Fall Issue 2025

Cult of Personality

JULIA FOX

The Man Who Changed Photography

In 1925, the Leica I made history. Compact, fast, and revolutionary, it opened the door to a new visual language. It made photography portable. It made history visible. And it became a legend. It all began with one bold decision.

Ernst Leitz II, visionary entrepreneur and the man behind the Leica I.

The Camera that Changed Photography

We’re honoring the Leica I, the camera that changed the world of photography, and commemorating 100 years of innovation, craftsmanship, and timeless moments that continue to inspire.

DESIGN DINING SHOPPING CULTURE

ALWAYS MORE

Alex Katz, White Lotus 3

Photography courtesy of the artist.

Photography of Susan Orlean by Jameson Baldwin.

Man Ray, Le violon d’Ingres, 1924. Photography courtesy of the Man Ray 2015 Trust /Artists Rights Society (ARS).

270 YEARS OF DOING BETTER IF POSSIBLE

IN 1755, IN GENEVA, A QUEST BEGINS. A QUEST FOR EXCELLENCE IN HIGH WATCHMAKING.

A QUEST OF PASSION, PERSEVERANCE AND MASTERY. A QUEST TO « DO BETTER IF POSSIBLE, AND THAT IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE ».

A QUEST THAT NEVER ENDS.

VACHERON CONSTANTIN CELEBRATES SEEKING EXCELLENCE FOR 270 YEARS.

ANNIVERSARY

Carmelo Anthony with Stan Squirewell’s General Barca, 2018. Photography by Frank Frances.

Joel Quayson, How Do You Feel? (Film Still), 2024. Photography courtesy of the artist.

Polène’s Paris boutique. Photography courtesy of Polène.

Vicky Krieps shot by Marc Hibbert in London wearing a jacket by Givenchy by Sarah Burton, hat by Benny Andallo, and tights by Heist.

Anthony Edwards shot by Léon Prost in Milan wearing Prada.

Jewelry from the Chanel Reach For the Stars 2025 collection. Photography by Pablo Di Prima.

The Editor

Fashion is everywhere. Style, that intangible sense of personal texture, is much more elusive. When we put together our September Art + Fashion issue each year, we look to people who have unearthed and cultivated their style through their crafts and on their bodies. This time, we’ve dedicated the issue to the cult of personality—a mix of instinct, idiosyncracy, and conviction that proves irresistible. In a culture preoccupied with influence, these figures, four of whom are this issue’s cover stars, seem surprisingly rare. That’s because a cult figure is, by design, not for everyone. Artist Sophie Calle—shot for this issue by the legendary Juergen Teller—has dedicated her career to exposing the private eccentricities that make us interesting. The actor and writer Julia Fox is consistently outrageous—flouting dogma and traipsing among the fashion, film, and literary worlds, leaving a trail of bemused and adoring audiences in her wake. The 24-year-old basketball star Anthony Edwards has turned the NBA’s established hierarchies on their heads, promising to restore the game’s old glory with his ebullient trash talk and flamboyance on the court. Actor Vicky Krieps has earned a devoted following for performances that thrum with emotion, refusing to participate in the fame machine that defines her industry along the way.

In these pages, you’ll find dozens of other people who, like our cover stars, have earned niche, devoted fan bases because of the raw and honest ways they present themselves to the world. Vaginal Davis, the interdisciplinary artist and countercultural icon, is preparing a major exhibition at MoMA PS1; prolific 98-year-old artist Alex Katz refuses to rest on any laurels and is preparing for a suite of exhibitions this season; Apple’s visionary vice president of human interface design, Alan Dye, introduces CULTURED and a cadre of artists to Liquid Glass, his team’s latest technological innovation, in Aspen; and a swath of debut novelists assembled and interviewed by Books Editor Emmeline Clein are proudly writing for “if you know, you know” audiences, even as they step onto a bigger stage.

What draws us to cults of personality is the winking self-awareness it requires. It’s the people who understand and trust themselves who are best equipped to summon what hasn’t existed before into the world. At a moment when we desperately need alternatives to the way things have always been done, I hope you find the unconventional visions in this issue as galvanizing as I do.

What draws us to cults of personality is the winking self-awareness it requires. It’s the people who understand and trust themselves who are best equipped to summon what hasn’t existed before into the world.

Clockwise from top left: Sophie Calle shot by Juergen Teller at her home in the South of France.

Anthony Edwards shot by Léon Prost in Milan wearing Prada.

Vicky Krieps shot by Marc Hibbert in London

a top by Issey Miyake, hat by Comme

Garçons

Heist.

Julia Fox shot by Richie Shazam in New York wearing a dress by Emily Eanae and beam by Rebel-Spirit.

CONTRIBUTORS

JUERGEN TELLER

Photographer

You can spot a Juergen Teller photograph anywhere—they’re unmistakably posed and stripped of all pretension. The image-maker is uniquely adept at catching subjects unguarded, a skill that was put to the test when he traveled to Arles, France, to meet up with artist Sophie Calle for her cover shoot. “I have known Sophie for a long time and it was a pleasure to collaborate again,” says the photographer. “I arrived to her house in the South of France to be greeted by her and a large number of her stuffed animals. Sophie moves between the mischief of a child and confident intelligence.” Calle joins an illustrious list of Teller subjects that includes Kate Moss, Cindy Sherman, George Clooney, and fellow CULTURED cover star Julia Fox. The breadth of the photographer’s reach is dwarfed only by the number of institutions holding his work in their collections: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in Zurich, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and countless more.

“SOPHIE MOVES BETWEEN THE MISCHIEF OF A CHILD AND CONFIDENT INTELLIGENCE.”

KATE ZAMBRENO Writer

“While I was interviewing Sophie Calle, I kept thinking how young she was when she made her early ’80s pieces, and how her style and voice

was already so fully formed,” says Kate Zambreno, who traversed the span of the French artist’s career for this issue. Zambreno is the author of books including The Light Room, a meditation on art and care, and Animal Stories, a book on zoos and Kafka, both newly out from Transit Books. They are also a Ph.D. student in Performance Studies at NYU. Two novels, Foam and Performance Art, will be published by Semiotext(e) in fall 2026 and spring 2027. A match for Calle in both rigorous inquiry and style, in the cover story Zambreno pushes the bounds of what an interview can, or should, be.

“I KEPT THINKING HOW YOUNG SOPHIE CALLE WAS WHEN SHE MADE HER EARLY ’80S PIECES, AND HOW HER STYLE AND VOICE WAS ALREADY SO FULLY

FORMED.”

MAX BERLINGER Writer

Max Berlinger is interested in the crosshairs of culture. For this issue, he narrowed in on the intersection between sports and art, specifically as former NBA player Carmelo Anthony sees it.

“Carmelo was a really thoughtful guy, and I loved hearing his approach to collecting,” Berlinger shares. “I felt like this was really a passion for him, and a practice that he developed over the years. He really emphasized how this is a personal endeavor and how a person’s collection should be a reflection of their tastes, not about the market or what’s cool and trendy. I thought that was a really thoughtful, beautiful sentiment.” Elsewhere, Berlinger has explored these niches for The New York Times, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

“CARMELO EMPHASIZED HOW THIS IS A PERSONAL ENDEAVOR AND HOW A PERSON’S COLLECTION SHOULD BE A REFLECTION OF THEIR TASTES, NOT ABOUT THE MARKET OR WHAT’S COOL AND TRENDY.”

Clockwise from top left:

Photography courtesy of Juergen

Teller, Max Berlinger, and by

Heather Sten

CONTRIBUTORS

JON KRAWCZYNSKI

Writer

Minnesota Timberwolves player Anthony Edwards’s career is transforming at the speed of light. To match his momentum, we needed someone who’s been there from the start. “I have known Ant for six years now and have had countless basketball conversations with him over the years. But I have always wanted a chance to broaden the horizons of our conversations,” says writer Jon Krawczynski, who has covered sports in Minnesota—first for The Associated Press and now for The Athletic—for more than two decades. “This conversation allowed me to delve into a different side of his persona, to look beyond the athlete to see how he is opening up to an entire world that is becoming accessible to him.” In this issue, Krawczynski sits down with Edwards to explore his journey to becoming one of the league’s most charismatic stars.

“I HAVE KNOWN ANT FOR SIX YEARS NOW AND HAVE HAD COUNTLESS BASKETBALL CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM… THIS CONVERSATION ALLOWED ME TO DELVE INTO A DIFFERENT SIDE OF HIS PERSONA, TO LOOK BEYOND THE ATHLETE.”

haunting, refusing to let go.” She knows those characters well, as the pair have been close friends since their teenage years, rising together into New York’s creative echelon. Shazam now works across disciplines as a photographer, model, and filmmaker who has lensed Chappell Roan, Doechii, and Charli XCX for Valentino Beauty, Interview, The Cut, and more. For this issue, she set Fox in a whimsical theater, complete with tomato throwing. “She moved through the space with this electric presence, breaking the fourth wall like it was second nature,” says Shazam. “It wasn’t just a shoot; it was a layered performance, raw and unapologetically her.”

“IT WASN’T JUST A SHOOT; IT WAS A LAYERED PERFORMANCE, RAW AND UNAPOLOGETICALLY HER.”

FRANK FRANCES Photographer

“Before photographing Melo, I made it a point to drive through the Red Hook Houses to better understand where he came from,” says Frank Frances, who took us inside former NBA player Carmelo Anthony’s Westchester, New York, home for this issue. For Frances, photography is as much about the memories that give way to the current moment as it is about what currently lies in front of the camera. “As an artist documenting his story, I felt it was important to connect with his roots firsthand. Being in his home, surrounded by his collection, revealed a profound sense of resilience and determination that was deeply embedded in the space.” Elsewhere, Frances’s work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem and in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications.

“Shooting Julia was like watching all her inner characters come to life,” says Richie Shazam of photographing Julia Fox, “each one vivid,

“BEING IN CARMELO’S HOME, SURROUNDED BY HIS COLLECTION, REVEALED A PROFOUND SENSE OF RESILIENCE AND DETERMINATION THAT WAS DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN THE SPACE.”

Clockwise from top left:

Photography courtesy of Jon Krawczynski, Frank Frances, and Richie

Shazam

RICHIE SHAZAM Photographer

CONTRIBUTORS

TAYLOR DAFOE Writer/Photographer

Taylor Dafoe is the only contributor in this issue with a double byline. Ahead of Raúl de Nieves’s new showing, Dafoe profiled and shot the artist in his Brooklyn workspace. The Upstate New York creative has also contributed to the likes of Frieze, Interview, and ArtNews, and written on everything from gallery overhauls to the rise of “ick art” for CULTURED. “De Nieves’s studio was every bit as colorful as he is,” Dafoe recalls. “His work lined the walls and windows, while rogue beads, rhinestones, and other materials overflowed onto the floor. During my visit, de Nieves’s dog, Penguini, never left his side— especially as I photographed him.”

“DE NIEVES’S STUDIO WAS EVERY BIT AS COLORFUL AS HE IS.”

ISABELLE WENZEL Photographer

Wuppertal, Germany–based Isabelle Wenzel is one of fashion’s least predictable image-makers. An acrobat by trade, the photographer is as comfortable capturing models in motion as in repose. “It’s more like a study of physical expression paired with beauty. I often feel more like a movement director who happens to press the shutter at just the right moment,” she says. Her work has been exhibited everywhere from Copenhagen to Miami, but for this issue, she traveled to the countryside outside London to shoot the latest

from houses including Prada, Balenciaga, and Loewe. “[We played] with the idea of overcoming gravity, which, of course, is an absurd endeavor on planet Earth. Yet the struggle against it gave rise to images full of power and fluidity.”

“WE PLAYED WITH THE IDEA OF OVERCOMING GRAVITY, WHICH, OF COURSE, IS AN ABSURD ENDEAVOR ON PLANET EARTH. YET THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IT GAVE RISE TO IMAGES FULL OF POWER AND FLUIDITY.”

ZITO MADU

Writer

“As a writer and former athlete, I believe that on an existential level, athletes are chasing the same goal as writers and artists,” says Zito Madu, “the possibility of creating a masterpiece that captures and embodies one’s full self.” For this issue, the Nigerian-American writer explores the continuity of his own career—how the drive of one pursuit carried into the next. Madu is the author of the surrealist memoir The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, a finalist of the National Book Critics Circle award for Autobiography in 2024, and a regular contributor to CULTURED’s Critics’ Table, where he traverses New York in search of the next great show.

“AS A WRITER AND FORMER ATHLETE, I BELIEVE THAT ON AN EXISTENTIAL LEVEL, ATHLETES ARE CHASING THE SAME GOAL AS WRITERS AND ARTISTS.”

Clockwise from top left:

Photography by Alex Schulte, Matthew Stith, and Isabelle Wenzel

MARA VEITCH Executive Editor

JOHN VINCLER Co-Chief Art Critic and Consulting Editor

ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT Senior Editor

SOPHIA COHEN Arts Editor-at-Large

JACOBA URIST New York Arts Editor

KAREN WONG Contributing Architecture Editor

SAM FALB Design Editor-at-Large

ALEXANDRA CRONAN

KATE FOLEY Fashion Directors-at-Large

GEORGINA COHEN European Contributor

KRISTIN CORPUZ Social Media Editor

PALOMA BAYGUAL Digital and Marketing Coordinator

CAT DAWSON

DEVAN DÍAZ

ADAM ELI

ARTHUR LUBOW

HARMONY HOLIDAY

LAURA MAY TODD

EMMA LEIGH MACDONALD

LIANA SATENSTEIN Writers-at-Large

DOMINIQUE CLAYTON

JOHN ORTVED

YASHUA SIMMONS Contributing Editors

SARAH G. HARRELSON Founder, Editor-in-Chief

JULIA HALPERIN Editor-at-Large

JOHANNA FATEMAN Co-Chief Art Critic and Commissioning Editor

ALI PEW Fashion Editor-at-Large

EMILY DOUGHERTY Beauty Editor

MINA STONE Food Editor

JASON BOLDEN Style Editor-at-Large

SOPHIE LEE Assistant Editor

TOM SEYMOUR London Correspondent

EMMELINE CLEIN Books Editor

EVELINE CHAO Senior Copy Editor

ROXY SORKIN Lifestyle Columnist

SIMON RENGGLI CHAD POWELL Art Directors

HANNAH TACHER Junior Art Director

ORIANA REN Junior Designer

CAROL SMITH Strategic Advisor

AHIMSA LLAMADO

LAYLA HUSSEIN

NATALIA BADGER Social Interns

CARL KIESEL

Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer

LORI WARRINER

Vice President of Sales, Art + Fashion

DESMOND SMALLEY Director of Brand Partnerships

HAILEY POWERS Marketing and Sales Associate

SAMAH DADA Culinary Columnist

ETHAN ELKINS

DADA GOLDBERG Public Relations

PRIYA NAT Sales Consultant, Home + Travel

PETE JACATY & ASSOCIATES Prepress/Print Production

BERT MOO-YOUNG Senior Photo Retoucher

JOSÉ A. ALVARADO JR.

SEAN DAVIDSON

SOPHIE ELGORT

ADAM FRIEDLANDER

JULIE GOLDSTONE

WILLIAM JESS LAIRD

GILLIAN LAUB

JEREMY LIEBMAN

YOSHIHIRO MAKINO

LEE MARY MANNING

BJÖRN WALLANDER

BRAD TORCHIA

Contributing Photographers

EVA BIANCHINI

GIULIANA BRIDA

KARLY QUADROS

MARK MANKARIOUS

SAVANNA CHADA

Editorial Interns

Mina Stone’s Back-to-School Granita

This celebratory twist on iced coffee is the perfect accompaniment to a frenzied September afternoon.

Inspired by the back-to-school spirit of September in New York, this granita is a riff on the iced coffee that keeps most of us going throughout the day. The recipe is as simple as it gets: Freeze a mix of coffee, maple syrup, and vanilla; scrape it into a slushy consistency; and top it with condensed milk whipped cream, a nod to Vietnamese coffee that lends the dish a cloud-like creaminess. When our schedules kick into high gear, what’s better than an energizing treat you can enjoy for both breakfast and dessert? —Mina Stone

illustration by Madeline Donahue

Unpredictable

The Miraculous Mess of Vaginal Davis

By ADAM ELI

A godmother to the worlds of drag, queercore, zine publishing, house galleries—what hasn’t Vaginal Davis touched? A new show at MoMA PS1 traces her extraordinary life in art.

A muse to Pina Bausch, a confidante to Rick Owens, a case study for José Esteban Muñoz: Vaginal Davis is the blueprint. The categoryallergic artist and musician’s taste for the stage was jumpstarted by the rendition of Mozart’s The Magic Flute she saw in South Central LA when she was only 7; she has reigned as the Queen of the Night over an abundance of scenes—drag, queercore, experimental film, and fine art among them—ever since. This fall, a survey spanning five decades of Davis’s contributions to these fields and beyond is landing at MoMA PS1 in New York. Ahead of its opening Oct. 9, I called up the artist, who currently lives in Berlin, to talk legacy, therapy, and mortality.

Were you born a performer, or did you become one?

I’ve been performing since I was a child, and I think I turned myself into a performer because

being shy and reserved just wasn’t going to fly. People think performers are extroverts, but I’m an introvert. I have to turn into this other thing to get almost anything done. If you peel back all the layers—if there is a “real me,” because after so many years you just become a construct—the real me is shy and sort of dorky.

What is the construct of Vaginal Davis?

It’s hard to articulate because there’s no clear line between the private person and the public persona. That happens with a lot of performers, writers, artists, especially people in entertainment. Everything gets blurred. That’s why I’m in therapy—once a week, sometimes twice. I’m a mess-tacle, a big mess plus a spectacle. When you’re a mess-tacle, you need someone outside your realm to bounce things off of. Reflecting on my life, I see mortality differently. I never thought I’d live to be 64,

“I think I turned myself into a performer because being shy and reserved just wasn’t going to fly.”

especially with the AIDS pandemic that took so many from my generation. The goddesses laid out a path for me, and you accept your lot in life and move on.

Based on the extraordinary nature and scope of this show, which spans so many mediums and so much time, what do you hope the legacy of Vaginal Davis is?

People were always accusing me of being artsyfartsy, even as a child. I was just doing what felt organic to me, not thinking of it as a body of work. I’d do something, move on, never look back. I wasn’t a good archivist. Luckily, other people saw value in what I did because I rarely kept copies. Growing up poor, in a non-academic family—I was the only one who went to college—there wasn’t a careerist mindset. Today, most artists come from generational wealth or privilege; it’s rare for someone from my background to be recognized at all.

Jeff Briggs, a high school student back in the ’80s, kept a lot of things I produced that I didn’t. Through him, Moderna Museet was able to gather much of what became this exhibition. With all the moves, floods, and damaged apartments, it’s a miracle any of it survived. When Moderna first staged the show, I never thought it would travel. It was a shock to hear it would come to New York. If you’d told me this eight or nine years ago, I’d have laughed in your face. Things like this don’t happen to people like me. I guess that’s my legacy—it’s a patchwork that others saw value in, even when I didn’t.

Something I’ve heard you say many times before is, “You can’t change institutions from the inside; they always wind up changing you.” How have you approached these institutional collaborations?

I really believe that they’ll always change you. You have to make your “yes” mean yes and your “no” mean no. I follow the advice of the legendary Diana Vreeland: “There is elegance in refusal.” If something doesn’t feel right, I don’t do it.

Photography courtesy of MoMA PS1

Reynaldo Rivera, Vaginal Davis, 1993.

MADE IN, AND OF, LA

By JANELLE ZARA

THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE UNITING ARTISTS IN THE SEVENTH EDITION OF “MADE IN L.A.”

BECAME CLEAR TO THE CURATORS ONLY AFTER THEY FINALIZED THEIR SELECTION.

For the seventh edition of “Made in L.A.,” the Hammer Museum’s biannual survey of art in the city, curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha began with a list of more than 1,000 artists and what they fondly describe as “no ideas.” Foregoing a predetermined theme “was a way of not creating a limit before we started,” says Harden, an independent curator who cut her teeth at the California African American Museum. Then, the duo set out to “visit as many studios as possible.”

Over roughly half a year, Harden and Pobocha, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago and former senior curator of the Hammer, arrived at a slim list of 28 artists whose thematic connections emerged after the fact. The lineup includes people who fall outside the traditional

definition of an artist, like Hood Century’s Jerald Cooper, an online archivist of South LA’s modernist architecture, and Black House Radio’s Michael Donte, who will be programming DJs inside his installation at the museum. Fitting for America’s entertainment capital, there will be plenty of experimental filmmakers (among them Bruce Yonemoto, Na Mira, and Mike Stoltz), as well as four episodes of Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s 2024 metafictional documentary series THEATER. The show will also include choreography by Will Rawls, ceramics by Alake Shilling and Brian Rochefort, and installations by Gabriela Ruiz and Patrick Martinez.

Throughout the development of the show, as Los Angeles weathered the ongoing turbulence

of wildfire and military invasion, Harden and Pobocha realized that any attempt to respond to these rapidly evolving conditions would always feel incomplete. “Real life—material, physical, psychic reality—is changing every day,” says Harden. Instead, she and Pobocha ultimately focused on LA as a discursive site that has shaped the work of a wide range of artists. There is car culture’s influence on Pat O’Neill and Carl Cheng’s sculptures and the unmistakable Southern California light gracing Greg Breda’s portraits. Spanning generations and media, the connective thread among this eclectic group is their enduring engagement with the constantly evolving history, economy, and landscape of LA.

Photography courtesy of the artist

Pat O’Neill, Los Angeles, from the series  “Cars and Other Problems,” ca. 1960s.

‘What

Is Really Real?’

By EVA BIANCHINI

What we deem authentic or true has never been more in flux. For its 15th anniversary, the Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival returns with a referendum on the question.

Since 2010, curator Demet Müftüoğlu-Eşeli and filmmaker Alphan Eşeli—cofounders of the Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival—have sparked rich multidisciplinary dialogues focused on the intersections among the arts. For three days in October, the festival convenes creative minds from the film, technology, photography, literary, and art worlds for a series of panels, screenings, workshops, and exhibitions. This year’s theme, “What Is Really Real?” explores the most pressing subject of our time: the slippery premise of reality in our digitally mediated world. Müftüoğlu-Eşeli and Eşeli sat down with artist José Parlá, a festival board member and frequent collaborator of the organization, to reflect on the weight of truth today.

The theme of this year’s festival is “What Is Really Real?” Why is it so critical to interrogate

the fault lines between the authentic and the artificial?

Alphan Eşeli: The subjectivity of reality has always been with us; it’s woven into human nature. We’re moving quickly toward a moment when “artificial” will no longer be synonymous with “inauthentic.” Immediacy, convenience, and the promise of precision are seductive. Our job is to track where things come from and keep our judgment intact as this integration deepens.

Demet Müftüoğlu-Eşeli: The theme is an invitation to pause, question, and reconnect with a sense of wonder, that feeling of being grounded in the world and invited to see it differently.

José Parlá: It has always been important to question what we consider reality, and authenticity. We must examine not only the

obvious fabrications but also the subtler energies and intentions in the people, environments, and information we surround ourselves with.

José, have these questions of reality versus illusion impacted your artistic practice?

Alphan, your filmmaking?

Parlá: Everything I experience finds its way into my paintings and my creative work, and this became especially true after waking from a four-month coma during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The dreams I had in that state registered as real memories, leaving me to navigate the blurred line between those dreams and the shared reality of this dimension. My “CICLOS” series delved into this period of recovery—exploring memory, dreams as reality, and the translation of physicality and movement through painting.

Eşeli: It has always had a huge impact on my work. In every film, my characters encounter events through their own subjectivity; what happens matters less than what it means to them. I’m drawn to ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, because pressure clarifies; the more extreme the situation, the deeper the search for what’s real.

What has the festival meant to you over these past 15 years?

Eşeli: It’s taught me to trust audiences, listen harder, and meet different views with curiosity. For me, it has always been a renewal.

Müftüoğlu-Eşeli: It’s been a love letter to Istanbul and a cultural bridge to the world. The festival has been described as turning the city of Istanbul into a “living laboratory.”

What does this phrase mean to you?

Müftüoğlu-Eşeli: The city becomes our playground. For three days, Istanbul transforms into an open, ever-evolving space where boundaries between disciplines dissolve—where a filmmaker might find themselves in dialogue with a fashion designer, or a world-renowned musician might collaborate with an up-and-coming talent. We experiment not only with artistic formats but with how people encounter and interact with art and with each other. That’s why we choose to realize our main exhibition in a neighborhood setting, integrating it into the city’s daily rhythms.

Studio withFrequencies Alex Katz

By ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT

Seven decades into his practice, Alex Katz is proving that 98 is as good a time as any to be prolific.

Alex Katz has never been one to assign narrative to his work. The artist has committed a wide range of characters to the canvas over his seven-decade career: his wife of 67 years, New York’s beau monde, modern dancers, even idling vacationers. But he’s always opted for style over story, preferring to dwell on the crease of a garment or glare of sunglasses rather than the portent of an expression or the personal life of a subject.

It is perhaps this interest in the surfaces of existence that drew him to The White Lotus (at least for part of an episode), the television series that lends its name to his latest show. On view at Gray Chicago through Sept. 20, the body of work has indeed only a superficial connection to Mike White’s biting anthology; its blown-up faces and cool glances originated on a beach in Maine, where Katz has had a home since 1954, by way of Antonioni’s L’Avventura. Other cinematic paintings of the artist’s are on view at SCAI Piramide in Tokyo and San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and Gladstone Gallery will dedicate an exhibition to a suite of his orange abstractions, the first of which were shown in a duo show with Matthew Barney at O’Flaherty’s in 2024, this fall. In the midst of it all, CULTURED checked in with the towering figure in American art to see what his studio practice looks like these days.

You’ve made a career out of portraying people and landscapes associated with leisure and contemplation. In a world that feels increasingly hostile, stratified, and dispiriting, have you ever considered turning to other subject matter? I paint for my temperament. I couldn’t paint from Pollock’s or de Kooning’s temperament. You relate to different things, and they relate to you. When I saw a Veronese at the Louvre, I could relate to the power and the proficiency of the painting, and the solidity, which Pollock and de Kooning don’t have. The

Goya in the Louvre has a tenderness I could relate to that they also lack.

What’s the first thing you do when you enter your studio? Look at what I’ve done.

What’s on your studio playlist? I like jazz, Miles Davis, and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion . I’ve been listening to Sonny Rollins’s The Complete Prestige Recordings this summer.

If you could have a studio visit with one artist, dead or alive, who would it be? Fra Angelico. He seems so sophisticated.

What’s the biggest studio mishap you’ve experienced? I was painting on a 12-by-30-foot painting, and I used the wrong jar of paint on the face! The face turned out pretty good with the wrong paint, so I continued to paint the painting.

Have you ever destroyed a work to make something new? I destroyed 1,000 paintings. I destroyed a painting once and much later I got a reproduction of it and repainted it. It turned out a little better than the original.

When was the last time you felt jealous of another artist? I don’t think I’ve ever felt jealous of another artist. At certain times, other artists seem better than I am, but I’ve never felt jealous.

Have you ever wanted to give up on being an artist? Why didn’t you? When I was around 30, I hit bottom. My mother told me, “You’re either an artist or a phony. Your personal life doesn’t matter.”

What’s the most exciting thing about being an artist today? I have proven that I was right. And the people who disliked me or wouldn’t talk to me or gave me bad reviews were wrong.

“When I was around 30, I hit bottom. My mother told me, ‘You’re either an artist or a phony. Your personal life doesn’t matter.’”

“I paint for my temperament. I couldn’t paint from Pollock’s or de Kooning’s temperament.”

Photography by David Michalek and courtesy of Gray Chicago

Sally Mann on the DoubleEdged Sword of Success

By SOPHIE LEE

Countless artists have committed their practice to paper with memoirs, but we guarantee that few are keeping it as real as the 74-year-old photographer.

The title of photographer Sally Mann’s new book is revealing on two fronts. Art Work is, of course, what the celebrated creative produces. In 2001, she was named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time, and her intimate, unflinching images are held everywhere from the Met to the Victoria and Albert Museum. But, as Mann, 74, clearly outlines in this follow-up to her National Book Award finalist, the memoir Hold Still, making art is also a lot of work. Between scans of journal entries and outtakes, Mann parses through her career highs and lows, offering lessons learned along the way. Here, she shares what she hopes the next generation will read into her unsparing account.

You’re reflecting on a career and sharing advice that you’ve picked up over the years. What does it feel like to reach that period?

“You

You mean what does it feel like to be an old woman?

Accomplished and introspective!

It’s one of those double-edged swords. You only get to be accomplished and successful at the end of your career. So you spend your whole life desperate for this moment, and then it’s vanishingly short. Once you’re there, all you have left to do is die, really. Just statistically—I’m in the peak of health. I’m probably in better shape now than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel pretty confident now.

There’s a line in the book about having this urge to make a career of shattering norms. Is there an art-world norm you’re interested in shattering?

only get to be accomplished and successful at the end of your career. So you spend your whole life desperate for this moment, and then it’s vanishingly short.”

I still subscribe to the idea of the purity of the art world. I always think of art as somehow above commercialism. Art and commerce are now inextricably melded, so I’m just adjusting to that. I’ve never done commercial work because of that whole rarefied, Olympian idea of art. I guess the celebrity aspect of the art world has never been exactly my ambition. It’s not something I particularly enjoy. I’ve seen it ’cause I’m with Gagosian, so you can’t miss the art-world celebrities who keep the door open. But I’m just a natural recluse.

Is there something that you think up-andcoming creatives get wrong about what it’s like to be an artist?

I do think there’s a hazard in instant success, and that happens a lot these days. There’s so many people who had this shockingly fast rise into whatever their field is who then just fizzle out. You never hear from ’em again.

Is it an uncomfortable period, that middle stage of your career where you’re not on the way up but you’re also not doing retrospectives?

It is uncomfortable ’cause when you’re young, you’re full of hope and ambition and confidence. Then you get to a certain level, let’s just call it a plateau. You just have to grind it out and look for the next little moment of ascendancy where you can move to the next level. If you don’t move to the next level, you’re fucked. At my stage in a career, there’s a risk there too, because if you have a reputation and you’ve done well and you’re successful, people are more likely to forgive mediocre work because you’re famous.

