Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Vogue

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…

There are too few novels that turn our current political climate into comedy. Jess Walter’s So Far Gone (Harper) is an amusing counterexample: the story of the charming, curmudgeonly Rhys Kinnick, who responds to the increasingly MAGA leanings of his son-in-law by removing himself from society and resolving to live, Thoreau-like, in the cinder-block house in rural Washington that once belonged to Rhys’s grandfather. The plan goes awry when his two grandchildren show up, unannounced, on his door-step, ferried there by a neighbor. The children’s mother has disappeared, and the novel becomes a romp through various political subcultures, peppered with lovable hard-boiled characters, as Rhys attempts to find her. So Far Gone feels like a 21st-century variation on classics of detective fiction and entirely original at the same time. In…

There’s music in the air at Louis Vuitton’s menswear HQ in Paris. Swelling piano chords float along office hallways, buoying along a soulful, unmistakable falsetto—a voice that’s launched a thousand hits. “I stay in a flow state,” says Pharrell Williams from his light-filled executive suite turned recording studio, pausing mid-song to swivel away from his piano keyboard. “It’s like when you get in a place of absolute disconnection with the exception of what you’re focused on in your brain. It opens up a whole other world, and that world becomes a dimension unto itself.” In the two-plus years since Williams was appointed Louis Vuitton’s creative director of menswear—only the second Black man to hold the position, after Virgil Abloh—he’s been mapping a new frontier for the storied French house, one…

When I learned that The Met was celebrating the Black dandy, I was a bit blown away, to be honest. Black dandyism, the men who came before us—curator Monica L. Miller’s work and how she explains this history in the exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”—it’s all so important to learn. What hit home hardest is how far back it goes, and that there are so many different ways to present as a man; you don’t have to be traditionally masculine. And Black men have always had to be more excellent than our white counterparts. I’ve seen that with my father and with me—we needed to be overachievers. That’s why this theme is just so important to me. When I was growing up outside of London, there were no museums near…

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…

Early in his career in New York, designer Prabal Gurung got to thinking about his ambitions. “Start a brand,” began the list. “Get in a few stores. Dress Oprah. Michelle Obama. Gloria Steinem. Get in Vogue. Apply for CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Win CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. Go to the Met Gala. Become the creative director of Chanel. Start a foundation.” Gurung, who’s known for his celebratory dressing influenced by his South Asian identity as well as for his social activism and philanthropy, has achieved pretty much everything he wished for (even if Chanel might need to stay on that wish list a while longer). His new memoir, Walk Like a Girl (the title a defiant facing-down of the slurs he endured during his childhood in Kathmandu, and then later at school…

It’s past 1 a.m. on a Tuesday in downtown Manhattan, and A$AP Rocky, in a white long-sleeve tee and relaxed jeans—his khaki Saint Laurent trench and Chanel trapper hat slung across a chair—is contemplating his next pool shot. These late weeknight hours are usually reserved for working, Lindsey, a member of his production-management team, tells me, as Rocky paces around a corner nook at Soho House, behind him a delightful display of glass candy jars situated on sage-green lacquered shelving. But it’s been only eight days since the Harlem-born rapper, designer, and father to two was acquitted on assault charges. Everybody’s on a post-not-guilty high. Rocky’s been at this for roughly 10 hours—by which I mean hanging out, seeing friends, family members, and business associates, and talking to me about…

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…

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.…

“You’re looking sharp, little man!” said the photographer as I sat down. I remember smiling bright and wide and holding on to my mother. “My mama picked it out!” I said of the suit and bow tie. The air in the room shifted. Everyone in the JCPenney photo studio looked at my mother, who was 21 and beaming, even though she was taking this family portrait alone. The nervous, pitying glances faded away. Looking “sharp” was a way to communicate to people that I was taken care of. When I was asked to consider how I came to be a dandy—the type of man who flaunts his elevated wares much to the awe and fright of many around him—I called my mother, the person who has known me the longest.…

Table of Contents: 30: 3. Paradis coat hand-painted by Johanna Tordjman; 3paradis.com for similar styles. Jacket and pants; labrumlondon.com. Eton shirt. Shoes; ghbass.com. J Smith Esquire hat; jsmithesquire.com. Costume Studio cane. Manicurist: Adam Slee. Tailor: Judith Grant. Cover Looks: 30: On Rocky: Ozwald Boateng jacket, pants, and tie; Ozwald Boateng, Savile Row for requests. Boss shirt; boss.com. De Beers earrings; debeers.com. Margot McKinney brooch; margotmckinney.com. Audemars Piguet watch; audemarspiguet.com. Hair, Tashana Miles; grooming by MichelleWaldron using Dior Sauvage. On Domingo: Balmain vintage jacket and pants; us.balmain.com for similar styles. Balmain shirt. Chanel High Jewelry brooch; select Chanel boutiques. Grooming, Jamie Richmond; barber, Jacki Brown. On Hamilton: Ferragamo suit; ferragamo.com for requests. Off-White bow tie; off---white.com. Jean Schlumberger by Tiffany & Co. earring (as brooch) and Tiffany & Co. by Elsa…