Innehållsförteckning för Autumn 2024 från Dazed & Confused

We at Dazed have always believed that the mind can move mountains, and we can change the world by exploring the universe within ourselves. For this issue, themed around the impossible, we have plunged head-first into the surreal, boldly gone where no one has before, and made predictions that might seem far-fetched now, but could pave the way forward. ‘Celestial Being’ is the stage name of Ayra Starr, the Nigerian future icon who has always welcomed divine intervention in her art, and who may skip through different musical styles in her sound but always stays true to her spiritual core. In the first of our seven autumn cover stories, photographer Zora Sicher and stylist Kyle Luu capture her bold and uncompromising essence. Central Cee is another musical shapeshifter who has…

Salama Younis is in many ways a typical 27-year-old influencer. His Instagram is curated into tiles that speak the universal language of social media: palm trees, beaches, sunsets, aesthetic shots of food. One reel captures him from above as he lies on the sand holding a drone, before transitioning to a bird'seye-view of the coast of Gaza decked with armchairs. Another is a montage of an engagement party with shots timed to the music he's overlaid. A particularly sweet reel is a time-lapse of two young girls teaching their infant brother to swim in the sea. But that was all before October 7, when Hamas’ assault on Israel sparked the most recent escalation of hostilities in Gaza. Now Younis posts reels of himself in selfie mode speaking in a tone…

Ayra Starr has been living life in reverse. The Nigerian musician has headlined a world tour, earned a Grammy nomination and performed on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage at the age of 22. But she is still green to many of the pleasures your ordinary 20-something might enjoy. “I've always been an adult,” she says of her teenage years spent mostly looking after her siblings or working. It was only last year that she went on her first holiday. On a birthday trip to Barbados, Starr was able to let herself unclench and soak in her accomplishments under the soothing blues of a clear sky. It was then, for the first time, that she started to write about her life. Starr had never done that in a song before. A natural griot,…

Hair JADIS JOLIE at E.D.M.A., make-up RAISA FLOWERS at E.D.M.A. and SABRIYA ALVIN, models KHADIJA SENE at LULU MANAGEMENT, YAA OPONG, ANAYA GOMEZ and AGAAR CITHEC at URSULA WEIDMANN MODELS, lighting NIGEL HOSANG, photographic assistant TONY ADKINS, styling assistant ADRIANNA ESPINAL, production SHAY JOHNSON STUDIO, production assistant RICO ABDOUESSA, location manager ELISSA ARTHUR, casting JOSE MALAVE…

The night before President Biden announced he would drop out of the presidential race, ending a month of speculation and escalating madness, an especially tuned-in friend told me over drinks that he'd been having nightly stress dreams about the election. The dreams were not just about the outcome but also the future of our democratic state, which never seemed so fragile. “It feels existential,” he said, and took a big gulp of something called a WAP (Wet Ass Peaches) martini. It was the end of a long few weeks. Biden and former president Donald Trump debated, beaming on to primetime a sitting president who could no longer string a sentence together. Then someone tried to assassinate Trump with an AR-15 at a campaign rally, successfully nicking his right ear. He…

Anyone familiar with Lagos will tell you it's a city that challenges the very notion of ‘impossible’. From the moment you touch down in Murtala Muhammed International Airport, the density of the air changes, background noise rises a few decibels, and it's clear from even the smallest of interactions that you are no longer playing by the same rules. Whether it's the traffic that makes it impossible to reach your destination on time or the talented individuals who contort their way through seemingly insurmountable odds, Lagosians size up the impossible and defy its authority. It's fitting, then, that Lagos (Èkó in Yoruba) is not only the setting of Eloghosa Osunde's debut novel, but a key character in it. A series of overlapping short stories told from the vantage point of…

For Jermaine Craig, things began to change for his philanthropic fundraising platform, Kwanda, at the height of 2020's Black Lives Matter protests. It was a period when black squares filled up Instagram feeds in an act of solidarity and, for a brief moment, the world was forced to reckon with the unending issue of police brutality. It was also a period when the world showered immense, albeit fleeting, attention on Black-owned businesses and founders in an attempt to right historical wrongs. “There was a big push to invest in Black businesses and Kwanda was picked up as one of the platforms to trust because of the work we were doing around transparency,” recalls Craig. “And so we went from a few hundred members to 2,000 in the space of a…

The psychedelic brutalism of Dawson Heights; Southwyck House, AKA ‘the Barrier Block’, built high off the ground to deflect the noise of a planned 60ft tall motorway; the sky walkways of the North Peckham estate: Noris Obijiaku's TikTok is a journey through London's futurist council blocks, the 20th century estates that were built to harness the power of collective living and shared space. His commentaries trace the way their designs enabled mini societies to form in pockets of the city so often demonised and denigrated by the state. Alongside the clips, the architectural assistant sketches physics-defying blueprints of community buildings of the future, taking cues from the semi-dormant building projects he explores. Across the internet today, there seems to be a new energy for the various ways architecture can be…