Cy Twombly, he did all that really exciting work. And then there was a plateau. America didn’t cotton to his work. They rejected it. He got really humiliating reviews. People don’t write about it now, but my father saved them, and I have a little folder of terrible reviews of Cy Twombly’s work. Then he has this burst of great work at the very end. He’s breaking new ground. It’s full of energy and exciting. If I can be like Cy when I’m in my 80s, I’ll feel like I’ve lived my life correctly as an artist should. That’s his story, and I’m trying to follow in his gigantic footsteps.

Gagosian

456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills September 25 – November 1, 2025

CAROL BOVE Nights of Cabiria

SuspendDisbeliefYour

By JULIA HALPERIN

Photography by JEFF FUSCO

Calder Gardens, a new cultural institution in Philadelphia dedicated to its native son

Alexander Calder, is not your typical single-artist museum. In

fact, it’s not a museum at all.

The first thing to know about Calder Gardens is that it is not a museum. The new $90 million Philadelphia cultural institution doesn’t have a collection, thematic exhibitions, or even wall labels. It consists of an 18,000-square-foot building designed by Herzog & de Meuron; a carefully landscaped-to-look-wild garden by High Line designer Piet Oudolf; and a rotating display of sculptures by Alexander Calder, a Philly native famous for creating the mobile.

Developed in partnership with local philanthropists including Joseph Neubauer and the nearby Barnes Foundation, which is offering operational support, Calder Gardens aims to create an art space that is not for learning or doing, but rather for thinking and feeling. Ahead of its Sept. 21 opening, CULTURED caught up with Alexander S.C. Rower, the Calder Foundation’s president (and grandson of the artist), and Juana Berrío, Calder Gardens’s senior director of programs, about what it takes to build a new kind of cultural experience from the ground up.

Where did the idea for Calder Gardens come from?

Alexander

up and said, “I want to do a Calder Museum in Philadelphia, in his hometown.” I said, “I’m not interested in doing a museum, but I would do something else.” Calder Gardens is an experiment.

What does that look like in practice? What parts of the conventional museum world did you move away from?

Juana Berrío: We’re prioritizing storytelling rather than scholarship. I’m thinking about these meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation practices that we’re going to include. We’re commissioning artists to do audio walks.

Rower: There isn’t a biography available. There aren’t titles and dates available. We don’t know how agitated people will be to not have wall labels. But it’s not about the artist’s experience. It’s about what could be your experience.

Berrío: It speaks so much about the present moment—how we are conditioned by elements in our culture that tell us you cannot do things on your own. You cannot go from point A to point B without Google Maps. You cannot learn something if someone is not teaching you. We want to make sure that people feel

that they can find their own tools within themselves.

Berrío: I’m from Colombia, and more than 20 years ago, I had the chance to live in the forest on the Pacific Coast for several months. I noticed things about my body and my brain, like how you get attuned to particular sounds, how you isolate different things, how you respond to light. So that’s why I trust that we all have those tools.

Nature plays a key role in Calder Gardens. How does the landscape relate to Calder’s work?

Berrío: Every element—the works by Calder, the garden, the building—they’re all constantly moving and changing.

Rower: Calder was an ecologist. In the ’70s, when I was a little kid, I had these big discussions with my grandfather about the future of water, how water was a resource that we were losing track of. Piet Oudolf’s gardens are really specific in that they don’t just make an annual four-season revolution. They continue to evolve and step up, which is exactly what your experience with Calder’s art is [like].

S.C. Rower: This amazing character from Philadelphia, Joe [Neubauer], called me

“We don’t know how agitated people will be to not have wall labels. It’s not about the artist’s experience. It’s about what could be your experience.”

—Alexander S.C. Rower

Alexander S.C. Rower, Juana Berrío, and a member of the art installation team at Calder Gardens.

Susan Orlean Leaves Nothing on the Table

By ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT

After almost five decades spent examining the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, the writer takes a magnifying glass to her own existence with her first memoir.

Photography by JAMESON BALDWIN

“Writing is a really interesting mix of magic and routine, and you need the routine to be able to conjure the magic.”

“I had to really convince myself that there was any reason anyone would want to read this,” Susan Orlean says across the screen. “To suddenly be looking at myself, I felt like, Yeah, but so what? ”

The veteran journalist is speaking to me for the first in what will inevitably be a marathon of interviews ahead of the publication of her first memoir, Joyride , in October. You might accuse someone who’s been a New Yorker staff writer since 1992, seen two of her stories become cult films (Adaptation and Blue Crush , with Meryl Streep playing a fictionalized version of Orlean in the former), and witnessed many of her other contributions to the field of journalism cemented in the canon, of a little bit of false humility. But she’s also right: Many writers who dedicate their lives to documenting interesting people don’t have time to have interesting lives themselves, so why bother with memoir? Orlean, however, has grabbed life by the metaphorical horns, and Joyride revels as willfully in her personal ups and downs (be they romantic or professional) as the stories she spent the rest of her time reporting. Expect a frank account of someone watching her marriage disintegrate as her career takes off, rebounding in Bhutan of all places, and being won over with an exotic (as in exotic animal) Valentine’s Day surprise. Beyond these adventures of the heart and no shortage of reporting capers chronicled, I must say I felt the most engrossed when I read Orlean write about writing. She relates the agony and ecstasy of the perpetually new task with the pep of someone who committed to this path for life, not just a living, and knows she chose right. Her boundless enthusiasm, in a world that’s tired and cynical, is no small balm.

The logline of sorts for your new memoir Joyride is this quote: “The story of my life is the story of my stories.” Which of your stories feels particularly evocative to you at this moment?

“The American Man at Age Ten,” because in so many ways it embodies my interests and my principles as a writer. I was asked to do a celebrity profile of Macaulay Culkin [for Esquire], and I said, “I don’t think a profile of a 10-year-old actor is go be very meaningful.” I

asked to do this story of this ordinary boy. I wrote that story a million years ago [1992], but it resurfaced in the last year with the show Adolescence. There is new interest in the question of what exactly is happening to men. The boy I wrote about was not toxically masculine in any way, but the attention on young boys has become a preoccupation because of these issues of toxic masculinity and incel mentality as embodied by the Trump administration—a certain kind of exaggerated, bullying masculinity. Where does this sense of bravado and dominance emerge? Ten happens to be an age that’s extremely formative.

Your reporting has taken you into pretty extreme situations over the years. What does your everyday as a writer look like?

My office is a hundred feet from my house and where I do all of my work. Writing is a really interesting mix of magic and routine, and you need the routine to be able to conjure the magic. My writing metabolism is pretty consistent. I usually start at about 11 a.m., and I try to write a 1,000 words a day. When I was a runner, I would say, “I’m gonna run five miles.” I did not run four and a half miles or four and three-quarters miles. Same with 1,000 words.

What’s your relationship to showing people your work, or reading other people’s work while you’re writing?

I rely very much on my husband [to read my work]. I can tell if he’s saying it’s not quite there. And if he says to me, “I love it,” I trust that as well. It used to be that I’d only show things to my editor when I thought they were literally ready to print. In the case of this memoir, because it’s a new form for me, I showed it to him when I was maybe a third or a quarter of the way done. I just needed to hear him say, “I get it. You’re doing it right. Don’t worry.” Depending on what I’m working on, besides what I’m reading for research, I do look at work that is analogous. That shows me how it’s done well. I have a couple of books that I keep at my left hand all the time, the same few books that, when I get stuck, I flip through.

One is Calvin Trillin’s book Killings . One is Ian Frazier’s book Great Plains The White Album by Joan Didion, of course. Then there are a

couple of journalism collections that have a bunch of really great stories—The Literary Journalists and Literary Journalism . I go back to the same books all the time. I practically don’t need to even open them anymore because these have been my guides for so long, but they’re always helpful.

The way that we write has changed so much since you came onto the scene—from the inescapability of email to the rise of Substack to how much we write about ourselves now.

It’s true that when I look back at the great writers that inspired me, they were present in their writing, but it was rarely about them. I have a Substack; I use it to write these little first-person essays. I never reject life moving forward. I’m not somebody who goes, “It used to be real journalism.” People’s appetites change—I’ve never found that frightening. But my commitment to the kinds of stories I want to do hasn’t changed. I feel like there is still an appetite to learn about the world and other people and other subcultures and circumstances and slices of forgotten history. It’s just not being practiced as much. And frankly, the number of magazines running those kinds of stories has shrunk enormously, as I’m sure the opportunity to publish those kinds of things has diminished.

In many ways, I am the transitional generation. When I came to The New Yorker, they barely had bylines. Nobody knew what a single writer at The New Yorker looked like. The bylines on the huge features were at the end of the story in tiny type. There was no index. There were no contributors’ notes. The New Yorker went out of its way more than any other magazine to shield the writers from any sort of public persona. I came to the magazine as that was slightly changing. In the beginning, I felt that there were people there that thought I must not be a good writer because I’m a little too public. I do think that kind of false backgrounding of the writer is a little exaggerated and pointless. Like, why shouldn’t you know who wrote the story? But now we’ve gone a bit overboard. I’m not that interested in seeing Writer X in a video talk about the thing that Writer X just wrote. I can just go read it.

The Accident That Changed Art History

By KARLY QUADROS

A late-night darkroom mishap by a young Man Ray—and the aesthetic revolution it provoked— is the focus of a new exhibition at the Met this fall.

In 1921, a young photographer in Paris accidentally created something new.

Working late in the darkroom one evening, Man Ray absentmindedly placed three glass tools— a thermometer, a cylinder, and a funnel—on top of an unexposed sheet of photo paper. Before his eyes, silhouettes began to form. The resulting image was sharp and spectral; the poet Tristan Tzara described it as capturing the moment “when objects dream.” Ray named his cameraless creation after himself, and with that, “rayographs” were born.

More than a century later, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is opening “When Objects Dream,” the first exhibition to examine the late experimental artist’s rayographs in the context of his broader oeuvre. The show, on view until Feb. 1, 2026, brings together more than 60 of these specimens alongside 100 paintings, objects, drawings, and films spanning Ray’s career. Its supporters include the haute couture house Schiaparelli, whose founder and namesake, Elsa Schiaparelli, was a close friend and collaborator of Ray’s, at the heart of the 1920s avant-garde in Paris.

Both Schiaparelli and Ray were preoccupied with the ways that people present themselves to the world—and how they are often driven by unconscious desires lurking just beneath the surface. Born to a tailor father and designer mother, Ray was exposed to the tools of the fashion trade from the start. One of his earliest and best-known pieces, Gift, 1921, which will appear in the Met show, is an iron studded with spikes—a domestic tool transformed into something lurid and fantastical. Schiaparelli executed similar transformations through her Surrealist designs, like a lobster dress created in collaboration with Salvador Dalí and a pair of hypnotic golden spectacles designed alongside Ray.

“I’ve always had a special feeling for Man Ray— like me, he was an American … [and] an outsider in Paris, a voyeur of a scene who later became synonymous with it,” says Daniel Roseberry, Schiaparelli’s current creative director. “And like Elsa Schiaparelli, he blurred the lines between fashion and art: Before fashion became a commercial enterprise, it was an artistic one, and that’s in no small part thanks to them.”

Man Ray, Self-Portrait in 31 bis rue Campagne-Première Studio, 1925.

Photography (top) by Ian Reeves and (bottom) Ben Blackwell, courtesy of

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922.

Here’s a Dirty Little Secret

By KARLY QUADROS

From frayed jeans to rusted gowns, a new exhibition at the Barbican looks to the rebellious past and sustainable potential of fashion’s filthy side.

In 1993, Hussein Chalayan, then a fashion student at Central Saint Martins, buried a pile of flutter-sleeve dresses, vests, and maxi skirts under a heap of iron filings and soil in his friend’s London garden. Six weeks later, he exhumed them. Stained with rich shades of rust and ochre, the collection was soon scooped up in its entirety by luxury department store Browns. The decaying garments were an instant hit, a (not so) subtle nod to the ephemeral nature of every fashion cycle.

It was a high-fashion statement on a simple truth: Sometimes, it’s fun to get dirty.

A new show opening Sept. 25 at the Barbican, “Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion,” unearths the manifold ways the industry has harnessed rot and rebirth, from the transgressive tears of Vivienne Westwood to the moth-bitten knits of Maison Martin Margiela. The first fashion-centric exhibition at the London institution in nearly a decade, “Dirty Looks” recenters the museum’s commitment to fashion as a visual medium and features garments from over 60 disruptive houses, including gunpowder-speckled pleats from Issey Miyake, crumpled denim from Calvin Klein, and wine-stained couture gowns from Robert Wun.

“They are not necessarily anti-fashion, but they expand the horizon of what we call ‘beautiful’ or ‘fashionable,’ and what fashion can be,” says Barbican curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven, who cut her teeth at MoMu, Antwerp’s fashion museum, and the Met’s Costume Institute.

The exhibition also sees five young designers, including Elena Velez and Michaela Stark, explore dirty fashion’s regenerative potential in the face of the industry’s rampant waste. “The saying goes ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ ... That still holds for the glossy surfaces of fashion, even though a new generation of designers are breaking up with those ideas,” Van Godtsenhoven concludes. “Embracing our dirty side might be just what’s needed for fashion to get our creative juices flowing again, in a way that doesn’t kill people or the planet.”

Piero D’Angelo, Physarum Lab, 2019.

MY REQUIRED READING WITH PALOMA ELSESSER

By SAM FALB

IN

HER LIBRARY: TONI MORRISON AND JOAN DIDION. IN HER DAYDREAMS: BJÖRK’S UNWRITTEN MEMOIR. HERE, ONE OF THE INDUSTRY’S HARDESTWORKING MODELS INVITES US ON A TOUR OF WHAT SHE READS.

Famously discovered by none other than Pat McGrath, in just a decade Paloma Elsesser has become one of the most visible and iconic working models, walking for Coperni, Ferragamo, Fendi, and Marni, and featuring in campaigns for the likes of Balenciaga and Willy Chavarria. Though image is her art form, it’s a book—or Kindle—that’s always at arm’s reach. She reads to punctuate a day’s casual cadence or to ease the marathon travel that comes with bookings across the world’s fashion capitals. At home in Brooklyn, her bookshelf is as eclectic as her CV, with everything from bell hooks’s Talking Back to Miranda July’s All Fours, and tomes like A Wrinkle in Time or The Year of Magical Thinking adding a touch of the melancholy Elsesser admits she’s drawn to. Also on the shelf is TREASURE , the vulnerable surgery documentation project Elsesser wrote, paired with photography by Zora Sicher, in 2023. Ahead of what promises to be another busy fashion month, she shares the literary discoveries that will keep her going from the airport to backstage, and fittings to flashing lights.

Where is your favorite place and time to read?

I love to read at night in bed or on a plane, but a book or my Kindle is always in arm’s reach. It comes with me on a visit to the doctor’s office, a pedicure, or a quiet Sunday afternoon when I’m stretched out and lazy. I read wherever there’s time to fill, or time to savor.

Describe the type of reader you are in three words.

Voracious, tolerant, curious.

How do you find your next great read?

Word of mouth, frequenting big bookstores and niche ones, or doing research.

Name one public figure you feel deserves a biography, but doesn’t have one yet.

Björk. All of the existing ones are too focused on the production, mixing, et cetera, and not on the extensive details of her life. I’d love for her to write a memoir.

Which book has taught you something new about your industry?

The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley.

Was there a particular work that your childhood self loved?

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

What book has helped you understand the world we live in right now?

The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

Which book has made you want to live your life in a certain way?

Talking Back by bell hooks.

Which book ruined you, in the best possible way?

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

Where do you turn when you’re starved for inspiration?

Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Can you share one trashy book to wedge in your vacation bag?

All Fours by Miranda July. Not trashy but quite naughty, and a fast read.

If your bookshelf could wake up and talk to you, what would it say?

“Don’t be so sad.”

“I READ WHEREVER THERE’S TIME TO FILL, OR TIME TO SAVOR.”

Photography by Born

THE IMMORTAL COOL OF JANE BIRKIN

“You cannot decide you’re an It girl. Someone has to bestow it upon you.”

—Marisa Meltzer

By Karly Quadros

Bangs mussed to a T, a penchant for the mini (of the dress or shorts variety), and a bag that’s harder to get your hands on than the nuclear launch codes: Jane Birkin’s name has become virtually synonymous with cool. From her swingin’ young adult years, spent cavorting with the Beatles in London, to the ’70s in the heart of Paris, where she was embroiled in a tempestuous love affair with the louche songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, Birkin surfed the changing societal and sartorial tides with a witches’ brew of sincerity and insouciance. There was only one way to describe her: It girl.

That’s the term Marisa Meltzer has taken as the title of her new biography of the singer, out Oct. 7. Known for her 2023 bestseller Glossy: Ambition,

THE SINGER AND ACTOR DID WHAT FEW DID WHAT FEW IT GIRLS MANAGE TO DO: SHE GREW UP.

Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier, the journalist looked for the woman behind the late muse in the archives of French Vogue, Hermès workshops, and the black-velvetlined townhouse that Birkin shared with Gainsbourg, complete with old cigarette butts and the songwriter’s beloved Lolita poster. Here, she gives CULTURED a peek at her process.

It Girl’s epigraph is from The Importance of Being Earnest: “To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”

I thought it really got to the heart of what Jane Birkin was all about, which was seeming like everything was easy. The challenge of this book was showing the truth behind it. There’s this real difference between how she thought of herself, what preoccupied her, and how the world thinks of her. There was jealousy over actors that were taken more seriously. There were things that she’s known for, like the Birkin bag, that did not seem to really preoccupy her at all.

What do you think it means to be an It girl, and what made Jane Birkin one?

You cannot decide you’re an It girl. Someone has to bestow it upon you. An It girl is somehow representative of the moment, usually in style and in personality, what she’s doing, who she’s hanging out with. She really reflected but also anticipated the way that women wanted to dress for her entire life. Few people can do that. The ultimate French girl is alluring, but someone who went and infiltrated the French world is even more exciting. If you look at the history of French It girls, there’s a lot of foreign-born ones: Josephine Baker, Marie Antoinette, Jane Birkin.

What was Jane’s relationship with designers of the time?

She definitely embraced the younger designers. You didn’t see her in Dior or Chanel. She loved Paco Rabanne and Thea Porter. She was a great friend of Yves Saint Laurent. You’d also see her in a lot of stuff that she picked up on vacations, like the basket bag she bought at a market in London. She went to a steak dinner in the early ’90s that Princess Di was at. If you look at the footage, Diana is wearing this heavy, intense gown, and she looks melancholy, like she often does. Meanwhile, Jane Birkin is at the same dinner, wearing a custom slinky silk shirt and tuxedo jacket, looking so comfortable.

David Bailey, Jane Birkin, 1969.

Photography courtesy of David Bailey and Gagosian

MEG WEBSTER GETS HER FLOWERS

By JACOBA URIST

What is the legacy of Land art in a time of climate catastrophe? Eighty-year-old artist Meg Webster, whose ever-urgent work is on view in New York and Paris this season, shares some thoughts.

Photography by Steven Probert

When I met artist Meg Webster on a muggy Manhattan afternoon in July, I’d just returned from a Land-art pilgrimage to Michael Heizer’s magnum opus City. The more-than-mile-long concrete behemoth in the remote Southern Nevada desert took 50 years and an estimated $40 million to build. Webster, now 80, worked as Heizer’s studio assistant in her late 30s. But she has made her own career as a land artist in a very different kind of terrain: the concrete and chrome of downtown Manhattan.

Since moving to New York in 1979, Webster has created potent sculptures out of moss, beeswax, and salt that use smell, scale, and texture to invite city dwellers and country folk alike to consider their relationship to the natural world anew. This spring, nine of her sculptures went on long-term view at Dia Beacon, a temple to minimalism, conceptual practice, and Land art in Upstate New York.

“PEOPLE ARE NOT TAUGHT ABOUT ECOLOGY IN SCHOOLS. THEY DON’T KNOW THAT THEY NEED BUGS.”

For decades, Land art has been considered an especially macho form, as much about mastering the unruly earth as communing with it. Touchstones of the movement include Robert Smithson’s black basalt rock coiling 1,500 feet into the Great Salt Lake and Walter De Maria’s 400 steel rods conjuring lightning in New Mexico’s high desert. With few exceptions, female land artists like Webster have been given short shrift. In recent years, however, several exhibitions have attempted to right the imbalance. At the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, curator Leigh Arnold mounted “Groundswell: Women of Land Art” in 2023, featuring work by Webster and contemporaries like Agnes Denes, Alice Aycock, and Nancy Holt.

The Nasher show also upended the myth that Land art is made only in wide-open, remote landscapes. “Increasingly, the attitude of scholarship [is] that a lot of Land art occurred within very dense urban contexts,” Arnold says. “Getting away from this idea of a pilgrimage to a place to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience, Land art could occur just outside the artist’s studio if they were living in Manhattan.”

Webster’s story—and the place it occupies in art history—will receive yet another overdue revision in October, when she features prominently in a group exhibition dedicated to Minimal art at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris. Alongside Donald Judd and Carl Andre—and Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, and Anne Truitt—Minimalism is another movement where Webster is a pioneer. Her use of natural materials like salt and beeswax infuses Minimalism’s geometric forms and sharp angles with a warmth and aliveness not found in the fluorescent bulbs of Dan Flavin or the plywood sheets of Judd. (She also belongs in surveys of performance art: Her pared-down stainless steel Bench for Two Backs Leaning, in

which two people sit back-to-back to activate the sculpture, evokes Marina Abramović.)

Since she received her MFA at Yale in 1983, Webster has sculpted mud, sand, and sticks as a

tal, beautiful, and inspiring.” Among my favorites is her “Moss Bed” series: large, spongy-verdant cushions that smell like a dank forest (Moss Bed, King is currently at Dia, as is Webster’s Wall of Wax, a globby, 24-foot-long curved beeswax wall

tender and primal response to the environment. “I’ve done some pieces that are biggish,” she says. “But I’ve been dragging soil and forming it inside as well. It’s not about the monumental, although this [Dia] work is definitely monumen-

that looks like an organic take on Richard Serra, and Cono di Sale (Salt Cone), a 92-inch-high crystalline tower, first shown at the 1988 Venice Biennale.) Webster’s interest in Land art began in the early ’80s, when the survival of the planet

Meg Webster, Wall of Wax ,1990

Photography by Bill Jacobson Studio and courtesy of the Dia Art Foundation

felt exceedingly fragile. “My professor David Von Schlegell, a wonderful man, read an important text in The New Yorker about nuclear war and that was shocking,” she recalls. “We were right at the edge of having a serious Earth

the end of the Earth” after nuclear winter, she says.

Just a short walk from Judd’s studio, Walter De Maria’s Earth Room, a loft packed with 250 cubic

problem. So that started why I was making earth forms.” In 1984, Donald Judd invited Webster to show her work on the ground floor of his Spring Street studio. “I ended up putting a giant mound of salt on the floor to symbolize

yards of dirt in the heart of SoHo’s bustle, continues to inspire Webster. (“I have definitely been reacting to his work,” she emails several hours after our interview. “I strived to add plants and ecology, wanting to bring people to

the joys of the planet and its creatures.”) In 2016, Webster brought similar magic to Chelsea when she bathed Paula Cooper Gallery in a futuristic pink glow for the installation Solar Grow Room. The four raised wooden flower and vegetable planters, powered by an off-grid solar electrical system, felt both ominous and beautiful.

This is not to say that Webster foregoes the great outdoors. That same year, Webster constructed Concave Room for Bees at Socrates Sculpture Park, a visceral living sculpture of flowers and herbs designed to attract the pollinators. Webster’s installation felt like a breathing, botanical take on Donald Judd’s first outdoor artwork in concrete, the 1971 circle at Philip Johnson’s Glass House. I remember walking my young son through the pungent air—he was captivated by the buzzing—looking out at the East River and the skyline. “People are not taught about ecology in schools,” Webster reflects on the piece. “They don’t know that they need bugs.”

“THERE’S A HOPEFULNESS TO IT, BUT ALSO AN URGENCY— LOOK AT THIS AND THINK FOR A MINUTE.”

This is truer now than ever. In an era of extreme weather (Webster and I meet three days after the catastrophic floods in Texas), climate policy rollbacks, and cuts to scientific research, I fear the Land art I’ve treasured hasn’t achieved what its makers had hoped. Here in the U.S., we have yet to train our collective gaze on the majesty of the natural world, nor shift our attention to the toll we’ve taken on our fragile ecosystem. If anything, a half-century after the Land art movement began, we’ve resoundingly turned our back on both.

Against this backdrop, what exactly can Land art do today? “We’ve got many major problems,” Webster responds. “There’s a giant political crisis. Trump is just horrible. And there’s an environmental crisis, thanks to him partly. We’re in meltdown. And you can’t just get back from that.” At the same time, she explains, “it doesn’t work to just scream and yell and create awful feelings.” The works at Dia are meant to register, but at a delicate frequency. Indeed, Webster is the rare legacy artist who vibrates with a soulfulness of unbridled optimism.

“Certainly, people are calmed by the Dia show,” says Webster. “There’s a hopefulness to it, but also an urgency: Look at this and think for a minute.”

“IT DOESN’T WORK TO JUST SCREAM AND YELL AND CREATE AWFUL FEELINGS.”

MAPPING THE BODY, ONE PHOTOGRAPH AT A TIME

A LOT HAS CHANGED SINCE 2011. ZORA SICHER TURNED 16 THAT YEAR; SHE’D TRADED BROOKLYN’S TWEEN PUNK-BAND CIRCUIT FOR THE DARKROOM AND WAS ALREADY WELL ON HER WAY TO BECOMING ONE OF HER GENERATION’S FOREMOST DOCUMENTERS OF INTIMACY, WHETHER BODILY OR EMOTIONAL. A YEAR LATER, SHE WOULD GET HER FIRST TATTOO WITH A FRIEND, EDEN. THAT IMAGE, SHARED EXCLUSIVELY WITH CULTURED BELOW, CLOSES SICHER’S FIRST MONOGRAPH, GEOGRAPHY, OUT THIS MONTH WITH DASHWOOD BOOKS. THE TOME SEES THE IMAGE-MAKER, WHO HAS WORKED WITH EVERYONE FROM PALOMA ELSESSER TO MARNI, SIFT THROUGH THE ARCHIVE SHE’S ACCUMULATED SINCE 2011—AN EXERCISE THAT REVELS AS MUCH IN THE PEAKS AND VALLEYS OF GROWING UP AS IN THE ACT OF MAKING SOMETHING TOGETHER, WHETHER THAT’S A FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, OR A PHOTOGRAPH.

—ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT

“This image is of myself and a dear friend that I grew up with. We were both born in the year 1995, and it was my first tattoo we got together at 17 years old. She opens the book as well with another image of a tattoo, which initially wasn’t an intentional decision...

but something that subconsciously came together through laying out the images. I think the fragmented nature of these ‘portraits’ establishes the notion of mapping the body— a theme I began to explore during the collecting of these images throughout an extended period of time.”

Zora Sicher, Me & Eden, 2018.

Photography by Zora Sicher

Vulnerability, Doubts, and Insecurities Are as Much Artistic Tools as Oil Paint

By SOPHIA COHEN

An Alice Walker novel about three generations of Black American life in the South has helped Nathaniel Mary Quinn fill in the gaps of a family history that’s informed every step of his practice—including a new show at Gagosian.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Study for Grange Copeland 2025.

Photography by Jackie Furtado and courtesy of Gagosian

“I work for hours on end to come face-to-face with my own fragility, fears, insecurities, and doubts.”

Every Nathaniel Mary Quinn work is an exercise in excavation.

The Chicago-born artist is a material alchemist—manipulating oils, pastels, and charcoal into haunting portraits—and a memory worker. Many of the moments in time Quinn evokes come from his own singular upbringing: At 15, his mother passed away, and he was left to take care of himself following the sudden desertion of his other family members. Fragmented recollections of these years were spun into evocative compositions that have landed in the collections of the Whitney, LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and more.

This fall, Quinn is opening his fifth solo with Gagosian, “ECHOES FROM COPELAND,” which filters touchpoints of his life through a 1970 novel by Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland , about three generations of Black Americans living in the South. Ahead of the opening on Sept. 10, he sat down with CULTURED ’s arts editor-at-large, Sophia Cohen, to parse through his novel inspirations.

courageous turn. I wanted to find a way to blend these disparate parts without the strict, strong stock demarcation of lines, which led to the discovery of a process I’d like to call paint-drawing: a combination of the two.

You’ve been talking about the layering of ourselves and creating a structure within that. What role is your biography playing in this story, if any?

In this body of work, there is a strong departure from my biography, no doubt about it. But this book [by Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland ,] offered me another pathway into something about my family that I never knew about. I have no working knowledge of my mother’s upbringing, of her childhood, or what life was like for her when she was a teenager. My mom passed away when I was 15, so I couldn’t ask her these questions that I imagine children ask their parents when they become adults. I do know that my mom was from the South. I do know she was born in Mississippi during a particular era in American history. The book offers a glimpse into what might have been her lived experiences.

I know that you added your mother’s name, Mary, to your own, so that you’ll carry her name with you as you build on the life that she started for you.

I’m never bored of talking about this because, of course, she’s my mom, and I love her with all my heart. Seeing my name on any institution’s wall—at museums and galleries or in a book, even the monograph [of my work] that Gagosian did [last year]—that beautiful monograph has my name on the cover, and my mother’s name, too. Now, I’m entering spaces and having experiences that my mother could never fathom—they would seem like science fiction to her. This woman was poor. She had no education. She did not have material accomplishments, but she was a lovely woman. She’s the best mother I could ever imagine.

The visual language of my work is inextricably tied to my biography. In the way I construct my figures, there’s always this rippage, this cut and slice and blending back together. All of that is a reflection of my childhood experiences of being abandoned by my family and finding a way to resolve those feelings. My mother had two strokes; she was crippled. All my figures are a reflection of that body that I first came to know intimately, within the context of a mother and a child.

“The visual language of my work is inextricably tied to my biography. In the way I construct my figures, there’s always this rippage, this cut and slice and blending back together.”

Those who are less familiar with your work often mistake it for collage, but it’s not. Why is that distinction important to you?

