Innehållsförteckning för Volume 5, 2021 från W Magazine

Wes Anderson’s films are as instantly recognizable for their twee surrealist aesthetic as they are for their recurring cast of characters, including stalwarts Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, and Anjelica Huston. They, along with new additions Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan, appear in Anderson’s latest work, The French Dispatch, which follows the staff of a fictional American publication in France. When it comes to Anderson’s behind-the-scenes team, the director maintains a similarly tight-knit crew. “Wes brings together the most wonderful and lovely group of people you could ever hope to hang around, to make these movies,” says production designer Adam Stockhausen, who has worked with Anderson ever since 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited. Wilson’s mother, Laura, a photographer, is another set regular, snapping the action between takes. Here,…

On a Monday afternoon in September—just after the first day of school had let out—nine tiny models were milling around Brooklyn’s Herbert Von King Park in layers of Italian cashmere. The kids, a creative bunch, none of whom does this professionally, seemed remarkably unfazed by the flurry of activity that accompanies a fashion shoot: As photography and styling assistants flitted around them, they sipped from juice boxes, shared their Transformers, and scattered cheese snacks on the ground. Louie Nobuko Huelster, 5 years old, tested the durability of a pair of green velvet shoes by jumping from one row of bleachers to the next. A few others wriggled out of their knit pants when their parents weren’t looking. Even when approached by a masked stranger with a voice recorder, the kids…

At the eccentrically daft dinner parties that Hugh Hayden stages regularly, guests are showered with hospitality and hobbled by irksome constraints. Much thought and care goes into these culinary installations, which he has been presenting in different forms since high school. Using his training as an architect, Hayden, now 37, once designed a set of interlocking tables with semicircular cutouts that enclosed diners, who were seated on spinning stools. In an earlier year, he bound and blindfolded his guests, and spoon-fed them. He usually dictates a dress code—most recently, white shirts and black pants. “They’re a lot of fun, but it requires you to submit to the experience,” said Kayode Ojo, a sculptor and a friend, of the soirées. “He’s a very generous host. It’s almost a lot of pressure…

Within the gray brick walls of his London studio, Juergen Teller is seated at a long wooden table, flipping through the pages of his new book, Donkey Man and Other Stories: Editorial Works Volume 1 (Rizzoli). There’s one photo series in particular that has always stuck with him: a portfolio called “Enjoy Your Life, Junior!,” which appeared in Pop magazine in 2017. In Bubenreuth, the Bavarian village where the photographer grew up, a classroom of 6 and 7-year-old children had tacked up tear sheets of Teller’s most iconic works—Kate Moss with pink hair; Marc Jacobs advertisements shot against a stark white background. Teller’s mother informed him that the kids were inspired by his work and had interviewed her for a school assignment. “I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going…

The word “trailblazer” is one that many have used to describe the breakout supermodel Precious Lee, and considering the milestones she’s achieved since she appeared at Milan Fashion Week in September 2020, it’s easy to see why. Just this past year, Lee became one of the first curve models to walk the Versace runway, was the only curve model in the label’s spring 2021 campaign, and graced the covers of Vogue, British Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. At the most recent New York Fashion Week—the first full-fledged, in-person extravaganza since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic—she appeared in seven shows. That was all before the model arrived at the Met Gala in a sparkling silver tailored Area gown that borrowed motifs from the braided ponytails and protective hairstyles she saw and…

It took Valeria Napoleone “nine years of nightmare” to gut and rebuild her Victorian terrace house in the Kensington district of London. Six of those years were spent winning permits and fighting legal battles. At times, the uphill struggle seemed foolhardy, but Napoleone regarded her mission as more than a personal one: It was for contemporary women artists. She was securing the ideal home for her unparalleled collection of their work. The daughter of a plastics-and-resins industrialist from Lombardy and the wife of an Italian-born financier, Napoleone grew up in a small town outside of Milan. She began collecting art in her late 20s, when she lived in New York. After graduating with a degree in journalism from New York University in 1990, she returned to the city four years…

Little is known about the life of Louis Vuitton. The man whose initials have become synonymous with luxury made his living as the French aristocracy’s preferred trunk-maker and packer, after leaving home at 13 years old to master the craft. Beyond that, many of the specifics have been lost to the sands of time. But we do know that he was born on August 4, 1821, at 3 a.m., in Anchay, France, a hamlet in the Jura Valley, which is enough information for Susan Miller, the Internet’s favorite astrologer, to draw up his birth chart: Mr. Vuitton was a Leo, with a Cancer rising and a moon in Libra. “Leos want uniqueness. They want something different. They never want to copy anyone. They want to create,” Miller tells me via…

I’m always doing things in a metaphorical way,” says the hairstylist Jawara, who created the gravity-defying shapes in this story. “I wanted to get across the idea of hair in motion to represent change—getting out of dark times and leaving uncertainty behind.” Born in Brooklyn, partly raised in Jamaica, and based in New York and Paris, Jawara, who prefers to use his first name only, knows a thing or two about moving forward. In the eight years since he broke out on his own, after assisting fellow hair greats Guido Palau, Luigi Murenu, and Sam McKnight, he’s become one of the fashion industry’s most in-demand names, and a go-to for stars such as Beyoncé, Solange, FKA Twigs, and Naomi Campbell. The images on these pages might represent optimism for the…