Innehållsförteckning för March 2016 från ELLE

MARCH 4 Up-tempo indie rock band La Sera, fronted by ex–Vivian Girls member Katy Goodman, puts out their Smiths-influenced fourth album, Music for Listening to Music To, which was produced by Ryan Adams (in a week!). MARCH 1 Elizabeth Isadora Gold’s reported memoir, The Mommy Group, lays bare the importance of female friendship during parenthood and serves as a much-needed antidote to the mommy wars. MARCH 3 At the outset of ABC’s creepy new drama, The Family, a man claims to be the long-ago abducted son of an ambitious Maine politician (Joan Allen). Basically just politics as usual, right? MARCH 4 Knight of Cups, Terrence Malick’s latest film, has a galaxy’s worth of stars (Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Joe Manganiello). Prepare yourself for meditations on love, soaring music,…

ON YOUR MARK! Know someone who would make a great candidate for public office? Of course you do. Now do something about it by nominating her for the ELLE Running Club Some of our most successful female leaders—House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, for one— famously say they only got involved in politics because someone else asked them to. That’s where you come in: Go to ELLE.com/WeNominate, and tell us why your female friend, family member, teacher, local leader, businesswoman— or you!—have what it takes to hold office, whether local, national, or in between. And be sure to tweet short versions of your nomination, tagging them #WeNominate. Nominations will be posted on ELLE.com, and this spring a panel of judges led by ELLE editorin-chief Robbie Myers will choose the strongest future…

For our March fashion spectacular “Artist in Residence” (page 478), London photographer David Burton turned his lens on his hometown, taking inspiration from the early work of British painter Lucian Freud—as well as the modern-day Gucci girl, with just a dash of ’90s, Marc Jacobs–era Perry Ellis thrown in for good measure. “I think it is precisely the dingy light and miserable weather that cause young people to retreat into their bedrooms and create music and fashion and art,” says Burton, who’s married to Alexander McQueen creative director Sarah Burton. Shot in the former home of another game-changing twentiethcentury British artist—Francis Bacon, who painted 1944’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion while living there—in the city’s Knightsbridge neighborhood, the spread features the work of stylist Carmen…

We found it! The modern way to dress for the red carpet Dion Lee shoots for the stars A beginner’s guide to the party circuit…

Skyrocketing model Pyper America Smith grew up in rural Spanish Fork, Utah, and moved to L.A. two and a half years ago after being signed to Next Models along with her three equally photogenic, social media–bait siblings, Starlie Cheyenne (22), Daisy Clementine (20), and, of course, male-model sensation Lucky Blue (17)—all of whom also make up the rock band the Atomics. These days, Pyper travels the world to walk in runway shows for Moschino and Philipp Plein in Milan and shoot ad campaigns in Iceland with Annie Leibovitz. “I never thought I’d be doing any of the things I’ve done in the past year,” says Pyper, who often has Lucky by her side on jobs in far-flung locales. “We have so much fun on set. Since my siblings and I…

BIKER BAR CLASSIC MOTOS REV THEIR ENGINES IN HOT NEW HUES…

SEQUIN DRESS + CAMO JACKET + WELLIES = KATE MOSS FOREVER FEMININE CARGO PANTS + CRISP WHITE SEPARATES = CREATIVE CLASS POLO SHIRT + PENCIL SKIRT + EMBELLISHED SANDALS = NERDY SEXY COOL…

Tina Fey goes to war! Dana Spiotta’s brilliant new novel A standout sophomore album from AlunaGeorge If actress Matilda Lutz has one thing, it’s sprezzatura. Case in point: The 25-year-old Italian was visiting L.A. while on college break, when she called her mom back in Milan and said she wasn’t coming home. “I didn’t know anybody,” Lutz says. “I got a job in a restaurant. I found an [acting] class. I just started a new life.” From there, the Mediterranean stunner (whose parents are both former models) caught the eye of a producer dining at her restaurant, which led to an agent, a manager, a few bit parts in come-and-gone indie movies, and, eventually, the lead in next month’s Rings-a reboot of 2002 horror film The Ring, which, along with…