In the process of making my works, I don’t think about collage at all. I am thinking about how to create harmony with parts that don’t seem to fit together, because that’s the way I imagine identity is constructed—from many different experiences that don’t have a seamless fit. You must contend with them; you must face them. In this body of work, I’ve taken another

Even if you’re exploring different themes, there’s always a piece of you in there. That piece of you is something that people feel connected to.

I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. Like any artist, I work for hours on end to come face-to-face with my own fragility, fears, insecurities, and doubts. I would argue that those things are as much artistic tools as oil paint is.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn in his Brooklyn studio, 2025.

James Frey at home in Pound Ridge with artwork by Aaron Young.

A SLICE OF HEAVEN

By SOPHIE LEE

Photography by MAEGAN GINDI

At home in Pound Ridge, James Frey is surrounded by work that fuels his passionately written prose, like this year’s Next to Heaven.

“I buy art because I want to feel what art makes me feel—joy, inspiration, awe, curiosity, respect—as much as I can in my everyday life,” says James Frey, whose collection at home in Pound Ridge includes pieces by Rashid Johnson, Robert Colescott, and Nate Lowman. As an author, Frey trades in the full spectrum of emotion across A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning, and this year’s novelistic exploration of the darkness underlying a charming American town, Next To Heaven

In the mid-aughts, Frey was lambasted in the press for greatly exaggerating the facts in his bestselling memoirs about addiction and rehab. In 2025, an era of “emotional truths” and with scant capacity for shock, Frey’s writing style reads as ahead of its time—though he’s taken a turn toward fiction, where his imagination can run free. He collects art with the same unbridled enthusiasm, offering as little regard for market trends as he does critiques from the literary establishment (“I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he recently told The New York Times). These works of art are pieces he wants to gaze up at over dinner, and here, Frey gives us a seat at the table.

Who do you think is tougher: art critics or book critics?

I think it’s probably the same. Critics are critics in every medium. The fundamental difference is that the art world is much smaller than the book world. The audience is vastly smaller. How many people see the most well-attended art shows in New York, versus how many read the bestselling books in the world? It’s the tens of thousands versus many millions. So when you get savaged by a book critic, as opposed to an art critic, it tends to be seen by many more people.

Where does the story of your personal art collection begin?

I have been art obsessed since I was a kid. I always dreamed of having cool pictures on the wall, and whenever I have had money in my life, I spend it on art. When I was 24, I had a job that paid in cash and required great discretion. I had to do something with the cash. In 1994, laws related to money were very different than they are now, and large cash purchases could be made without government knowledge or interference. The first piece I bought was a Picasso drawing in blue crayon from 1908, and the second was a Matisse drawing of a woman from 1918, both from a well-known gallery that was, at the time, happy to sell art to me for cash. I was six months out of jail and rehab, and carrying a backpack with $50,000 in it. It took a

while to convince the gallerist I wasn’t a cop or a thief.

Which work in your home provokes the most conversation from visitors?

A large, early Rashid Johnson mirror painting called Soul on Ice. It’s white spray paint on a large mirror. It is the only piece hanging in my kitchen and dining area, and it dominates the room. It’s both raw and gorgeous, and many people who see it, especially those not interested in art, aren’t sure what it is or why I have it in my house or what it means. It’s a piece that does what I believe art should do, which is create an emotional reaction in everyone who sees it. That leads to a great conversation or inspiring someone else to look at Rashid’s work, or art in general.

If you could snap your fingers and instantly own the art collection of anyone else, who would it be and why?

A Manet. I don’t need someone’s entire collection. I would love something made by the hand of Manet, preferably a painting, but a drawing would be a delight. Just seeing a Manet every day would make me smile for just about forever.

“I was six months out of jail and rehab, and carrying a backpack with 50,000 in it. It took awhile to convince the gallerist I wasn’t a cop or a thief.”

Raúl de Nieves in his Williamsburg studio with Penguini.

‘GROWTH ARRIVES CLOAKED IN FAILURE’S GRACE’

Raúl de Nieves has filtered everything from drag culture to Catholic iconography into his more-is-more sculptures. At Pioneer Works this fall, he’s leaving excess behind—for good.

It’s late in the day and the sun is pouring into Raúl de Nieves’s spacious Williamsburg studio. Through the windows, the Manhattan skyline is framed like a poster one might find in an Airbnb—an apt, if somewhat ironic, symbol of the ascent that this queer, Mexico-born artist has experienced in recent years. But it’s not success that is on his mind these days. What he’s thinking about is failure.

“I’ve seen so much growth,” de Nieves says of his practice of more than two decades. “I’ve also seen so much failure.” The 42-year-old, who arrived in San Diego with his family at the age of 9 and has exhibited at august institutions such as the ICA Boston, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, is sitting on a threadbare couch in the back of his studio. The floor is covered with stray beads, strips of plastic, and pools of hardened resin— vestiges of the bedazzled, mixed-media sculptures and collages for which he’s become known. His small dog, Penguini (“like little penguin pasta”), is velcroed to his side. “The more that I see that I need to work on something, the more it allows me to know myself better,” he says.

De Nieves is speaking ahead of “In Light of Innocence,” his latest institutional show opening Sept. 12 at Pioneer Works in Red Hook. It’s a

“In a way, this show has really allowed me the opportunity to think about the next chapter of my life.”

venue with which the artist has a long history— his band Haribo was among the nonprofit’s first musical artists in residence—and one that offers the kind of supple exhibition space suited to his fantastical, more-is-more sculptures. The show has all the makings of a victory lap. Instead, it will arrive like a valediction.

“This is the last time I want to do this kind of work,” de Nieves says of his signature “stained glass” assemblages, 50 new versions of which will line Pioneer Works’s windows. Made from tape, acetate, and other inexpensive (he hates the word “cheap”) materials, these pieces have been a staple of the artist’s oeuvre since his breakthrough turn in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. In past shows, they’ve cast a glittering glow over his sculptures nearby, but for “In Light of Innocence,” they’ll be installed above a gallery inhabited by just one modest, floor-bound work.

This is a form of restraint not typically associated with de Nieves, a big personality in life and

art. But the new stained glass pieces brim with enough symbols and suggestions to offset the emptiness below. Along with the nods to Mexican craft, Catholic iconography, and drag culture that appear in so much of de Nieves’s art, they feature names, phrases, and images from the Tarot. De Nieves is not much of a practitioner himself, but he appreciates how the cards offer audiences a flexible framework through which to examine their own lives. It’s about “finding these things that can open up a portal,” he says.

“The more that I see that I need to work on something, the more it allows me to know myself better.”

That’s what de Nieves is after with “In Light of Innocence.” He sees the show’s negative space as a kind of invitation, a portal through which we might find the guidance we’re seeking. The departure comes with risk, but he’s willing to make that trade. “In a way, this show has really allowed me the opportunity to think about the next chapter of my life,” he says. Then the artist points to a new stained glass work, embedded with a phrase that has become a mantra of late: “Growth arrives cloaked in failure’s grace.”

Words and Photography by TAYLOR DAFOE

A Certain Kind of Woman

By KAT HERRIMAN Photography by JUSTINE KURLAND

Chicago-born fashion designer Colleen Allen’s distinctly offline cult following signals a quiet rebellion by a generation exhausted with algorithmic femininity.

The girls roast pigs, comb each other’s hair, hang boys by their feet, bathe in the stream. They hunt and kiss and band together into large troops that could bring the world down.

These are all scenes from Justine Kurland’s “Girl Pictures.” The artist started making the 1997–2002 series to stage images of youthful defiance over the course of long road trips. What she made, while zigzagging across America, were photographs that captured the sense of communion young women feel when they are given the space to make believe with one another. Reflecting on this seminal body of work, Kurland wrote, “I intended for them to play act a state of communal bliss. As it turned out, the girls didn’t have to pretend.”

On a Monday morning in July, Kurland once again opened the portal to her radical female imaginary, this time for fashion designer Colleen Allen, who—shot alongside a handful of like-minded friends and muses, including legendary executive Judy Collinson, jeweler Alice Waese, and models Charlotte O’Donell and Irina Shnitman—stepped through the looking glass in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

It was a dream come true for Allen, 29, who has seen herself time and again in Kurland’s images of teenagers stripped down to their realness. The photographs remain a touchstone for her namesake line which, in the past year or so, has amassed a substantial girl gang all its own. What Allen’s clothes share with Kurland’s “Girl Pictures” is an otherworldliness—a vision of girlhood unhooked from a The Wing–like commodification of gender and instead infused with a deep reverence for art history and the contributions of women whose convictions once rendered them hysterical, ostracized, or worse.

Muses for past seasons have included witches real and imagined, including surrealists like Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning. For her upcoming spring collection, Allen found her spark in something slightly more contemporary: Red Comet, Heather Clark’s recent biography of Sylvia Plath. Listening to the audiobook in her studio, Allen was struck by parallels to her own life: For one thing, both American women crossed the Atlantic for their education. Allen attended Central Saint Martins in London (before returning to New York to intern under Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and later at the Row), while Plath made the pilgrimage to the University of Cambridge from Boston. Allen was particularly intrigued to learn that Plath had once been a fashion intern in New York—and loathed it. She fixated on an anecdote in which Plath and her fellow interns defiantly tossed their mandatory girdles off a rooftop, an episode that made its way, in an altered form, into Plath’s best-known work, The Bell Jar. This small act of rebellion became the seed for Allen’s new collection, a suite of lingerie-infused house clothes that reclaim the domestic wardrobe while nodding to histories of care, control, and the women institutionalized on account of both.

As with past collections, there is specificity to the colors and plushness of Allen’s latest garments, which she repeatedly trials on herself before sharing with a small circle of confidantes. “That’s the specialness of being really small—I get to have that quiet space to work through things on my own,” Allen confesses. “I am trying to take advantage of this time while I can.”

This intimate methodology ensures feel comes first, which explains why silk lines many of Allen’s signature fleece coats. As we talk, Allen constructs an image of herself groping her way

through racks of fabrics and vintage clothing like a chef shopping for the right melon.

Her path to certain shades is equally intuitive. Allen’s first collections—the ones that set her on the ascendant trajectory she’s navigating today— were characterized by hot oranges, vibrating lavenders, religious reds, and venomous greens. (She’s since added in a few plastic blues.) These colors are gathered from her travels, or found in tarot cards and paintings. “Color is where I infuse that mystical quality, which is really important to me,” Allen says. “I’m always attracted to something that is a bit wrong. There’s beauty in colors that you can’t quite place.”

This material seduction coupled with Allen’s Victorian-inflected tailoring is what has made It girls everywhere respond so rabidly to her output. (I’ve spotted Allen’s handiwork on devotees like gallerist Hannah Hoffman and writer-publicist Kaitlin Phillips.)

Optimistically, her meteoric rise can be read as a broader shift toward clothing maximized for clients’ delight rather than the calculated judgements of social algorithms. That’s not to say that Allen’s clothing hasn’t gone viral—check the respective Instagrams of Ayo Edebiri and Charli XCX. It just hasn’t been at the expense of the woman wearing it.

Over the past two decades, fashion has established a false binary: Chase a fleeting timeliness or retreat into utilitarian timelessness. Allen rejects both. Her clothes don’t worship at the altar of utilitarianism or taste. They slouch towards a more spiritual and mystical understanding of dressing—and perhaps more poignantly, the due comfort of the feminine body.

“I’m always attracted to something that is a bit wrong.”

—Colleen Allen

Colleen Allen, Charlotte O’Donnell, Irina Shnitman, Alice Waese, and Judy Collinson in Prospect Park.

Hello, My Name Is...

By SAM FALB

Jane Keltner de Valle and Giancarlo Valle made a name for themselves with their relentlessly creative design practice. Ten years in, they’re changing it.

Nearly 10 years after its founding, the design studio formerly known as Studio Giancarlo Valle is doing something that few marketing consultants would ever recommend: changing its name. Having developed a reputation for designing clean yet cozy spaces and furniture, the New York studio founded by Jane Keltner de Valle and Giancarlo Valle is rebranding as Valle de Valle. The new name, they say, more clearly expresses both partners’ contributions to their shared project.

“Studio Giancarlo Valle had a place and reputation,” Jane says of the firm’s previous title. “We felt that what we’re doing is a partnership, so we took the first name out and added ‘de Valle’—we love the symmetry of it.” Giancarlo chimes in, “Jane realized early on that this could be our shared path, creatively and personally.”

The duo met at a holiday party two decades ago—Jane was situated in the fashion world at Teen Vogue before moving on to become style director at AD. Giancarlo had arrived in New

York after cutting his teeth at firms like Snøhetta and SHoP Architects.

That fateful run-in was the spark that ultimately led to the pair’s impressive rise. Over the years, Jane’s relationships across the design industry expanded the studio’s reach, bringing in projects that blurred the lines between architecture, interiors, furniture, and art. Giancarlo, meanwhile, zeroed in on the minutiae of design (literally—he is known for his dollhouse maquettes), delving deep into collaborative projects with everyone from Domeau & Pérès to Nordic Knots.

In 2024, the pair unveiled Casa Valle, their Tribeca-based gallery where clients and admirers could immerse themselves in the duo’s aesthetic, defined by contrasting textures and a warm palette. This past May, they mounted an exhibition anchored by a limited-edition reissue of Antoni Gaudí’s iconic Batlló chair in collaboration with BD Barcelona. The thoughtful reimagining of the Modernisme staple is trademark Valle de Valle: sensitive to

the design’s history without being beholden to it.

While the pair prepares for the studio’s official 10th anniversary next fall, they’re also focused on a slate of new projects and a forthcoming book from Rizzoli. Between private residential work everywhere from London to New York’s Upper East Side, Jane and Giancarlo are fielding some of their most high-profile and ambitious commissions yet: designer Ulla Johnson’s forthcoming Madison Avenue flagship, a wine bar in downtown Manhattan, and the total transformation of a 500-acre island in the Bahamas. Partnering with Johnson is especially personal for Jane. “It feels like a full-circle moment,” she says. “Ulla and I go way back, and she’s such a thoughtful collaborator.”

As Valle de Valle evolves to meet the future, Jane and Giancarlo are staying nimble—and in lockstep. The rebrand “speaks to the way we work,” Giancarlo concludes. “Clients—and future clients—want to work with both of us, and our name is emblematic of that.”

“Studio Giancarlo Valle had a place and reputation. We felt that what we’re doing is a partnership.”

—Jane Keltner de Valle

“Clients—and

future clients—want to work with both of us, and our name is emblematic of that.”

—Giancarlo Valle

Photography courtesy of Studio Valle de Valle

Jane Keltner de Valle and Giancarlo Valle at their Canal Street studio.

A WHOLE FAMILY OF FENDIS

Family ties have carried the house of Fendi through an entire century. Here, Silvia Venturini Fendi reflects on a personal lineage woven through the iconic silhouettes, supple leather, and tightly knit generations that have become sartorial canon, alongside archival sketches from onetime Fendi creative director Karl Lagerfeld.

“THERE IS SO MUCH BEHIND FENDI: 100 YEARS OF HISTORY AND DESIGN, BUT ALSO OF REWRITING VALUES, CHANGING SOCIAL READINGS.”

“EACH

COMPONENT OF MY FAMILY, AND OF THE FENDI CHOSEN FAMILY TOO, HAS HELPED ME APPRECIATE RARITY, QUALITY, AND THE HUMAN TOUCH OF PRODUCTS.”

Sketches by Karl Lagerfeld and courtesy of Fendi

by Jill

Cult Classic: That’s a Wrap

Diane von Furstenberg’s wrap dress was born amidst a gender revolution— and has remained a constant through many more.

First introduced in 1974, the wrap dress was an instant hit, flying off the racks at breakneck speed into the closets of a new generation of high-powered, socially conscious women. Radical for its time as an affordable, work-to-play staple, the dress is still vestimentary shorthand for empowerment and sangfroid. Walking down the street in any of today’s fashion capitals, the iconic look is never far from sight (in a bevy of ever-expanding prints and shapes, no less). The wrap dress’s universality is its (not so) secret power: Its effortless silhouette belongs on every woman, no matter where she’s headed.

Photography

Krementz

The Art of Facts

By SOPHIE LEE

Palestinian-American artist Jordan Nassar’s latest body of work is asking more questions than it answers—just as he intended.

“I’m thinking about the choice to reveal or obscure something.”

“It’s a weird time to be making work,” acknowledges Palestinian-American artist Jordan Nassar, as he is bent over his desk, studiously adding tiles to a mosaic headed for his September showing with James Cohan. The work is based on a trio of Roman-Byzantine floor decorations that now hang on a wall at Tel Aviv’s international airport, where they have greeted Nassar every time he visits with his Israeli-born husband, the painter Amir Guberstein. “I’m thinking about the choice to reveal or obscure something,” he goes on, “about how governments construct narratives and use things from history—like tile mosaics from thousands of years ago—to support whatever direction they want the narrative to go.”

Over the last decade, Nassar has made a career of interpreting historical craft—specifically

Palestinian embroidery—through the lens of his own diasporic upbringing. As conditions grow increasingly unlivable in Gaza and the West Bank, Nassar has pushed his work to meet the intensity of the moment. “The pieces are darker—large swaths of black, gray, deep red, green, or blue embroidery,” he says. In each, the technicolor landscapes he’s become known for peek out from folds of somber fabric, like “a little tear you peek through,” he notes. “That has to do with holding onto a bit of hope, even in a darker mood.”

As has become tradition for the New York–born artist, the embroidery is made collaboratively with a group of women based in the West Bank. Nassar gives them a pattern and palette, and they dispatch their creative interpretations of his sloping hills and florals from Ramallah to a

friend in Jaffa to avoid shipping delays. These days, even this workaround has slowed due to tariff uncertainties. When we speak, several of Nassar’s exhibition pieces are at the framer’s with missing panels.

“Usually, my shows are finished well ahead of time,” he says of the international backlog, staring down at the mostly unfinished mosaic in front of him. Invoking Byzantine relics with tiny shards of glass is also a time-intensive undertaking, but Nassar hasn’t been able to shake the airport pieces from his mind. “As an artist, you don’t always have a reason you can verbalize for what you’re drawn to do,” he muses. “When I saw those mosaics, I just wanted to remake them—maybe to make them my own, maybe to free them from being used as propaganda. I don’t know exactly, [I’m] just observing.”

Photography by Takamasa Ota and courtesy of James Cohan

Photo

Palaty Gallery

TORY BURCH DOES AMERICANA—WITH

THE DESIGNER REVEALS HOW HER FALL/WINTER COLLECTION PUTS A WINKING, IRREVERENT SPIN ON THE AMERICAN CLASSICS.

COLOR THEORY

PICK YOUR PALETTE: FOCUS ON THREE MAIN COLORS, WITH TWO THAT ARE CONTRASTING. FOCUS ON PRIMARY SHADES, WHICH KEEP THE MOOD ESPECIALLY SPORTY.

The story of Tory Burch’s Fall/Winter 2025 collection begins with what she describes as “twisted American sportswear.” Sleeves are tossed over shoulders, and winkingly mismatched materials bristle with pins. “It’s literal and figurative,” she says.

For years, Burch’s guiding light has been the historic designer Claire McCardell, who also counts Donna Karan and Calvin Klein among her acolytes. “In the 1940s, Claire McCardell genuinely invented American sportswear and revolutionized the way we dress,” Burch says.

STYLE IT: EMPLOY SLOUCHY, OVERSIZED FITS AND POLISHED LAYERS, AND LET SLEEVES HANG LONG RATHER THAN ROLLING THEM UP.

“Her designs encouraged self-expression and empowered women with a casual elegance that is as relevant today as it was 75 years ago. Everything was intentional, nothing was frivolous, and comfort was as vital as glamour.”

Burch’s collection is shot through with a liberatory freedom of movement that connects garments as disparate as joggers and tea-length dresses. Here, CULTURED Editor-at-Large Ali Pew dives into the runway details that culminate this harmony of complexity and ease.

ACCESSORIES: KEEP

IT MINIMAL, BUT WITH DETAILS THAT TIE BACK TO SPORTSWEAR, LIKE THE SHADE OF EYEWEAR OR THE PRACTICAL POCKETS ON THE BAG.

AMERICANA—WITH A TWIST

SPORTSWEAR

PICK YOUR PALETTE: ONE KEY COLOR WITH MULTIPLE SHADES AND TONES. TONAL WITH SUBTLE CONTRAST.

STYLE IT: WRAP A SCARF LOOSELY AROUND THE SHOULDERS FOR EFFORTLESS EASE REIMAGINED WITH TONAL COLORBLOCKING, OR PIN A SLEEVE BACK WITH A BROOCH FOR AN EXTRA DOSE OF THE JOYOUSLY UNEXPECTED.

ACCESSORIES: ADD SOMETHING “OFF.” THIS CAN INCLUDE LEOPARD PRINT, AN INTRICATE, DANGLING EAR CUFF, OR FLAT SQUARE-TOE BOOTS THAT READ EQUESTRIANMEETS-ITALIAN ARTISAN.

YOUR GUIDE TO THIS FASHION MONTH’S

CREATIVE DIRECTOR DEBUTS

GUCCI

NEW DESIGNER

Demna

PREVIOUSLY AT Balenciaga

FIRST COLLECTION

On Sept. 23 , Gucci will reveal Demna’s first designs in a presentation format; fans will have to wait until next March for the designer’s inaugural show with the Italian house.

CLAIM TO FAME

From IKEA bags to mud-covered runways and a $300 DHL tire T-shirt, Demna is fashion’s foremost provocateur, with a wide runway at Gucci to continue his particular brand of storytelling.

MARNI

NEW DESIGNER

Meryll Rogge

PREVIOUSLY AT Meryll Rogge

FIRST COLLECTION

Marni acolytes will have to wait until next February for Rogge’s spin on the Milanese house’s legacy.

CLAIM TO FAME

Rogge became the first woman to be named Designer of the Year at the Belgian Fashion Awards in 2024, and was the recipient of the 2025 Andam Prize, one of fashion’s most prestigious honors.

LOEWE

NEW DESIGNERS

Jack McCollough

Lazaro Hernandez

PREVIOUSLY AT Proenza Schouler

FIRST COLLECTION

McCollough and Hernandez will unveil their Loewe-verse on Oct. 3

CLAIM TO FAME

The duo, who founded Proenza Schouler while in school at Parsons, won the first CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund prize in 2004.

BOTTEGA VENETA

NEW DESIGNER

Louise Trotter

PREVIOUSLY AT Carven

FIRST COLLECTION

Trotter will unveil her first take on Bottega Veneta with a runway show on Sept. 28

CLAIM TO FAME

The English-born designer has lent her sharp, unfussy approach to ready-to-wear at lines including Lacoste, Calvin Klein, and, of course, Carven.

DIOR

NEW DESIGNER

Jonathan Anderson

PREVIOUSLY AT Loewe

FIRST COLLECTION

Anderson will show his first womenswear collection with Dior on Oct. 1

FUN FACT

The Northern Irish designer is as ambitious as he is adventurous sartorially. Over the past two decades, he has left his mark on everything from Uniqlo to Luca Guadagnino’s movies to his whimsical eponymous brand, JW Anderson.

BALENCIAGA

NEW DESIGNER

Pierpaolo Piccioli

PREVIOUSLY AT Valentino

FIRST COLLECTION

The Italian designer will premiere his vision of the Spanish brand on Oct. 4

CLAIM TO FAME

The couturier’s appointment signals a return to a more romantic Balenciaga, after his graceful, gown-forward tenure at Valentino.

THE DOMINOES HAVE FALLEN, THE GRID POSTS HAVE CIRCULATED, AND THE NDAS ARE SIGNED. FASHION’S TOPSY-TURVY RESHUFFLING OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS IS OFFICIALLY COMPLETE (FOR NOW). HERE’S YOUR CHEAT SHEET TO THE DESIGNERS UNVEILING THEIR FIRST COLLECTIONS IN EUROPE THIS SEASON.

VERSACE

NEW DESIGNER Dario Vitale

PREVIOUSLY AT Miu Miu

FIRST COLLECTION

Versace will also trade in the runway format for an intimate presentation for Vitale’s debut with the house on Sept. 26

CLAIM TO FAME

Vitale worked his way up the ranks at Miu Miu for over a decade, eventually being appointed the brand’s design director and head of image under Miuccia Prada herself.

MUGLER

NEW DESIGNER

Miguel Castro Freitas

PREVIOUSLY AT Sportmax (under Max Mara)

FIRST COLLECTION

The Portuguese designer will make his Mugler debut on Oct. 2 .

CLAIM TO FAME

Freitas comes to Mugler with an enviable CV of luxury mainstays under his belt, including Dior, Lanvin, Dries Van Noten, and Yves Saint Laurent.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

NEW DESIGNER Duran Lantink

PREVIOUSLY AT Duran Lantink

FIRST COLLECTION

The Dutch designer will show his first Jean Paul Gaultier direction on Oct. 5 , followed by a haute-couture debut next January

CLAIM TO FAME

After several couture seasons featuring a rotating cast of guest directors, Lantink will be the brand’s first permanent creative director since the namesake designer’s tenure ended in 2020.

JIL SANDER

NEW DESIGNER

Simone Bellotti

PREVIOUSLY AT Bally

FIRST COLLECTION

Bellotti will make his Jil Sander debut with a runway show on Sept. 24

CLAIM TO FAME

Bellotti spent 16 years at Gucci before moving to Bally in 2022, where he was appointed creative director the following year.

CARVEN

NEW DESIGNER

Mark Howard Thomas

PREVIOUSLY AT Lacoste

FIRST COLLECTION

The low-profile Central Saint Martins grad will debut his first Carven collection on Oct. 2

CLAIM TO FAME Thomas will take on this role from another buzzy designer on this list, Louise Trotter. The two also previously worked closely together at U.K. label Joseph and Lacoste.

NEW DESIGNER

Matthieu Blazy

PREVIOUSLY AT Bottega Veneta

FIRST COLLECTION

The successor to Virginie Viard will show his first womenswear collection with the French house on Oct. 6 , before heading to New York to unveil his Métiers d’Art collection in December

CLAIM TO FAME

Raf Simons was a member of the jury for the 2006 International Talent Support prize and hired finalist Blazy to come work for him, a kick-off that would lead to roles at Maison Margiela, Celine, and his star turn at Bottega Veneta.

The Studio Museum (Is Once Again) in Harlem

By JULIA HALPERIN

Ahead of the institution’s relaunch in November, three artists reveal the impact it has had on their own trajectories.

Nikita Gale, RUINER XIX, 2022.

Exterior view of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s

Since its founding in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem has pulled off a balancing act that has eluded many of its peers: simultaneously cultivating an intimate relationship with its neighbors and serving as a beacon for boundary-pushing contemporary art internationally. For the past seven years, however, America’s leading institution dedicated to the work of artists of African descent has been closed to the public while laying the groundwork for a new chapter. On Nov. 15, it will open a seven-floor, 82,000-squarefoot building designed by Adjaye Associates and executed by Cooper Robertson.

In the art world, the Studio Museum is best known for cultivating a range of emerging talents— both artistic and curatorial—who go on to seed institutions around the globe. To mark its reopening, CULTURED convened three prominent conceptual artists who had significant early support from the museum: Nikita Gale, Camille Norment, and Sable Elyse Smith.

“The premise of ‘Freestyle’ was so welcoming to me: Black art can be anything that art can be.” —Camille Norment

Each was featured in the museum’s distinctive twist on a biennial, a series affectionately referred to as the “F” shows because their titles all begin with the letter. Norment, 55, an Oslo-based multimedia artist and composer, appeared in the first “F” show, “Freestyle,” in 2001 and is creating a new installation made of brass tubing and a chorus of voices for the grand reopening. The LA-based Gale, 41, showed a critical early work—an installation featuring two guitars that made a droning noise—in the exhibition “Fictions” in 2017. And 39-year-old Smith, based in New York and also featured in “Fictions,” was an artist-in-residence in 2018 and worked in the education department from 2013 to 2016. Here, they reflect on how the institution has shaped their lives and careers.

Sable Elyse Smith, Cornering, 2019.

Photography (bottom) by John Berens and (both) courtesy of the Studio Museum in Harlem

Camille Norment, Notes from the Undermind , 2001.

What do you remember about your first visit to the Studio Museum?

Nikita Gale: It was around 2005—I was an undergrad and I took this class with [curator and art historian] Kellie Jones. She mentioned that she was on the board of this place called the Studio Museum, which I had never heard of. I ended up going to see the show “Frequency” and it shifted my understanding of what artists do. I was a bedroom musician, taking photos, and kind of dabbling [in art]. To see that there was a space for that kind of creative production marked a profound shift for me. A decade later, I was in the “Fictions” show with Sable.

Sable Elyse Smith: I started to go to the museum after I moved to New York in 2011. When I graduated from my MFA program, I applied for a job in the education department. That was my real introduction.

Camille Norment: Visiting the Studio Museum was a normal part of my routine. I was in the very first “F” show that Thelma [Golden, the Studio Museum’s director and chief curator] organized: “Freestyle.” It was instrumental in affirming my perspective of what I can do, and be, as a Black female creative practitioner. The museum was so kind as to open up a wall underneath the stairway and expose a hidden space in which I installed a sound-based work. The premise of “Freestyle” was so welcoming to me: Black art can be anything that art can be.

During opening day, I was standing outside my installation and here comes a man looking at the work and then he looks at me, kind of slyly, and says, “Where’s the Black?” It’s a very important moment because “Freestyle” was acknowledging that freedom. It’s the experience of growing up as a Black female that, by default, becomes embodied in the work. But also, no one should be creatively confined to pre-formed assumptions of what art should be.

Sixteen years later, Nikita and Sable, you were included in the “Fictions” show. What did being part of this series mean to you?

Smith: There [was] a lore around the “F” shows at that point. Ours was teetering on this idea of maybe it’s the last “F” show [because the museum was about to undergo its renovation]. Who knows how that legacy continues?

Gale: Often there is difficulty around legibility as a Black queer artist who is working in sound or process-based works. I recognize it must have been even more difficult 16 years ago. It makes me think about the wariness that I’ve always had around aesthetic categories and genres being so closely linked to identity. I remember my studio visit for the “Fictions” show with [then-Studio Museum curators] Connie Choi and Hallie Ringle. I’d just finished grad school and I was feeling very ungrounded. I was excited they were there, but also in the back of my mind, feeling like, Maybe this isn’t the kind of thing that would fly for a Studio Museum show—that little thought in my head like, Where is the Black? Being in that show opened me up to all of these really fascinating practices. To feel like I’m in conversation with

this lineage of artists who’ve made space for a practice like mine to be more understood—it feels very meaningful.

