Innehållsförteckning för December 2015 från ELLE

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler star in Sisters, a comedy directed by Pitch Perfect’s Jason Moore about siblings who learn their childhood home is about to be sold and return to clean out their rooms—ostensibly. (Instead, they throw an epic rager.) December 18 December 1 Impeccably groomed burlesque star Dita Von Teese reveals the nitty-gritty secrets of her glamour regime in the 400-page tome Your Beauty Mark (HarperCollins). December 3 The latest from live-musical trailblazer NBC (remember Peter Pan?) is the supersoul funkstravaganza The Wiz Live! Newcomer Shanice Williams (as Dorothy) is joined by Queen Latifah, Uzo Aduba, and Mary J. Blige. December 4 Amazon Prime’s sophisticated dramedy Transparent—which features Emmy winner Jeffrey Tambor as a trans woman—returns for a second season. December 4 In Youth, a retired composer (Michael…

On an international flight last year, Soko Glam founder Charlotte Cho slipped out of her seat, armed with a hydrating sheet mask to apply in the bathroom. The plane’s dimmed lights, she hoped, would provide ample cover on her walk back: While hydrogel and microfiber masks are ubiquitous on cool-girl Instagrams, they skew more Hannibal Lecter than dewy maven when viewed outside of bathrobe-bedecked snaps. But Cho needn’t have worried. She returned to her seat to find the man next to her sporting his own mask. Her first thought: I am definitely going to Korea right now. Cho, whose parents are from Seoul, grew up in the sun-drenched hills and strip malls of mid-’90s Los Angeles County, heartily embracing her hometown’s aesthetic of bold tans and scarce brows. She graduated…

“[Her ELLE cover is] just too classy for us to even try to dress it down with a salacious clickbait headline employing the word boobs. Which is why we love Selena. We’re bored of boobs for now…. Liz Collins handled the shoot, and styling was done by Simon Robins. The pop star is wearing a few structured, angular looks for the spread and, well, look, I don’t know much style/fashion lingo, so this is my way of saying it’s mainly not flowy or body-con. It’s very approachable-chic, which is pretty much what she’s going for at this point, isn’t it?”—Carl Williott, of idolator.com “Selena Gomez, 23, is now becoming her own woman. She has been lying low for the past year or so but now she is coming back, more…

Before street-style blogs experienced their stratospheric ascent, Garance Doré was just a fashion-obsessed woman living in Paris creating illustrations and taking pictures of other sartorially savvy women (herself included) and posting them on a website. Fast-forward almost 10 years to 2015 and Doré—who recently added author to her multihyphenate status with her new book, Love x Style x Life (Spiegel & Grau)—is steadily leading that pack; and though she now calls New York home, she maintains her globalcitizen schedule. “It’s a really busy city, so my desire is always to escape,” Doré says. When she’s not jetting to Paris, London, and Milan during fashion weeks, Doré, 40, finds sanctuary in island destinations like Mykonos and her native Corsica. “I love anywhere that has lots of light. It’s the photographer in…

In 2011, L.A.-based personal stylist Simone LeBlanc turned her knack for sourcing one-of-a-kind finds for her clients into a full-spectrum gifting service. Now she and her team are in the business of hunting down how’d-you-think-of-that gifts— from dispatching someone to the Middle East to bring back a stone from a family’s long-lost childhood home (which she set in marble and carved song lyrics into) to unearthing, say, a woolly mammoth tusk from the Black Sea. For mere mortals, she has seriously upgraded the gift box concept to what she calls “contained stories.” Take the girls’-night-in cocktail trove she put together with her accessoriesdesigner pal Clare Vivier for the holidays: It includes Vivier’s handmade coasters and playing cards, a brass cocktail set, bourbon cherries, and recipe cards for two party-drink favorites,…

PORTRAIT OF A LADY Though 50-year-old painter Helen Downie, more widely known by her pseudonym Unskilled Worker, has rarely been seen in public, her haunting portraiture (such as Bird Girl, Gucci Cruise, above) has been viewed the world over through her viral Instagram account (@unskilledworker). Now, after inviting Downie to interpret its fall 2015 collection on canvas, Gucci is sponsoring No Longer/Not Yet, an exhibition in Shanghai’s Minsheng Art Museum of which Downie will be a part (through December 16). BOOTS ON THE GROUND “Make Art Not War!” It’s a fitting tribute for the sixty-fifth anniversary of Clarks’s iconic hippie favorite, the desert boot. The painterly political statement is the handiwork of Brit contemporary artist Patrick Brill (pseudonym: Bob and Roberta Smith) and is one of four collaborations in the…