Anyone who’s ever spent a season uneasily, unromantically alone will greatly appreciate British critic Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City (Picador). A follow-up to her acclaimed The Trip to Echo Spring, a literary travelogue in which she retraced the steps of six American writers and their doomed romances with alcohol, this is also first and foremost a critical investigation, but one laced with memoir and essayistic musings on life and art. In this, her third book (her first was To the River, a lyrical tale of the River Ouse, in which Virginia Woolf drowned), Laing turns her attention to solitude and New York, and to the lives of several artists whose work comforted her while she spent a long while single in that city after a love affair foundered; she writes…

THE FUTURE OF SKIN CARE…

CRIMSON CLUB Red’s sexier, more complex cousin—call it oxblood, maroon, or garnet—“gives a sense of individuality, breaking the rules,” says Giorgio Armani international makeup artist Linda Cantello, who sent the models down the runway at Emporio Armani with wine-stained mouths. “I love the contrast of the strong lips with the fluid fabrics and loose, natural hair.” Makeup artist Wendy Rowe, who created the vampy statement lip at Burberry, says to make bold color look more casual and less look-at-me, “play down the rest of the face” with minimal makeup. GIRL ON FIRE And the winner is…Lineisy Montero! In only her second runway season, the 19-year-old model from the Dominican Republic walked in an epic 68 shows. Her beauty routine? Cool-girl low-maintenance: “I don’t really use products in my hair, so…

The year 1995 brought us the end of Full House and the launch of eBay; the Dow hit a new high, and on the catwalk, as hairstylist Jimmy Paul remembers, runway hair started looking very…specific. Which is to say, all the models at any given show had the exact same hairstyle: texture, color, cut—everything matched. Designers stopped emphasizing the exuberant individuality of supermodels— Linda Evangelista prancing with her platinum crop, Cindy Crawford with her beachy waves. “All of a sudden, all the girls had matching hair because there was such a thing as extensions,” Paul says. That’s not to say that fashion shows haven’t featured cookie-cutter hair and makeup in the past: In 1903, at what is considered to be America’s first runway show, the NYC emporium Ehrich Brothers featured…

Conventional wisdom suggests that a guy expressing a positive sentiment about his mother indicates that he values women and treats them well. (If a man were to opine the opposite— say, “My mom’s a real bitch”—that would seem to be a big red flag.) It derives from the same school of thought as “Date a man who has sisters.” But even if you don’t buy into all that, it’s hard to imagine how someone thinking his mom is nice could be anything less than, well, nice. Which is precisely what makes it all the more insidious. This nice little comment about his nice little mother—which may sound extremely casespecific but has been said to me by multiple suitors, in exactly the same way (with an emphasis on the “so,” as…

There are few truly bad vehicles for sale today, but, when there are more models boasting more whistles and bells than ever before, that doesn’t make car shopping easy. Even if you’re car savvy, you can still make an uninformed choice or get a bad deal. And the wealth of resources for information can obscure the fact that many of the rules of the game have changed. But fear not: We can help. We’ve spent months researching the changing auto-retail landscape and have collected the best advice here. As new ways of shopping supplant the old, those in the know can save time and money and get greater enjoyment out of their new car. OLD Spend a Saturday kicking tires on dealership row to decide what you want. NEW Stay home,…

OLD Call your insurance agent the morning you go to pick up your new car to have your policy transferred. NEW Get insurance quotes upfront, before you make any deal at the dealership. ADVICE Note that we wrote quotes, plural. Not all insurers use the same standards for evaluating risk and setting rates, even when it comes to how long they hold tickets and accidents against you in assessing surcharges. Sadly, the best way to save on auto insurance is to switch providers, so call around. Or use thezebra.com to gather multiple quotes without revealing all your personal details. QUICK TIPS • DO: Contact dealers via email. It’s more efficient and creates a record of the negotiations. DON’T: Buy a car just because it wins awards. You have to drive it,…