“With

the Studio Museum, I feel like I’m connecting on a level that feels more human, because of their investment,

and where it is

in

Harlem, and how that serves as a magnet for people who will approach the work on a slightly different register.”

—Sable Elyse Smith

Are there conversations your work can have at the Studio Museum that would be impossible elsewhere?

Gale: Every institution is a reflection of its audience. For me, the difference is that the Studio Museum represents an accumulation of interests around collecting and identity that are very different from most institutions in New York, the U.S., and the world, really.

Smith: With the Studio Museum, I feel like I’m connecting on a level that feels more human, because of their investment and where it is in Harlem, and how that serves as a magnet for people who will approach the work on a slightly different register. Even if I’m having a great conversation about something I’m participating in at MoMA, there is a barrier to intimacy.

Norment: You just look and you know there’s a whole base of knowledge that the work can sit on top of. That’s a shared cultural experience. It’s quite unique and really does change the reading of the works. Anyone who’s encountering the work within this context is actually quite privileged.

Sable, how did your experience in the museum’s education department inform your trajectory?

Smith: I started working at the Studio Museum at the same time I was doing this fellowship in MoMA’s education department, and I had those two things working against each other in really interesting ways. That was a catalyst for me to seek out all kinds of art-related education experiences and turn it into a “career.” [Smith is an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts ] I felt incredibly alien at MoMA and the complete opposite at the Studio Museum. There was so much space and autonomy. I went to my boss and I was like, “I have this idea for this museum education training program,” and she was like, “Okay, we have this much money in the budget, which won’t change, but let’s try to pilot something.” I started to understand structures in a different way.

What are some of the relationships you formed through the Studio Museum that ended up being formative for you?

Gale: Where do I start with that list? Rodney McMillian, whose work I saw on my first visit, ended up being one of my professors in grad school and a mentor. I didn’t meet [former Studio Museum Associate Curator] Christine Y. Kim during my show, but she became a curator at LACMA and a champion of my work; I would attribute that connection to the Studio Museum. I’m thinking of the museum as a project that is not just about exhibition space, but creating social space, an archive, a collection—all of these important types of work.

Smith: So many curators have come through Studio Museum—Jamillah James who’s now at the MCA Chicago, Naima Keith at LACMA.

Norment: Having known Thelma [Golden] since the early days, it was also her relationship to the creative community that I came into when I came to New York in the early ’90s. Greg Tate was writing about the exhibitions—he became a very important character in my life. It was a lateral structure rather than a vertical structure, which is how I would have described my relationship then to institutions such as MoMA or the Whitney or the Guggenheim—not even vertical, but completely distant, and utterly unrelated to who I am.

“Institutions also have the ability to teach artists how you should expect your work to be treated. The ‘Fictions’ show was the first time I ever had a professional art handler deal with my work. That was a big deal, just watching someone pack the work properly.”

—Nikita Gale

You all share a way of working that is interdisciplinary and not easily commodifiable. How does that shape your relationship to institutions in general, but also the Studio Museum in particular?

Smith: The Studio Museum was one of the first institutions that gave my work not just a one-off platform but continuous engagement. Other institutions look at that and think maybe it isn’t such a risk.

Gale: Institutions also have the ability to teach artists how you should expect your work to be treated. The “Fictions” show was the first time I ever had a professional art handler deal with my work. That was a big deal, just watching someone pack the work properly.

Norment: It really has established itself as a space of care—a very overused word, but it’s true.

What Exercise?

By ZITO MADU

A critic parses the emotional intersections of art and sports through the lens of his two callings: soccer and literature.

Much of my life has centered around play. I played soccer from the time that I could walk, and made it to the professional levels before quitting to become a writer.

During the tour for my first book, The Minotaur at Calle Lanza—a work of literary nonfiction incorporating speculative elements—I was often asked how I made that transition, as if sport

and literature were opposites. My answer is that, while the approach is different, the foundation feels the same. I am still at play. I am still using my mind, body, and experience to express myself within the borders of the field and with recognition of my own strengths and limitations, physically and technically. With literature, I’m still attempting to do what I dreamed of as a young kid, riding in a van with my teammates

to a far-off soccer tournament—to fully realize and express myself through an art.

In an interview with The Paris Review, Julio Cortázar made this connection between literature and sport when he defined both as serious and profound forms of play. For the novelist, art —like literature—is a game “one can put one’s life into.” Just as sport, like art, is a platform for human expression. Anyone who has ever made something that feels like it reflects them—a painting, a novel, a sculpture—or who has performed on a field, a court, or even a ping-pong table, where it felt like their body and mind were working together perfectly, knows that what they experience—beyond relief and happiness for reaching a deadline, finishing a piece, or winning a game—is a feeling of joy and a sense, a glimpse, of being truly free. For however long that feeling lasts, the pain of getting there is worth it. Then you try to do it again.

Read Zito Madu’s full essay on the intersections of art and sports at culturedmag.com/the-critics-table/.

Photography by Sean Davidson and

A New Kind of Game

By MAX BERLINGER

Since retiring from the NBA in 2023, Carmelo Anthony has doubled down on a collecting practice that’s driven by instinct and a willingness to play the long game.

Photography by FRANK FRANCES

Styling by KHALILAH BEAVERS

All clothing by BURBERRY

To right: Ernie Barnes, Above the Rim, AP#2, 2018. Above: Eduardo Kobra, Warhol x Basquiat

Carmelo Anthony wears a full look by Burberry and jewelry by David Yurman. Watch is talent’s own.

Jonathan Mannion, Rakim Allah NY 1997, 2018.

The first art that Carmelo Anthony was exposed to came in everyday forms: graffiti and, later, album covers. “Records were always art pieces to me,” the celebrated basketball player turned entrepreneur tells me. “You’d have these vinyl collections, and the covers, those were art.” Hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy and woo-woo funk band Earth, Wind & Fire were early touchstones. “Everything is a message,” he says of the rich symbolism layered into the latter’s trippy visuals.

Now 41 and retired from the NBA, Anthony— who ranks 10th among the league’s leading career scorers and is a three-time gold medal Olympian—has applied the same unrelenting devotion to amassing an impressive collection with an emphasis on street art and photography. Personal highlights include five works by Nelson Makamo, and pieces by Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Ernie Barnes, and Marcus Jansen, but despite the capacious wall space available at home, Anthony confesses that the collection has grown too large to display coherently in its entirety. “My taste is very intentional,” he adds. “Every room in my house has a steady flow, and there’s a message in each piece that I collect.”

Though Anthony’s relationship to art has evolved since he retired in 2023, the Brooklyn and Baltimore native began collecting in earnest while still starting out in the league, thanks to

the guidance of older players like Juwan Howard. “I’d hear these older guys talk about Black art, how they’d go down to SoHo in the 1980s and buy pieces. When you hear those stories, it makes you want to go on your own journey,” Anthony recalls.

Young, driven, and hungry—both on the court and off—Anthony started to educate himself by interacting with art in any way he could: visiting museums and galleries, touring private collections, and meeting artists at their studios. “When you get a chance to step into another artist’s world, it makes the artist that much more meaningful,” he says. “I was very observant at the beginning, just studying the game, trying to understand the industry and people’s collections,” he continues, thinking back on his early days. “You go to someone’s home and they have certain pieces and it’s like, Oh, that’s cool. I want to do my own version of that.” This love of art is part of a bigger passion for beautiful, wellcrafted things. “It’s all interconnected,” Anthony notes. “I love luxury at the end of the day; I love details. Whether it’s art, watches, or design, I like to see something executed at a high level.”

While various leitmotifs ebb and flow through the collection, there’s an emphasis on the Black experience. “A lot of the Black artists … They’re talking to me about things that I’ve gone through

or been a part of,” Anthony muses. “I like to be able to extend that story to people who enter the house or ask me about my collection. That experience has to surround me at home, because it’s what I relate to.” New additions are born from a mix of research and instinct; though he consults gallerists and solicits tips from friends like Swizz Beatz, Anthony notes that he often finds himself captivated by a work regardless of its provenance. “Sometimes it takes real effort to understand a work,” he says, “but I’ve also [collected] pieces without even knowing who the artist is. If a piece speaks to me, it speaks to me.”

Today, Anthony pays forward the invaluable generosity that older athletes offered him early in his career by advising younger players who might feel unwelcome or trepidatious in art-world circles on how to build up a fulfilling collection—and a life in general. “It’s very individualistic,” he says of the process. “There’s nothing wrong with what you like. Nobody can tell you that a work of art is not good if you feel it.” At some point, he’d like to share this labor of love with a wider audience by curating shows from among the works in his possession—but like any real athlete, Anthony knows that the right things come with time. “Thinking about my legacy,” he concludes, “I’d like to cement myself into the art world as a collector, [and] eventually show the world my full collection. But we’ll get there. I’m not in a rush.”

Hebru Brantley, NWA.

“Every room in my house has a steady flow, and there’s a message in each piece that I collect.”

Executive Production by DIONNE COCHRANE

Stan Squirewell, General Barca, 2018.

The Little Camera That Could

By KARLY QUADROS

For over 100 years, Leica cameras have brought the world home.

It’s hard to imagine a time when a photo wasn’t a swipe and click away. But back in 1925, cameras were large, finicky things, and their subjects posed and precious. After all, who would want to risk ruining one of only a few exposures? Then came the Leica I, a small metal box carrying 35mm film. Internally, employees of the nascent company worried about the viability of a camera developed for the everyday, until Ernst Leitz II, then at the helm, declared, “I hereby decide: We will take the risk.”

Over the next 100 years, Leitz’s instinct was proven prescient as Leica’s portable cameras changed everything about the way that life was captured and visually understood. Thirty-five millimeter film became the standard for on-the-go imagemakers. Henri Cartier-Bresson, the Parisian father of modern photojournalism, was an early adopter, as was Robert Capa, whose images of the Spanish Civil War dropped the brutality soldiers faced into ordinary Americans’ living rooms. The members of CULTURED’s Young Photographers List, featured in this issue and supported by Leica, would be nowhere as intrepid without its compact design and technology.

From V-J Day in Times Square to Che Guevara’s revolutionary headshot, the images produced by a Leica have a way of turning an instant into iconography. People become symbols, leaders become legends, and photographers bring their cameras out into the world—then bring the world back home again.

Leica’s M11 100 YEARS OF LEICA “NEW YORK USA” Edition, released in New York this year. Photography

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The Bunny Mellon Effect

When she died in 2014, Bunny Mellon left behind dozens of Tiffany & Co. pieces. This year, the jewelry house is cementing her legacy as the ultimate tastemaking muse.

A broken potato chip was never once served at Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon’s home. The late horticulturalist, art collector, landscape designer, and sometimes-recluse—best known for the White House Rose Garden reno she undertook for the Kennedys—had staff at her Virginia estate remove all but the most intact Lay’s before serving the charmingly lowbrow treat to guests. More than a decade after she died at the age of 103, Mellon’s name is still invoked as a shorthand for midcentury elegance and exacting perfectionism.

The New York native—born on Madison Avenue, no less—was the right-hand woman of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and a devoted patron of the late Tiffany & Co. designer Jean Schlumberger. By the end of her life, she had nearly 150 pieces adorned with his diamond and sapphire butterflies or gold and emerald flowers. (Staff at the estate claim they still find pieces tucked away around the house.) Among her trove was one of the first Bird on the Rock brooches made by Tiffany & Co. in 1965—arguably Schlumberger’s most recognizable design.

It’s no surprise, then, that as the jewelry house releases the latest iteration of the Bird on a Rock collection this month, it is returning to the proverbial well—Mellon’s Virginia estate—for inspiration. The sprawling property is the same one where Schlumberger regularly visited his friend—and where he, in turn, would seek inspiration among Mellon’s immaculate gardens and library of over 10,000 horticultural volumes. “We studied birds as Jean Schlumberger did,” says Chief Artistic Officer Nathalie Verdeille of designing the latest collection, “carefully observing their stances, their feathers, the structures of their wings.” Tiffany evidently also studied Schlumberger himself. While the line’s fine jewelry pieces are arranged in a variety of subtle, diamond-encrusted wing patterns, the high jewelry items center two different gemstones: tanzanite and turquoise, with the latter chosen as a nod to Schlumberger’s love of the material. Settings unfurl around each like gold talons securing a catch in flight.

Today, the rise of “if you know, you know” fashion, archival runway pulls, and historic reinterpretations like Tiffany’s Bird on the Rock collection suggest that a sense of lineage and place is in high regard. Each time a design is plucked from the churn of history and made lustrous once again, the result is memorable—a piece with historic heft that transcends karats.

Not Your Father’s REM

By SOPHIE LEE

On the 10th anniversary of his record-breaking Sleep, Max Richter returns with a booster shot of an album and a heartening antidote to our hypermediated lives.

At the turn of the 2010s, Max Richter, the preeminent composer of our time, was spending part of the year playing shows around the world. His partner, the artist Yulia Mahr, stayed home with their young children, and in the middle of the night, she would tune into livestreams of Richter’s concerts as she faded in and out of wakefulness. “Somewhere else on the planet, she’d be listening in,” the now 59-year-old musician recalls. “She [would tell me] that there’s something special on an emotional level about listening to music in that state. You can’t censor anything.” This is how Sleep —the first classical record to reach one billion streams—was born.

In 2015, Richter released the eight-and-a-halfhour album, 204 tracks long, and as much an experiment in sound as it is a seminal addition to the canon. The project—meant to function as a retreat from the merciless pace of modern life—was performed in its entirety overnight at venues like the Sydney Opera House and the Great Wall of China, where Richter remembers

stepping offstage to find the armed guards asleep, cradling their guns. “I was like, ‘My work here is done,’” he laughs.

“It’s not like I’m a Luddite. I mean, look at my studio: It looks like NASA ground control.”

This month, for the project’s 10th anniversary, Richter dropped Sleep Circle, a 90-minute continuation of his hypnagogic preoccupations timed to the duration of a REM cycle.

“Spending time with an old piece is, in a way, like meeting a previous version of yourself,” he says of parsing through Sleep for touchpoints.

“You start thinking, That’s an interesting decision. Why did I do that? Versions of ourselves are constantly in flux, aren’t they?”

When Richter recalls the genesis of Sleep, it’s almost hard to remember the version of the world he speaks about. He notes that 4G had just hit the phones that were already fixtures of our pockets. Life has only moved in one direction since then: “Faster.” In 90 minutes, Sleep Circle mirrors this acceleration with denser compositions and a wistfulness that reverberates off the strings.

“It’s not like I’m a Luddite. I mean, look at my studio: It looks like NASA ground control,” Richter says, waving to the wall of synths behind him. “We’re still learning as a species, as a culture … Having all our devices connected, it’s not [the same as] having us connected.” This from an artist who, through screens—be it film, phone, or laptop—has reached into our homes, concert halls, and cinemas. His measured compositions emerge from the mediatic onslaught like TikTok’s late-night PSAs (“Hey, you’ve been scrolling for a while now”), but the reminder is a bit simpler, and soothing: just sleep.

by

Marie Sutter

Photography

“IT’S SOMETHING THAT I HAVE STRUGGLED WITH, THE DIFFERENT SIDES OF ME.”

‘COMPACT. RAW. REAL.’

By EMILY DOUGHERTY

EARNING DIOR’S PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD IS A COMPLEX HONOR FOR AN ARTIST IN THE EARLY STAGES OF BUILDING A PRACTICE. THIS YEAR’S WINNER, JOEL QUAYSON, IS FEELING IT OUT.

“How do you feel?” The question—posed again and again by the narrator of Joel Quayson’s short film How Do You Feel?—echoes as Quayson, a student at the Hague’s Royal Academy of Art, dresses and undresses in front of the camera. He pulls a simple white shirt over his head, its open collar revealing a silver cross. How do you feel? He tugs on a fuzzy pink balaclava—a frame for sad eyes bedazzled with fuchsia glitter and shimmering crystals. How do you feel? He removes the shirt. He wipes away the makeup. How do you feel? “Compact. Raw. Real. It questions you. You question him. The concept is simple but pure,” says Peter Philips, creative director for Dior Makeup. He and fellow jurors—including partner institution Luma Arles’s founder Maja Hoffmann and artists from around the globe—awarded Quayson the 2025 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents at the annual Rencontres d’Arles photo festival. “There’s such a heaviness behind it: He wants his parents to see who he is, but he can’t show them,” adds photographer and jury chair Yuriko Takagi. “After I watched it, I couldn’t stop thinking of it. You wonder how he feels—and by the end, you return to questioning how you feel. How do I feel?” On the eve of his

award ceremony in July, Quayson shared just that with CULTURED’s beauty editor.

Describe the feel of your work in three words. Vulnerability. Acceptance. Discovery.

What draws your focus to the concept of multiple selves? It’s something that I have struggled with, the different sides of me. The video shows one part of me: how I’m seen by people who know my orientation, [how] I like to go out and be around my friends. Dressing up. Just being open and expressive. And the other part is about my culture, my religion, and my family—how they see me. Both sides are very different, but it is still one person. I’m getting ready for a party and putting on things and having fun with it. After the party, when I go back home, I have to take everything off, so that they won’t see. Otherwise, they would question why I dress like this. They would ask, “Are you this? Or are you this?” This struggle has gone on and on and on for so long.

Has your family seen your work? No, I’ve told them about it, that my work was selected and that I won. They wanted to see it, and I want to

show it to them, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know how they will react to it. They don’t know I’m queer.

What are your essential ingredients when shooting photography or a film? I admire people. I love to look at people on the street, at school, or any place—see how they dress and how they behave.

Where else do you turn for inspiration? Movies, TV, definitely music. Charli XCX really inspires me. For photographers: Peter Lindbergh, Tyler Mitchell, Ryan McGinley, Petra Collins. Petra’s really the one, along with Peter Lindbergh, who made me want to start doing photography. Her work is so vulnerable and so soft and beautiful. Whenever I see her work, I go, How does she do this? I check on YouTube to see behind the scenes but still can’t figure it out. With makeup, I’m inspired by the people around me: drag queens, ballroom artists, photographers. On social media, [it’s] the people doing extraordinary things with makeup, and Euphoria. It was so simple, but so beautiful.

Joel Quayson, How Do You Feel? (Film Still), 2024.

Three Photographers, Three Places

SANDRA BLOW

When the Museum of Modern Art in New York established its New Photography series in 1985, photographs could only be edited in the darkroom. Now, as the series celebrates its 40th anniversary, most of us carry powerful cameras—that also edit and store thousands of images—in our pockets. Fittingly, the eye and skill of a keen photographer have never stood out more. MoMA’s “Lines of Belonging,” opening Sept. 14 and featuring 13 international artists and collectives from four cities, is a testament to the enduring power of a well-captured image. Here, three of the participants reflect on their contributions.

Sandra Blow captures the thriving queer, artistic, and nightlife scenes of Mexico City, where she lives. Trained in advertising, her photography spans fashion editorials and snapshots of daily life.

“I took this photograph in Mexico City. The person in the image is my friend Tony, a French tattoo artist. The context was simple—like many of my photos, it was just a fast, fleeting moment. We were at my home in Colonia Roma, and Tony wasn’t wearing a shirt because it was a hot day. I grabbed my camera and asked to photograph his Chanel tattoo. I loved the contrast of luxury branding with tattoo art. I shot it on expired film, which adds to its feeling. Though I haven’t seen Tony in years, this image makes me feel we’re still friends.”

Sandra Blow, Tony, 2018.

Three Photographers, Three Places

L. KASIMU HARRIS

L. Kasimu Harris strives to tell the stories of underrepresented communities in his native New Orleans. His photographs are in the collections of institutions including the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

“Marwan Pleasant is a fashion designer by trade, a Black Masking Indian by blood, and a flag boy in the Golden Eagles by choice. I made photographs as he and other members of the tribe suited up at the home of the grandfather, ‘Big Chief’ Monk Boudreaux. It was Mardi Gras morning 2018, and blocks away from the marching bands and floats. Their tribe meandered [through] the streets in traditionally Black neighborhoods of uptown New Orleans. They chanted and greeted other Indians in a contest of who sewed the prettiest suit of beads and feathers. The suits are heavy and this city is perpetually humid. Respite was in Sportsman’s Corner, a venerable Black-owned bar. Inside, the Indians resumed singing, and Pleasant was in the throes of a spiritual transition. I moved closer. Beyond the peak moment, the image is about access, preservation, and a bold declaration for Black culture: I was here, I am here.”

L. Kasimu Harris, Come Tuesday (Marwan Pleasant at Sportsman’s Corner), New Orleans, 2020.

Three Photographers, Three Places

PRASIIT STHAPIT

Prasiit Sthapit is a visual storyteller based in Kathmandu who photographs societies at the borderline. He is also the director of Fuzzscape, a multimedia music documentary project.

“For decades, Susta lived in limbo—no bridge, no electricity, poor schools and health care, and every monsoon, hundreds of hectares of land used to erode. When I first visited in 2012, two huts sold tea and fish; a year later, they had vanished into the river. Each year, the river crept closer. Retaining walls built in 2016, shown here, signaled change, followed by a bridge completed finally in 2024. It brought electricity, tourism, and market access. Locals speak of transformation. I, however, am inclined to be a little more skeptical. If there’s anything Susta’s history has shown us, it’s that hope is best leavened by caution, but hope is necessary and, in the case of Susta, even powerful.”

Prasiit Sthapit, Retaining Wall, 2016, from “Change of Course” series, 2012–18.

Follows Feeling Form

POLÈNE BET ON HIGH QUALITY, LOW-FANFARE LEATHER GOODS. NINE YEARS IN, THE FRENCH BRAND’S SOFT-POWER STRATEGY HAS PAID OFF—AND NOW IT HAS THE CHAMPS-ELYSÉES FLAGSHIP TO PROVE IT.

PRESENTED BY POLÈNE

“MAKING

LEATHER SURPRISING

IS A COMMON THREAD IN THIS FLAGSHIP, WHICH FOLLOWS A CONVICTION DEEPLY ROOTED IN ALL OF OUR PROJECTS.” —ANTOINE MOTHAY

Amidst the battalion of luxury strongholds in Paris’s storied Champs-Élysées district, Polène’s new flagship quietly commands attention. Inside, the space radiates a calm and collected brand of minimalism, inspired by the 9-year-old brand’s artisanal backbone and the neutral-forward palette of Ubrique, the Spanish town that’s home to its workshops. “[Ubrique] is our starting point but also our horizon,” co-founder and CEO Antoine Mothay says of the low-key Andalusian locale, which has garnered quite the reputation as the fashion world’s purveyor of leather goods in recent years. “This daily dialogue between Paris and Ubrique is what makes our approach unique.”

The boutique was designed in collaboration with Korean studio WGNB, which has already

left its mark on Polène’s Seoul and London outposts, to highlight the house’s legion of bags, jewelry, and small leather goods. “What appealed to me about WGNB was their desire to create a calm, serene, and warm atmosphere … and for this tranquility to radiate out onto the street,” says Mothay. Indeed, the space provides sanctuary from the bustle of the Parisian avenues, ushering visitors up a dark wooden staircase and through its dome-punctuated expanse. Leather is, unsurprisingly, another leitmotif. With the Tours-based Hors Studio, Polène devised a way to transform the material into stone, which coats the tabletops and checkout counter. “Making leather surprising is a common thread in this flagship, which follows a conviction deeply rooted in all of our projects,” notes Mothay.

This taste for material experimentation extends throughout the boutique’s key design elements. Marianna Ladreyt, known for her creations across fashion and furniture, handwove a sculptural sofa from intertwined leather tubes. Meanwhile, ceramicist Clémentine Debaere-Lewandowski contributed a textured table formed from clay impressions taken in Ubrique’s mountainous terrain. The patience and site-specificity of the latter work particularly touched Mothay, who lived in Ubrique while the brand was still nascent. “It reminds me of the importance of taking the time to create beautiful, sensitive, and poetic objects,” he shares. The same could be said of Polène’s Champs-Élysées home, which takes the brand’s ethos of everyday abundance to new heights.

There Were Countless Memorable Pieces on Offer at Collectible. These Four Stuck With Comedian Julio Torres.

Earlier this month, Water Street Projects played host to Collectible’s second-ever New York edition. Among the singular designer treasures, the Brussels-based design fair presented one particularly unconventional offering: a line by comedian-cum-designer Julio Torres. The SNL alum and creator of the acclaimed indie film Problemista debuted a collaboration with furniture brand Sabai that revels in New York life.

To mark the occasion, the budding interiors savant highlights a few of the other pieces on view at the fair that he couldn’t stop thinking about.

“She just got out of the shower and wasn’t expecting company… now there’s a detective at the front door. Can she convince him she had nothing to do with the fact that her ex suddenly went missing?”

“A scepter for a foolish prince. It will make [the space] say, ‘I’m here and I have something to say, but I can’t remember what.’”

“Reminds me of a Sailor Moon character mid-transformation. I think it would be welcomed in most homes. We’ve all seen the wobbly pastels take over; this is that, but grown up.”

“I can’t tell if it’s life-size or for a child. The disorienting proportions are very alluring.”

Photography courtesy of Collectible

Studio Sam Klemick, Ribbon Side Table, 2023.

Merve Kahraman for Tuleste Factory, Hozcal Lamp.

Andrea Spiridonakos, When the Oceans Drank Atlantis, 2023.

Concordia Studio, Mecedora.

Cabinet & Table by Draga & Aurel

Chair by George Ranalli

Glass Chandelier & Wall Art by Jamie Harris

Wall Cabinet by Djivan Schapira

Totem by Jessica Boubetra & Jean Baptiste Lenglet

Glass Vessel by Maarten Vrolijk

Sculptural Light by Teemu Salonen

‘WHERE DOES THE BODY END AND THE TECHNOLOGY BEGIN?’

By MARA VEITCH

AHEAD OF THE LAUNCH OF APPLE’S LIQUID GLASS TECHNOLOGY, TWO ARTISTS INVESTIGATE ITS MALLEABLE PROPERTIES.

“Most users probably won’t be able to describe it, but I hope they can feel it,” says Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design. He’s referencing the company’s latest undertaking, but he may as well be talking about any of Apple’s innovations over the past half-century. At the core of the company’s synapse-rewiring, society-shaping ingenuity lies a sensory push-and-pull: between the materials of the physical world and the newly developed textures, pioneered in large part by Apple’s designers themselves, of the emergent digital one.

“Apple has a long history of using metaphors,” Dye notes, citing some of the earliest referential details of the user interface: a Files icon that resembles a manila folder or the Books app’s hardwood backdrop. Glass, historically, has been chief among these house codes: there’s the iconic Glass Cube Fifth Avenue storefront in New York, Apple Park’s glossy loop in Cupertino, and the iPhone’s infinite black screen.

The pendulum between a reverence for the tactile and the embrace of a more digital visual language has swung back and forth over the years (2013, for example, saw the advent of iOS 7, when the design team opted for a flatter, more monochromatic interface). But this fall, when Apple launches iOS 26, the company’s first-ever design update to extend across all Apple platforms globally, it will engage with this tactile tension in an entirely new way. The update’s marquee feature is Liquid Glass—a translucent new digital material that refracts

the light from its surroundings the way real glass would, undulating in response to human touch like crystalline jelly.

“We[’ve created] a digital material that does things no physical material could do, while maintaining all the qualities that a real piece of glass would,” Dye says of the offering, which will be most recognizable to the average Apple user as a sense of added dimension and depth to the Apple interface. (It follows, then, that the process for creating Liquid Glass would be a tactile one. Dye’s Human Interface Design team is oriented alongside Apple’s in-house industrial design studio, which allowed both sets of designers to convene regularly to study how various glass prisms interacted with light—a form of “sketching,” according to Dye.)

All of this, for Dye, comes back to the company’s reverence for the romance of physical materials—a sensibility no one can relate to better than an artist. Here, two of them—Alice Bucknell, whose core materials include CGI and game engines, and video and performance artist P. Staff—reflect on the role of Apple’s boundary-warping technology on their practices.

How does technology support your work?

Alice Bucknell: As an artist working with game engines to make video games and CGI films, technology is at the center of my practice. It allows me to bring speculative worlds and complex narratives into immersive virtual

environments that feel both reality-adjacent and open to other possible futures.

P. Staff: Everything I do is filtered through technology, and it is a space of play as much as resistance and promiscuity with form.

What textures and feelings do you associate with Liquid Glass?

Staff: I have long been fascinated by transparency and the surface of the screen, and the sensation of penetrating multiple layers of information and imagery.

Bucknell: To me, Liquid Glass is a kind of sensing layer between a user and her content. I think of lightness, fluidity, and a dynamic interplay between the senses—heightening one’s experience while reducing the traditional “footprint” of the interface and transforming it into a bridge between worlds.

Does Apple’s design approach resonate with your own practice?

Bucknell: I love Apple’s handling of the interface as something that intuits the user’s actions. In my work, I understand video games as “affective interfaces” for experimenting with agency and possibility, and Apple’s approach to design holds a similar resonance.

Staff: I am equally fascinated by colour, haptics, and sensation. Where does the body end and the technology begin?

Photography by Dan Winters and courtesy of Apple

“WE‘VE CREATED A DIGITAL MATERIAL THAT DOES THINGS NO PHYSICAL MATERIAL COULD DO, WHILE MAINTAINING ALL THE QUALITIES THAT A REAL PIECE OF GLASS WOULD.”

—ALAN DYE

What does it mean for clothing to be lived-in from the start? At Prada, the answer unfolds through softened pumps, deliberately reimagined seams, and handbags bearing the illusion of age. There’s a sense of duty to not just dress the body, but also echo its quirks and character, in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s recent collections. The co–creative directors showed skirts and coats with slits just high enough to allow for optimal mobility for Fall/Winter 2021. Two years later, in the house’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, raw-edged skirts and gently creasing suiting set the tone with an insouciance that felt more than sartorial. This season’s offerings give new momentum—and no small dose of whimsy—to the studied undoneness that’s become a pillar of the brand.

Wear & Tear, Prada Style

By SAM FALB

Prada’s newest pieces come preweathered and purposefully undone—challenging the notion of elegance as the purely pristine.

PREMEDITATED PATINA

Atelier shots show a pump from the Fall/Winter 2025 collection being sanded and scuffed by the team—a process of deliberate undoing.

