Vogue August 2019

THIS MONTH WE CELEBRATE WOMEN of ambition and achievement, from cover star Ariana Grande—whose unflinching honesty, as you will read in writer Rob Haskell’s excellent profile, is light-years away from the usual carefully constructed pop persona—to the phenomenal number of designers offering clothes as real as they are chic. Every issue of Vogue, of course, is dedicated to women who’ve triumphed in their chosen field, be it fashion, politics, sports, business, or the arts. But there is something wonderfully energizing about the sheer number taking the lead in our world today, and we wanted to celebrate them for impacting and informing every aspect of our lives. We owe so much to those women who, in the last few years, came forward to challenge the status quo and to speak out…

Wake up, Rennie.” I felt a hand on my shoulder and pulled the sheet over my head. “Rennie, please.” Even before I turned and saw her face, I could hear a peculiar quaver in my mother’s whisper. Her voice sounded hesitant and desperate. The mattress sank where she lowered herself beside me, and my body stiffened against the depression. I kept my eyes shut and steadied my exhalations. “Rennie!” The whisper, more urgent now, still held an unfamiliar tremor. She pulled down the sheet. “Please wake up.” I opened my eyes. Malabar was in her nightgown, her hair mussed. I sat up. “Mom, what’s wrong? Is everything OK?” “Ben Souther just kissed me.”* I took in this information. Tried to make sense of it. Couldn’t. I rubbed my eyes. My…

BEAUTY Jorja Smith is feeling a bit under the weather. “I thought I was going to be OK, so I apologize,” she laments to the crowd at this year’s Governors Ball Music Festival inside Randall’s Island Park. But a summer cold is no match for the celestial falsetto of the Grammy-nominated R&B star, who has taken to the stage in a burnt-orange leather crop top and metallic trousers, with coral-tinted eyelids to match. Smith unleashes her lush, velvety vocals, seamlessly crooning the songs on her debut album, Lost & Found (2018)—including “Blue Lights,” the politically charged single that launched her career. Forty-eight hours later and Smith is still in the throes of the bug, she says, intermittently humming along to Frank Ocean’s breezy “Pink + White,” which is playing in…

ART In the late 1960s, Sam Gilliam began filling rooms with massive lengths of unprimed canvas, soaked and stained in riotous hues and slung from walls and ceilings in site-specific combinations. Soon enough, Gilliam realized if he wanted to make a living—with three children, he had to—it would behoove him to work on a more collector-friendly scale. Thus evolved the draped paintings for which the artist, 85, is now best known: comparatively small derivations of the same idea that could be displayed alone against a wall. Lately, though, a surge of interest in his career—Gilliam jokes by phone from his D.C. studio about his “rediscovery”—has led to opportunities to revisit the earlier work. This month, the painter takes over a gallery at Dia:Beacon with two of his massive drapes, both…

FASHION Catherine Holstein likes to say that Khaite, the brand she launched in New York in 2016, isn’t actually a brand at all: “It’s a breath, a feeling, an emotion.” It’s also a raging success, and has been from the very start. Before she sold a single pair of jeans, with their elevating enamel button, or one lofty cashmere sweater, Holstein started an Instagram account, and its inspired mix of 1990s magazine editorials, old movie stills, and Cecily Brown and Marlene Dumas paintings soon had Net-a-Porter and MatchesFashion emailing her for appointments. Holstein wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity. Barneys picked up her Parsons School of Design junior thesis collection, and she went on to sell at Lane Crawford, Isetan, and 40 other global accounts before working in the design studios…

TRAVEL Airbnb’s origin story is the stuff of Silicon Valley lore: In 2007, a design conference came to San Francisco. Sensing an opportunity to make some extra cash, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia blew up three air mattresses and advertised their quarters to attendees in search of accommodations. Now, with the recent launch of Airbnb Luxe, they’re moving beyond their inflatable-furniture days. “It’s five-star everything,” says Chesky of the 2,000 tony properties he has added to Airbnb’s listings. If the original platform allows travelers to experience life like a local in an Echo Park bungalow, Airbnb Luxe now shoots them straight to Malibu’s Billionaire’s Beach. To qualify, rentals must pass a rigorous 300-point screening; a favorable champagne flute–to–guest ratio, electric-car charger ports, and panoramic ocean views all help a property…