ELLE May 2013

"At 12:01 A.M., the rocket went off and you heard…'Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.' People in the room were sobbing. I had been at MTV for only two weeks…There were people in the room who had started the channel in a hotel room and had been fighting for it for years."—Martha Quinn, on the night MTV hit the airwaves Tuesday, May 7 BROADCAST PIONEERS Pop culture junkies, especially Behind the Music fanatics, will devour VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave (Atria Books), in which original MTV hosts—Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn—dish about meeting music legends, and their secret workplace romances. Tuesday, May 7 HAPPY TRACK On She & Him's fourth album, Volume 3 , doe-eyed funny girl Zooey Deschanel and…

Wednesday, May 1 ACQUA FOR LIFE Giorgio Armani and Sean Penn have joined forces with Green Cross International to improve the availability of potable water in underserved countries such as Haiti. Above, photographer Jim Goldberg captures a man fishing in a polluted river. Monday, May 6 THE GIFT OF TIME Michael Kors wants to watch hunger stop. As part of the designer's new partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme, the sale of each of his gold- or silver-tone 100 Series chronographs ($295) will provide a nutritious meal to 100 children. Friday, May 3 FREE FOR ALL Like abstract expressionism? Uniqlo has teamed with New York City's MoMA in a multiyear initiative to offer free admission to the museum every Friday evening from 4 to 8 P.M. Saturday, May…

PROMOTION LOG ON TO MAYSURVEY.ELLE.COM TO GET STARTED No purchase necessary to enter or win. Reader Feedback Sweepstakes. Sponsored by Hearst Communications, Inc. Beginning January 1, 2013, at 12:01 A.M. (ET) through December 31, 2013, at 11:59 P.M. (ET) go to maysurvey.elle.com and complete and submit the entry form pursuant to the on-screen instructions. One (1) Grand Prize winner will receive $5,000, one (1) Second Place winner will receive a $500 American Express gift card, and ten (10) runner-up winners will receive a $100 American Express gift card. Odds of winning depend on the total number of eligible entries received. Must be a legal resident of the 50 United States and DC, Puerto Rico, or Canada, who has reached the age of majority in his or her state, territory, or…

GUEST BLOGGER: TAYLOR STERLING Bay Area–based style blogger Taylor Sterling could be the poster child for the growing viability of blogging as long-term career path. A former recruiting director for a financial-services firm, the San Francisco native created her personal blog, Sterling Style, as an after-work outlet for her love of fashion back in 2009. But when the economy continued taking a turn for the worse, Sterling decided to try to capitalize on her creativity and devote herself to blogging full-time. In 2011, she founded Glitter Guide, an online lifestyle website, tapping her Washington, DC–based pal and fellow style blogger Caitlin Moran to be her editorial director. And risk soon gave way to reward: As the site's founder and creative director, Sterling, 31, now oversees a team of about 15…

My very first job out of college was at Rolling Stone, and as much as I loved every minute of it, I felt I had to take a sartorial side: Was I allied with the stoners in the art department, who wore Grateful Dead T-shirts without nostalgia or irony? Copy and photo, who were heavily into punk? Or the pretty, preppy boys and girls who were running the place? I typically wore an artfully roughed-up gray T-shirt and black miniskirt or black jeans, a combination of the antiestablishment/establishment looks, though it didn't really reflect what I was doing at the magazine, or where I wanted to go. It was interesting to me that the uniform of "success" at every conservative institution on the East Coast—button-downs, khakis, power suits, even stockings,…

A SWIFT KICK TO THE SENSES There are fans—and then there are Taylor Swift fans. Whether she's befriending Hollywood royalty (Selena Gomez, Emma Stone, and Gwyneth Paltrow are all in our March cover girl's contacts), ensnaring and immortalizing bad boys with her tearstained guitar, or looking model-like in Burberry Prorsum, Céline, Proenza Schouler, and more, in our designer-packed feature, she makes loving her, to use the pop star's own word, "red": "Boy, if I was Taylor Swift, I'd run out and buy every single piece of clothing Saint Laurent had. Joe Zee would also live in my purse." —Danielle Lisle, Tomandlorenzo.com "The news is in: Taylor Swift is going through a classic phase! Always classy and appropriate, like Coco Chanel." —@104GREYclothing, via Twitter "I am never, ever getting over that…