Eventually, the pointed toe will be further softened by the wear of its owner, the only proof of its pristine origins being the Prada label added as a calling card to the front of the heel.

TUMULTE ON TOP

The season’s handbag star is the Prada Tumulte. Introduced on the runway alongside blurred silhouettes and tousled hairstyles, the leather doorstop distills femininity through Prada’s utilitarian bent.

A siphon for the day-to-day chaos that gives it its name, the Tumulte’s rounded body, accordion-like sides, and hang-off-the-wrist chain show strategic signs of faux wear and tear—battle scars for the woman who can weather anything.

RAW REFINEMENT

A slate gray, Shetland wool dress was lifted from its native corporate-conservative habitat and cinched, pulled, and rethreaded into a bloom of contours. A nipped waist gives way to a softly constructed knot at the bust, both anatomically observant and abstract. In Milan this past February, the dress traipsed down the runway, styled with stomp-worthy boots and a plum-red leather handbag as the collection’s stylist, Olivier Rizzo, juxtaposed office finery with the unkempt edge best associated with after-hours diversions.

By ELISSA SUH

by MARC

HIBBERT

Vicky Krieps Beholden to No One

The elusive Luxembourgish actor has been the object of cult adoration since her breakthrough in Phantom Thread. As she looks down the barrel of three major fall releases, Vicky Krieps is focused on staying out of the spotlight.

Photography

Styling by STUDIO&

Vicky Krieps wears a dress by Comme des Garçons from 20 Age Archive, feather headpiece by Keisuke Terada, and tights by Swedish Stockings. Shoes are stylist’s own.

Vicky wears a top and skirt by Marco Ribeiro, and a hat by Noel Stewart.

Vicky Krieps never imagined being an actor. As an 8-year-old growing up in Luxembourg, she remembers watching Beauty and the Beast—not the Disney version, but the surreal 1946 one by Jean Cocteau—and longing to be a part of it. “But I had no idea how,” she recalls. “If you’re from there, you don’t dream of becoming a film actress. Those people come from London, or Paris, or New York.”

“I LIKE TO JUST STOP THE TRAIN FOR A MINUTE. IT’S A FORM OF RESISTANCE TO THIS SYSTEM THAT TELLS US EVERYTHING HAS TO MOVE FORWARD: THE PLOT, THE MONEY, THE HOUSE, THE CAR.”

The ominous romanticism of Cocteau’s fairytale rendition feels like an apt origin story for Krieps, who, nearly two decades onscreen and a Cannes Best Performance award later, has earned a reputation for skirting the expected to conjure an off-kilter mood across her steadfastly independent filmography. In her performances, there inevitably comes a moment when the 41-year-old actor seems unreachable, detached—her cheeks flushed, dark eyes drifting just above the fray. These scenes reveal her eerie magnetism: She’s not just present in the emotional gravity of the moment, she’s thrumming with it.

By this point, most cinephiles know the hallmarks of a Krieps role: women confronting moments of rupture or unrest, characters who resist intimacy in order to safeguard knotty inner lives. The actor is drawn to these parts for reasons she can’t quite explain. “It’s nothing to do with ‘who’s the director, what is the budget, or who is in it,’” she muses over the phone. “I myself never feel like I’m at the steering wheel.” In this case, her meaning is both literal and figurative: She’s riding shotgun with her husband Lazaros Gounaridis on a road trip through Europe when we speak, a brief moment of calm before the maelstrom of festival season.

“I MYSELF NEVER FEEL LIKE I’M AT THE STEERING WHEEL.”

This fall marks a kind of supernova moment for Krieps, with three major premieres that reveal the depth and range of her enigmatic sensibility. First, there’s the theatrical release of Love Me Tender, an adaptation of Constance Debré’s cult memoir, which debuted at Cannes to strong reviews. In it, Krieps plays a lawyer mother fighting for custody of

her young son after coming out as a lesbian. In Yakushima’s Illusion, the long-awaited return from Japanese auteur Naomi Kawase, she’s a hospital worker coping with the disappearance of her lover on a volcanic island. The film is heavy on atmosphere and light on plot—Krieps hasn’t seen the final cut, and can’t make heads or tails of it just yet. Then there’s Father Mother Sister Brother, the latest from Jim Jarmusch and the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival this month. A triptych that follows adult children as they reckon with aging parents, Krieps stars opposite Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling as siblings visiting their novelist mother in the film’s Dublin-set second installment. (Krieps sports pink locks in the film, an uncharacteristically overt transformation for an actor who tends to look like herself onscreen.)

The Jarmusch project is a quietly momentous milestone for Krieps—a collaboration with a director she idolizes, and a role that promises to introduce her to a wider audience without compromising what she values. “Jim Jarmusch is my hero,” she gushes. “I would’ve done anything he asked.” She first encountered the laconic No Wave director as a teenager watching Stranger Than Paradise at her local cinematheque. “I thought this was the coolest thing on the planet,” she continues, describing the scene where Eszter Balint trudges through an empty Lower East Side with a boombox blasting Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

“JIM JARMUSCH IS MY HERO. I WOULD’VE DONE ANYTHING HE ASKED.”

But more than music or mood, it was Jarmusch’s refusal to rush, his willingness to let a scene drift into place, that left an impression on Krieps. It’s something she prioritizes in her own craft. “I like to just stop the train for a minute,” she says of her tendency to impose a pause, literally, onscreen. “It’s a form of resistance to this system that tells us everything has to move forward: the plot, the money, the house, the car.” Most movies, she observes, exist to entertain. “You need tragedy, you need a joke, all the elements to try and catch everyone’s attention.” The Jarmusch project, on the other hand, gave Krieps the chance to ask, “What happens if we don’t try to do that at all?”

Krieps is similarly contrarian when it comes to accents, which she refuses to perfect— more out of conviction than carelessness. “If I’m given an exercise and I understand how to do it, something in me resists giving that last 10 percent,” she observes cheekily. She notes, for example, that she’s just a few tutoring sessions shy of speaking unaccented French, but prefers to savor the subtle imperfections of her diction. “Everyone has an accent from somewhere,” she says.

“The more perfect I am, the less room I leave for the audience.” Krieps holds fast to these principles, even with her idols: Her character in Jarmusch’s film is meant to be English, but bears an alluring trace of the actor’s continental inflection.

“THE MORE PERFECT I AM, THE LESS ROOM I LEAVE FOR THE AUDIENCE.”

Though her characters occupy wildly different universes, Krieps argues that they share a common yearning. “They’re trying to break free,” says the actor, who often describes her work as a means of gnawing away at something fundamentally human. “I feel a need to research humankind,” she adds. “Why are we good? Why are we bad? Why do we fight? How do we love?” Her supporting turn in the upcoming third and fourth seasons of Ryan Murphy’s true crime series Monsters, which delves into the story of the serial killer Ed Gein and the 19th-century patricidal axe murderer Lizzie Borden, respectively, falls along the same continuum. “These monster stories, they’re always asking why we are the way we are, and how we transcend that.”

Despite her coveted filmography and stacked fall slate, Krieps remains willfully out of step with the machinery of fame. She’s noted before that she comes down from a project by writing songs—a private way of metabolizing the emotional residue of her work. “It’s a relief,” she says. “Even if the song doesn’t answer the mystery of who the character was, at least I can let go of something.” But when I ask if she’d ever release them publicly, she stops me short. “You make the music and then what—it has to go online? Why? It wasn’t made to be sold.” I change the subject, asking what kind of project she wants to take on next, now that she can do anything. The answer, predictably, surprises: “Probably a silent movie,” she says, pausing. “Mm-hmm. Silent, black and white. I would love that.”

“YOU NEED TRAGEDY, YOU NEED A JOKE, ALL THE ELEMENTS TO TRY AND CATCH EVERYONE’S ATTENTION. WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DON’T TRY TO DO THAT AT ALL?”

Vicky wears a dress by Issey Miyake and hat by Abi Wood. Tights and shoes are stylist’s own.

Vicky Krieps wears a dress by Comme des Garçons from 20 Age Archive, bloomers by Róisín Pierce, and shoes by Jude.

Vicky wears a top by Issey Miyake, hat by Comme des Garçons from 20 Age Archive, and tights by Heist.

“I LIKE TO JUST STOP THE TRAIN FOR A MINUTE. IT’S A FORM OF RESISTANCE TO THIS SYSTEM THAT TELLS US EVERYTHING HAS TO MOVE FORWARD: THE PLOT, THE MONEY, THE HOUSE, THE CAR.”

Vicky wears a top by Transe Paris, skirt by Comme des Garçons from 20 Age Archive, collar on head by Chylak, socks by Falke, and shoes by Le Monde Beryl.

Hair by KEISUKE TERADA

Make up by BEA SWEET

Head of Production by KIT PAK-POY

Production by VICTORIA WATKINS

On-Set Production by NATALIE STENIER

Lighting Direction by IVANO PAGNUSSAT

Motion by JOEL KERR

Styling Assistance by CYDNEY EDEN MOORE,  SOFIA ALLEGUE PIRIZ, CLIONA O’SULLIVAN, and ABI WOOD

Hair Assistance by YASEMIN HASSAN

Lighting Assistance by KAYLA MIDDLETON

Vicky wears a jacket by Givenchy by Sarah Burton, hat by Benny Andallo, and tights by Heist. Black headpiece is stylist’s own.

KATE ZAMBRENO, the writer X SOPHIE CALLE, the subject

JUERGEN TELLER, the photographer

(A portrait of the artist by Kate Zambreno, along with portraits of the artist by Juergen Teller.) Creative Partner, DOVILE DRIZYTE Layout, JUERGEN TELLER

Sophie Calle at

“I realized the Sophie Calle I encountered during our interview was the editor—one of her many roles as an artist, in addition to detective and archivist.”

I composed the interview request carefully, attempting not to fawn, and it was forwarded to her by Lisa Pearson of Siglio, English publisher of the early 1980s photobooks in exquisite editions (The Address Book, The Hotel, Suite Vénitienne, The Sleepers).

I knew from reading other English-language interviews (with Heidi Julavits, Sheila Heti, Brian Dillon, Lucy Ives, and others) that it might be tricky getting Sophie Calle to open up. There would be, I imagined, conditions. I was excited about her ambivalence toward the traditional profile, which I assured her I too shared. What would be the rules of her game? Maybe she’d make me write it as a third-person narrative. I was ready to be a submissive co-conspirator in her (our) durational project. I also entertained a fantasy that she would ask me to write a novel with her as the main character, and that she would follow those constraints for an entire year, which she asked Paul Auster, Enrique Vila-Matas, Jean Echenoz, and others to do before abandoning the project and cataloging it as part of her “Unfinished” series, displayed at the Musée Picasso in Paris in 2023–24, emptying out her elaborate system of drawers, as well as, in the rest of the space, inventorying and displaying her possessions, while she lived in a hotel for the three months her solo show was on view. At last, after a short follow-up where I casually dropped that I was the first to interview Annie Ernaux in English after the Nobel, a reply: “Okay! Let’s talk tomorrow or the next day.” This, it turned out, was a preliminary phone call before the formal interview, to clarify the conditions, she said. As I was waiting to pick up my children from their summer camp in a South Brooklyn scrapyard on a boiling hot day, I received an unfamiliar +33 phone call. I clicked the red button automatically, before I realized it was France calling. She seemed amused then by my awkwardness. She was about to see a play. She told

me she wanted to review any quotes and that she would rather I wrote in my voice, not hers, as it wasn’t really her voice being interviewed in another language. I hung up suddenly with a cheerful “Bye Sophie,” but my phone kept on pocket dialing her, in grocery stores, at home. Or she was calling me, these phantom Sophie Calle rings. I never figured it out.

Our real interview began an hour behind schedule. Sophie’s air conditioner was being fixed. I observed her tan arms in a black sleeveless top with those signature glasses and bangs (“Wait, do we need tinted lenses?” a friend asked when I sent him a screenshot). I tried to talk about the heat in Europe, and joked that my building’s super criticized us for having too many air conditioning units. She didn’t seem amused. Maybe it was the language barrier. In my courtly communication, I wrote that I think of The Address Book as such a distinctly summer project: the discovery of an address book of one Pierre D. on the streets of Paris, and the subsequent interviewing of the acquaintances and familiars within it over the course of a month, amounting to a portrait filled with holes and shadows. This she published daily in a French newspaper in August. Maybe she was able to get away with it because so many were away on holiday. (Isn’t that what art should be—what we can get away with?)

I kept thinking of this summer’s catastrophic floods in the U.S., and a companion book to the Musée Picasso show, a catalog of moldy works after a recent flood in her storage space, work that eerily deals with ephemerality and mortality, including her earlier series of blind people describing beauty, also exhibited at the Picasso show. Also destroyed were the dried flowers, gifts from the architect Frank Gehry, a large photograph of which will be displayed alongside framed photographs of the original flowers at a Perrotin show in New York this fall, alongside a “restaging,” I’m told by a publicist of the Musée

Picasso exhibition, which has a retrospective feeling while also playing with the finality of a retrospective.

During our hour-long video conversation, her screen revealed a lofty, light-filled country house, the artwork displayed on the wall chaotic and charming. Was that one of her famous taxidermies hanging behind her at the entrance, or a hunting trophy? She didn’t want to talk about her space, her summer retreat, located in a small village in the South of France, and wasn’t interested, she said, in hunting, which initiated a mildly bickering back and forth when I tried to assert that I was also not interested in hunting. I just wanted to ask about her about her “On the Hunt” series, first conceived at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (the hunting and nature museum in Paris), where she inventoried the desired qualities from 124 years of lonely hearts ads in a French hunting magazine, displaying them with double-sided nighttime highway surveillance photographs of startled deer et cetera (the prey), juxtaposed with photos of old-fashioned hunting towers taken by Calle in the countryside (the predator). In 1905–14, men were obsessed with virginity (“with or without stain”), while women of that time pretended to be happy marrying a Howard Marshall II. By the time of the Tinder profile, the main concern is proximity (proximity, incidentally, was often an impetus for her earlier follow pieces, a connection I try to make to Calle, who regards this assertion with her version of a dry, Gen Z stare).

“What was she like???” the (mostly) young literary (mostly) women texted me when they heard about our conversation. “Very French,” I respond. “Not into small talk.” “Is this the interview, this?” Calle said when I began to read from my handwritten questions. “Do I have to answer that?” She was annoyed but direct when I asked questions about the recent work. She wanted to keep to the facts, which

was kind of as it should be. Which were we, prey or predator? Interviewer or interviewee?

The hunting series, now on view, in part, at Paula Cooper, is a knowing subversion of the Sophie Calle project, especially this earlier stalking period that she is best known for in the U.S.—not only The Address Book , but her project Suite Vénitienne, where she followed a man through Venice and staked out his route, including his hotel. I asked her how she developed her specific writing style, that dry, witty, direct voice, like a detective novel. She was so young when she began these projects. She corrects me— “I was 26, I was not young.”

I was not sure of myself as a writer or as a photographer. I think it was this insecurity that made me write on my photos … and it’s the fact that people have to read standing that made me find an economic style. I have to find an economic language, going straight to the point … I edit until I cannot take any word out. I start with many details and I cut, cut, cut until I think that if I cut more people won’t get it.

The wall and the book, they help each other, she says to me. But also, she clarifies, the books allow for other people’s words to be published more completely—like the 107 interpretations of a breakup letter in “Take Care of Yourself,” including those of a tarot reader, a parrot, a psychoanalyst, her mother, a 9-year-old, a Talmudic expert, a crossword puzzle maker, a chess player, an Ikebana master, an accountant,

and many scholars, writers, and performers, originally shown at the French Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale in what may be the most exhaustive response ever to a bad piece of writing.

I realized the Sophie Calle I encountered during our interview was the editor—one of her many roles as an artist, in addition to detective and archivist—economical with language in her vignettes and stories, condensing lengthy conversations with others into epigrammatic portraits that are, even in translation, unmistakably her own.

At some point, she reminds me that we only have 20 minutes left and I should ask my questions if I have them. I wanted to talk about the interventions in the “Because,” or “Parce que,” series, both the book—the last she made with her frequent collaborator Xavier Barral before his death—as well as the wall pieces, which are exhibited both on the fourth floor of the Musée Picasso show and now in part at Perrotin. The writing is also list-like, rendered like a series of wry poems. In the book, we read the text first and then must reach inside the envelope of the facing page to examine the photograph. In the show, the text is embroidered on a curtain, and people have to lift the curtain up to see the image. Sophie points out to me that the Perrotin show is entitled “Behind the Curtain,” and these newer interventions around her recent photos, the frames and positionings, are to playfully ask viewers or readers to read the text, to understand

the reasons for the photo, before viewing the photo. She launches into a familiar complaint, that people often take a photo of an artwork before, or without ever, looking. The funniest moments in the “Parce que” series contain this frisson of annoyance—staged photographs of Sophie fake breastfeeding a baby, or giving birth to her cat. A spirit of revenge against a critic. “Because I found a seven-word definition of me online: ‘Sophie Calle, artist without child by choice.’”

She seems pleased when I tell her how beautiful I find her photographs of the covered Picasso paintings, protected from dust and light during the pandemic, also in the Perrotin show. She writes of this encounter that when she saw these shrouded paintings, “even before I knew it, I had accepted.” As I’ve read her say before, she wants to make clear that her taking over of the museum— moving her private space into his, at his invitation, she says—was a project of love and play, not of Nietzschean ressentiment. Picasso is no Pierre D., the bumbling male dilettante of Paris she circles in The Address Book , but a “genius” she reveres. “I didn’t want people to misunderstand and think that I was getting rid of him for aesthetic or political reasons.” Instead, she is playing with his absence, with Picasso as a ghost, in keeping with the spirit of so many of her projects. “I know there was a show in New York, I heard it was bad,” Sophie then says, slyly. She’s referring to Hannah Gadsby’s panned takeover of the Brooklyn Museum. “Oh, very bad,” I parrot back, even though I didn’t see it. We both laugh.

“I found a seven-word definition of me online: ‘Sophie Calle, artist without child by choice.’” —Sophie Calle

Julia Fox wears a full look by Marc Jacobs.

ASK ME ANYTHING

Julia Fox has lived many lives—domme, author, musician, actor, beauty vlogger, you name it. As New York’s favorite Renaissance woman prepares to deepen her commitment to the big screen this month with the sports-horror send-up Him, she took a moment to share some words of wisdom with her famous fans.

By MARA VEITCH

Photography by RICHIE SHAZAM

Styling by DAX REEDY

Production by DIONNE COCHRANE

There’s no box for Julia Fox. The New York scene girl has been on everyone’s radar for at least a decade—painting in her own blood, posing nude in Playboy, working doors downtown, inspiring a viral Charli XCX lyric, and everywhere in between. In recent years, Fox has become a pillar of the chaotic, absurdist black comedies favored by a stimmed-out generation (there’s the Safdie brothers’ 2019 bender Uncut Gems, of course, and more recently Tony Kaye’s The Trainer, in which she starred opposite Vito Schnabel, who she’ll reunite with in the upcoming heist comedy Mykonos).

This fall, Fox adds another film-world feather to her cap with Him —the latest contribution to the Black Surrealist canon from director Justin Tipping, under the auspices of Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. The film

follows a promising upstart quarterback (Tyriq Withers) who enters the dark, violent underbelly of the professional sports machine when his idol (Marlon Wayans) invites him to his extravagant desert compound for one-on-one training. The only knife to cut the film’s nerve-fraying tension is Fox—the ultimate WAG living the good life as the bubbly counterpart of a retired football legend.

Clad in next to nothing and sporting a set of bleached eyebrows that Tipping told her she could keep when she arrived on set, Fox traipses through a scene just as the sense of foreboding becomes too much to bear, filming videos of herself hawking jade vaginal eggs for her online followers while coaxing the young athlete deeper into the underworld.

Fox will tell anyone who’ll listen that she loves trying new things, and while being a font of comic relief is nothing new for the 35-year-old, the project did expose her to a lot of blood and gore. “I’d never done anything like that before, with the prosthetics and knives,” she recalls. “All that blood squirts in your eyes. That was new.” In the end, though, the real pull for Fox, who has plumbed the murky depths of fame and fortune herself, was the tension at the film’s heart. “It’s really about the lengths people will go to and the sacrifices they’ll make to their bodies and their spirits just to be a part of this world,” she muses, “It’s like a drug.”

For her CULTURED cover feature, Fox—fresh off a plane from New York to Los Angeles— fielded questions from her friends, admirers, and collaborators on how to do it all.

WHAT’S ONE PHYSICAL OBJECT YOU WOULD GIVE TO YOUR INNER CHILD? ONE FOR BABY JULIA AND THEN ONE FOR TEENAGE JULIA?

—PETRA COLLINS

“I’d give baby Julia a microphone. And for teenage Julia, a copy of my book. That’ll let her know it’s going to get good.”

IF YOU HAD TO STOP SERVING, WHAT WOULD YOUR NEXT AESTHETIC BE?

—PAUL W. DOWNS

“If I ever stop serving, send help. It means I’ve lost the plot. But if that day comes, maybe I’d go like, clean-girl, trad-wife. Kinda hot?”

THOUGHTS ON BEING IN LOVE? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT AS SOMEONE WHO HAS GONE THROUGH IT AND HAS (PRESUMABLY) CHOSEN TO DISTANCE HERSELF FROM IT? IS IT WORTH THE SACRIFICE?

—JEMIMA KIRKE

“When it comes to love, I’ll say this. If you are in the market for loving a man, I would look for men from other countries. American men are very sensitive. They’re poorly emotionally regulated. They get offended a lot. They get in their feelings. A British man, for instance, is a lot more playful. They’re more self-deprecating. Their love language is putting each other down; it’s just all fun and games. If you tease an American man, he’ll be like, ‘What, bro? You got something to say, bro?’ I don’t take myself too seriously, and I like people who are also that way. I have found that men from other countries don’t think they’re gods. You know what I mean?”

YOU’VE ACHIEVED THE HOLY TRINITY OF HAVING A CAR, A DOG, AND A BABY IN NEW YORK. WHAT WOULD THE FOURTH THING BE IN THE NYC QUATERNITY? (I LOOKED UP WHAT THE PROPER WORD WOULD BE, AND I’M DISAPPOINTED THAT THAT’S WHAT IT IS.)

—BOWEN YANG

“Bowen, you are too good. It is crazy to have all those things in New York. It’s a lot. The final thing would be having a cat, and I have three. There’s Frankie, who was found in the trunk of a car in New Jersey. Alfie is from Russia. And Myko, he’s from Mykonos. I found him while I was shooting a movie over there, and brought him back with me. I was kind of like, ‘Am I ruining this cat’s life?’ But the locals said they love it when the tourists take the cats, so I was like, ‘Say less.’”

Julia wears a top, skirt, and clutch by Anja Cecilia; bangles by Ellison Baus; rings by Jill.Herlands; and heels by Lanvin.

“WHEN IT COMES TO LOVE, I’LL SAY THIS. IF YOU ARE IN THE MARKET FOR LOVING A MAN, I WOULD LOOK FOR MEN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES.”

—JULIA FOX

Julia wears underwear and stockings by Marc Jacobs. On table: Van Cleef & Arpels’s Bouton d’or necklace, Rose de Noël clip, and Perlée watches.

Julia wears a full look by Ferragamo.

YOU’RE MY QUEEN, AND PART OF THE REASON FOR THAT IS SEEING WHAT AN AMAZING MOTHER YOU ARE. WHAT IS THE MOST MOVING THING ABOUT MOTHERHOOD FOR YOU? ANY ADVICE? —VANESSA KIRBY

“It changes your perspective on everything. But when you’re on the other end of it, you’re like, Wow, that needed to happen. It kind of feels like if life were a video game, you just got to the next level.

The main thing it taught me was just knowing a love like that. I’ve had so many boyfriends and girlfriends, but [my son] Valentino showed me what real love is. It’s not always pleasant. There are times where I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t wait to get away from him. But then I get away from him and I’m like, Oh my God, I can’t wait to go be with him again.

My biggest advice is to take a vacation from your child. Just like anybody else, when you’re together all the time, it starts to wear on your nerves. It’s okay to go to the beach for a couple of days, relax, have a few margaritas. Your kid will survive. My other piece of advice is to really integrate your child into your life, as opposed to vice versa. I love the European model, where you just take your kid with you everywhere and they just deal with it. You want to set them up to be in the real world, you know? You’ve got to show them how to be good people.”

WHAT IS X FEELING IN THE FOLLOWING EQUATION: 2(4-X)-3(X+3) = -11?

—JULIO TORRES

“Okay, I feel like X in this equation is the feeling of going out to dinner with your friends. When it’s time to divvy up the check, you end up paying more than everyone else for some reason, even though you didn’t drink.”

AS A DYED-IN-THE-PALE NEW JERSEY GIRL WHO WANTED TO BE A CALIFORNIA GIRL, I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT SELF-TANNER OR SPRAY BRONZER YOU RECOMMEND FOR AN ON-THE-GO, RANDOM TUESDAY GLOW? —LISA TADDEO

“That is hilarious. I’m also a really pale city girl, and I never go out in the sun, so I actually do have an amazing product for that! They’re glow drops, and you mix them with your moisturizer. I’m going to have to look at my TikTok shop purchases… how do I find that? Fuck. Okay, here it is. They’re the Isle of Paradise self-tanning drops. The bottle is so tiny, and you just mix it in with your moisturizer.”

Julia wears a dress, stockings, and heels by Tory Burch; garter skirt by Taysha Kim; and brooch by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Additional looks are models’ own.

MY DEAREST JULIA, I FULLY REALIZED HOW HILARIOUS YOU ARE WHEN WE BONDED AS JUDGES ON PROJECT RUNWAY . WOULD YOU EVER STAR IN A FASHION COMEDY?

—WILLY CHAVARRIA

“Love you, Willy. Definitely down to star in, like, a Zoolander remake. Fashion is so serious—those people have no life outside of fashion. They don’t get married. They don’t have kids. I can respect people that are committed in that way, but I would definitely do something where it’s poking fun at just how insane these people are. I’d be the disruptor protagonist who rocks their world.”

FROM YOUR ON-SET DIVA BESTIE: DO YOU THINK HELL IS REAL, OR IS IT JUST GROUP CHATS WE CAN’T LEAVE? —TYRIQ

WITHERS

“First of all, I love you Tyriq. This is really your moment, and I’m just happy to be along for the ride. Regarding hell, I’ll say this: I’ve politely muted every group chat I’ve ever been inducted into against my will. I think we are responsible for our own happiness, but yes—hell’s real, its just not some mythical place beneath the earth.”

WHEN YOU LOOK AHEAD TO THE FUTURE, WHAT SPARKS FIRE IN YOU, WHAT PULLS YOU CLOSER WITH CURIOSITY, AND WHAT SHADOWS YOUR MIND?

—RICHIE SHAZAM

“I’m really about trying everything, even once. I would love to direct a film one day, when I feel like I’m ready. I want to write more books—different genres—write movies, maybe put out an album, all of it. The only thing I really dread is monotony, getting stuck in a loop. A lot of people get caught up in that in the world we live in. It’s easy to put joy and happiness low on the totem pole when you’re just trying to live. I guess that’s scary to me.”

Julia wears a dress by Charlie Le Mindu, garter by Anja Cecilia, and heels by Emma Joan Foley.

Julia wears a shower curtain by Anja Cecilia, and undergarments and heels by Marc Jacobs.

Hair by SEAN BENNETT

Makeup by ROMMY NAJOR

Nails by NAOMI YASUDA

Set Design by LANE VINEYARD

Modeling by WALTER PRINCE, RICHARD LIOTTA, MOLLIE ALTUCHER, and LAYLA HUSSEIN Creative

ANT-MAN GOES BIG

By JON KRAWCZYNSKI

OUR HIGH-STRUNG, HYPER-VISIBLE ERA PRODUCED A GENERATION OF STAR ATHLETES WHO ARE ALWAYS ON GUARD. THEN CAME ANTHONY EDWARDS.

Photography by LÉON PROST

Styling by MICHELA BURATTI

“I AIN’T TRYING TO BE NO MODEL.”

“HELL, YEAH. I’LL TURN ON MY HIGHLIGHTS RIGHT NOW AND WATCH THEM MOTHERFUCKERS.”

There is a certain flavorlessness to many of today’s young star athletes. They were all raised in the crucible of social media, fully aware of the dangers posed by legions of online trolls parsing every word they say, waiting to pounce on the smallest miscue. There are millions of dollars to be lost in endorsement deals and brand ambassadorships if you say the wrong thing, which is why so many of them speak carefully and feel flat—if not outright boring—these days.

Then there is Anthony Edwards, as spicy as they come.

At just 24, Ant-Man has already made three All-Star appearances in five professional seasons, and is on the short list to succeed LeBron James as the next marquee attraction in the National Basketball Association. The dynamics of his game make him an obvious candidate, but the authenticity and charisma that ooze from his pores are what really set him apart. There is no faux humility, no curated public persona. He cusses like he’s the lead in a Tarantino flick, barks at unruly fans in unfriendly arenas, and tells anyone who will listen that he’s the best player in the world. “Hell, yeah. I’ll turn on my highlights right now and watch them motherfuckers,” he tells me over the phone.

Edwards has led the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals in each of the last two seasons. It is an unprecedented level of success for a franchise that had one playoff appearance in the 17 years before his arrival. But he’s not done yet. There is one giant milestone left in his sights: the team’s first championship. “I keep coming up short,” he says. “But don’t worry about it. I’m going to make it happen.”

That overwhelming confidence—and his American roots in a league increasingly dominated by international players—has Edwards front and center as the NBA prepares for a post-LeBron world. According to the league, the Timberwolves are reportedly paying him a sum that could reach $260 million over the life of his five-year contract. He even appeared in Hustle, a 2022 Adam Sandler movie, maximizing his cultural crossover potential.

When we speak, Edwards has just returned from a trip to Milan for men’s fashion week. He shot his CULTURED cover in an ornate palazzo there—dressed in head-to-toe Prada, with his older brother, Bubba, always nearby.

The siblings were raised in Oakland City, a gritty neighborhood in Southwest Atlanta, and were rocked when both their mother and grandmother died of cancer when Ant was just 14. Growing up, Edwards recalls wearing sweatpants every day. “I was poor as hell,” Edwards says. “I had nothing fly that I could even try to put on. I had about one pair of shoes.” Bubba would lend his little brother an extra pair when it was time to hoop.