Ribbed stretch-cotton tank, $775, sequin skirt, price on request, both, GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI, visit givenchy.com. Gold and diamond earring, PHYNE BY PAIGE NOVICK, price on request. Gold-plated brass and horn ring, MAIYET, price on request. Patent leather loafers, BOSS, $365. For details, see Shopping Guide.…

Coco Chanel, that oft-quoted maximalist, believed that jewelry—and lots of it, s’il vous plaît—imbued its wearer with a certain energy. This notion inspired the new Les Talismans de Chanel, a statementmaking (these two knuckledusters boast a combined 15 carats of brown and white diamonds and rock crystal) collection of fine jewelry that blends the designer’s love of Japanese pearls and enamel with the house’s oh-so-French signature quatrefoil setting. Gold, white gold, pearl, rock crystal cabochon, and lacquer ring; white gold, diamond, and brown diamond ring, both, CHANEL FINE JEWELRY, prices on request, call 800-550-0005. Stretchjersey bodysuit, CHANEL, $1,500, at Chanel boutiques nationwide…

When it comes to gift giving, we aim to inspire you to go for the gold—or silver! or, better, both!—hence this ribbon-inspired ring from Greek jeweler (and onetime Olympic-medal maker) Elena Votsi. And because not every recipient on your list is this easy to tie a ribbon around, the rest of our list is addressed to the complicated, contradictory types in your life. Whether they’re minimalists or maximalists, we’ve got something for everyone.…

YES, HANK DONE IT THIS WAY Cambridge-educated Brit thespian Tom Hiddleston (aided by an ensemble of real Nashville cats) does a jaw-dropping turn as the doomed Alabama-born troubadour Hank Williams, of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Jambalaya” fame, performing in the biopic I Saw the Light. His offstage operatics with his troubled wife (Elizabeth Olsen in a tricky, inspired turn) are almost as enthralling. A MOUNTAIN OF TROUBLE Juliette Binoche rocks as an activist who taunts Chile’s leaders to do whatever it takes to save a group of miners buried 200 stories underground for 69 days in The 33, a filmed-on-location real-life saga of human triumph that riveted the world in 2010. As the leader who emerges to keep these desperate men sane and focused on survival, Antonio Banderas helps make…

UNREAL HOUSEWIVES Helen Ellis’s American Housewife (Doubleday) is a raucous, whip-smart collection of stories featuring retro-feminist ladies who lunch, launch madcap getaway schemes, and whack their naughty doormen with kitchen stools. One story begins, “My novel is sponsored by Tampax. It’s the story of three generations of women and spans three decades. That’s a lot of menstruation.” BUKOWSKI ON MEOWSKI Before the cat memes, there was Charles Bukowski (1920–1994), an ur–feline fancier. “I check out my five cats,” he writes in On Cats (Ecco), a joyous mélange of poetry, prose, and pictures, edited by Abel Debritto, “…and they look at me and say through the irises…watch us and learn to be cool: Brave is beautiful, we are all together in nowhere and that’s splendid….” THAT LIFE! Distinguished writer James Kaplan…

THE EARTH MOTHER MIRANDA KERR Despite having 7 million Instagram followers, the Aussie supe and organic skin-care entrepreneur keeps her beauty ritual relatively low-tech. LIP SERVICE: After a long day, “putting on a red lip—not an orange-red or a blue-red, but a classic one— makes me feel more uplifted and ready,” Kerr says. Her favorite shades are by Charlotte Tilbury. PREP WORK: Before she applies her makeup, Kerr smooths out her complexion with her brand Kora’s AHA Facial Exfoliator. “I leave it on for five minutes, and it makes my skin glowy and bright,” she says. SERENITY NOW: To get her energy flowing before a big night out, the yoga devotee will “meditate or do a backbend, handstand, or shoulder stand.” GREAT LENGTHS: Her formula for prettily tousled strands: a…