POLICY MATTERS: Percentage who’d get behind a candidate who supports... HILLARY VS. BERNIE WHILE CLINTON EVOKED A WARM FEELING IN NEARLY HALF OF SINGLE WOMEN, ONLY 34 PERCENT OF FEMALE MILLENNIALS FELT THE SAME— SUGGESTING THAT SO FAR YOUNGER WOMEN AREN’T AS SOLD ON CLINTON AS THEIR MOTHERS. AND YET THE GIRLS GENERATION IS EVEN LESS ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT SUPPOSED MILLENNIAL FAVORITE SANDERS: HIS WARM-AND-FUZZY RANKING WAS 4 PERCENTAGE POINTS LOWER THAN HERS 80% Of all single women said they’d be unlikely to vote for a candidate who referred to women as “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs,” “disgusting animals,” or “bimbos,” “even if they generally supported the candidate’s policy positions.” Memo to the Donald: 73% of Republican women felt the same way. WHAT CENTURY IS THIS? LET THEM PLAN THEIR OWN FAMILIES:…

It’s the perfect Throwback Thursday photo: a teenage Brie Larson posing, clearly under the influence of Britney Spears, hip cocked in the middle of a Hula-Hoop, wearing hip-huggers and a short, fitted, cap-sleeve yellow tee that states in bold-pink capital letters: i’m going somewhere better later. Like a clue to where she was headed, her dangling earrings are great big stars. The picture, floating around on the Internet, is funny now, ironic, even, given the way she navigated from one better place to the next, and where “better” has ended up being. Larson enters West Hollywood’s Sunset Marquis hotel, wearing a white alpaca sweater with red-striped sleeves, skintight jeans, patent leather ASOS ankle boots, and a wide, bright smile. She carries herself like an athlete, lean and solid, surefooted—the last…

If fashion were a cult—and who are we to say it’s not—Rei Kawakubo would be its high priestess. A master at interpreting how clothing can both hide and reveal our vulnerabilities, Kawakubo has changed perceptions about the meaning, pleasure, and function of fashion in the same way that Arnold Schoenberg forever changed classical music with his 12-tone method and David Lynch blew apart traditional forms of film narrative. She started designing clothes in 1969 in Tokyo under the label Comme des Garçons, taken from a Françoise Hardy lyric (translation: “Like Boys”), but didn’t incorporate her company until 1973. Her runway collections veer from Edward Scissorhands– meets–Victoriana mourning gowns one season to cartoon caricatures of gauze-wrapped mummies the next, with a Dada-esque wedding dress here and a rockabilly rebel-with-a-cause there, all…

COVER Embroidered dress, $7,220, Lurex and sequin-embroidered dress, price on request, by Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, visit givenchy.com. White gold and diamond hoop earrings, $4,490, necklace, $2,450, by Hearts on Fire, call 877-PERFECT or visit heartsonfire.com. Gold pinky ring, by David Yurman, $1,950, at David Yurman (NYC), visit davidyurman.com. FIRST LOOK PAGE 235: Jeans by Alexander McQueen, at Alexander McQueen (NYC). Necklace by Pomellato, $174,800, call 800-254-6020, visit pomellato.com. Cuff by Todd Reed, $158,400, at Todd Reed (Boulder, CO). Boots by Marc Jacobs, at Marc Jacobs stores nationwide, visit marcjacobs.com. TRENDS AND ACCESSORIES PAGE 240: Vest, top, skirt, hand straps, necklace by Louis Vuitton, call 866-VUITTON or visit louisvuitton.com. Cuff by Isabel Marant, at Isabel Marant (NYC, L.A., San Francisco). Jacket by F.R.S. For Restless Sleepers, collection at Bergdorf Goodman…

“WOWZA!! This is easily the best Rooney Mara cover I’ve seen, ever!…What a way to start the year. Kudos to ELLE. I cannot fault anything. Love the styling, love the photography with that sunlight coming through, and more importantly, love the art direction.” —Benn98, thefashionspot “Buy the new @ELLEmagazine for @LaurenAWaterman’s interview with Rooney Mara. I love them both after reading it.” —Christine Champagne, @itsthechampagne, Twitter “I’m loving this cover….It looks like one of [ELLE’s] covers from the early ’00s that had a slightly boho but sophisticated look. I remember some great ones with Erin Wasson, Kidman, and Blanchett.” —A.D.C., thefashionspot DRIP, DROP In December, we took a deep dive into drinking, with a guide to the most “ELLE” bars in the country. It wasn’t all celebratory—in “This Is Your…