A decade later, there they were: dressed in Prada as a French photographer snapped portraits of them in one of the most stylish cities in the world. This, for Edwards, represented a whole new level of triumph. “It definitely opens your mind,” he muses. “There’s more to life than whatever you got going on. You see different cultures. [But] the best thing about all this is being able to go out there with Bub.”

When I jokingly ask Edwards what his childhood self, who couch-surfed his way through Atlanta, would say if he could see him posing for a magazine in the Italian metropolis, he makes sure I remember who I’m talking to. “I don’t like saying I’m modeling,” he says. “I just took a couple pictures. I ain’t trying to be no model.”

“NONE OF THIS SHIT WOULD HAPPEN WITHOUT BASKETBALL, WITHOUT THE WORK. A LOT OF PEOPLE FORGET THAT. I DON’T FORGET THAT.”

Even on the court, he is as stylish as they come. He soars through the air like Michael, shoots three-pointers like Steph, and talks trash to opposing fans like he’s playing at Rucker Park. “I love that,” Edwards says. “Finding somebody to pick on.”

The applause and the new clothes are nice. The money is nicer. But as the spotlight brightens and the number of eyes on him grows, Edwards is adamant that the trappings of stardom will not blind him. “None of this shit would happen without basketball, without the work,” he says. “A lot of people forget that. I don’t forget that.”

If that sounds like a lot of pressure, you don’t know Anthony Edwards. “Hell no, I’m a player,” he assures me. “I’ll be cool.”

Grooming by COLLEEN DOMINIQUE

Executive Production by NEELA QUAGLIOLA for MAI PRODUCTIONS

Production by FRANCESCA MIANI

Production Team: SIMONA GHINASSI and DIEGO PERRONE

Tailoring by GIORGIA MORRA

First Assistance by MARIO CATTALDI

Location: GRAND HOTEL ET DE MILAN

THERE IS NO FAUX HUMILITY, NO CURATED PUBLIC PERSONA. HE CUSSES LIKE HE’S THE LEAD IN A TARANTINO FLICK, BARKS AT UNRULY FANS IN UNFRIENDLY ARENAS, AND HE TELLS ANYONE WHO

WILL LISTEN THAT HE’S THE BEST

PLAYER IN THE WORLD.

YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS 2025

Vanishingly few photographers on this list, who range in age from 24 to 35, remember life before smartphones. But their exposure to an endless stream of visual media has only strengthened their ability to discern what makes a photograph work. To select this year’s class of Young Photographers, CULTURED asked top names in the photography world to nominate one rising talent and come up with questions they’d like them to answer. In the pages that follow, we introduce 12 emerging image-makers through their reflections, photography, and self-portraiture.

For generations, photographers were motivated by the desire to capture dispatches from a faraway land. But these Young Photographers revel in staying closer to home. Whether they are working in a traditional darkroom style or experimenting with the latest A.I. tools, they plumb their personal histories for inspiration. Their work serves a dual purpose: offering a window into their lives for audiences around the world—and a mirror in which their communities can see themselves.

HANNAH ALTMAN

NOMINATED BY GILLIAN LAUB 30

BOSTON

This has been a big year for Hannah Altman, whose keen explorations of Jewish culture are the subject of a monograph, We Will Return to You , and shows in Toronto, Richmond, Hamburg, and at Brandeis University’s Kniznick Gallery in Waltham, Massachusetts.

“In Jewish tales, there is an ongoing tension with loss, change, persecution, and uncertainty, threaded through mysticism and memory. My work leans into that way of seeing. The images reward a slow, intentional viewer who approaches the photographs with both curiosity for the unknown and their own projections and connections. Ideally, it opens up questions about what we inherit and how we continuously reimagine it. I’m thinking about how rituals, narratives, and objects evolve over time, and how gesture expands translation. I guess there’s something hopeful in the idea that we can keep reshaping what we’ve inherited instead of letting it calcify or disappear—a refusal to be flattened. Making work is part of that for me. It’s a way of insisting that storytelling deeply matters, and that narratives can keep growing and shifting as long as we keep returning to them.”

“THERE’S SOMETHING HOPEFUL IN THE IDEA THAT WE CAN KEEP RESHAPING WHAT WE’VE INHERITED INSTEAD OF LETTING IT CALCIFY OR DISAPPEAR—A REFUSAL TO BE FLATTENED.”

Hannah Altman, Yad (You)

Hannah Altman, Curing

CHARLIE DENIS

NOMINATED

BY NADIA LEE COHEN 31 LOS ANGELES

A photographer who ping-pongs between the commercial and fine art realms, Charlie Denis brings his exuberant style to clients like Levi’s and Skims. His claim to fame is an experimental four-minute Christmas film starring Kim Kardashian that he co-directed with nominator Nadia Lee Cohen in 2024.

“IT’S NOT THAT I’M TOTALLY DISCARDING TRUTH OR REALITY TO CREATE SOMETHING FANTASTICAL OR SURREAL; IN DRESSING THINGS UP, I’M ALWAYS VERY CONSCIOUS OF THE INESCAPABLE BANALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE.”

“Consistent [in all my photography] is this idea that the photo is not where the story or the emotion ends. I don’t mean this to sound derogatory in any way, but for me, shooting women in particular is kind of like the adult version of playing with Barbie dolls as a queer kid. My favorite part of that would be transforming them—dressing them up and imagining the lives they would live (that maybe a part of me desired too). Then the photos go out into the world and garner attention, which is kind of what I always imagined for the dolls. [I had an] obsession with realism, then a subsequent realization that realism in these mediums just cannot exist, since the minute you stick a camera in front of anything it automatically imposes a performance. That’s when I started pushing things further and embracing theatrics. It’s not that I’m totally discarding truth or reality to create something fantastical or surreal; in dressing things up, I’m always very conscious of the inescapable banality of everyday life. So that informs the work too and becomes its own thing that is neither real nor fake, but somewhere in between. It’s much more important to capture a real sense of emotion than trying to capture life exactly as it is. And it’s more fun that way too.”

Top: Charlie Denis, Kate, 2024. Bottom: Charlie Denis, Dita , 2024.

CHRIS COOK

NOMINATED BY MING SMITH

33 NEW YORK

Chris Cook describes himself as a “native tourist” of New York who is dedicated to chronicling the life of cities. His book of photographs of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests has been acquired by the Met, Yale University, the British Library, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

“The best moments come when I’m moving without a plan. I love the freedom of letting the neighborhood speak to me visually. When I’m in the studio, I’m experimenting—collaging, painting, scanning, printing. A good day is when I lose track of time and just follow a feeling. Jamel Shabazz, Roy DeCarava, and Ming Smith—their work taught me how to see with emotion first. Kerry James Marshall’s precision and storytelling, Gary Simmons’s use of memory and erasure, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s raw urgency all shaped how I approach my own visual language. [My photos] ask: what are we preserving and who gets remembered? How do we translate personal memory into public record? And they ask the viewer to recognize Black life beyond struggle—there’s softness, pride, humor, style, love. What happens when we center those truths? I think a lot about the fear of erasure— of people’s lives, histories, and voices being overlooked or lost. I’m also confronting personal fears, like losing loved ones or forgetting where I come from. These images serve as a bridge: personal enough to reveal truth, yet public enough to spark dialogue.”

“MY PHOTOS ASK THE VIEWER TO RECOGNIZE BLACK LIFE BEYOND STRUGGLE—THERE’S SOFTNESS, PRIDE, HUMOR, STYLE, LOVE.”

Chris Cook, Kids on the Block , 2023.

Chris Cook, Washington Square Park , 2020.

JAK BANNON

NOMINATED BY DANA SCRUGGS 26 PARIS

A sought-after photographer, creative director, video editor, and musician, Jak Bannon has collaborated with the likes of Travis Scott, David Guetta, and Netflix. He will release his debut album in 2026.

“Early in my career, I was making work to prove to people that I could make things that were cool. Now, I really make photographs for myself. That’s my rule: If it resonates with me, there’s somebody out there who feels the way I feel who it will resonate with too. The most ideal situation for me to make work in is collaborative. Even if I just have another person to have brain friction with, it just makes everything so much better. Pressure definitely makes me creative. I know if I have a shovel and a bunch of dirt in front of me, that if I keep digging, eventually I’ll get to the diamond. Sometimes there are projects where you have to get a jackhammer to get through and find the good idea.

“IT’S A BLISSFUL UNDERSTANDING, LIKE, OH, I’VE NEVER SEEN THAT IN REAL LIFE, BUT I’VE FELT THAT FEELING.”

And sometimes there are projects where you know you don’t want to shovel what’s in front of you. I do like to go [into] more surreal and abstract [territory] because abstraction can help to mirror how we feel internally. Sometimes people really resonate with stretching an image or blurring something. It’s a blissful understanding, like, Oh, I’ve never seen that in real life, but I’ve felt that feeling.”

Jak Bannon, HURRY (Film Still).

Jak Bannon, I Am Close to the River (Music Video Still) for quickly, quickly. Jak Bannon, USB (Commercial Still).

ASHLEY MCLEAN

NOMINATED BY

BUCK ELLISON

29 NEW YORK

Recognized as a promising young talent by Dior and Aperture, Ashley McLean is entering the second year of her MFA program at Columbia with a steadily growing list of admirers of her intimate, introspective portraiture.

“I’ve learned through making portraits that the poetics of a [subject] is 50 percent of the work. So creating the right conditions for them to fully surrender into themselves is ideal. For me, it resists this culture of urgency we’re in today. What’s this person’s interior life? Is it loud? Quiet? What is this a residue of, whether scene, site, or person? What’s left behind? I ask these questions because photography can flatten, and I’m constantly obsessing over ways to counter that. Dignification and precarity are the two modalities Black bodies often occupy in photographs. At a time when the art world obsesses over utopia, I’m asking what fragility looks like alongside beauty. At the start of summer, I returned to my family’s homeland, Guyana, to spend time with my grandparents and make work about homecoming. There was a night scene that haunted me for days, so I returned to photograph it. When I got back to New York, the negative was almost black. I was really bummed because I thought it would be ‘the one.’ But that experience isn’t lost just because it isn’t on film. It’s so imprinted in my memory that it holds as much value as it would on my contact sheet.”

“DIGNIFICATION AND PRECARITY ARE THE TWO MODALITIES BLACK BODIES OFTEN OCCUPY IN PHOTOGRAPHS. AT A TIME WHEN THE ART WORLD OBSESSES OVER UTOPIA, I’M ASKING WHAT FRAGILITY LOOKS LIKE ALONGSIDE BEAUTY.”

McLean, Doney & Solomon (I) , 2020.

IVA SIDASH

NOMINATED BY PAOLA KUDACKI

30 KHARKIV, UKRAINE

Iva Sidash makes art under extreme circumstances. In her ongoing project “Seeing the Unseen,” she captures everyday life on the front lines of the Ukraine war. This year, she won an Ian Parry Photojournalism Grant and the Women Photograph Fellowship, among other accolades.

“I use photography to look at life in its most fragile forms, and to carry those truths forward. How do people stay human in the middle of war? What does care look like under pressure— when the world is breaking but someone still folds laundry, brushes a child’s hair, sets the table? The [images] touch the fear that this war will become normal, that the people behind the headlines will disappear from view. I’m afraid of the kind of silence where no one’s looking anymore. But I didn’t want to repeat the usual images of destruction and violence. I wanted to show the small acts of care that keep people going. Documentary photography lets me ask questions without forcing answers. I photographed [a woman named Zoya] in her ruined apartment in North Saltivka, Kharkiv— it was destroyed by Russian shelling. She said to me: ‘Show this to people. Show it to the world. Let them see what is happening to us, because if the Russians take everything, at least the truth will remain.’ I still carry that moment with me. She wasn’t asking for help; she was asking to be seen.”

“HOW DO PEOPLE STAY HUMAN IN THE MIDDLE OF WAR? WHAT DOES CARE LOOK LIKE UNDER PRESSURE—WHEN THE WORLD IS BREAKING BUT SOMEONE STILL FOLDS LAUNDRY, BRUSHES A CHILD’S HAIR, SETS THE TABLE?”

SARA MESSINGER

NOMINATED BY MICHAEL FOLEY (DIRECTOR, LEICA GALLERY NY) 26 NEW YORK

Sara Messinger has shot editorial images for The Cut, The New York Times , and The New Yorker, but she found her niche in pathos-filled portraits of teenagers. Earlier this year, her images were shown alongside those of 92-year-old Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson at Leica’s New York gallery.

“[Photographing teenagers] wasn’t so much an active decision; the story found me. I photographed a few of them in the park one day, and after, I kept running into them and saying hi. I was always curious what it was like to grow up in New York. They embodied this authenticity and honesty that I always admired, and that I think I was in search of at that point in my life. A lot of my work addresses fears from my childhood that have followed me into my adulthood. [I’m] trying to capture a love and honesty that I didn’t experience in my adolescent years, and that I still search for. The fear of not finding this in my life drives me to search for connection through my photography. I will be the first to admit that it’s very difficult to keep yourself going in a time like this. I hope that at the very least, no matter how long it takes to find what you are looking for, the journey is enjoyable.”

“A LOT OF MY WORK ADDRESSES FEARS FROM MY CHILDHOOD THAT HAVE FOLLOWED ME INTO MY ADULTHOOD … TO FIND A LIGHT IN THE DARKEST PLACES IS WHAT PHOTOGRAPHY IS, PERHAPS, ALL ABOUT.”

MICHAEL WOLEVER

Pennsylvania-born Michael Wolever makes images that conjure the fantastical feeling of ’90s filmmaking. Think soft lighting, furry monsters wooing the girl, and dudes traipsing through the woods, unafraid of what they hide.

“I’ve lived a pretty weird life. I draw a lot of inspiration from my memories of it. Charisma and eyeliner go a long way. My work asks questions about shame, attraction, and melodrama. Am I a perv? Who is allowed to be? Pictures are full of denial, yet they’re often confessions. Photography is a funhouse mirror and, sometimes, a shame ritual. In no particular order, the things that make a photo exciting to me are wedgies, inhalants, feet, a beautiful animal, a freak of nature, a fetish, Pennsylvania… I’ve confronted cowardice through making pictures, or choosing not to make pictures, analyzing my own intention, and criticizing others’ intention or lack thereof. I spent a good amount of time not making any pictures at all because I didn’t know how I felt about the culture of it. The technical element of [photography] could become so accessible that there will be a shift toward mass self-awareness in picture-taking. What are we actually doing and why? I think even a beer ad could start to look inward. I’ve certainly become a more critical person, totally preoccupied with what I like or hate, figuring out why, feeling the answer change…”

“IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER, THE THINGS THAT MAKE A PHOTO EXCITING TO ME ARE WEDGIES, INHALANTS, FEET, A BEAUTIFUL ANIMAL, A FREAK OF NATURE, A FETISH, PENNSYLVANIA…”

Michael Wolever, Big Flirt

ADALI SCHELL

NOMINATED BY PARIS CHONG (DIRECTOR, LEICA GALLERY LA)

24 LOS ANGELES

Drawing from his upbringing in Southern California and family ties to rural Ohio, Adali Schell may be best known for a series capturing his friends with their first cars. His work has been shown at Les Rencontres d’Arles and published in The Guardian, The New York Times , and The New Yorker.

“DANIEL ARNOLD ONCE TOLD ME THAT IN SPITE OF ALL THE AFFIRMATIONS, HIS CAMERA HAS ONLY GOTTEN HEAVIER. AT 17, I COULDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT HE MEANT … I ONCE THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY WAS FOR ANYONE AT ALL TIMES. ONLY MORE RECENTLY HAVE I COME TO UNDERSTAND ITS FRAGILITY … IT’S SOMETHING THAT ONLY WORKS IF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE RIGHT, IF I’M WITH THE PEOPLE I LOVE.”

“My first camera was an iPod Touch, the first generation to feature a built-in camera. I was in the fifth grade and wanted the device so I could play games and talk to friends after school, but eventually discovered the camera as a means to guard myself, aid my anxiety, and safely engage the people and landscape around me. I used to think of myself as a street photographer and would predominantly shoot strangers from the hip. As a teenager, I was convinced that these fleeting moments offered an intimate glimpse into humanity, only achievable by the candid camera. In more recent years, I’ve almost entirely abandoned this kind of picture, instead focusing my camera on what is mine and what I already know. The pictures which matter most to me are of my actual life: my mom, sister, grandfather, extended family, and friends. The more pictures I take, the more fearful and insecure I seem to become. Daniel Arnold once told me that in spite of all the affirmations, his camera has only gotten heavier. At 17, I couldn’t understand what he meant, but I’ve found this to be alarmingly true. I once thought photography was for anyone at all times. Only more recently have I come to understand its fragility, its suffocation under pressure. It isn’t something I have full possession over. It’s something that sometimes works if the circumstances are right, if I’m with the people I love.”

Adali Schell, “Car Pictures.”

Adali Schell, “New Paris.”

HERO BEAN STEVENSON

Hero Bean Stevenson has shot for clients including Maison d’Etto and Carven, written and directed short films, and co-founded an art and design gallery, Raum, in Los Angeles. All the while, she has cultivated a distinctive, spare approach to black-and-white photography.

“When I photograph a subject, it is first and foremost about creating a moment of recognition—engaging with as open and direct of an energetic channel as possible, and experiencing freely the moment of connection. This act of seeing, of looking at one another with vulnerability and acceptance, is what makes the present profound, and what makes the future seem bright and possible.

I took Werner Herzog’s portrait in 2023, and it was an unexpected moment that felt completely spirit-fortifying. I had been invited [to a film set] to shoot stills, and knew that while it had been a lifelong dream of mine to create a portrait of Werner, it was very unlikely that I’d get to. At the end of the day, I had one exposure left in the roll, and the light had all but gone in the loft. The thought of approaching him for a formal portrait was intimidating, but it felt like a necessity. The quiet strength, openness, and mountainous presence that I was met with when I looked through my camera, and then up at him as I clicked the shutter, was invigorating in a way that I cannot describe. I am grateful that the portrait can.”

“I TOOK WERNER HERZOG’S PORTRAIT IN 2023 … THE QUIET STRENGTH, OPENNESS, AND MOUNTAINOUS PRESENCE THAT I WAS MET WITH WHEN I LOOKED THROUGH MY CAMERA, AND THEN UP AT HIM AS I CLICKED THE SHUTTER, WAS INVIGORATING IN A WAY THAT I CANNOT DESCRIBE. I AM GRATEFUL THAT THE PORTRAIT CAN.”

Hero Bean Stevenson, Werner Herzog

JASMINE CLARKE

NOMINATED BY STEPHEN SHORE

29 NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

After teaching photography at Bard College and Parsons, Jasmine Clarke has become a student again herself: She is an MFA candidate in photography at the Yale School of Art. Her tender images of home and family have been shown at the Brooklyn Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum.

“Audre Lorde defines biomythography as a dynamic combination of history, biography, and myth. This is exactly how I think about photographs, as ‘fiction built from many sources.’ Before coming to graduate school, I had a certain idea of what my work looked like, about what kind of pictures I made. This past year has strengthened the factual and relational foundation of my practice, which then allows me to take my images to a more inventive place, weaving together history, reality, and my own imagination. My photographs ask questions about the nature of seeing. How much do we trust what we’re looking at? I think of my pictures as layered and unfolding. I see memory and family as fragmented, pieced together through images telling interlocking narratives of cultural identity, mythology passed down through generations. Myths, like photographs, exist somewhere between truth and fabrication. I’m interested in what makes a picture complicated, in pictures that ask more questions than [they] give answers. Pictures that are haunting, that you can’t stop thinking about after the image has left your sight.”

“MY PHOTOGRAPHS ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SEEING. HOW MUCH DO WE TRUST WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT?”

Jasmine Clarke, Brooklyn , 2025.

Jasmine Clarke, Daisies , 2024.

“‘DO YOU WANT TO DO A LITTLE PORTRAIT SESSION?’ IS MY WAY OF SAYING, ‘I REALLY LIKE YOU, AND I WANT TO KNOW YOU BETTER.’”

CAMILLE FARRAH LENAIN

NOMINATED BY

BELL PITKIN

(MANAGER, LEICA GALLERY BOSTON) 35 NEW ORLEANS, NEW YORK

French-Algerian photographer Camille Farrah Lenain’s documentary and portrait work has earned her an Arnold Newman Prize, residency at the Joan Mitchell Center, and placement in the pages of The New York Times and Rolling Stone Next, she’s looking ahead to the release of her first monograph in spring 2026.

“I remember a slumber party with my girlfriends, playing with a camera and flash under the sheets. We must have been around 11 or 12. I held on to these photographs really tightly, as a form of memory and friendship, with a quiet awareness that it wouldn’t last forever. The camera was a shared object at the time, not defining my role as ‘the photographer,’ which is a dynamic I’m recently trying to reclaim in my practice: Here, now it’s your turn to make my portrait. Although photographing others is central to my work, it can feel tumultuous to approach someone. I question, why am I drawn to this person? Will they understand what I see in them? Should I explicitly share this vision, or trust the magic of the photographic encounter? Then, I search for trust, either through their eyes or body language, through words if we are taking time to speak. I need this tacit invitation to photograph them, otherwise it feels like I’m cutting them off too soon. It may be about overcoming the fear and shyness that comes with wanting to connect. ‘Do you want to do a little portrait session?’ is my way of saying, ‘I really like you, and I want to know you better. I want you to trust me, and offer you this gift in return.’ Maybe it’s a way to communicate without words, and leave room for ephemerality and interpretation.”

Camille Farrah Lenain, A Day With Edith.

Camille Farrah Lenain, Cassandra and Raymond .

FASHION IN FLIGHT

Radicality—however quiet or subtle a form it takes—is an essential ingredient for fashion to have a chance at timelessness. Isabelle Wenzel is no stranger to extreme conditions. In the German acrobat-cum-photographer’s work, bodies—often her own—tumble, leap, and contort themselves into living sculptures. For the issue, Wenzel turned her lens on Fall/Winter 2025 looks from Balenciaga, Loewe, Miu Miu, Alaïa, and more. Their sculptural volumes of fabric, reflective leather, and sheets of silky fringe appear to have drifted off the runway before finding themselves caught in the unique intermingling of precision and play that is a hallmark of Wenzel’s work. In the following pages, the photographer takes the season’s loudest looks to new heights.

Photography by ISABELLE WENZEL

Creative Direction by STUDIO&

Anneliek Heuvel wears a dress by Vaquera and tights by Falke. Shoes are stylist’s own throughout, unless noted.

Anneliek wears a coat by Acne, shawl is archive Issey Miyake from Rellik, gloves by Paula Rowan throughout, and socks by Falke. Stirrup stockings are stylist’s own throughout.

Anneliek wears a top and skirt by Marco and tights by Falke.

Anneliek wears a top, skirt, and shoes by Prada, and tights by Heist.

Anneliek wears a dress by Balenciaga and tights by Falke. Socks are stylist’s own.

Anneliek wears a dress by Valentino and crown from Rellik.

This page and next: Anneliek wears a skirt and sweater by Gucci, hat by Noel Stewart, tights by Swedish Stockings, and shoes by Aeyde.

Anneliek wears a dress by Loewe and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Anneliek wears a dress by Issey Miyake and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Anneliek wears a dress by Loewe.

Anneliek wears a top and skirt by Alaïa and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Anneliek wears a dress, bra, and socks by Miu Miu, tights by Tabio, and a hat by Noel Stewart.

Anneliek wears a coat by Chanel and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Anneliek wears a coat, scarf, and gloves from Givenchy by Sarah Burton, and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Modelling by ANNELIEK HEUVEL OF PLATFORM AGENCY

Photography Assistance by MICHEL WENZEL

Fashion Assistance by CLÍONA O’SULLIVAN AND ABI WOOD

Anneliek wears a dress by Saint Laurent and tights by Swedish Stockings.

Hair by YOKO SETOYAMA OF THE DAWES PROJECT

Makeup by MACHIKO YANO

Casting by CLARE RHODES

Anchored in Memory

Photography by ADAM FRIEDLANDER

Styled by JOCELYN CABRAL

All jewelry by GRAFF

This season, Graff leans into warmth, motion, and tactile elegance.

For the last 65 years, Graff has been revered for its command of yellow diamonds. The stone’s vibrance and rarity—forged from the chance inclusion of nitrogen in an otherwise colorless diamond’s formation—make it a coveted component of any high jewelry piece. This season, the stone is at the heart of Graff’s new designs—supported by a confluence of other gemstones and precious metals that glimmer like sun off seawater. Take, for instance, a high jewelry necklace that sees white diamonds and rubies slope around the neck in perfect symmetry.

Graff was founded by Laurence Graff, OBE, who started out in London’s jewelry district at 15 and rose from an apprentice to found his namesake jewelry brand in 1960. Today, it’s helmed by his eldest son, Francois, and just as responsibility has been passed on, a number of signature designs have as well. A Toi et Moi ring features over 11 carats of diamonds in two teardrop white and yellow forms, hugging a finger’s frame over a slim band cut.

Like the brand’s own story, these minute works of art are a tribute to the passing of time—and the nostalgia and heritage that keep us anchored in memory, even as new horizons beckon.

Be Together Round Ruby and Diamond Earrings set in white gold.

Be Together Round Ruby and Diamond Necklace set in white gold.

Yellow Cushion Cut with White Baguette and Round Diamond Necklace set in yellow and white gold.

Round and Baguette Ruby with White Round Diamond Earrings set in white gold.

Laurence Graff Signature White Round Diamond Double Row Necklace set in yellow and white gold.

Production by CHANCE JARVIS

Be Together White Round Diamond Pavé Link Bracelet set in yellow and white gold.

Bethann Hardison Sizes Up the Modeling Industry

The relentless advocate and former model sits down with CULTURED

Style Editor-at-Large Jason Bolden for a no-holds-barred tête-à-tête about the state of the trade she has revolutionized time and again.

“We’re all students of Bethann Hardison,” says Tyson Beckford in Invisible Beauty, the 2023 memoir-in-film of the soon-to-be 83-year-old materfamilias of American fashion.

Beckford is the rare male model to have ascended to household name status. Hardison helped put him on the map—like she did with Veronica Webb, Kimora Lee Simmons, and a generation of faces that made their way onto runways, magazine pages, and TV screens—a few years after founding her modeling agency in 1984. The Bethann Management era followed two decades of history-making moments for the New York native, from being discovered by the streetwear savant Willi Smith when she was but a Garment District showroom assistant to walking in Stephen Burrows’s Battle of Versailles

Photography by TOM SCANLAN

face-off in 1973. It also ushered in a whole new chapter of her life dedicated to holding the fashion industry accountable for maintaining the strides in racial diversity it had made, ever so incrementally.

The meaning of a model has changed drastically over the course of Hardison’s lifetime. She has witnessed the rise and fall of the supermodel, the advent of the casting director, and the revolving door of runway regionalism. A subset of models today are voicey, taking to platforms like Instagram and TikTok to livestream their influence with verité-ish confessionals, but few have a voice. Hardison’s Black Girls Coalition, founded in 1988 with Iman and brought back in 2014 as runway diversity waned, empowered dozens of models of color to not only speak out

but stand behind each other, denouncing racism in ad campaigns as much as they rallied around homelessness in the industry. An initiative as rhizomatic as the BGC is a unicorn in an industry that has become as splintered as it is self-centered. This May, Hardison announced a new eponymous foundation that will extend her support to discovering and mentoring emerging creatives. These days, she is as invested in the forces shaping fashion from behind the scenes— like Polo Ralph Lauren’s James Jeter or stylist Carlos Nazario—as she is in the front row. But she’s never short on opinions about the trade she revolutionized time and again.

In the following pages, Hardison sits down with CULTURED ’s style editor-at-large, Jason Bolden, to parse the fate of the fashion model.

Bethann Hardison

“I’ve always been nonconformist. the left when going to the right.”

a visionary and a I tend to go to everybody is

—Bethann Hardison

Left and right page: Photography by Arthur Elgort

Jason Bolden: Thank you for doing this—I’m beyond excited. I want to talk to you about the culture of the fashion business and get your perspective on what’s new, what’s the same. Do you feel like modeling has found a new renaissance, or is it in a rut?

Bethann Hardison: Look, everything is changing. The great thing about the modeling industry for me is that it has found its way to be more diversified. I only deal with the racial diversity part. I don’t care about how big you are, how old you are—I didn’t come here to make those changes. I just wanted to make sure that we went back to something I had already known, racial diversity, which lost its weight because of the fact that Eastern Europe had opened up [in the 2000s]. I love the body alignment of an Eastern European girl, but when it went on for a decade, I knew my industry was in trouble.

Bolden: Your intention had really nothing to do with the business side of fashion, but just that momentum of pushing diversity translates into dollars and cents. It also gives the consumer an opportunity to see themselves, which makes them want to shop.

Hardison: I was never thinking in dollars and cents, or equity. I was only thinking intellectually.

Bolden: But it turned into a business. It helped someone like me; I got to see myself. You can’t make change if you can’t see it visually. You gave us a vision to grab onto and catapult into different careers outside of walking the runway.

Hardison: We didn’t have things in the industry called casting directors before, who began to cripple the model industry and the fashion industry. The designers and their teams used to find the models: That’s how models became muses. Yves Saint Laurent and Mr. Givenchy showed it best because they had cabines of women that they just loved.

The idea of trying to put the girls of color back into the fashion industry was to make sure that whites and Blacks and everyone started to see color again. If you put that girl there, then it would also affect other industries, which it did.

“We didn’t have things in the industry called casting directors before. The designers and their teams used to find the models: That’s how models became muses.”

Bolden: It affected my industry too. Once you start saying yes to those girls, they start having a voice and being like, “Hey, I need this particular person who understands my makeup and my hair.” It opened up a world for them to give opportunities to people like [makeup artist] Sam

Fine, for example. Are there any models right now who remind you of any of those early trailblazers you championed?

Hardison: Once I start seeing that something’s okay, I take my foot a little bit off the clutch. I’m not very interested in fashion models [at the moment]. The problem with the modeling industry is that once they discover a type of girl—like the West African model—it becomes so inundated. Even though I’m happy that the girls and boys are working—and the boys are doing even better to me—it becomes a question of how much of a career are they going to have? The last hurrah that I had was when I took everyone from Imaan Hammam to Cindy Bruna out for dinner and made them into a posse. Those girls have a career. I don’t care if you’re making $7,500 a month or $75,000, a career is when you can continue to work and people continue to see you.

