cardio warm-up of choice is a jumping-rope circuit of 30-second intervals, alternating between faster and slower paces, for at least 10 minutes, followed by a 10-minute run or brisk walk on the treadmill at an incline. This really increases muscle elasticity, he insists. 3. Once the blood is pumping, Holder focuses on a targeted trio of “butt-busting” mat moves in reps of 10: bird dogs (extending the opposite arm and leg in unison); fire hydrants (raising one leg at a right angle out to the…

TELEVISION Roger Ailes, the longtime chairman and CEO of FOX News, claimed to know the first three adjectives any journalist would reach for when they began to write about him: “paranoid, right-wing, fat.” After watching The Loudest Voice (Showtime), a dramatized adaptation of investigative reporter Gabriel Sherman’s exposé of Ailes’s rise—as well as the events that would lead to his eventual demise—we can confidently add “menacing” to that list. Ailes (played by a jowly Russell Crowe) waddles into Rupert Murdoch’s office in the mid-’90s and takes command of FOX News. The Loudest Voice is concerned with FOX’s unexpected sway over political rhetoric during the past two decades—and Crowe owns the screen as the mercurial, foulmouthed, tantrum-prone executive presiding over it all. As a historical document, the show feels like a…

BEAUTY Under the soaring ceilings of the Grand Palais, two Italian brunettes are chattering at warp speed. The 20-year-old model Vittoria Ceretti, a muse of the late Karl Lagerfeld, is having her makeup done for Chanel’s recent cruise show while Lucia Pica, the house’s global creative makeup and color designer, shares a few instructional words with her team: “Fresca. Leggera. Ordinata.” Fresher, lighter, neater. On top of a sheer, natural base, Pica is using a steady hand to deliver the runway’s unexpected statement: an intensely glossy black lip. The collection is also Virginie Viard’s first solo outing as Chanel’s newly named creative director, and she is in the early stages of putting her own stamp on Karl’s and Coco’s legacies. But if her first and last looks—an easy jacket with…