In yet another profession where women are still underrecognized, bartenders like Brittini Rae Peterson, a head mixologist at Los Angeles’s Melrose Umbrella Co. and the winner of this year’s Speed Rack competition—a four-yearold all-female national contest involving more than 200 competitors to benefit breast cancer research (challenges include races to make a cocktail in record time)—are slowly making inroads. Here, we catch up with Peterson. ELLE: What attracted you to Speed Rack? Brittini Rae Peterson: I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, and it was great that it was for charity. It also promotes the concept of strong females in the industry that wasn’t evident 10 years ago, when customers would say, “Hey, could I speak to your bartender, please?” ELLE: What’s the biggest misconception about…

DRINKING IS KILLING MY BRAIN CELLS Sort of. Over years, binge drinking (four or more drinks in two hours for women, five or more for men) can decrease activity in the prefrontal cortex, the region associated with decision making, and damage neurons—which in turn can cause cells to self-destruct. “But the term ‘kills brain cells’ is misleading,” says Julia Chester, PhD, an associate professor in behavioral neuroscience at Purdue University, “because it makes people think that one drink can kill cells immediately, which is not true. It depends on pattern, duration, and age— adolescents are particularly susceptible.” By this, she’s referring not only to the documented fact that the age at which someone begins drinking is correlated with becoming an alcoholic, but also to evidence that teenagers’ brains are more…

We know what you really want this holiday season: A FEW GOOD MEN Here, we bring you four of Hollywood’s best. You’re welcome. Like every woman, “I had moments of feeling strong and secure, and moments of feeling exposed,” Eddie Redmayne says when asked if he felt pretty in the chic dresses, silk stockings, satin pumps, bobbed hair, and perfect makeup of his trans alter ego in this month’s The Danish Girl (see our review on page 194). “You would feel the gaze of people on you; there was a certain scrutiny. I talked to some of the women on set about it, and they said, ‘This is what we live with!’ It was a constant education.” Directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) and based on the novel by…

During the 10 months that Michael B. Jordan, 28, spent training to play the boxer Adonis in this fall’s Creed, he stuck to a pro athlete’s diet. That is, except for Sunday—his cheat day. “I’d wake up first thing Sunday morning, like, religiously, and go to this spot where I’d order French toast, turkey sausage, home fries, and scrambled eggs,” Jordan says. “Two and half hours later? I’d do a foot-long Philly cheesesteak—just literally destroy it. Another two and a half hours later? Pizza! Next? Krispy Kreme doughnuts.” He pauses, breathless. “Every Sunday, man. Every single Sunday.” It’s notable to hear Michael B. Jordan lose his composure, even on the subject of wild caloric excess, considering the hypercurated selection of roles that is his résumé. In 2002, when he was…

—The Art Activator “I want people to immediately have their hearts racing and think, What is this?” says Anne Pasternak, the new director of the Brooklyn Museum, which along with having the most diverse audience in the city also boasts a 1.5 million–work collection, ranging from seventeenth-century Dutch portraits to Warhol silkscreens. Pasternak has plans to revamp the museum’s permanent collection space and invite artists to produce more experimental projects, and envisions new programs that will take place outside of the museum’s monumental Beaux-Arts building. The latter was a skill she honed at Creative Time, the public art nonprofit that she headed for 20 years, growing its budget from $350,000 to $5 million and, along the way, supporting ever more ambitious projects, including, in 2013, a Nick Cave performance piece…

—The Triple Threat Multihyphenate Margaret Lee not only creates photographs, installations, and sculptures that flirt with the line between real and not real (think: a photo of a Marni boot with a lifelike, handpainted watermelon or a sculpture with a dangling chrome banana) but is also a studio manager to one Cindy Sherman (since 2003) and a gallerist in her own right. In 2011, Lee and Oliver Newton, now her husband, founded 47 Canal to facilitate the wild aspirations of a group of fellow self-declared outsiders without art-school degrees, who’d recently coalesced into a kind of scene. “They were creating work on their own terms and creating an audience for it, too,” says Matthew Higgs, the director of the nonprofit White Columns, which gave Lee her first solo show. “So…