Hair SONNY MOLINA at STREETERS using DAVINES, make-up JANESSA PARÉ at STREETERS using FENTY BEAUTY, nails PIKA at SEE using ESSIE, models CHLOE OH and DIVINE MUGISHA at ELITE, photographic assistants PATRICK LYN, HENRY LOPEZ, styling assistants EMMA OLECK, MAX WEINSTEIN, FRANCES COONEY, JESSICA AHIALEY, DAX PASZKIEWICZ REEDY, ELIJAH HOLLINGSWORTH, ANASTASIA INBORN, hair assistant KAM, make-up assistant MORGAN MATOUS, digital operator ZORAN JELENIC, production FELIX CADIEU at NEIGHBORS BK, MARY GOUGHNOUR and CAROLINE WESTDYK at CLM, casting BERT MARTIROSYAN…

A musical prodigy who's got the whole world guessing at his secrets, Mk.gee's thrilling and mysterious adventures in pop have seen him hailed as a new kind of guitar hero. He explains his burning desire to be the ‘best at something indescribable’ The miseducation of Mk.gee began with a technological error, a musical discordance. He was nine years old and it was the golden age of pirating, when YouTube-to-MP3 converters reigned supreme and streaming apps had yet to reach their cultural zenith, cornering the listening market and bending it around themselves. Back then, if you were young and curious and without pocket money, you had to familiarise yourself with the arcane science of seeding and torrenting, summon the patience to slowly import files to your iTunes library and then laboriously…

_AGGLOMERATI_ @_agglomerati_ 1CONCEPT 1concept.world 4ELEMENT 4element.co.uk 16ARLINGTON 16arlington.co.uk ACNE STUDIOS acnestudios.com ALAÏA maison-alaia.com ALAN CROCETTI alancrocetti.com ALBERTA FERRETTI albertaferretti.com ALBINA ZHAKAN @zh_a_kan ALEX AND TRAHANAS alexandtrahanas.com ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER alexandrevauthier.com ALEXIS BITTAR alexisbittar.com AMI amiparis.com AMINA MUADDI aminamuaddi.com ANDREAS KRONTHALER FOR VIVIENNE WESTWOOD viviennewestwood.com ANIYE RECORDS aniyeby.com ANN DEMEULEMEESTER anndemeulemeester.com ANNA DANIELSSON DESIGN @annadanielssondesign ANNAKIKI annakiki.com ANNIE COSTELLO BROWN anniecostellobrown.com ANTONIO MARRAS antoniomarras.com ARIANA BOUSSARD-REIFEL arianaboussardreifel.com ARTIFACT artifactnewyork.com ASPINAL OF LONDON aspinaloflondon.com ATLEIN atlein.com ATOM LEATHER atomleather.com AUSTIN JAMES SMITH austinjamessmith.com AZIZ @aziz_rebar B-LOW THE BELT b-lowthebelt.com BALENCIAGA balenciaga.com BALMAIN balmain.com BARNABY HORN barnabyhorn.com BARRAGÁN shop.barragannnn.com BENJAMIN PAUL @benjaminpaulf BLUMARINE blumarine.com BOTTEGA VENETA bottegaveneta.com BURBERRY burberry.com C.P. COMPANY cpcompany.com CALZEDONIA calzedonia.com CARHARTT WIP carhartt-wip.com CARMEN KREMM @carmenkre CARTIER cartier.com CASADEI casadei.com CATE SARCI @catesarci CECILIE BAHNSEN ceciliebahnsen.com CFCL cfcl.jp CHANEL chanel.com…

When leaving for school as a kid, Central Cee would stuff sweets into his satchel. The sweets would disperse into clamouring hands and, in exchange, the jar they came in would fill with coins. One day, in Year 8, he made £90. Back at home, a boy from his old primary school would come over with a mic and an interface. For a fee, the boy would record Cee's earliest raps. “I'd pay him £7 an hour,” he remembers. “Every day I would leave school and go link my man, pay him in coins and record. That was the beginning stages of man's ting.” Cee is back in London today to put the finishing touches to his debut album in the studio. We are sitting in the building's lobby, and…

It recently occurred to Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, amid the blistering humidity of a Puerto Rican summer, that he perhaps didn't know as much as he should about his family history and, by association, himself. Martínez, who records under the musical moniker Bad Bunny, had recently wrapped up a breakneck year – touring North America, dropping a near-90-minute-long new album and performing at Vogue World in Paris – when he decided to return to the Caribbean island where he'd grown up. He needed to take a beat. But during those sun-dappled afternoons spent lounging on the beach, Martínez's thoughts began drifting backwards – and quite literally, when our call connects. “I've been looking a lot at my surroundings behind me,” says Martínez, gesturing at the San Juan coastline over his…