Indholdsfortegnelse for Volume 3, 2022 i W Magazine

Gillian Laub Photographer, “The Ties That Bind” (page 48) Did you ever make mix tapes? My favorite teenage hobby was making mix tapes for my friends, sister, and boyfriends, and then I’d dub a copy for myself. I still have all of them saved at my parents’ house: “Sexy Songs,” “Something to Remember Me By,” “Road Trip,” etc. What was the first concert you ever attended? When I was in fourth grade, my parents took me and my older sister to a Madonna concert at Radio City Music Hall. The Beastie Boys opened, but we didn’t know who they were at the time. I snuck a mini tape recorder in. My first bootleg! Have you seen any live music lately? I just took my daughter to her first concert. We…

In fashion, as in life, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Against a backdrop of shifting tastes and values, the Ralph Lauren polo shirt has remained a constant of American style for 50 years. Since its introduction, in 1972, the little shirt that could—a wardrobe mainstay that Lauren has described as “the most democratic of garments, as ubiquitous as a pair of jeans”—has been interpreted in a kaleidoscope of hues, as well as in classic, big, skinny, and high-fashion fits. (There is even a version for the yuppie puppy in your life.) The polo’s iconic logo, a design flourish that first appeared on a women’s tailored shirt in 1971, has likewise been rendered in a host of colors and sizes. As a whopping new book, Ralph…

Every time Lil Nas X steps out in a bedazzled Balmain crop top or Harry Styles flaunts a pink manicure and pearl necklace, their fans fawn, the Internet erupts with a thousand think pieces about the state of gendered fashion, and no-fun social conservative types clutch their own pearls. This is hardly anything new. If you flip through vintage issues of Rolling Stone or Circus, you’ll realize that all that’s really happened is that our rock stars (a term that, today, has little to do with a musical genre) have returned to dressing like rock stars, with all the sexed-up trimmings. Fifty years ago, David Bowie introduced his otherworldly, gender-defying Ziggy Stardust persona; 10 years later came Prince’s commercial breakthrough record, 1999, after which he appeared on red carpets with…

Recently, at a dinner party in Paris, I was talking with an accessories designer at a major French fashion house about the trajectory of today’s emerging talents. “They are very good at function and utility,” she told me. “But they have lost all appreciation for beauty. If you want beauty in fashion, forget it.” I thought about that observation as I made my way through the streets of the Marais neighborhood on an unusually balmy March morning to the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation. After launching his line in the early 1980s, the legendary Tunisian designer built a fiercely loyal following by celebrating and embellishing the female form, endowing women with an audacious sense of confidence. The relationship between beauty and power was Alaïa’s raison d’être—he wasn’t called the “King of Cling”…

Music means very different things to different people. Every year, when it’s time to plan this issue, there is no shortage of passionate ideas—and discussions—in the W offices. A case in point is our cover star, Lana Del Rey. She is the kind of musician whose fans are profoundly obsessed with everything she does. As we initiated our conversations about her feature in W, she began following me on Instagram, and within seconds, my DMs were flooded with fans asking if she was going to be on the cover. I am so happy to report that their—and our—dreams came true. The singer was shot by one of my favorite photographers, Jamie Hawkesworth, who took her out of her everyday world and into a Fellini dreamscape. Dripping with Swarovski jewels, she…

Sands Point, the tip of a peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island, was the inspiration for East Egg, the fictional Gold Coast setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Once a rural retreat for robber barons, it’s now a nature preserve that abuts a New York City suburb. But a few Gilded Age mansions still remain along the shore, among them Castle Gould, an imposing stone pile modeled after an Irish manor. These days, from the beach, instead of a mysterious green light, one sees the high-rise buildings of downtown New Rochelle. Where champagne-fueled lawn parties might once have taken place, there’s now a dog run with a chain-link fence. A castle in the suburbs feels like a very Lana Del Rey sort of place. Throughout her…

In October 2021, the knitwear designer Victor Glemaud watched Ousmane Sembène’s 1966 film, Black Girl, and had an epiphany: It would be the inspiration behind his fall 2022 runway show. Sembène’s movie, which follows a young girl who leaves Senegal to become a governess in the South of France, only to end up as a domestic worker, was impossible for him to shake. “It’s a powerful story of women and immigration. I started thinking about my mother and her twin sister,” explains Glemaud, 44, who was born in Haiti and grew up primarily in Queens, New York. The resulting collection, in a palette of clementine, white, black, and brown (right), emphasizes his deft hand with statement knits. Glemaud has been in fashion since he was 19, when he studied at…

Polo G’s favorite place to record music is a small studio in Los Angeles. On a recent cool spring evening, the 23-year-old rapper, who has experienced a meteoric rise in the past three years, pulls up to the studio in a black Chevy Suburban, alone. The building’s facade is unmarked, and looks more like an abandoned storefront than a place where chart-topping music is made—but this is where Polo, born Taurus Tremani Bartlett, made most of his latest album, Hall of Fame, which soared to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 when it was released, in 2021. It is also where he has been working on his upcoming album, together with the producer Southside. Polo settles into a cramped, silent room bathed in purple and yellow light. He says this…

Natasha Lyonne Actor, Director, Writer, Producer After a three-year hiatus, Russian Doll, the streaming series you cocreated with Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland and star in, just returned for a second season. It’s a unique project, structurally and tonally. What does originality mean to you? Aggressively not following the pack, on instinct. So if you see everybody going one way, instinctually run in the opposite direction. In order for that to work, it’s pretty crucial to develop a strong sense of self. What is your most original quality? Teenage psychedelic brain damage that created a warped sense of humor. Do you think it’s more difficult to be original today than it was 20 years ago, when we weren’t as inundated with images and points of comparison? I’m guessing that it’s…