When Miguel’s “Adorn” dropped in 2012, it sounded like nothing else on the radio. Or at the Grammys, or on Saturday Night Live—two stages Miguel went on to slay. Perhaps that’s why the song was such a hit. Here was this neo-soul singer with eight-pack abs who made people want to get their freak on. Miguel’s latest album, this year’s Wildheart, only furthers his ambition. It’s no surprise that his music defies categorization: Feeling like an outsider has been his personal journey from the beginning, and that emotion is baked into his lyrics. Born Miguel Jontel Pimentel, he was raised in L.A., the son of a Mexican American father and an African American mother. He claims girls weren’t interested in his unique look early on, though that’s certainly changed: The…

December 1 Wearable art: The brainchild of Brooklynbased painter Tessa Perutz, Massif Central is bringing some of the borough’s buzziest talents (such as painter Julia Dault, pictured) to a wider audience by printing original works on 36- and 51-inch silk scarves. The latest collection is out now; visit massifcentral.us. December 4 Old pals Chloë Sevigny and Tara Subkoff join forces again for a pairing made in fashion heaven. Opening today, #Horror is Subkoff’s feature-length directorial debut; the Urs Fischer–produced flick stars Sevigny and confronts cyberbullying and the true cost of likes on social media. Feeling left out of the Art Basel Miami Beach scene? Get your art fix with fashion historian E.P. Cutler’s Art + Fashion (Chronicle Books), which examines 25 iconic partnerships, from Schiaparelli and Dalí to Dior and…

I’ve written before about the fact that when it comes to deciding who to put on our cover, we often gravitate toward women going through a transition of some kind—someone who’s moving from one phase of her life to another. But I think I can say that we’ve never cut it this close before: meeting cover girl Daisy Ridley at the very moment she’s about to go from budding actress to worldwide phenomenon; from “She’s cute, who’s that?” to “There she is!”—a phrase often followed by the thunderous footsteps of paparazzi storming the victim into retreat. Ridley, as you may know by now, has been cast as the female lead in Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens, Disney’s latest entry in the Star Wars narrative. It’s opening worldwide, like the…

Abby Bangser glides through the sprawling white tent on Randall’s Island, negotiating her way past Giuseppe Penone’s staggering 25-foot-long wall of laurel leaves in one gallery’s booth and Martin Creed’s bold primary-colored stripes (painted directly on the walls à la nurseryschool classroom) at another. For the past four years, the island has housed Frieze New York, which, along with its 12-yearold London counterpart, is among the global art circuit’s most eagerly anticipated fairs. Clad in a black Proenza Schouler top and pants from The Row, her caramel-colored hair neatly smooth and shiny, Bangser flashes a toothpastecommercial smile at every gallerist she greets, some of whom whisper in her ear about this big sale to a collector or that Museum of Modern Art curator flirting with an artwork. “He’s having an…

Derek Lam, beloved purveyor of dependably chic, all-American sportswear, wanted to give his uptown muse a change of scenery for spring. This season, he’s envisioning “a multidimensional woman who doesn’t like her look to be matched or coordinated.” To ease her out of her comfort zone, Lam commissioned Walt Cassidy—a heavily inked, Brooklyn-based multimedia artist, who rose to fame in the ’90s as an outrageously costumed Club Kid known as Waltpaper—to make sculptural earrings and necklaces to pair with the designer’s intarsia-knit dresses, wide-leg trousers, and long, belted trenches for his New York Fashion Week show. The only directive Lam gave Cassidy was that the jewelry should complement his mostly neutral color palette. Cassidy, whose current work includes abstract, Rorschach-like metal patterns set in plywood frames, found himself becoming obsessed…

What better place to start than with a necklace known as the Majestic? The undisputed showpiece of Louis Vuitton’s latest fine-jewelry collection, Acte V, the Majestic pays homage to the post– Art Deco movement known as Streamline Moderne. With its 30-carat, V-shaped Australian black opal suspended from three ropes of diamonds and Akoya pearls, it’s proof of just how timeless great design can be. White gold, diamond, black opal, and pearl necklace, knit tank, both, LOUIS VUITTON, prices on request, at select Louis Vuitton stores nationwide…

