Vogue November 2022

AS THIS ISSUE WENT TO press, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. It felt, as so many have said, like the end of an era. Her reign reaches back as long as I have memories—but a recent one stands out. I remember sitting with her at designer Richard Quinn’s show in 2018. She told me she was delighted to be there, remembering how she herself had appeared in a fashion show before she became queen. She spoke with a joyousness and a humor that bounded around the room. Unforgettable for all of us there. And there was another loss in September—less monumental, of course, more personal and bittersweet. My friend and hero Roger Federer announced that he is retiring from professional tennis. This news—following so…

Game Time “If ever there were a time to shoot a Vogue story, it would be during a heat wave,” jokes photographer Campbell Addy. This summer, he, contributing fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, and models Achenrin Madit, Akon Changkou, Maty Fall, and Nyagua Ruea decamped to a field in boiling North London to set fall’s sportiest separates into motion (“Play On!” page 114). Suffice to say that they and choreographer Abdourahman Njie, who masquerades in the story as a local footballer (that’s him with Madit, wearing a Ralph Lauren RLX tank and Max Mara skirt, above), worked up a real sweat—although it hardly put a damper on the fun. “What can I say? I feel like this shoot was meant to be,” Addy goes on. “All of our energies were bouncing…

Annie Leibovitz was invited to photograph Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2007. She took four portraits that day—and would photograph the queen a second time, at Windsor Castle in 2016. Here are her memories of her first, historic sitting. I wanted a straightforward, intelligent portrait. I thought that this would be my only chance to photograph the queen, and I was allotted less than half an hour. They showed me catalogs of her clothes and jewelry and asked me to pick what she would wear. I picked a long gold dress as a base. The rest—the dark cloak that Cecil Beaton photographed her in, and the Order of the Garter robe, and a fur coat—would be layered on top of it and removed for the different pictures. The…

It is the fall of 1971. I have just walked into a room in a church basement, where there is a meeting of NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the organization created two years earlier by Betty Friedan. Although abortion had been legal in New York since 1970, it was still illegal in most states. I’ve moved to Syracuse—the first time I have lived outside the New York metropolitan area. I’m feeling a bit unmoored, not yet at home in my MFA program, and missing the political engagement I had experienced as a college student at Barnard and Columbia. When I see my fellow attendees, I know, as Dorothy knew that she was not in Kansas, that I’m not in New York City anymore. Only two…

The gleaming slopes are perfectly poised for self-expression, a blank canvas for showoff freestylers, schussing snowboarders—and, of course, a great showcase for medal-worthy style feats. My early attempts at ski style were formulated on trips to Sweden on school breaks when my sisters and I lavished zinc oxide rainbows over our faces (the deft “color play” of Pat McGrath it was not). But the ultimate ski staple—a trusty down jacket—has, along the way, become a mainstay of the workaday winter, and so much more: As temperatures drop, I wear mine bundled with knits and track pants on the whippet walk, or thrown over Saint Laurent cocktail minis and barely-there blouses for evening. And while we may have loathed athleisure as a fashion hype word, it did give us all license…

At a recent party in SoHo, I was surrounded by flirty Gen Z’ers and Cali-sober younger millennials. The looks were ferocious, with skin showing all-round, from itty-bitty skirts to curve-skimming dresses and crop tops galore—and, amid the throbbing electro and all that skin, I spotted one young woman wearing a dainty corset, laced up at the front. I couldn’t stop myself from asking her about it. “I love the corset for all sorts of structural and flattering reasons,” replied Lizzy Cohan, a 26-year-old journalism student. She bought this one after she saw the lead singer of a favorite band, the Marias, wearing something similar, and tracked down Christina Montoya, the designer of the California-based brand Stiina. A DM later and measurements sent, Cohan had her corset, which at this party…