AGE: 30 BONA FIDES: Since making her runway debut for Jean Paul Gaultier in 2012, Glauser has done print and catwalk work for Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, and Vivienne Westwood. CURRENT HQ: Paris. “I feel like people are so chic; you see these old ladies who dress amazing,” she says. SIGNATURE LOOK: Laid-back and tomboyish—but no labels, please: “The word androgynous almost sounds like a sickness. I don’t get up in the morning and think, What can I do to be more androgynous?” DOPPELGÄNGER: Mr. Robot’s Elliot Alderson. “This guy actually really dresses like me. I feel like that’s how I look.” FIRST STEPS: Glauser began modeling menswear at university in Switzerland (she was a sociology major). “I was like, Guys, I really want to model for men, because look at…

It’s been 75 years since a certain small familyowned Manhattan workshop started making sturdy cowhide purses inspired by the soft leather of baseball mitts. Coach went on to make an indelible mark on American style via the colorful leathers and clean shapes first introduced by Bonnie Cashin in the ’60s. Now it’s going one step further with creative director Stuart Vevers’s upscale range, Coach 1941, including this luxurious bag created just for ELLE, which marries glovetanned pebble leather with exotic touches like python straps for a new, relaxed luxury. Looks like a home run to us.…

Asked about the inspiration for his spring collection, Virgil Abloh, the creative director behind the elevated streetwear brand Off-White, gives an answer that’s quite simple—boring, even, if it weren’t so clever: “Brunch,” he says, sounding not unlike Andy Warhol, glibly answering overwrought questions about his soup cans. “It’s based on brunch. It’s a thing in our generation— you have an outfit to go to brunch, to go shopping. That’s my main muse.” Welcome to the new school of cool. Abloh, along with designers and comrades Demna Gvasalia, of two-year-old streetwear label Vetements, and Gosha Rubchinskiy, who launched his self-titled label in 2008, is reinvigorating the Paris runways with the radical idea of making fun, youthful, back-to-basics clothes born from their own interests and tastes, done in chic fits and fabrics…

1 JUST FALL NINA SADOWSKY (Ballantine) Sadowsky’s debut novel takes off on the terrifyingly vulnerable nature of marriage, and also this: Would you kill for the one you love? When cool, patrician Ellie learns an unforgivable secret about her apparently faultless new husband, she’s forced to reconcile who she thought she was with who she’s willing to become. One reader devoured the book, which is told in tension-building flashes from present to past, “from cover to cover on one four-hour plane ride, unable to put it down.” 2 THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT KATE HAMER (Melville House) Beth and her eightyear-old daughter, Carmel, become separated at a festival in England, and their lives are irreparably upended—Beth’s becomes a frantic, unending search for her daughter; Carmel clings to her memory…

Until very recently, the fact that dense colonies of microorganisms live all over our bodies— on everything from our hair and our fingernails to our eyeballs—wouldn’t have been a thought many of us would want to linger on. Now, however, in this kombucha- and kimchi-crazed era, when “fecal transplants” have become acceptable dinner-party conversation and rafts of research have proven the connection between bacterial imbalances in the gut and a host (so to speak) of health issues ranging from weight fluctuations to mood swings, we’re increasingly likely to find ourselves gazing into a mirror thinking, I wonder how my biome is doing today? And while several studies suggest a strong relationship between salubrious intestinal microflora and a healthy complexion—in one of the most recent, published in the Journal of Microbiology…

I could have asked him out, but I never considered it. Once I spent more than an hour trying to catch a chicken because I thought its plump, feathered body between my two palms might satisfy a deep urge, but whenever I reached for the bird, it slipped out of my grasp. This was what I imagined would happen with Matt—I had the strong sense that to pursue him directly would scare him away. So instead I situated myself around him as frequently as possible; but once in place, I always let him come to me. It required a lot of patience, a lot of waiting. But I was 24. Time still felt like a limitless resource. Fortunately for my purposes, we worked at a restaurant that posted a schedule…

THEY LIKE YOU OUT OF THEIR LEAGUE While more men than women are “pumped!” to date someone hotter than them (28% and 15% respectively), the majority of both sexes claim that it doesn’t matter; personal connection trumps aesthetics in the end. MEN LOCK IT IN EARLY 22% 13% Nearly double the number of women than men wait until date eight (or later!) to bring up exclusivity. THE PORTION WHO’D DATE SOMEONE WHO… Disagrees with them about abortion? Doesn’t care about politics? Supports Donald Trump? *American Women Web Survey THE DÉCOLLETAGE DEBATE IS NUANCED 20% of men think that low-cut tops are a turn-on, 10% think they’re a turnoff, but the vast majority think it depends on the person wearing it. MEN: DON’T TALK DIRTY. (OK, MAYBE SOMETIMES.) 30% of women…