Sure, it’s a nice thought: effortlessly zipping around the city, gazelle-like in the latest skyscraping stilettos. But this season, even the designers at Jimmy Choo—a label that’s no stranger to vertiginous heels—are getting real. Taking a cue from the most stylish of downtown denizens (off-duty models, of course), they’ve created the most perfect moto boot exclusively for ELLE. Its ankle-grazing height is equally suited to skinny jeans and miniskirts, and its flat heel will never slow you down, whether on two legs—or two wheels. Leather ankle boot, JIMMY CHOO, $1,250, exclusively at neimanmarcus.com. For details, see Shopping Guide.…

For a while there, Benjamin Walker was at serious risk of being typecast. After his turn in 2010’s short-lived emo-rock Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and his debut as a big-screen action hero in 2012’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the 33-year-old Georgia native and Juilliard grad became, as he says, “the go-to guy for weird presidents.” Happily, Walker has managed to move on from the White House, with a trio of projects that are anything but analogous. In this month’s In the Heart of the Sea, costarring Chris Hemsworth, he plays George Pollard, the smarmy, nepotistic captain of a real-life whaling ship that was sunk in 1820 by its wouldbe prey (and that ultimately inspired Moby-Dick), leading the surviving crew members to cannibalism. “I was a mess by the…

1 A CARLIN HOME COMPANION KELLY CARLIN (ST. MARTIN’S) In her no-holdsbarred memoir, the daughter of comedian George Carlin confronts, unflinchingly, the turmoil of having drug- and alcohol-addicted parents, while also noting the strength her family found in dealing with their vices together. Readers admired her lack of self-pity, and her hope that she possessed her father’s wit. She needn’t worry. Says one reader, “I found myself laughing out loud.” 2 I BLAME DENNIS HOPPER ILLEANA DOUGLAS (FLATIRON BOOKS) When her parents, inspired by Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, turned their home into a hippie commune, Douglas turned to her grandfather, actor Melvyn Douglas, and the glitzy world of Hollywood. It paid off; she went on to star in Cape Fear, GoodFellas, and Alive. “A movie-lover’s delight,” as one reader…

There was a time in my life when getting set to go out was no mere preamble, but the event itself. During college, particularly, when our dance cards were full of parties and concerts and club nights, my friends and I would gather at an apartment or dorm room, bags bulging with makeup, wearing work-in-progress outfits that would require the addition of a borrowed blouse or belt to make them sing. We’d cluster in front of mirrors, cheap beer chilling and music blaring, and begin our transformation—a group of giddy caterpillars with butterfly dreams. There were sticky pink lip glosses to be applied; strips of spiky black lashes to be glued crookedly to one another’s lids; secrets to be drunkenly spilled. Often, by the time we arrived at our destination,…

GISELE BÜNDCHEN Polished Bedhead Instead of a fresh blow-out, consider the beauty of second-day hair. Rather than fake it, Josh will often do clients’ hair the night before, “then tweak it before the party.” To get his longtime client Gisele’s livedin look, Josh spritzes beach spray onto her dry hair and then wraps sections around a curling iron held vertically. “It’s supposed to have a haphazard texture,” he says, “so you can hold some pieces longer or wrap some sections horizontally to break up the wave pattern.” EMMA STONE Undone Updo If you’re wearing an openbacked or elaborate dress, Josh suggests something simple, like this tousled chignon. To create the look, he starts by back-combing hair at the crown, then brushing it back into a high ponytail. “I always want…

PREP WORK Pre-soiree, the objective is maximum luminosity. If you have a day beforehand, book a noninvasive in-office treatment, which can boost brightness and smooth without side effects. Intense Pulsed Light (IPL), when administered at a low setting, “temporarily shrinks pores,” which makes skin more lustrous, says L.A. dermatologist Jessica Wu, MD. Alternatively, try a gentle exfoliating peel, such as the in-demand Radiance Peel from New York derm Patricia Wexler, MD. The low-concentration trichloroacetic acid blend “tightens, closes pores, and gets rid of imperfections,” Wexler says. “You look better immediately, but the peak effect is the day after.” To make skin look “superdewy” on the day of a party, New York derm Kavita Mariwalla, MD, recommends the easily tolerated HydraFacial—a four-step system involving the application of a cell-sloughing serum; exfoliation…

