Opposite page: Elise Taylor starts the day with morning coffee at Chelsea’s Empire Diner in a linen-blend turtleneck, wool blazer, white denim jeans, and canvas sneakers by Polo Ralph Lauren. She wears her own pearl earrings and Vhernier’s Spire ring in white gold and white diamonds.
COVERING THE TOWN PRODUCED AND STYLED BY DANIEL CAPPELLO PHOTOGRAPHED BY JULIE SKARRATT BEAUTY BY OSCAR BLANDI SALON RENEE COHEN FOR HAIR V I K T O R I YA O S YC H E N KO F O R M A K E U P, F E AT U R I N G N A R S
ELISE TAYLOR is a girl about town—not to mention the world. As a Living Writer for Vogue, she covers her fair share of our fair metropolis, from food and spirits to the design world and beyond. Outside of New York, she can be spotted on just about any continent covering travel stories for Vogue, with frequent stops in London, where she has the royal beat. Yes, while the rest of us were busy watching Meghan Markle and Prince Harry tie the knot via Instagram refreshes, Elise was there to witness—and document—the regal “I do”s. A Connecticut native, Elise is a graduate of Greenwich Academy and went on to Boston College for her bachelor’s degree. She spent high school tinkering away on the Greenwich Academy Press; in college, she was an editor for four years at The Heights, her alma mater’s award-winning newspaper. “It was a lot of late nights, red ink, and stale pizza,” she recalls. But her passion for journalism was anything but stale. “I was 13 years old when I picked up my first issue of Vanity Fair,” she tells me. It was Tom Ford’s Hollywood Issue, in which the designer, fully clothed, posed with a bare-bummed Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, reminiscent of Manet’s Dé90 QUEST
jeuner sur l’herbe. “I read it cover to cover, and decided that, one day, I’d write for a magazine.” As determination would have it, she ended up at that very same magazine. Before joining Vogue as a writer, Elise worked as an editorial associate for Vanity Fair. Today, her life is part-literary, part-glamorous, yet always cultural to the core. When not covering the Red Cross Ball in Monaco or the launch of the longest flight in the world (hint: it’s coming this October from Singapore Airlines), Elise can be spotted at some of her favorite New York institutions like The Frick and the New York Public Library, or taking in a performance at Lincoln Center. When she’s not covering the cultural scene or eyeing curiosities for herself at John Derian’s shop in the East Village, she’s usually spending time in the Victorian seaside town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, where her father’s family has been vacationing since the 1930s. For this issue, we managed to snag her for a day somewhere between Shanghai and the South of France so that she could pose for us in some of fall’s most exciting—and most wearable— fashions. We only have one question that remains unanswered: Elise, How do you make it look so easy? —D.C.