OLD Stretch your budget to get a nicer car by leasing. NEW Consider a lightly used car, especially a certified pre-owned (CPO) one. ADVICE Leasing gets you into a nicer car than you probably thought you could afford, but it comes at a cost. You’re not actually buying anything when you lease; you’re paying the difference between the sale price and the car’s forecasted end-of-lease residual value plus interest and fees. A wise alternative is to buy a relatively new used car, letting the original buyer pay the initial chunk of depreciation, which is the biggest hit on a percentage basis. The sweet spot tends to be a three-year-old car that’s just been turned in from lease. You can get a car that’s nearly identical to the current model year’s, but…

OLD Make your deal on the car, then spring your trade-in on the salesperson. NEW Get a trade-in offer first, or better yet, sell your car yourself. ADVICE A good salesperson is going to ask about your trade-in the minute you show interest in a new car. Not just because she has to factor it into the deal, but because dealers want to take good cars in trade; trade-ins fuel the profitable usedcar side of the dealership. Dissembling about your trade can blow up the deal, and deception is never the best path to getting a reasonable offer. If you want maximum value for your old car, sell it yourself or take advantage of a service that will do that for you. If you prefer the convenience of trading in your…

Since beginning research into the incel universe, I’d hoped to find the first online incel: Which corner of the manosphere had he hailed from? How had the concept spread? More than once I thought I’d found the source of it all, but the trail kept going cold—until, after four months of looking, I found her. “I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody,” says Alana, now a 43-year-old management consultant and artist from Toronto. In 1993, she was finishing an undergraduate degree in statistics at Carleton University in Ottawa, and she’d never had sex or anything close to a boyfriend. Sometimes she blamed her appearance: short, slightly overweight, eczema splotches. Often she felt like she’d passed through adolescence without learning the unspoken rules of…

Man of Steel was the Superman reboot many die-hard fans never believed possible. Turns out, there was a way to supplant Christopher Reeve’s earnestly gorgeous man in tights (and his bumbling alter ego) in audience’s minds: by updating him with a distinctly twenty-first-century hero. Henry Cavill’s brooding, yoked he-man returns this month in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, opposite Ben Affleck as the caped crusader. As it happens, Cavill, 32, has had his share of Clark Kent–ian moments. At his posh English boarding school, classmates called him “Fat Cavill” and “lemon”—local slang, he explains, for someone who “tries too hard to impress the girls and is a bit of a knob about it.” Presumably, Cavill (who first hit our radar as Henry VIII’s eye-candy henchman in Showtime’s The Tudors)…

PISCES FEB 19–MAR 20 Mars moves into Sagittarius on the 5th, lighting your tenth house of honors and achievement. With Saturn in the same house, you’ll work hard on a new venture and learn many lessons in the process. With Neptune, Mercury, the Sun (eclipsed on the 8th), and a new moon all in Pisces, your career will indeed be on the rise, but be prepared for outstanding offers in nearly every area of your life. In love, Venus enters Pisces on the 12th—you’ll be dripping with charm—and the weekend of the 19th, when Venus conjoins Neptune, will be magical. A second lunar eclipse on the 23rd closes out the month. You may finally see a large payout you’ve been anticipating. ARIES (MAR 21–APR 19) The Sun, a new moon,…

Here’s a secret: Every time we assign a story, we’re not totally sure what we’re going to get. (And when we’re going to get it can be even more of a mystery.) In one sense, that’s what it’s all about: You really don’t know what’s going to happen on assignment, who the reporter might meet or under what circumstances, and it’s her job to find the story, to uncover the covered. The same is true on the visual side— you may think the team is off to shoot, say, a swim story on a sunny island, only to find when you get the pictures that it’s something else altogether, as the light and location and weather—and even, sometimes, the models—are all variables to which the team had to adapt. (And…