My first job out of college was as a bar columnist. Okay, technically, I also got a marketing job, but I quit that six months in, making my “side gig” my only gig: writer of my own column in Paper, a pop culture and arts glossy. I was 22. At the magazine, I distinguished myself and earned my keep (sort of: The job paid $150 a month) as the sort of girl who could interview a DJ at 3 a.m. in the basement of the club Twilo and make it to work the next morning intact (if incognito: oversize vintage sunglasses, floppy hats, stageworthy makeup) the next day. As a sheltered suburban Los Angeles teen who had rapidly transformed into a New York City undergrad-gone-wild, I relished the fact that…

Darlings! I’m a mother. As I mentioned last month, after a glamorous 10-week pregnancy during which I drank a champagne cocktail laced with arsenic every evening at midnight, I gave birth to a beautiful little app—the Anti-Tinder, the Rosemary’s Baby of the iPhone—a breakup game called Damn Love. (I figure Fantasy Football is huge; why not Fantasy Breakups?) And by God! The wicked child is a smash! Better yet, ELLE has been giving me family leave, and I’ve had time to dive into the last 22 years of columns and come up with the letters for Auntie Eeee’s All-Time Greatest Hits, Part 2. This first letter wins the Ask E. Jean prize for the Person Who Changed the Most after being featured in the magazine. I’ll tell you all about…

It’s the start of the holiday season. But it’s not the nip in the air or the smell of chestnuts roasting on an open fire that reminds Chiwetel Ejiofor that Christmas is coming. It’s the people who come up and start talking to him about Love Actually. As you no doubt recall, Ejiofor plays the newly married Peter, who remains blissfully unaware that his best friend is sick in love with his wife, Keira Knightley. “I watch that movie every year,” people will start telling him come December 1. Or “I had a gospel choir play ‘All You Need Is Love’ at my wedding, too!” Or “I can’t believe she ran out and kissed him while ‘Silent Night’ played softly in the background. That was so wrong. You were right…

Carmen Herrera —The Undersung Hero Up a flight of paint-splattered stairs in New York City’s Flatiron district lies the studio apartment in which painter Carmen Herrera, 100, has lived and worked for the past 55 years, gradually distilling her ideas into abstract canvases— geometric fields of vibrant colors segmented by stark, straight lines—whose power is only amplified by their extreme simplicity. Raised in Cuba, the youngest of seven children, in 1938 Herrera married an American, Jesse Loewenthal, and moved with him to New York, where she began to get serious about painting. Then in 1948, after the couple relocated to Paris, Herrera fell in with a group of expats experimenting in abstraction, a school loosely known as the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and exhibited alongside Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers.…

—Populist powerhouses Agnes Gund and Samantha Boardman P.S. 123, a struggling Harlem grade school where many hallways are decorated with wild, atmospheric drawings, is just one of 200 city sites currently served by the nonprofit Studio in a School, which hires artists to teach art to kids and was founded by Agnes Gund in 1977 after she learned the city was virtually eliminating arts education (today Studio reaches nearly 30,000 students a year). This type of public-spiritedness is typical of Gund, a longtime philanthropist and legendary arts patron. “She has empathy, a fierce intelligence, enormous drive, and she’s fun,” says Clifford Ross, an artist and former Studio board member. “She pulls people into her path.” One such person is Samantha Boardman, a psychiatrist married to real-estate developer Aby Rosen, a…

THIS MONTH FOR SAGITTARIUS: (NOV 22–DEC 21) It’s birthday time, and the planets are gathering to support your every wish. You’ll start to see things going your way by the 11th, when the new moon arrives in your sign. Imagine where you’d like to be exactly one year from now, and the road toward that dream will begin to lay itself out before you. Romantically, your first indication that “when you’re hot, you’re hot” will be over the weekend of the 5th, when the Sun and Uranus cook up surprises in matters of the heart. But watch your words on the 10th—when Mars confronts unpredictable Uranus—and the weekend of the 19th. These days look shaky for relationships. The end of the month is laden with holiday gifts: The interplay of…