“Nowadays a lot of girls don’t know why they model. They walk through the room stomping like they’re rushing to the gate of an airport. There’s no purpose.”

Some of the West African girls are coming along and you won’t remember them all. But you will remember someone like Anok [Yai] because she’s a unique, great model. She knows what she does when she hits the runway; she knows why she’s there. [Nowadays] a lot of girls don’t know why they model. You’re almost like an actor; you have to have an intention on that runway. I was moaning with the CEO of Gucci not too long ago, telling him how I just hate when these girls walk through the room stomping like they’re rushing to the gate of an airport. There’s no purpose.

I’m more interested in the creatives who continue to gently propel what we need to see as people of color—because there are no models out there that are going to do what Bethann Hardison did. There’s a young man [at Ralph Lauren] that I’m very taken with, James Jeter. His story is wonderful and [so is] how he’s been allowed to work within Ralph. Ralph discovered him [working] in the store and had him come to the corporate office to work with him. To come into the creative area, he had to prove that he had something to give. Now, he’s the young man who did the collection that [partnered with] HBCUs and honored Oak Bluffs and Martha’s Vineyard. That to me is so significant because it’s storytelling.

Bolden: To hear these stories of people like Ralph, one of the pillars of American fashion, reaching back with eyes wide open [is incredible].

Hardison: He’s never been asleep. People made the mistake of saying Tyson Beckford was the

first Black model for Ralph Lauren. That’s so far from the truth. I go with a big broom everywhere I go, sweeping up the incorrect information … I have a real issue right now; I’m one of those people who would like to go to schools and tell fashion students to please not be a designer. There are so many fucking fashion designers out there, and most people don’t even know that fashion is a true trade.

Bolden: But everybody is chasing fame. In the world of social media, everyone has an opinion, but they don’t understand how we even got there … What you’re saying makes me really excited to push and ask questions constantly in these spaces—uncomfortable questions—and when I feel like I don’t see what I want to see, then it’s up to me to push that boulder uphill.

Hardison: I’m still here to help the boat ashore. I’m glad that I’m asked to be part of many things. But at the same time, I’ve always been a visionary and a nonconformist. I tend to go to the left when everybody is going to the right. Let me ask you a couple of questions. When you first started thinking about what you wanted to do, did you ever think, Oh, I would like to be a stylist?

Bolden: I never even knew that was a job. I’m born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. I thought there were two ways to do fashion: You worked at a really fancy store or you became a designer. I came into the business by selling vintage clothes. I did a pop-up in New York by accident, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew how to curate beautiful clothes with a small amount of money, and I could tell you the history of the brands front and back from Claude Montana to Bill Blass to Ossie Clark. It was an accident!

Hardison: It’s never an accident! Stop with those silly words. I don’t know anyone who is now doing what you all do that didn’t come out of some sort of circumstance … But when you do the work you do now, you’re still doing it from the point where you started: pure joy.

Bolden: I’m at a really amazing place where I’m seeing it in a different light because I have a child. I get to show my child what it feels like to be in love with something that you do, you know what I mean? And the work is never done.

“Sometimes we are meant to do things.”

Hardison: We didn’t come here to fix anything. When you left St. Louis and did your pop-up, you didn’t come in thinking, I’m gonna [change the world ]. But sometimes we are meant to do things. In this particular case, the industry has changed. The only good thing was being able to make the entire international fashion industry embrace racial diversity, which was the most important to me. If there’s not as many Black girls or boys on the runway as there were before, it’s because it’s finding its place. Sometimes you gotta get the herd to be curated, so that those who are meant to survive it will.

Down Ambera Wellmann’s K-Hole

by Johanna Fateman

On the eve of Ambera Wellmann’s two concurrent gallery openings, the artist invites critic Johanna Fateman into her studio for a look at her (sort of) post-figuration era.

Photography by Christian DeFonte

Ambera Wellmann, Death

Pole dancers, masked mourners, a fisherman, and an image of the artist herself are among the painted figures here in Ambera Wellmann’s Bushwick studio. It’s a lot of bodies for a body of work that she set out to make without any. The artist laughs as she moves canvases aside to reveal others propped up behind them, telling me about the self-issued challenge, acknowledging that she changed course—reembracing figuration—rather quickly.

We meet in late June, and this is not an et voilà event. She is in the thick of it, showing me almost-finished and maybe-finished works, and mentioning others she’s not yet started. Her dog, Chicken, a Chinese Crested, barks for treats while we talk, and the artist holds a sprig of linden blossoms that I plucked on my walk from the train to her nose, taking deep breaths.

Wellmann is preparing for a pair of New York shows, both opening on Sept. 5. One will be at Company, the adventurous, esteemed, and queer-focused Elizabeth Street gallery that she has worked with in New York since 2020. The other, her debut for Hauser & Wirth, will take over the mega-gallery’s Wooster Street space. The concurrent exhibitions, and the joint representation they celebrate, propose a new model for the gallery system—an ecosystem where big fish don’t always eat the little (or medium-sized) ones, and where artists, fingers crossed, can benefit from the best of both worlds.

More importantly, at least as far as our conversation is concerned, the two very different spaces offer an opportunity to stage complemen-

tary shows. (It’s a 13-minute walk between the venues, making staggered receptions doable.)

On Wooster Street, she’ll hang a group of new paintings, including an epic centerpiece, on white walls. Company, on the other hand, is “a great place to be totally unhinged, go crazy, be disgusting, whatever,” she confides, a little giddily. That show’s pièce de résistance will be a charcoal mural drawn directly on the wall— something she’s never done before.

“I began asking, Are we making this for a straight audience? Who is this for?”

Wellmann is known for her collage-like and hallucinatory paintings, feats of spatial impossibility rife with internal inconsistencies of perspective and scale, populated by unmoored elements drawn from a lexicon of striking, semi-mythic imagery: Glistening fruit, watchful animals, and women fucking are frequent subjects. The artist’s sex vignettes— her soft-focus but graphic blazes of sweaty torsos and pliant limbs—are fan favorites to say the least, but her appetite for them has been tempered by a certain skepticism recently. The desire to move away from bodies, however fleeting, is partially due to “feeling frustrated with figuration as an art-world trend, and, in particular, with ‘queer figuration.’ I began asking, Are we making this for a straight

audience? Who is this for? It started feeling almost conservative, in a funny way.”

I know what she means, I think. Most pessimistically: Figurative painting has become clichéd as the mediator par excellence of identity, inadequate for the task of representing difference (or worse, guilty of flattening it), and cheapened by its use as a fast and dirty, easy-on-the-eyes means to diversify a collection (though I’m hesitant to cast aspersions on the impulse in this radically regressive moment). But, I also think, setting aside the most banal practitioners of so-called or market-defined queer figuration, the “trend” means little when you look at painters, or at paintings, one by one. Wellmann’s unease is understandable, though, and she gives other reasons for pushing herself into new terrain as well. She gets bored easily, she says, and “as soon as I feel like I’m painting something that people expect of me, or that I expect of myself, the potentials for surprise, change, transfiguration—the things most important to my practice —have disappeared.”

“As soon as I feel like I’m painting something that people expect of me, or that I expect of myself, the potentials for surprise, change, transfiguration—the things most important to my practice—have disappeared.”

The artist, who will be 43 when her shows open, grew up in rural Nova Scotia, in the seaside town of Lunenburg, without much exposure to art. Two postcards Wellmann’s mother had— reproductions of a Blue-Period Picasso motherand-child and Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son —had an outsized influence on her as a quiet child living in a violent household, though their value to her lay less in their aesthetic qualities than in their role as hopeful examples of how one might have a voice without speaking. (That said, it’s easy to find Goya in the most surreal, ravenous, and shadowy passages of Wellmann’s work). Still more profound, perhaps, was a gift she received when she was 5 or 6: a tube of black oil paint. It was like “a key to the universe,” she remembers.

It follows, from her enduring wonder and passion for paint itself, that the erotic content of her work isn’t confined to the kinds of figures or acts that appear. There’s an anarchic volatility to the compositions, a sense of churning, smoldering flux, separate from the question of imagery. When we discuss the ways that her paintings sometimes come together at the last moment,

Ambera Wellmann, One Thousand Emotions, 2025.

Wellmann pulls out an as-yet-untitled crimson canvas, slated for her show at Company, to make her point. (The picture brings to mind Pierre Bonnard’s The Red Cupboard , 1939, set aflame.) She explains how a rash act of redaction resolved it: There’s a figure somewhere in there, concealed by the burgundy gloom of the still life’s background. “There’s a sense of atmosphere now, so palpable you can almost imagine breathing it,” she says, still awed by the effect.

She turns around to face a more recent twopanel work on the wall behind us, People Loved and Unloved , 2025—another composition of thrumming, scarlet atmospherics—that will no doubt be a standout in her Wooster Street presentation. It was initially going to show a debaucherous dinner party; as she finished it, she thought, I think it needs to be a strip club. She added pole dancers—descending nude and upsidedown—into the chaotic mix of messy tables and pensive, spectral, or staring guests. “I wanted the painting to feel like drunkenness … as though you’re seeing double. I wanted it to feel like a k-hole.”

“I wanted the painting to feel like drunkenness … as though you’re seeing double. I wanted it to feel like a k-hole.”

Despite all this, the appearance of spontaneity, heat, and speed is somewhat deceptive: There’s as much—or more—attention to craft and art history, more scraping (or sanding) away of paint and repainting, as there is furious abandon. Pentimenti provide a material record of a halting or multistage process, speaking to a slower pace, as does the enchanted illusionism

Wellmann perfected when depicting porcelain vessels and figurines in the somewhat quieter, cooler work of the late 2010s—when she was finishing graduate school in Ontario, and just after. Unfussy but precise, the technique endures in her repertoire, mingling with looser and more abstract painterly modes when she renders other, non-ceramic objects. Apples catch the light in haloed dots and razor-thin lines of bright white (she paints lots and lots of glossy, scattered apples); musculature is defined by gradations of color that appear, somehow, both smeared and airbrushed. She bridges the brittle, delicate, glazed translucency of porcelain and the glow of warm skin with a dreamy seamlessness that can’t be rushed.

We begin and end our visit by looking at the largest work in her studio, the 18-foot composition Death Masks Eternity, 2025, after Courbet’s Burial at Ornans, 1849–50. Wellmann’s supernatural, wintry take evokes not just the gray-sky gravitas and ritual of the famous panoramic group scene, but also the French artist’s abandonment of idealized Romantic subjects for a steely Realism—the kind of

artistic rupture that perhaps befits our too-real times.

While not the only moment when climate grief surfaces in the paintings assembled here, it’s the one that spurs Wellmann to articulate her interest in it. She’s concerned, in her art, with the way the accelerating crisis changes our “experience of time and understanding of death,” she says. Recounting a conversation with her ex-wife, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (“like proper lesbian exes we still talk on the phone for three hours a day”), she says the catalyst for the work—which will be the main event of her Hauser & Wirth show—was an observation from the Mexican painter: “When we were young, we felt like we were moving toward the end of lives, toward death. Now, it feels like it’s coming toward us.” Just like the original 19th-century painting it references, it’s unclear in Death Masks Eternity “who or what” is being laid to rest. But Wellmann is not coy about why she chose to blanket the cemetery in white. She tells me that some winters during her childhood, there were five feet of snow—now there’s none.

The painting’s central void—an icy crater— gathers the dark-robed and disguised mourners (as well as a pair of beautiful hunting dogs and the skeletal horseman of a tarot deck’s Death card) in a semicircle that the artist and I, standing before it, complete. It’s captivating, but not entirely comfortable, to be roped into this ambiguous ritual. The feeling is emblematic of the risk and mystery in Wellman’s work generally, though.

After hours of talking, I still have questions— what does she mean, exactly, when she says that Company’s space is a great place to be “unhinged” and “disgusting”?—but I know it’s futile to press her on something that’s TBD. It’s enough to be in the presence of her excitement —I’m inspired that an artist so self-scrutinizing and careful is also so confident in last-minute magic, in work that doesn’t yet exist.

Ambera Wellmann, Sacrum , 2025.

Who Wants to Be a Literary It Girl?

By EMMELINE CLEIN

Photography by BRONWEN WICKSTROM

Books Editor Emmeline Clein sits down with five of this year’s debut authors to parse the demise of the New York novel, the rise of the manifestation daughter, topping from the bottom, and everything in between.

A girl escapes the downtown gauntlet only to find herself back in town, quietly rage-addled at a dinner party on the Bowery. Another scene-entrenched girl survives the Adderall shortage, only to make an SOS call from inside the house she’s been squatting in and ends up attempting a sort of prayer, palms upturned before an ATM in the gloaming. Another flees freelance hell for an ostensibly utopian commune in the Midwest, which turns out to be riddled with demons that promise trans girls revenge bodies and book deals, for the low price of their agency (who needs it when you can have an agent?). Two aspiring artists embark on heroine’s journeys straight into the bowels of downtown Manhattan (with a pit stop at Bard, obviously). A mother raises a daughter, tracing the tributaries of her family’s Southern past as she plants roots in the buckling New York concrete.

This is just a sliver of the harrowing terrain this year’s crop of debut authors traverse. With startling clarity, cynical wit, and an intellectual rigor rooted in a yearning for connection, Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love, Anika Jade Levy’s Flat Earth, Grace Byron’s Herculine, Stephanie Wambugu’s Lonely Crowds, and Sasha Bonét’s The Waterbearers break into the canon of contemporary literature, dissecting American womanhood in our ever-fracturing culture. This new generation of writers

straddles the young millennial–Gen Z divide, alternately channeling the ironized, dissociated ennui of the early 2020s post-feminists and bravely embracing cringe when it counts. Byron and Bonét’s careers as critics lend their literary prose an analytical, anthropological eye, while Wambugu and Levy’s work editing magazines informs their tender yet eviscerating fictional portraits of creative industries.

Adult women have had a rough couple of years, extorted to infantilize ourselves at every turn. Nevertheless, we persisted— through the desert of girl dinners, girl math, hot girl walks, and West Village girls—until we made it to the promised land (publishing deals for women bravely identifying as such instead of as girls, “literary,” “It,” or otherwise). Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful I can get away with wearing Brandy Melville in my 30s, and I respect a literary It girl as much as any boy genius. But the thing about girls is that we can do both; we’ve been training to tiptoe along the tightrope between girlhood and womanhood our whole lives. A breath caught mid-trapeze act, the moment you realize the spotlight is only on you because you’re the magician’s assistant and everyone wants to watch as you get sawed in half: It’s these moments of recognition, glimpses of the danger inherent to embodying certain feminine archetypes, that these books so delicately crystallize. They ask searing

questions about the extended adolescence imposed on us by the aspirational aesthetic and mindset of perma-girlhood, and interrogate the artifice inherent to any artistic “scene.”

This new raft of writing riffs on our collective and individual delusions in a moment when “delulu” has become a resting state for Gen Z, wielded as both a cutting insult and a lobotomymaxxxed total vibe. These books are willing to embarrass their characters and their writers, writhing around in the morass of feminine abjection and admitting delusion is often the only way out of the swamp of degradation. The reader isn’t spared either— strap in for “humiliation traps,” “extendedrelease nervous breakdowns,” and even epiphanies, when “suddenly the opaque bec[omes] transparent.”

But clambering out of quicksand requires someone to throw you a lifeline. These are stories about women in communion—through friendship, mimetic desire, crises of the sexual and artistic marketplace, and coming of age. The rose-colored glasses are coming off, along with the bows and baby tees. For CULTURED ’s fashion issue, I spoke with Bonét, Byron, Dubno, Levy, and Wambugu about the demise of the New York novel, the rise of the manifestation daughter, topping from the bottom, and more.

Flat Earth, Anika Jade Levy’s debut novel out Nov. 4, depicts an aspiring artist’s coming of age and coming apart in an avaricious, insidiously misogynistic downtown art scene. A founding editor of downtown literary rag Forever, Levy is also a professor at Pratt Institute.

People love to hate on the “Internet novel.” How do you illuminate or obscure the omnipresence of technology in contemporary life?

My book is about the Internet in the same way that it’s about sex work—which is to say that it’s not, but it’s in the water. The Wi-Fi is in the air. I’m not concerned with making a timeless work of art. I know it’s going to be timestamped. Technology is a concern of this book insofar as it contributes to our alienation and the encroachment of capitalism into human relations, especially romantic ones.

The 5G is in the air and in the bedroom.

You know the meme where the man is holding headphones up to a pregnant woman’s belly and he’s playing Alex Jones and then he’s like, “I told her it was Mozart?” That was me in graduate school, trying to do the reading, then going home every night and watching Infowars. I was mainlining the most destructive material on the Internet to get a sense of what was going on with men. I wrote the book in 2022, a period where gender fluidity was more present, but I had the

“There are ways of seeing that are contingent upon a degree of ignorance or naïveté only available to young women.”

sense that we were moving towards a battle of the sexes moment, and we have.

These days, people call their peers delusional even as they proudly self-identify as blissfully delulu. What delusions are worth mining from a literary perspective?

Before this narcissistic surveillance state, only dreams allowed us to experience ourselves as cinematic third-person narrators. Now we do that all the time—I think the corollary for the male conspiracy theorist is the manifestation daughter, because we are living in a moment of widespread secularism that feels historically unprecedented.

This book was written from a place of delusion. There are lots of reasons why it seems like it’s about me, but all of them happened after I wrote it, which has made me feel more delusional. The book starts with the Adderall shortage—I wrote it before that happened. The book deals with female mimetic desire and the narrator’s undoing at the success of her best friend. My best friend did not see commercial success until the moment after I sold this book. The things that we create, we’re subconsciously patterning.

If you were writing the künstlerroman— artistic coming-of-age story—of your own life, what would you title it?

Soft Power. I’m interested in ways women wield power and embody archetypes. My next book will be about becoming more intellectually

rigorous and being surrounded by a lot of educated, brilliant older men. That’s been the most humiliating experience in my life—being at a New Left Review dinner party when everyone’s talking about Italian fascist literature. And I say, “I like Elena Ferrante.” As a woman, somebody’s girlfriend, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s dinner date, there is this need to sing for my supper. With this book, the performance [of the narration] is: I don’t want to take up too much of your time, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be funny, to keep it brief. That’s not the archetype the women in this book are embodying. Everyone in the book is really two-dimensional—I wasn’t interested in writing nuanced female characters.

We famously need more women in male-dominated spaces, including in the writing of flattened-out female characters.

I’ll never forget something Lynne Tillman told me when I said something misogynistic. She responded, “That’s the problem with women today—or, I guess you’d probably call yourself a 29-year-old girl.” That’s the archetype I was investigating: a woman in an extended adolescence. There are ways of seeing that are contingent upon a degree of ignorance or naïveté only available to young women. I’ve been thinking about the muse discourse, and my conspiracy theory is that these great 20th-century men were using these girls not for their sexual viability, but because there are certain perspectives that are only accessible through the stupidity and delusion of a young woman.

“That’s been the most humiliating experience in my life—being at a New Left Review dinner party when everyone’s talking about Italian fascist literature. And I say, ‘I like Elena Ferrante.’”

—

Anika Jade Levy

These days, people call their peers delusional even as they proudly self-identify as blissfully delulu. What delusions are worth mining from a literary perspective?

Few things have this double edge of being really acceptable and also really shameful. In the book, I talk about class and upward mobility within Black families. If one actually thinks about the terror, perils, and obstacles in life, it’s hard to get out of bed. Delusion is certainly necessary to succeed, but there’s a very thin line between the level of delusion that’s inspirational and the level that’s going to make you end up an Anna Delvey. What makes her so interesting is that we can all recognize a level of delusion in the way we construct ourselves, which is rooted in the social media requirement that we construct narratives of ourselves and uphold them, which can get exhausting. In the case of the people I’m writing about, if you’re a woman, and you’re Black, and you’re poor, you have to have a level of delusion in order to believe that your life is worthy. Everything around you is telling you it’s not.

“Delusion is certainly necessary to succeed, but there’s a very thin line between the level of delusion that’s inspirational and the level that’s going to make you end up an Anna Delvey.”

Columbia writing professor and cultural critic Sasha Bonét’s first book of nonfiction, The Waterbearers, is out Sept. 16 and maps Black matriarchy in America, excavating this country’s self-delusions and spotlighting her own ancestors’ stories of survival, love, and legacy.

If you could commission Goodreads reviews from three people, living or dead, who would they be?

Tracee Ellis Ross, because she’s so funny and I think she’d really understand the book—she’s also not a mom, which would be an interesting perspective. Sojourner Truth, whose speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” connects to many themes in the book around Black women, femininity, and womanhood. And Janet Malcolm, the ultimate critic.

What’s the literary landscape oversaturated with? What are we missing?

Funnily enough, the literary world is oversaturated with motherhood books, one of which I wrote. The millennials are mothers now, and that’s what we’re talking about. There are also a lot [about] mental health spiraling, people diagnosing themselves—I’m all about mental health, I love it, but it’s being weaponized in the world at large as a way for people to avoid accountability or victimize themselves to feel more interesting.

Your book is a map of matriarchy and a portrait of sororal bonds across family lines, timelines, and gulfs of class and fame. It is a memoir of the women in your own family, but also a memoir of the famous and infamous women who helped forge your family members’ psyches without ever meeting them. How did you decide to include women outside of your family in this memoir?

It worked the other way around. I wanted to talk broadly about the impacts that Black women, like the funk musician Betty Davis, had on American culture, but I needed to narrow the story down. So I turned to my family as a way to say, “These women represent everything I’m trying to illuminate about the history of Black womanhood in this country,” especially when I needed to fill in gaps. I needed to know what my mom was up to when she was a kid, and she can’t really access her memories because the trauma blocked out a lot of them. So I asked, what was she watching? In the late ’50s, Essence and Ebony were coming about. Most American families had TVs. “Black Is Beautiful,” the crack epidemic, HIV—these things informed my understanding of how these women were constructing themselves, helping me shape their characters.

Your prose is so unique in nonfiction, especially the reported history subgenre; it is almost drastically lyrical. What were you reading for inspiration while writing this?

I’m a daughter of Toni Morrison. I grew up in complete awe of her work. I also love Hilton Als. With his criticism, he opens the door to say nonfiction doesn’t have to be what everyone is telling you it needs to be. I was also reading Leslie Jamison’s Splinters —she opens up the wound and digs around in there. Also, Legacy Russell’s Black Meme , and Natalia Ginzburg—her families become a whole universe.

What about your book is humiliating—for you, for the reader, and for the characters?

My whole book is about humiliation. The narrator is back with these people that have power over her, but she thinks they are so stupid. She’s constantly thinking, It’s humiliating that I still let these people have so much power over me. They’re so worthless and I’m so aware of it, yet here I am with them The narrator is certainly not me; she’s a bit more on one than I am. I bet she doesn’t have Instagram; it would probably ruin her life. S he’s such a hater that she doesn’t even need to fire up the hater machine.

What is your protagonist’s favorite book? What would she tell people is her favorite book?

There’s that line in The Bell Jar when Esther is freaking out, wondering, What am I supposed to be? That book is probably very important to the narrator, but she would be way too embarrassed to say so. She’d be like, “Have you heard of this tiny press in Sweden?”

What is the literary landscape oversaturated with? What are we missing?

The literary landscape is oversaturated with slightly misogynistic discourse around who the author girls are. Then there’s “brodernism.” Fuck off, actually. We have a publishing landscape that requires authors to do so much self-promo because people don’t read magazines. Getting a great review doesn’t

ZOE DUBNO Happiness and Love

The New York native is a critic and fiction writer whose debut novel, Happiness and Love, published this past April, is a searing examination of the moral vacuity and predatory logic of the downtown art world.

translate into sales, and people have to eat. No one wants to have to be an Instagram influencer—or maybe they do, but I don’t. I doubt most authors do. So, I’d love it if we could just get a pause on the para-discourse about “girl” authors. Those are smart ladies.

This book is really fucking funny—your sarcasm is knife-sharp but not cynical; there’s a certain rueful mercy in your jokes that runs through even your protagonist’s most dire negative judgments. How did you strike that balance?

In You’ve Got Mail , Meg Ryan says, “I never know the right mean comeback until like after I’ve left the situation.” When she eventually says it, she’s like, “I really wish I didn’t do that, that feels terrible.” That’s my life. I always say the mean comeback and wish I didn’t, because I want to be nice. Luckily, while you’re writing, you can allow the mean thought and the tender thought to come through at the same time.

This book deals in archetypes, arguing that the creative class often misconstrues an archetype as a subject, when in fact they’re too flat to be fertile artistic subject matter— the flaneur, the passante, the “hysterical woman who realizes her life is a lie.” Why did you choose to interrogate these figures?

I was mostly joking about people who are so invested in being right now. This is another Internet thing—being like, “I’m so mermaid-core” or “I’m a VSCO girl.” We’re

addicted to types. When I was a teenager, I felt like I was one kind of person, but wait—I also like this other thing. Is that going to be a problem for me for the rest of my life? Well, no, you’re allowed to do whatever you want, but also yes, because you want to fit in.

If you were writing the künstlerroman— artistic coming-of-age story—of your own life, what would you title it?

Having grown up on the Upper West Side in a stereotypically loud Jewish household, it would be Girl Portnoy’s Complaint. With less jerking off and more teen longing.

“The literary landscape is oversaturated with slightly misogynistic discourse around who the author girls are.

Then there’s ‘brodernism.’ Fuck off, actually.”

Lonely Crowds

The Kenyan-born, Rhode Island–raised writer Stephanie Wambugu is an editor at Joyland. Lonely Crowds, her first novel, published this past July, traces the origin and eventual dissolution of a friendship that alters the course of two young women’s lives.

What about your book is humiliating—for you, for the reader, and for the characters?

My character is really self-flagellating. The narrator is self-effacing, but is she topping from the bottom? It’s an insidious way of wielding power without seeming to. She’s able to climb the ladder, but presents as quite weak. In terms of the writing, it’s embarrassing to be so earnest over 300 pages. You can’t disavow it. Even in this post-ironic society, you can’t write a novel and be like, “I was just doing a bit.”

What is your protagonist’s favorite book? What would she tell people is her favorite book?

Her favorite book would probably be Sula by Toni Morrison, but I think she would lie. There’s a period in the novel where she’s pining over this Marxist; I think she would say something that he liked.

If you could commission Goodreads reviews from three people, living or dead, who would they be?

I would love a really scathing one from Gary Indiana. Maybe one from Frantz Fanon. Lastly, any enemy of mine.

If you were writing the künstlerroman—artistic coming-of-age story—of your own life, what would you title it?

The title would be Working. I’d like to use it as a title for a memoir because I think writing is

as much a calling as it is about making money and the bottom line. I would probably include my bank statements at various moments to punctuate it.

What’s the literary landscape oversaturated with? What are we missing?

What’s missing is more contemporary African fiction that feels closer to auto-fiction. I’m curious about what the next generation of African writers will be like, which ones will be visible in the United States—who, internationally, is able to break through.

Suffering is integral to your narrator’s creative process, both for her art as well as her self-concept. But she’s also experimenting with pleasure. How do those sensations map onto each other?

It’s a source of sadness for me to see how hard people try to alleviate negative feelings. I’m not anti-antidepressants if you need them, but I sometimes feel that by trying to bypass suffering, people are depriving themselves of the low that would actually make the high palpable. I don’t think those are things to be avoided. My narrator is capable of states of gratitude and feelings of devotion and loyalty that are directly proportional to the intensity of her suffering.

“It’s embarrassing to be so earnest over 300 pages. You can’t disavow it. Even in this post-ironic society, you can’t write a novel and be like, ‘I was just doing a bit.’”

“I’m not anti-antidepressants if you need them, but I sometimes feel that by trying to bypass suffering, people are depriving themselves of the low that would actually make the high palpable. I don’t think those are things to be avoided.”

“I think the era of very thin, cis white girls getting $100,000 to write their diaries should end. Get a job. What’s underrepresented? Bring men back.”

“The

affect of

this book is bitterness. Done well, bitterness is inherently funny.”

Grace Byron is a celebrated critic raised in the Midwest. Her novel Herculine, out Oct. 7, follows a flailing freelancer who flees Brooklyn for a commune in rural Indiana, where supernatural spirits prey on young trans women.

What about your book is humiliating—for you, for the reader, and for the characters?

Putting out a book is humiliating. I was talking with Torrey Peters, who called it masochistic; you’re inviting people to say nasty shit about you. My narrator is humiliated by her inability to blend in, but also her inability to have a bourgeois life in New York, to have a romantic partner who’s legible. For a reader, there are lots of humiliation traps in the book. It’s like, Okay, you want the trans girl sob story? I’m gonna give it to you, but in an aggressive way. There’s also a lot of making fun of liberals, girl bosses, and freelancing, which is its own humiliating experience.

The “literary It girl” concept caused quite the online controversy. Do you think she exists? Is that term complimentary or derogatory? Do you consider yourself one?

There could be a more expansive view of what we think a literary girl is. It’s too often thought of as, Who’s going to the little downtown magazine parties? Who’s beautiful? Who writes on Substack? It’s become a cliché, or an insult, but I think to be called a literary It girl, you have to be happening And to be happening, you have to have some brains. A lot of the people in this discourse are extremely smart, hardworking, and thoughtful— I admire their work a lot. I don’t know if I’m a literary It girl. Do you have to be cis to be a literary It girl?

I definitely don’t think so. I think of you, of Jamie Hood…

Thank you. The boys in the DMs certainly think I am.

What’s the literary landscape oversaturated with? What are we missing?

I think the New York novel is done—we’ve had enough of those. So, dare I say the e-girl novel? I’m going to dare, and I think it’s distinct from the Internet novel. I think the era of very thin, cis white girls getting $100,000 to write their diaries should end. Get a job. What’s underrepresented? Bring men back.

If you were writing the künstlerroman artistic coming-of-age story—of your own life, what would you title it?

Maybe Yikes. No, let’s go with Fucking It Up to Get It Up

You wrote a humorous horror novel. Talk about how you intertwine fear and amusement here.