Roxane Gay PROVENANCE: Omaha, NE NOW: Lafayette, IN PROFESSION: Writer and associate professor of English at Purdue University BONA FIDES: Work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories 2012, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, The Rumpus, and Tin House; books include Bad Feminist, An Untamed State, and Ayiti. THIS MONTH: “The Single File” (page 406). “I was really interested in Rebecca Traister’s examination of contemporary singlehood for women.” READING: Girlvert, by Oriana Small, aka Ashley Blue SCREENING: Pretty Woman and Se7en. “I watch movies to relax and let the world slip away. I love movies.” BINGE-WATCHING: “All the iterations of Love & Hip Hop.” LATEST SPLURGE: “A Sonos…

With her patrician good looks and effortless talent at working a party—not to mention a last name made world-famous by little sister Cara—Poppy Delevingne would have undoubtedly been corralled as one of Truman Capote’s swans had she been born a half-century earlier. Thankfully, the 29-year-old Delevingne is fully of the Age of Instagram, and the model (for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Anya Hindmarch), girl-about-town, and newly minted designer (her collection for swimwear line Solid & Striped is available at Net-a-Porter, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, and Shopbop.com this month) generously treats her 978K followers to snaps from her globe-trotting life. For this Solid & Striped installment, Delevingne took inspiration from her favorite beach destination, Corfu, Greece, where she and her friends often relax among the caves and sand. “The island…

ALEXANDER McQUEEN THE DRESS: Tiered peekaboo lace worn over menswear trousers? It’s a daring, interesting take on romance—good for a star with a bit of an edge, like Emma Stone. TRY IT WITH: Nix the body chain. All you need are glittering diamond drop earrings. BEAUTY PICK: Clean, beautiful skin and a bold lip, with hair off the shoulders—either short or pinned up. SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE THE DRESS: This is the rock ’n’ roll version of a very Hollywood dress; it’s revealing but not bodycon. Ladies, please don’t work a slit for the photographers! Just let it fall softly where it may. TRY IT WITH: I love the red, strappy shoe we saw on the runway, but skip the tiara unless you’re actually Courtney Love. BEAUTY PICK: A…

“Growing up, we didn’t really have home movies,” Jacob Bernstein says. So he made one—with big themes, extremely high production values, and a supporting cast that includes Meryl Streep, Lena Dunham, Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon, Gaby Hoffmann, Tom Hanks, Mike Nichols, Gay Talese, Ken Auletta, Marie Brenner, and other Hollywood and literary luminaries. On March 21, HBO will air Everything Is Copy, a funny and moving documentary starring Jacob’s famous family and reinterpreting some of the stories we’ve been told about them over the years. His father is Carl Bernstein, hitherto known for (1) uncovering the Watergate scandal with his Washington Post partner Bob Woodward, and (2) cheating on Jacob’s mother while she was pregnant with Jacob’s younger brother, Max. Their mother, of course, was Nora Ephron, the prolific and…

1 ultralavish pair of jeans by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen: Painstakingly embroidered to look destroyed—when they’re anything but—they strike a balance between couture and street that is quintessentially ELLE. 5.12" The length of the season’s chicest bag—shown here in actual size. It’s so chic, in fact, you won’t mind if you can’t fit your phone inside 13 KILLER LLBDs —as in, really, really little Little Black Dresses 4 TOPS FOR DANCING THE NIGHT AWAY One for every personality 309 Runways walked by the top five most-seen models of the season LINEISY MONTERO SHOWS WALKED: 68 FROM: Santo Domingo, DR INSTAGRAM: @lineisymontero SEE LINEISY’S BEST BEAUTY MOMENTS ON PAGE 354. HARLETH KUUSIK SHOWS WALKED: 66 FROM: Viljandi, Estonia INSTAGRAM: @harlethkuusik ALEXANDRA ELIZABETH LJADOV SHOWS WALKED: 65 FROM: Tallinn, Estonia INSTAGRAM:…

SNAP DECISIONS @SAMIRANASR “Presenting my current Insta-musts: Gucci’s giant glasses; Bally’s folded-back loafer slides; Prada’s perfect stripes; and Wolves Like Us, portraits of The Wolfpack’s eccentric Angulo brothers shot by my friend and ELLE collaborator Dan Martensen.”…

