Vogue April 2024

IT WAS THE FIRST ROUND of Wimbledon, very little drama, Novak Djokovic dismantling his opponent with professional efficiency on Centre Court. I was watching quite happily from my seat when a tennis-expert friend whispered in my ear that a remarkable battle was going on over on court one: Venus Williams against a 15-year-old American newcomer, ranked just 313th in the world. The way there was labyrinthine, but I made it and saw Coco Gauff returning Venus’s powerful ground strokes, covering the baseline with speed. A small group had gathered where you could stand, and soon there were more of us crowded together watching the match. It was 2019 and Gauff and delight the tennis world, and not for the last time. When she knelt, braced by her racket, after her…

Garden Variety With “High Country” (page 112) came one big logistical question: How could photographer Dan Jackson and contributing fashion editor Tabitha Simmons shoot spring’s most romantic clothes—including selections from Erdem, Prada, and Molly Goddard (the latter, seen admits, yet their answer soon arrived by way of a gorgeous house, not far outside London, with amazing topiaries (and two dear miniature donkeys). All’s well that ends well! Her Town “Yes, Ayo!” (page 104), Alessandra Codinha’s profile of 28-year-old Ayo Edebiri, the Emmy-winning star of FX’s hit com-dram The Bear, sent Vogue contributing editor Jorden Bickham and photographer Angelo Pennetta out West to California, where District their playground for the day. It fit the vibe: Edebiri is, by now, about as beloved by film and television critics as she is by…

When Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana first discussed celebrating their Alta Moda, Alta Sartoria, and Alta Gioielleria collections—the pinnacle of the body of work they’ve been building for four decades—an exhibition with a didactic parade of clothed mannequins wasn’t even they concocted an immersive takeover of Milan’s Palazzo Reale, transforming it into a series of tableaux of almost operatic extravagance rooted in the emotion and amore of Italian culture as translated by artisans into exceptional fatto a mano, or handcrafted, pieces. Curated by French fashion historian Florence Müller (who previously put together “Dior: From Paris to the World” and “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective”), “From the Heart to the Hands” will run in Milan from April 7 to July 31. “Today, this idea of the atelier, of the savoir faire,…

Last summer, 22-year-old South African singer Tyla summoned her choreographer, Lee-ché “Litchi” Janecke, to discuss “Water,” the lead single for her self-titled debut album, out in March. She had seen how concert audiences responded when she did the Bacardi—a South African dance known for its hypnotic movements—and she wanted to incorporate it into the video. Litchi went to work, experimenting with a routine during a rolling blackout in Johannesburg. “I sent her a rough draft, and she lost her mind,” says Litchi. The song already had all the makings of a pop banger—seductive vocals, an infectious beat—but it was the dance that inspired millions to take up a Tik-Tok challenge and landed “Water” on Top 10 charts across 16 different countries last fall. Tyla soon became the first South African…

What makes a successful garden? Vita Sackville-West designed her famous White Garden at Sissinghurst to be seen not in the sunshine but at night, the blooms serving as midnight guideposts as she and her husband, politician Harold Nicolson, moved through the grounds. It is just such visionaries of landscape, those with a story to tell, who continue to serve as inspiration—especially in a delightful collection of new garden books. Bunny Williams has always struck a balance between free-spiritedness and formality, and in Bunny Williams: Life in the Garden (Rizzoli), she doesn’t shy away from the idea that one isn’t born an expert: “The joy was in the process,” she writes of her first season’s planting, “but as the summer went on, I found that my beds were not fabulous—height and…

In late January, the Los Angeles–based artist Se Oh’s solo show opened in the city’s Stroll Garden gallery. The two-part exhibition was titled “Elegies” and featured a collection of hand-thrown, hand-painted vessels inspired by Korean burial ceramics—traditional totemic earthenware that is enclosed in the tombs of loved ones to aid their transition to the afterlife. Flowers native to California also adorn the vase-like structures, depicted with compact yet gestural strokes of cobalt oxide. The containers, which feature lips that curl and unfurl like the petals of a parrot tulip, are made from porcelain—“the diva of the clay world,” Oh says of the medium. And even the simplest of the structures have a certain theatricality. “I pull the edges to resemble different shapes of plants and stems,” Oh says. Oh, who…