Innehållsförteckning för Volume 2, 2023 från W Magazine

One of the few times Michael Musto ever woke up early in the 1980s was to head to an interview for a gossip and nightlife columnist job at The Village Voice. “I was just a wreck, because I hadn’t existed in the morning for quite some time at that point,” he says. But he got the gig and continued a mostly nocturnal existence for the next few decades, documenting the dirt and glamour of New York City’s downtown scene. In the world of “La Dolce Musto,” as his column was titled, club kids, drag queens, and tabloid fixtures were every bit as noteworthy as pop stars and models. Often, they were partying together at the clubs Musto frequented anyway. “I’m not just always talking about the past,” says Musto,…

On a recent afternoon in Corriganville Park, an old movie-set ranch in the rocky foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains in Southern California’s Simi Valley, with her blonde bouffant teased to previously uncharted dimensions, a spiked headdress in the shape of a bursting nebula, Wonder Woman–esque wrist cuffs, and bulbous Proenza Schouler open-toe shoes, Jennifer Coolidge looked very much the part of a sci-fi superheroine. She brought to mind such greats as Jane Fonda in Barbarella, Zsa Zsa Gabor in Queen of Outer Space, and First Mate Piggy in “Pigs in Space,” the cult Muppets space opera. Coolidge, who this year swept the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice Awards for her portrayal of a heedless hotel habitué on The White Lotus, was engaged in a winner-takes-all slugfest with Daniel…

Michelle Williams wears a Bottega Veneta dress, earrings, and shoes. Paul Dano wears a Brunello Cucinelli jacket, shirt, and pants; Vicki Turbeville bolo tie; John Lobb shoes. Directed and photographed by Steven Spielberg. Styled by Mark Bridges. Danielle Deadwyler wears a Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress. Directed and photographed by Todd Field. Styled by Allia Alliata di Montereale. Jennifer Coolidge wears a Bad Binch TongTong by Terrence Zhou custom bow dress; MAM headpiece; Amina Muaddi earrings; stylist’s own gloves. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Photographed by Lenne Chai. Costume designs by Shirley Kurata. W’s Directors Issue, now in its fifth year, is the brainchild of Editor at Large Lynn Hirschberg. I love making every issue of W, but I have to admit that this one may be…

Horror films had a tough few decades. From the 1980s until recently, movies featuring a murderous doll, a ghostly presence, or a creepy neighbor with a taste for revenge had been mostly relegated to the realm of C-list actors, ham-fisted dialogue, and predictable plots. Now the genre is a cultural force to be reckoned with. Thanks to a mix of box-office hits with crossover appeal, prestige projects with top-tier directors and major stars, and creatively ambitious indies, horror movies have become essential communal experiences that spark important conversations while delivering a whole lot of fun. “The idea of what horror is is expanding,” says Meg Hafdahl, an author who has written 11 books on the genre. “As a community, we’re learning, ‘Oh, horror isn’t just a girl falling and she’s…

When the mixed-media artist Lauren Halsey was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, her parents would invite friends and family over to watch football games and fight nights. Halsey, now 35, vividly recalls eating a slice of Jino’s Pizza when Mike Tyson bit a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Those evenings, however, went far beyond the sporting action. They provided a space for her accountant father to engage in teachable moments about Black history and identity. “In a very serious and rigorous way, my father studied aspects of pharaonic architecture and dynasties that he would just freestyle to my brother and me,” says Halsey, as she huddles for warmth on a rain-drenched January afternoon, seated behind the illuminated Lucite desk at her studio in South Central Los Angeles.…

Spike Lee Filmmaker Since the 1980s, when you made classics like She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing, you have directed, written, and produced dozens of films and TV projects—from the documentary NYC Epicenters 9/11 → 2021½, which explored loss in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, to the Oscar-winning feature BlacKkKlansman. Once you complete something, how do you decide what to pursue next? I have a lot of things in my head, and I’ve come to understand that the one I think about the most is the one that I should pursue. But this is a tough business. There have been times when the film I wanted to do didn’t happen for whatever reason. So then you just gotta keep it moving. Like Jay-Z said, “On to…

A mile in Manolo Blahnik’s shoes is no casual stroll—it can resemble a lonely crusade against vulgarity. “Everything is bad everywhere,” lamented Blahnik, the éminence grise of shoe design, now 80, on a recent afternoon. He was calling from one of his homes, an hour outside of London, bemoaning the decline of taste and intellect. “The platform shoe is evil—ghastly,” he sniffed. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not really a part of the world.” Fortunately for women who are, Blahnik, the self-styled “borderless shoemaker” born in the Canary Islands to a Czech father and a Spanish mother, has forged his own contrary path and continues to find plenty to get excited about. “Why not?” he asks. “I’m always looking to the future. Maybe tomorrow is better.” A pioneer whose namesake…

“You build relationships behind the scenes,” says makeup artist Peter Philips, who created the beauty looks for this story on some of his favorite models, past and present. The set had a class-reunion kind of vibe, as longtime collaborators like Malgosia Bela (“I’ve been a huge fan for years—she just doesn’t change”), Inge Geurts, and Delfine Bafort (whom he met at a model contest in his native Belgium 25 years ago) mingled with newer faces. “They’re all really inspiring to me,” says Philips. “I love the maturity of the older women—they’ve had children, they’ve had relationships, they’ve had breakups; there’s a whole life lived in their faces,” he says. “Yet they still have this unique beauty in front of the camera.” Philips kept makeup to a bare minimum in some…

“I’ve always been interested in the cries and whispers, the cloak-and-dagger of Hollywood,” the director Todd Field said, standing on the back lot of Universal Studios. Dressed in jeans and a navy cardigan, Field was attempting to channel the film noir spirit of Humphrey Bogart for this W shoot. “I didn’t want to re-create that feeling in a man,” Field explained. “That would have been too obvious. Instead, I was much more interested in a woman having those same typically male experiences. So I immediately thought of Danielle.” A few feet away, dressed in a slinky black Saint Laurent gown with a hood, Danielle Deadwyler overheard Field talking. Despite her serious mien in Till, in which she played the mother of Emmett Till, the Black teenage boy who was murdered in…