The visionary liberty and daring with which Dana Spiotta has crafted her brilliant new novel, Innocents and Others (Scribner), is both inspirational and infectious. At its heart is a cinematic tale of friendship, obsession, morality, and creativity between best-friend filmmakers Carrie Wexler and Meadow Mori. Their story speaks volumes about the choices female artists have made since second-wave feminism gave women the awareness and the opportunity to reach for more, both individually and communally. Their freedom bolsters and buffets their friendship and their filmmaking. And what a magical ride this indelible pair of characters provides along the way! They meet in an arty 1980s Los Angeles grade school and instantly bond over a shared passion for watching and making movies. While pragmatic Carrie comes from reduced circumstances and still can…

IN THE PINK I’ve long wondered if my naturally pink cheeks read as just a little too nice. At hipster bars, I’m always one hot flush away from being ID’d as an impostor. I’ve tried to fix it with color correctors and liquid foundations— but now I’m realizing I feel like a phony without it. So color me ready for the season ahead: Models at Chanel couture sported hot-hued blush paired with boyish brows; unabashedly bright cheeks radiated from the spring runways of Vera Wang and Naeem Kahn. Could it be I’m on trend? Don’t make me blush. —Ali Finney Models’ cheeks were dusted with CLÉ DE PEAU BEAUTÉ Face Enhancer (shown here in 15) at Vera Wang. X MARKS THE SPOT When I was young, my mom thought the…

In late 2015, when über-restaurateur Danny Meyer announced that he would do away with tipping in his multiple properties (which include New York’s Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern) to create wage parity with the back-of-house positions, it may have sounded like bad news for waitstaff, especially for waitresses: Don’t we always hear that tips are how servers—particularly those who can leverage good looks—make their real income? (A slew of restaurants across the country, from Pittsburgh’s Bar Marco to New York’s Eleven Madison Park, announced they’d do away with tipping, too.) In fact, according to those who have enacted this policy, the opposite is true. “The same server who might bring home $600 on a really good night will bring home $150 on a really bad night. All employees, but…

As much as I love the unending string of potential mates that modern digital dating—websites, apps, social media platforms, texting—sends my way, what I love even more is something I never saw coming when I began cyberdating: relentless breakups. Back when the phone was our only conduit to romantic communication, when you didn’t call, or he or she didn’t pick up, everyone usually got it and moved on. Now, linked to—but also hidden behind—our online personas, we’re more willing to send just one more message, one last check-in, to see if our love interest du jour is sure he or she doesn’t want to grab one more glass of wine. Thus, ghosting—disappearing into the electronic ether with nary a farewell, the breakup method of choice among millennials—stings particularly sharply because…

OLD Play it safe and only buy on a carmaker’s quality reputation. NEW Consider the flattening trend in new-car-quality surveys. It may not be worth paying extra for a brand because it has the highest quality score. ADVICE J.D. Power’s quality awards and the surveys that create them are frequently used by automakers as advertising cudgels. But what those proud carmakers often don’t mention is that quality is up across the industry. Yes, there are some brands that do spectacularly well and some that do quite poorly. In 2015, the worst brand in the J.D. Power Initial Quality Survey, Fiat, had more than twice as many problems per 100 vehicles as Porsche, the best brand. But only 12 problems separated the 6th through 15th brands, and those brands were still above…

In Beyoncé’s ring finger–wagging 2008 anthem, “Single Ladies,” she celebrates independent women who would rather be single than settle. In Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies (Simon & Schuster), which borrows both the refrain and the feminist spirit of that song, she chronicles the rise of unmarried women in America and the different people we’re becoming because of it. “For young women, for the first time, it is as normal to be unmarried as it is to be married, even if it doesn’t always feel that way,” Traister writes, noting that there were 3.9 million more single adult women in 2014 than there were in 2010. In 1960, 59 percent of women were married by the time they were 29; in 2015, it was just 20 percent. The…

Hair by Rolando Beauchamp at the Wall Group for Kérastase Paris; makeup by Yumi Lee at L’Atelier NYC for Dior; manicure by Casey Herman at Kate Ryan Inc. for Dior; set design by Bette Adams for Mary Howard Studio; casting by Sisi Chonco at Zan Casting; model: Eliza Cummings at Women Management; fashion assistant: Yashua Simmons…