Vogue May 2025

IT WAS HIS FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH of himself, taken by Arthur Elgort, 1988: André Leon Talley, in a wash of sunlight, striding up Fifth Avenue in a gray panel-checked suit by the tailor Morty Sills. He has his hands in his pockets; the jacket is neatly buttoned; his face is in profile; and the rest of the street is sunk into shadow as if André is a star on a stage, which of course he was, wherever he went. That was what made André so incredible: his instinct for self-presentation. He understood that, especially as a Black man, what you wore told a story about you, about your history, about self-respect. And so, for André, getting dressed was an act of autobiography, and also mischief and fantasy, and so much else…

The Curtain-Raiser For this issue, Jeremy O. Harris—whose striking talents as a playwright and screenwriter are nicely matched by his flair for dressing up—wrote an essay about his relationship to dandyism, the organizing aesthetic of the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute this spring, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” Harris’s text runs alongside “Superfine & Dandy” (page 122), May’s centerpiece fashion portfolio, celebrating contemporary suiting at its most dashing—and featuring many more major creatives, from actors and musicians to designers. Setting the Scenes Another key creative partnership in this issue was the one between photographer Malick Bodian and IB Kamara, the creative director of Off-White and editor in chief of Dazed. Together, Kamara (far left) and Bodian (near left) worked on the fashion portfolio “Kind of Blue” (page…

My oldest sister, Selena, was 27 when I was born in 1954, and she and her husband, John, had eight kids by the time she was 30. My nieces and nephews were closer in age to me than my siblings, and they were my very best friends. The music of all that life in Selena’s house enveloped me, excited me, held me. The sounds of her five daughters and three sons: Deanne, Linda, Leslie, Elouise, Elena, Tommie, and of course Ronnie and Johnny. Don’t try to keep track of all of them—even Selena couldn’t. My nephew Johnny was four years older than me, and he was my very best friend. If you ask me what my earliest memory is of him, you might as well ask me about how I…

In a magnificently preserved brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a portrait of Soull and Dynasty Ogun’s mother, Elthire Josephine, sits above a fireplace. The twins—who use the brownstone as the showroom, atelier, and gallery for their lifestyle brand, L’Enchanteur—have lovingly recreated this image of their mother, who died four years ago, in their jewelry. “It was taken when she was getting her immunization forms when she became a US citizen,” Soull says with a smile. Such seemingly minor biographical details are what animate L’Enchanteur, which was born in 2012 after Soull and Dynasty merged their independent labels—Alkhemi9 and BRZÉ, respectively. Since then, the identical twins have steadily become a force in artistic and fashion circles. The artist Mickalene Thomas is a longtime friend and collaborator of theirs, as is Lena Waithe.…

On the islands of Crete and Santorini, millennia-old frescoes depict girls and monkeys harvesting flowers: saffron crocuses, whose scarlet stigmas, when plucked and dried, become the precious spice. Saffron was used by the Greeks and other early civilizations as a flavoring, a dye, a medicinal cure-all, and a purifier. The Chinese believed it fended off bad chi; in ancient Rome, it was scattered in the streets to cover up the odors of daily life. Today, it’s beauty and wellness types who are increasingly embracing the ancient ingredient. See Matiere Premiere’s heady, concentrated Crystal Saffron Eau de Parfum and Les Eaux Primordiales’s Saffron Superfluide. “It’s very metallic—cold and hot at the same time,” Les Eaux Primordiales’s founder, Arnaud Poulain, says of the note; “it gives power to the fragrance.” As Antonin…

For his debut show at Louis Vuitton two years ago in Paris, Pharrell Williams embroidered miniature versions of Henry Taylor portraits on his suits and accessories. “Henry is a genius,” Williams said at the time. So when Vogue decided to put a painting of Williams on one of its covers this month, we asked Taylor, an artist with a singular, ineffable cool, to do it. (This marks the fifth time in the past eight years Vogue has commissioned an artist to do a painting for a cover.) There was no time for a portrait sitting, but Taylor can paint from memory, and he’d met the designer in Paris, at Williams’s first Louis Vuitton show. “I’m talking truth today,” Taylor tells me when we meet on Zoom to discuss the process.…