THE BANG BANG THEORY How an ELLE.com editor found herself among the celebrity tattooist’s inner circle Born Keith McCurdy, the artist known as Bang Bang got his nickname from the two guns etched into opposite sides of his neck. The idea, he says, was to get inked with something so offensive that no traditional establishment would hire him—and he would have no choice but to succeed at tattooing. “When I think about that decision now, I’m just at a loss,” McCurdy says. But no matter how farfetched, his plan worked. McCurdy’s client list reads like a Grammy ballot: Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry—you get the idea. “Every time Katy completes a tour, I tattoo her,” says McCurdy, who joined Perry for two consecutive tours and then the Super Bowl. “She…

Cary Leitzes PROVENANCE: Irvington, NY NOW: New York City PROFESSION: “Creative matchmaker and expert at bringing together brands and artists/designers/creatives”; founder of the marketing agency Leitzes&Co THIS MONTH: “Women in Art” (page 268). “I’d never been in Joan Jonas’s studio loft apartment, and that was very special and personal. Everything in the space was a labor of love.” READING: The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman. “[Kelley] works at IDEO with his brother David; the company developed the first mouse for Apple. They are known for a different way of design thinking where they do rapid prototyping.” LISTENING: “Jon Batiste is extraordinary. So moving and soulful. And Chet Baker. Bruce Weber did a documentary on him that is an all-time favorite.” INSPIRATION BOARD: “Instagram is definitely a…

Berlin-based Dominican American performance artist and DJ Isabel Lewis hosts so-called Occasions in which she aims to entertain all the senses. At Frieze London 2014, she welcomed guests experiencing visual overload to a bubble gum–scented off-site space filled with tropical plants to let down their hair with dancing and libations. At art fairs, people-watching can feel as important as art-watching, so Mexico City– based artist Pia Camil—whose expansive painting/ceramics/textiles/performance practice questions consumer culture—made the crowd as eye-catching as the work, giving away hundreds of ponchos made from factory remnants at Frieze New York 2015. Frieze Artist Award winner Rachel Rose, known for video installations that explore qualities of perception, has her first solo show, through February 7, at the Whitney Museum in New York. At October’s Frieze London 2015, the…

1. Rose gold and diamond bracelet, KIMBERLY McDONALD. 2. Platinum, diamond, and pink diamond bracelet, KWIAT. 3. White gold and diamond bracelet, DE BEERS. 4. White gold, amethyst, topaz, citrine, peridot, tourmaline, garnet, and diamond bracelet, BULGARI. 5. Blackened white gold and diamond bracelet, EVA FEHREN. 6. Black rhodium-plated white gold, diamond, and ruby bracelet, SILVIA FURMANOVICH. 7. White gold, diamond, black diamond, and emerald bracelet, NIKOS KOULIS. 8. White gold and multicolor sapphire bracelet, CHOPARD. 9. Gold and diamond bracelet, MARTIN KATZ. 10. Gold, emerald, and diamond bracelet, EFFY JEWELRY. 11. Platinum and diamond bracelet, KWIAT. 12. Gold and diamond bracelet, JENNIFER MEYER. 13. Titanium and multicolor diamond bracelet, G BY GLENN SPIRO. 14. Oxidized white gold and multicolor diamond bracelet, MONIQUE PÉAN. 15. Platinum, diamond, and sapphire bracelet,…

LOS ANGELES Twenty-six-year-old art world wunderkind (and fashion industry favorite) Lucien Smith has graduated from spraying canvases with paint-filled fire extinguishers. Catch Smith’s new range of still lifes and portraiture, including Genie Feral Child (above), at West Hollywood’s Moran Bondaroff gallery (formerly OHWOW), through January 2. moranbondaroff.com DUBAI Having generated a cult following in their home country with Kandinsky-inspired riffs on Art Deco jewelry, mother-daughter team Nadine Hammoud and Cherine Altobaishi of NC Rocks are bringing their colorful diamond and enamel wares to the States, landing soon at Mona Moore in Venice Beach, California. nc-rocks.com NEW YORK WHEN BECKETT FOGG AND PIOTREK PANSZCZYK—ALUMS OF CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION AND UNGARO, RESPECTIVELY—DEBUTED THEIR NEW LABEL, AREA, AT NEW YORK FASHION WEEK THIS PAST SEPTEMBER, EDITORS DID DOUBLE TAKES AS A BEVY OF…