The affect of this book is bitterness. Done well, bitterness is inherently funny. Can I make someone laugh every few lines and then say something so horrible about life or trauma that you hear the wheel screeching? So far when I’ve done readings, some people are afraid to laugh. Trans audiences are laughing, but I think a lot of cis audiences feel like they have to be really respectful, like this is so important and true. But I hope it’s funny, and that it pulls on the heartstrings.

“Who’s going to the little downtown magazine parties? Who’s beautiful? Who writes on Substack?”

—Grace Byron

IT’S A CLUB, KID

Dress codes went out the window around the time the legging became a socially acceptable way to do more than exercise, but there are still a few formalwear strongholds peppered across the island of Manhattan. One of them is the Nines, an old-school piano bar where baseball caps, flip-flops, shorts, and even tank tops are verboten. An apt setting to take Diane von Furstenberg’s Fall/ Winter 2025 collection, a lesson in defiant glamour, for a spin. For the issue, photographer Chiara Gabellini staged the line’s polished chiffon dresses and slinky smoking jackets on the city’s next generation of club kids.

All clothing DIANE VON FURSTENBERG FALL/WINTER 2025

Photography by CHIARA GABELLINI

Styling by AYUMI PERRY

Hair by GINGER LEIGH RYAN

Makeup by ALICE LANE

Production by CAROLINA BISHOP

Modeling by ELOISA SANTOS, FINLAY MANGAN, ELENE MAKHARASHVILI, BRIAN O’DWYER, and ELLIA SOPHIA

Photography Assistance by JOHN LAW

Styling Assistance by MADILYNN STITH

Hair Assistance by NEVADA RAFFAELE

Makeup Assistance by YELLY SAMARA

Production Assistance by MARK MANKARIOUS

Location: ACME and THE NINES

Two Years of Musical Chairs Have Ushered in a New Chapter for the Fashion Industry.

Where Will It Lead?

“Pretty

much everything has changed, but the biggest change is the pace and consistency. There used to be two seasons a year. Now it’s all been melted down into a consistent stream of content creation and a merry-go-round of fashion events.”

—ALASTAIR MCKIMM

Few worlds are as fickle as fashion. The 21st century has aided and abetted this quicksand-like quality to a dizzying degree. What used to be a microcosm few dared consider themselves fluent in has turned into a sprawling pop-cultural ecosystem where legacy houses balance their past with the imperative to stay relevant yet distinct from fast fashion’s churn. Creative directors, whose roles have become both more high-profile and less secure, are charged with branding an industry grappling with its own identity crisis. The most visible facet of this turbulent period is a recent round of musical chairs undertaken over the past two years. This fall, the dust settles at last, with no less than a dozen creative directors making their debuts at sartorial heavyweights like Loewe, Chanel, and Bottega Veneta. With the future of each house’s “codes”—the hues, motifs, and insignias that make up a brand’s DNA—at stake, the pressure is on.

To parse through the aftermath, CULTURED convened a quintet of voices who’ve seen the industry from every angle. Alastair McKimm, a celebrated

stylist and creative director, has worked with brands including Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, and Versace, and most recently served served as the global editor-in-chief of i-D from 2019–24. Ashley Brokaw, who founded her casting company after working with top industry names including Steven Meisel, helps define the faces of the moment, visualizing Prada and Miu Miu runway and campaign rosters today. Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag are the co-founders of M/M (Paris), a creative agency renowned for its work in art direction and graphic design, including collaborations with fashion houses such as Balenciaga, Loewe, and Givenchy. As a former fashion editor and director at publications like W, Women’s Wear Daily, and The Wall Street Journal, Meenal Mistry now applies her expertise in content for leading luxury brands, first at Bottega Veneta, and now at Tory Burch.

These insiders stitch together a weary yet hopeful picture of the world they’ve devoted their careers to— and the rollercoaster ride it’s been.

Alastair McKimm.

What have been the biggest changes in your line of work since you started?

Ashley Brokaw: Well, we had dial-up Internet! Lots has changed. When I first started, everything was about relationships over the phone. The changes in technology have made things quicker and easier, but also a bit less personal. The real shift has been in the model ecosystem itself. We’ve moved away from the supermodel era, where a Vogue cover was genuinely life-changing. Today’s landscape is more fragmented—we’re seeing fewer traditional models on major covers, and new models face significantly more competition to break through. The path to recognition has become more complex, and honestly, I’m not sure there’s a modern equivalent to what a Vogue cover once represented in terms of career impact.

Alastair McKimm: Pretty much everything has changed, but the biggest change is the pace and consistency. The workflow was very different in the early 2000s. We would see the collections, go back to London, work on ideas, plan the season, shoot stories, and publish, in that order, over months. There were two seasons a year. Now it’s all been melted down into a consistent stream of content creation and a merry-go-round of fashion events.

Meenal Mistry: Fashion has become entertainment and an integral part of pop

culture. The industry felt tiny and niche when I started. You got to see a few immediate images from runway shows in WWD or a newspaper. Otherwise, fashion magazines controlled what you saw and dictated trends. Livestreams, vogue.com, and social media broke down that wall.

This tectonic shift made everyone a content creator, including brands. That’s why you saw an influx of fashion editors leaving magazines to work for them. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to shoot a campaign, buy print ads, and rely on magazines to tell your story. You needed an “always-on” storytelling strategy and an in-house team.

Michael Amzalag: When we started, it was not such a big industry. We started with designers that were in charge of their own brands. The idea of a creative director didn’t appear until Tom Ford. It’s at the turn of this century that the Tom Ford and Gucci template established something that has affected the scale of an industry that has grown 10 or 20 times the size of what it was. In the 1990s, Dior and Chanel didn’t represent much for people outside of their clients. They were not even part of the fashion conversation. Everybody was excited about Helmut Lang, or the Japanese, or Jil Sander. Going to see a Chanel show was only valid for a certain type of person.

“It would be a pity if a creative director played it safe because they felt a single collection makes or breaks them.”

—MEENAL MISTRY

Which fashion show would you describe as the best you’ve attended? What made it so unforgettable?

Brokaw: The Versace Couture show, January 1999. I was working for Steven Meisel, and we flew over to see the show and shoot the campaign right afterwards. It was in the basement of the Ritz, and the runway was just a floor over the pool. There was a palpable buzz of energy and excitement, and the afterparty was also Kate Moss’s 25th birthday. She came with the hair from the show. The clothes were also incredible—these stingray sculpted dresses that looked sequined in the light. Absolutely one of a kind. I think it was the first time I saw couture clothing up close.

McKimm: I’m not sure about “best,” but the show that affected me the most was very early on in my career: Yohji Yamamoto Spring/Summer 2003, during the Paris shows in 2002. It was the launch of Yohji’s collaboration with Adidas. All these incredible black Yohji silhouettes styled with Adidas sneakers, the models walking in silence. It was the first time I saw a show with no music, and the silence was very powerful. I was so inspired to see the mix of high fashion, sportswear, and street-wear, which was ever-present in the Buffalo movement that I was obsessively studying at the time.

Photography by Ramie Faris

Meenal Mistry.

“Honestly, I’m not really paying much attention to this season. I get that this season is big and offers that initial buzz, but a creative director’s true breakthrough—to me, usually—is seen in seasons four and five, where rebranding efforts reach critical mass.”

—ASHLEY BROKAW

Ashley Brokaw.

Mistry: Alexander McQueen’s Fall 2006 show, the Widows of Culloden, is possibly the best show I ever attended. The clothes explored the romantic side of his Scottish heritage with fantastical headdresses. It ended with a beautiful, ghostly projection of Kate Moss, especially poignant in the wake of a recent scandal. I was moved to tears; I recall many people wiping their eyes. McQueen’s codes were raw and auto-biographical. When he fully deployed them, you couldn’t help but have an emotional reaction.

The best show I worked on was Tory Burch Spring 2022, my first season at the company. Downtown New York was still recovering from the early days of Covid, and the show celebrated its return to form—staged right on Mercer Street in SoHo with a local street fair on either side of the runway. The collection, a modern homage to Claire McCardell, signaled a new direction for the brand. It was a perfect early fall day, and people were so happy to see each other again.

How do Internet trends influence your approach to your work?

Brokaw: If something is trending, that’s my cue to pivot. If I’m on trend, I’m behind the ball.

Mistry: I always have an ear out for Internet trends that might connect to what we’re

messaging at any moment. But the microtrend cycle has become comically accelerated. Something pops up and immediately everyone— influencers, brands, publications—pounces and very quickly you’re sick of it. We started a brand Substack at Tory Burch in 2023, and I find the fashion coverage there to be incredibly interesting. There are certainly trends that bubble up, but I see more depth and breadth in writers’ perspectives. We’ve collaborated with many of them, and it’s a fun platform to hook into.

What are you hoping to see or feel on the ground this season? What do you expect will disappoint you?

McKimm: I don’t expect to be disappointed. With so many visionary creatives of my generation taking the helm of the most prestigious houses, I know it’s going to be an incredibly inspiring season. I expect to see respect for house codes, but with an emphasis on the here and now.

Mistry: I try to never expect disappointment. There is immense expectation around these debuts. My feeling is that everyone needs to slow down a little and give new creative directors a moment to develop their vision. My PSA? Let’s all take a beat before rushing to judgment. It’s important to remember that many of the ones we think of as successes took a few seasons to hit their stride: Riccardo

Tisci at Givenchy, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino. It would be a pity if a creative director played it safe because they felt a single collection makes or breaks them.

Brokaw: Honestly, I’m not really paying much attention to this season. I get that this season is big and offers that initial buzz, but a creative director’s true breakthrough—to me, usually—is seen in seasons four and five, where rebranding efforts reach critical mass. That’s when you see if consumers genuinely embrace the new narrative. Successful creative transformations rarely achieve impact through debut presentations alone. Today’s creative directors function as world-builders, constructing comprehensive universes across multiple strategic dimensions—from visual identity to retail environments to cultural positioning. I don’t think that believable brand architecture materializes overnight.

Are there particular house codes that are begging for a refresh or rebrand?

McKimm: Chanel tweed.

Amzalag: A rebrand has become such a trick to reactivate brands, almost as a franchise. We’ve reached a point where everyone’s going back to the original logo after trying to move away from the original logo. At some point, there is a need

for stability, for work that has real craft and appeal. When they don’t, or when they are too blunt, it doesn’t work for long—it only has initial shock appeal. We’re now realizing that people want things that are more stable and that they can relate to through time.

Mistry: In a post-Demna and Hedi [Slimane] world, I don’t know that anything is untouchably sacred. Perhaps a better question is whether it’s ever a good idea to change a deeply defining code. Those blue-chip codes—Chanel’s double Cs and tweeds, Bottega Veneta’s intrecciato, Valentino red—are a necessary anchor for future-facing creativity. From a storytelling perspective, house codes supply the weight and romance of luxury and heritage. At Tory Burch, even though the brand has evolved from when it was founded in 2004, the original double T is still essential, and it’s interesting to see how the team pushes it and plays with it every season.

Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior show saw so much support from other creative directors, who all sat front row. Do you see that as a turn toward a warmer, more familial industry atmosphere?

Brokaw: God, I hope so. I really feel for these creative directors. It can be isolating—they so often get pitted against each other in the press. It’s nice that they can celebrate their individual talents, and it’s important that they support each

other. It’s tough out there now, and there is so much pressure on these creative directors to deliver in environments that they don’t fully control. They are so front-facing that I feel an extraordinary amount of pressure is heaped on their shoulders.

McKimm: There’s definitely a camaraderie amongst creative directors. In my opinion, it’s due to the disposable nature of an already very challenging job.

Mistry: I’m not sure how much I would read into this. I recall a big designer turnout for Raf Simons’s debut at Dior—Riccardo Tisci, Azzedine Alaïa, Diane von Furstenberg, Marc Jacobs, Olivier Theyskens, Alber Elbaz, and more—which was over a decade ago. This may simply be what happens in Paris when there’s a major debut with a lot of expectation from a designer whom people genuinely like and want to support.

Mathias Augustyniak: I’m more drawn towards the interpretation that, even while competition is valuable, showing support is good too.

Of the creative directors who have shuffled their positions recently, who do you think is genuinely well-suited to channel the history and house codes of their new placement?

“Jonathan Anderson managed to get people to start to look at Dior again. Will it be a big success? I can’t see into the future, but at least it brings dialogue—we are discussing it.”

—MATHIAS AUGUSTYNIAK

McKimm: In my opinion, this round of hires makes sense. Jonathan, Matthieu [Blazy], Demna, Duran [Lantink], Glenn [Martens], and the already-proven Michael Rider—these are all modern thinkers who have enough experience to handle pressure and develop their own visions.

Mistry: I’m especially looking forward to seeing what Matthieu does at Chanel. There’s a deep well of references to feed his rich imagination. Jonathan is an inspired choice at Dior. Both are well-suited appointments. The combination of a strong imagination set free in a house with strong codes and source material holds a lot of promise. I also think Sarah Burton is well-poised to sharpen up the vision at Givenchy. I only wish there were more women in the mix. I really enjoyed Michael Rider’s debut at Celine. It wasn’t a wholesale reinvention, but a cocktail of familiarity and newness, with some very fun styling.

Augustyniak: Jonathan managed to get people to start to look at Dior again. Will it be a big success? I can’t see into the future, but at least it brings dialogue—we are discussing it. What’s good about this group is that there are many people in the mix who are obsessed with fashion. Jonathan is obsessed with fashion. Fashion is obsessed with fashion. There is no doubt about this. These are people who are making the fashion world move somehow.

by Anton Corbijn

Photography

Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak.

Photography courtesy of M/M (Paris)

Chanel Goes Galactic

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s enduring motto goes, “If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.” Its whimsy and ambition infuse the house’s most recent haute joaillerie collection, “Reach for the Stars.” Three of the late designer’s most beloved motifs emerge from a swirl of padparadscha sapphires, tanzanite beads, and pear-shaped diamonds—a comet, a set of wings, and her astrological sign, the lion. The interstellar blend pulls from Chanel’s singular 1932 collection, “Bijoux de Diamants,” the only high jewelry collection touched by the designer during her lifetime. For inspiration, she turned to the stars—a prism for two quintessential facets of the house: freedom and eternal modernity.

pink gold, diamonds, pink sapphires

RISE AND SHINE necklace

18K white gold, diamonds, sapphires

STRONG AS A LION ring

18K white gold, diamonds, 1 brilliant-cut diamond

STRONG AS A LION necklace

18K white gold, diamonds, 1 brilliant-cut diamond

white gold, diamonds, 1 brilliant-cut diamond

FULL SWING transformable earrings

18K white gold, diamonds

FULL SWING head jewel

18K white gold, diamonds, 1 pear-shaped diamond

ONCE A NEW YORKER, ALWAYS A NEW YORKER

AT 2 GANSEVOORT STREET, THEORY’S DESIGN TEAM IS REDEFINING THE EFFORTLESS UNIFORM THAT HAS BECOME ITS CALLING CARD.

In a sea of established fashion brands, Theory does things a little different. Its atelier isn’t tucked away in a semi-anonymous town in Europe, or scattered across American ZIP codes. The brand’s nerve center is only two blocks east of its New York flagship, towering over the city’s historically industrial Meatpacking District. Dubbed the “Design and Innovation Center,” the 79,000-square-foot building houses every step of the garment-making process—a sprawling space for sartorial creativity that is becoming ever rarer in New York’s increasingly crowded landscape—and even played host to Theory’s fashion week presentation last February.

Inside the airy space, the 178-strong design team, led by menswear and womenswear heads Dushane Noble and Martin Andersson, goes about the business of making the timeless uniform that has become synonymous with the line. Recently, they’ve been at work on the fall collection, a series of garments featuring modular suiting and merino knits. Fronting the “Made by NYC” campaign are the city’s own actor Britt Lower and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer Calvin Royal III. The latter is a particularly fitting model for the “Motion Wool and Motion Nylon” that defines the men’s offering, made to stretch in accordance with the wearer’s daily movements across town. “[Theory] understands the poetry and rhythm of New York,” said Royal. “The clothing moves with intention.”

To achieve this specificity of function, those working in the Innovation Center are sent home with samples—to attend dinners, take meetings, hail a cab, see a show. Two or three rounds of testing are staged based on this feedback, all in service of the line’s main tentpole: fit, whether it be of the wearer, their lifestyle, or their environment. Nearly 30 years in business have yielded one undeniable insight: This singularity of purpose is all the easier to achieve under a single roof.

Dubbed the “Design and Innovation Center,” the 79,000-square-foot building houses every step of the garmentmaking process.

Fronting the “Made by NYC” campaign are the city’s own actor Britt Lower and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer Calvin Royal III.

In the Studio With This Year’s Class of Dior Lady Artists

By SAM FALB

When Princess Diana first began carrying Dior’s now-iconic design in the mid-’90s, it was made from a sleek black leather. Later, at her request, the French house crafted a deep blue iteration to match her eyes and the Lady Dior became a chameleonic talisman overnight. For just shy of a decade, Dior has invited dozens of artists to put their spin on the accessory—adding another layer of individualism to its silky lambskin leather, cannage topstitching, and rounded handles.

Now in its 10th edition, the Dior Lady Art initiative counts the likes of Judy Chicago, Jack Pierson, Mickalene Thomas, and more among its alumni. Here, the latest roster of creatives speaks to the wearable objets d’art they’ve been tasked with reimagining.

Photography by Mateusz Stefanowski

Alymamah Rashed with her reimagined Lady Dior handbag.

Jessica CANNON

What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration? In daily life, my relationship with fashion shifts between practical workwear that enables me to move and paint in the studio, and choosing more playful and exciting clothes and accessories on my days off. Before this collaboration, I was familiar with the iconic Christian Dior silhouettes of the 1950s, and I began following the house more closely after seeing Dior and I in 2014, a film that documents Raf Simons’s first couture collection.

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? I began by researching Dior’s history and visual language. I read Christian Dior’s autobiography, Justine Picardie’s biography of Catherine Dior, watched films of couture shows, and visited La Galerie Dior in Paris, which allowed me to view many special pieces up close, including several fine jewelry pieces by Victoire de Castellane. I wanted to create something new for this project that would feel like a dialogue across time, between my work and the house of Dior.

Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium. In my studio, I often think about how to translate light and natural elements using various types of paint. While working with the Dior team, it was fascinating to learn about materials that can achieve similar effects in ways that are new to me. Some of the materials we used included sculpted tulle and pleated silk, which diffuse light, as well as stones, glass beads, and pearlized elements, which catch light and allow the appearance of the bags to shift with movement.

“I WANTED TO CREATE SOMETHING NEW FOR THIS PROJECT THAT WOULD FEEL LIKE A DIALOGUE ACROSS TIME, BETWEEN MY WORK AND THE HOUSE OF DIOR.”

Photography by Joe Perri

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Jessica Cannon.

Photography by Lei

What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration? For me, fashion often becomes a prism that refracts the complexities of human nature—when we adjust our collars in front of the mirror, we are essentially fine-tuning the way we converse with the world. This is my first collaboration with Dior. Before this, we didn’t know each other very well.

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? This was a delightful encounter between Dior and me. My creations have always been rooted in the existence and growth of contemporary women. Through physical gestures—both big and small—like carving, tearing, folding, and hammering, I ultimately arrive at an abstract visual language. Building upon Dior’s core (continuously redefining modern femininity within a framework of timeless elegance), I emphasized rebellion and resistance. I’ve been persistently pursuing that which transcends time and converses with eternity.

Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium. Indeed, before this, most of my works took the form of paintings. But I’ve always had a profound fascination with materials—never confined to acrylic paints. For this bag, I ultimately chose traditional, warm-toned leather for the body, paired with sleek, industrial-grade mirrored metal for the handles and logo lettering. This creates a deliberate clash of softness and hardness.

How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel? I imagine someone who is confident, free, graceful yet quietly defiant, who uses fashion to narrate their own story. A person pulsating with life.

“THIS IS MY FIRST COLLABORATION WITH DIOR. BEFORE THIS, WE DIDN’T KNOW EACH OTHER VERY WELL.”

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Ju Ting.

Patrick EUGÈNE

What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration? Fashion has always been part of how I express myself as an artist, even when I’m not consciously thinking about it. It shows up in how I present myself, in the characters I paint, and in how I approach form and composition. I think of style as another kind of storytelling, one that speaks to emotion, heritage, and identity. Day to day, I lean into pieces that feel lived in—something with texture or history.

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? The story starts with the pearls. I’ve often painted women wearing them, in a quiet nod to grace, strength, and legacy. The phrase “Pearl of the Antilles,” which used to describe Haiti, always stayed in the back of my mind. I’ve wanted to reclaim that phrase— to reshape what it means through my work. I didn’t want to just place a painting onto the bag. I imagined what kind of bag these women might actually carry—something that reflects their pride, their elegance, and their connection to culture. I focused on color, on materials that carry memory, and on symbols that speak to identity.

How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel? I want them to feel like they’re holding something personal. Not just something beautiful, but something meaningful. Something that carries a story. This bag holds a piece of my heritage, the quiet strength of the people I paint, and the power of things made by hand. I hope it feels intimate— like it lives with you, not just on you.

Photography by Heather Sten

“THIS BAG HOLDS A PIECE OF MY HERITAGE, THE QUIET STRENGTH OF THE PEOPLE I PAINT, AND THE POWER OF THINGS MADE BY HAND.”

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Jessica Cannon.

Photography by James Robjant

Marc QUINN

“MY HOPE IS FOR THE WEARER TO FEEL LIKE A LIVING WORK OF ART.”

Where does the story of your Dior Lady handbag begin? The Lady Dior handbag designs stem from some of the works I’ve been creating recently—from irises to orchids. All the content you see on the bags comes from my practice, but in a form that’s ready to be activated by the wearer.

Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium. These bags are a way of creating bespoke versions of my sculptures and paintings, translated onto a wearable form. In this second series of bags with Dior, I’ve moved more definitively into the realm of sculpture, exploring what’s possible within the context of the project and creating ambitious yet wearable pieces.

How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel? My hope is for the wearer to feel like a living work of art.

If you could own one of the past Dior Lady Art handbags, whose would you choose?

I would love to own the entire collection, and bring them together as a single installation!

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Marc Quinn.

Sophia LOEB

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? The handbag started with a feeling. I’ve always been inspired by changes in nature and the body. That’s where my paintings come from, and it’s also how I approached the bag—wanting it to feel alive and textured, almost like it’s in motion. When I thought about the Lady Dior, I saw it as more than just a bag—it’s a symbol, something with history and presence. I wanted to bring my own visual language into that, to wrap the structure of the bag in something more organic and intuitive.

Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium. In painting, I’m very focused on texture, layering, and the physicality of materials—so approaching these new surfaces felt like discovering a new kind of canvas. The different textures explored in the bags have their own life and character, and the way they respond to touch and light reminded me of the textures I build in my paintings.

How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel? As if they’re taking a piece of my artwork with them— something intimate, emotional, and alive. Although, of course, you wouldn’t touch them, my paintings are very tactile, and with this collaboration, I wanted to translate that impression into something you can actually hold, wear, and move with. I hope it sparks a sense of emotional connection—like you’re not just carrying a bag, but something with its own soul.

“I WANT THE PERSON CARRYING THIS BAG TO FEEL AS IF THEY’RE TAKING A PIECE OF MY ARTWORK WITH THEM—SOMETHING INTIMATE, EMOTIONAL, AND ALIVE.”

Photography by James Robjant

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Sophia Loeb.

Photography by James Robjant

“I WAS THINKING A LOT ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, WOMANHOOD, AND HOW WE HOLD THINGS AS WOMEN— THE AMOUNT THAT WE CARRY, BOTH PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY.”

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? At the time that I began talking with Dior about the project, I [had] just had my daughter. She’s my third child and my only daughter, so I was thinking a lot about motherhood, womanhood, and how we hold things as women—the amount that we carry, both physically and emotionally.

Tell us about your material exploration, working with textiles, leather, and hardware, and crossing into a new medium. The surface of the bag is a leather patchwork with cut pieces of leather intricately appliquéd on top of each other. As I was thinking about holding and the tenderness of touch, I really wanted the bag to be very tactile. The first iteration of the bag took the approach of a painting, but felt too flat to me. Because of this thinking about tactility and embodiment, I really wanted there to be layers to the bag.

The body of work I was making at the time was a series of sculptural paintings, which were assemblages of cut pieces of wood. The bag and the paintings evolved in tandem, and on both, we developed these layered surfaces—on the paintings using wood and on the bag using leather instead.

How do you want the person who carries your Dior Lady Art handbag to feel? I’d love the person who carries the bag to feel lifted and really special holding it. A lot of my work is very rooted in the everyday and is an attempt to bring these small glimpses of glory to life. I love the opportunity fashion provides to lift us, lift our heads, and do the same.

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Lakwena.

Alymamah RASHED

“FASHION IS A MODE OF UTTER FREEDOM— AN EXPRESSIVE EXTENSION OF THE SELF, AND A CONSCIOUS ACT OF LAYERING THE STORIES I CHOOSE TO CARRY ON MY FLESH.”

What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration? Fashion is a mode of utter freedom—an expressive extension of the self, and a conscious act of layering the stories I choose to carry on my flesh. I wear 11 rings on my fingers, each with its own story, its own symbolism, and a memory of how it was found or gifted. Every day, I decide which narratives I want to tell with my hands—and the hand, to me, holds immense gesture and meaning. Dior, to me, has always represented romance and beauty. Through this collaboration, I am honoring beauty—not just in the aesthetic sense, but in the complexity and duality of what it means to be human.

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? For this project, it was essential for me to create signifiers of home. And for me, home is deeply intertwined with elements of nature. One of the bags is rooted in a post-apocalyptic island in Kuwait called Failaka Island, where I spent a full year developing a body of work during my residency with FIKAR. I wanted to honor the very first object I picked up on the island—a washed-up seashell on its shore.

The second bag celebrates the native flower of Kuwait, the humaith, which blooms in vibrant magenta during Kuwait’s fleeting spring. It appears unexpectedly along sidewalks, and each time I see it, it feels like a marker. These two natural elements—the seashell and the humaith flower—are both recurring motifs within my practice.

Photography by Mateusz Stefanowski

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Alymamah Rashed.

Inès LONGEVIAL

What role does fashion play in your practice and daily life? What was your understanding of Dior before this collaboration? Fashion is a field where I like to move with my eyes partially covered. I sometimes look at it with suspicion because it can feel like it dictates a silhouette, a movement, a pose. That can deeply irritate me. But I can’t help also seeing it as a space for magic, fiction, and panache. It’s not the object that interests me, it’s what it allows us to invent. Dior was a myth—too vast to really grasp. And that’s exactly what I like: the possibility of projecting an entire imaginary landscape of desire onto it.

Where does the story of your Dior Lady Art handbag begin? I imagined this bag as a companion, a party friend. It’s waiting for David Bowie backstage after his concert, or sipping a cocktail with Niki de Saint Phalle. I wanted it to be funny, playful, and tender. I certainly didn’t want to illustrate my work on this bag; I preferred to unfold it, to invite it to take on another form.

If you could own one of the past Dior Lady Art handbags, whose would you choose? Dorothy Iannone’s, obviously. In her work, everything overflows. She invented an intimate, joyful, unfiltered mythology, where desire is a language of its own. I love the idea of decoding her bag. The star I put on the bag, while being a tribute to Christian Dior, is also a wink to the beaded black and white stars on Iannone’s handbag.

“FASHION IS A FIELD WHERE I LIKE TO MOVE WITH MY EYES PARTIALLY COVERED.”

Photography by Marion Berrin

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Inés Longevial.

Eva JOSPIN

“I UNDERSTOOD THAT DIOR LADY ART CONSTITUTED, TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST. IT’S THEIR WAY OF THINKING, EMBODIED IN THIS EXCEPTIONAL CREATION.”

Photography by Marion Berrin

How would you describe your artistic universe in a few words? Monumental, attention to detail, changing scales, recurrent motifs.

What influences have shaped your art and creative vision? My field of inspiration is very broad! From painting to tapestry, the history of gardens, the architecture of follies and troglodyte dwellings (my passion!), to set design, textile arts, and all the incredible inventiveness of the 20th century when a wide variety of materials —even the most basic ones like cardboard, my favorite material—entered the artistic domain.

As Dior Lady Art arrives at its 10th iteration, what does this artistic adventure mean to you personally? I discovered and followed the different editions of Dior Lady Art with great pleasure. When I had the chance to see the projects, and how the artist’s spirit and imagination had unfolded, I understood that Dior Lady Art constituted, to a certain extent, a portrait of the artist. It’s their way of thinking, embodied in this exceptional creation. It is therefore a great privilege for me to be part of this edition.

How did the collaboration go? There was a collective energy that allowed me to get as near as possible to what I wanted to achieve. A very fluid and diverse creative dialogue developed, during which a real emulation was forged with the house, enabling me to test several avenues, including a change of scale. I adapted to the micro format after having mainly worked on monumental pieces. The fruitful exchange with Dior led to finding the right size.

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Eva Jospin.

Lee UFAN

“I AM INSPIRED BY THE FEELING OF CONNECTION I EXPERIENCE WHEN CONTEMPLATING THE BEAUTY OF BIRDSONG, FLOWERS, OR THE MOON.”

How would you describe your artistic universe in a few words? By connecting the inside and the outside, my art highlights an even more open world. My works express the infinity of life through vibrations and silent resonances.

What influences have shaped your art and your creative vision? I am inspired by the feeling of connection I experience when contemplating the beauty of birdsong, flowers, or the moon.

Which works do you consider to be the most emblematic of your universe? The works represent a single point traced by the brush on a large canvas.

What do you like most about the Lady Dior bag? The Lady Dior bag is simple and classic yet universal and innovative.

What makes this design unique in your eyes? What creative detail touches you the most? I added a small orange or blue metal line that evokes my brushstrokes. It’s an addition that creates a very subtle accent.

What is your relationship with fashion? How do you think a piece of clothing or an accessory can become a form of expression? I appreciate designs that represent a person’s individuality rather than those that follow trends.

What does a project like Dior Lady Art represent to you? Do you think it’s a call to celebrate art in all its forms? To break down certain barriers? In my opinion, Dior Lady Art is an extension of art, but it’s not a painting or a sculpture in itself. It’s a way of expressing art.

Photography by Marion Berrin

Dior Lady Art Limited Editions in Collaboration with Lee Ufan.