Jack Kerouac, king of the Beats, didn’t write The Town and the City, On the Road, or any of his other early novels by reporting to a joblike, fee-based Writer’s Room. He barely had a pot to piss in and wrote at his mother’s kitchen table in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts, threading rolls of teletype paper into his typewriter. Flannery O’Connor penned her immortal books, including A Good Man Is Hard to Find, down on the family farm in rural Georgia. She famously said the only thing wrong with MFA writing programs were all the students they didn’t stifle. The Paris Review—the illustrious literary journal founded in 1953 and revamped five years ago—has pitched its tent firmly in the indie/outsider writer’s camp with the publication of The Unprofessionals: New American Writing…

When self-proclaimed wilderness perfumer Hall Newbegin says, “I spend a lot of time with my nose to the ground,” he means it literally. As the founder of Juniper Ridge, a fragrance company based in Oakland, California, that creates wearable eaux from plants and flowers foraged during epic camping trips around California and the Pacific Northwest, Newbegin has made it his mission to “put places in bottles.” That means lugging a converted whiskey still on mountain hikes, distilling mushrooms, ferns, wood—and, yes, even dirt itself—to capture the northern Sierra Nevada “when winter is right around the corner and the air has a light, sweet smell,” or “the incredibly beautiful, ephemeral wildflower bloom in Topanga Canyon that happens in the springtime after storms have rolled off the Pacific.” With the resulting collection…

IF THEY CHALLENGE YOU TO CHUGGING A BEER AT A LATER DATE, DON’T BELIEVE THEM When I met James Marsden, he was appearing on The Tonight Show that day and didn’t want to drink before his appearance. He said we could meet up after filming for our faceoff. But a few hours later, I got a very apologetic e-mail from his publicist with the subject line “Jimmy Marsden” saying that he was too tired. MOST ARE GAME TO BOOZE, THOUGH Jamie Bell had 3.5 blackberry mojitos; Ryan Phillippe ordered a shot in between cocktails No. 1 and No. 2. More than a third of my subjects ordered at least a second round (Brenton Thwaites, Nick Lachey, Bobby Cannavale, Jai Courtney, Sam Heughan, Jamie Bell, Jonathan Groff, Scoot McNairy, Reid Scott,…

Within weeks of being named Budget Committee chair in November 2012, Senator Patty Murray asked her House counterpart, Paul Ryan, to meet for breakfast in the Senate Dining Room. It was a bit like an awkward first date. Ryan, a conservative, was fresh off his run as Mitt Romney’s vice president (and nearly three years later, after John Boehner’s resignation as Speaker of the House, would be the only Republican of national stature the hard right was even considering for the job). Murray, the famous “mom in tennis shoes” elected by Washington State in 1992, is a liberal Democrat 20 years Ryan’s senior. He’s voted to repeal Obamacare roughly 60 times; she fought for the Affordable Care Act to include contraception coverage. He wants big cuts in food stamps, now…

To draw a Venn diagram of Chris Hemsworth’s fan base, you’d have to begin with a very large circle to represent the hundreds of millions of moviegoers who’ve enjoyed his four (and counting!) appearances as Thor. He’d worked prior to the first Thor’s 2011 release, of course— most notably on a soap called Home and Away in his native Australia, although he also had a small role as Kirk’s dad in the 2009 Star Trek. But as the 32-year-old actor admits in his almost comically sexy baritone, “Everything after Thor came from Thor. I don’t know if I’d have been in The Huntsman if it hadn’t been for Thor.” Next, since he mentioned it, let’s sketch a smaller circle to symbolize the Snow White and the Huntsman diehards, although it’s…

—The Unflinching Observer In one of Catherine Opie’s early-’90s self-portraits, the word pervert has been cut across her chest. “The LGBT community were calling themselves normal, but anybody in the leather community was abnormal,” the photographer recalls. “That binary was upsetting to me.” Ever since, she’s been exploring the creation of identity and the shifting contours of community, focusing her lens on Malibu surfers and empty freeway overpasses; most recently, she’s taken on both Elizabeth Taylor’s home and numerous national parks (intentionally blurred: “I’m always trying to recategorize the iconic”). “Her work makes an impact,” says Jennifer Blessing, who curated Opie’s 2008 Guggenheim solo show and considers her a master in the vein of Walker Evans. That will certainly be true next month, when Opie’s troika of solo shows open…