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JUERGEN TELLER

A curated series of photography by ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, JUERGEN TELLER and BRUCE WEBER

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THE MUSIC ISSUE

93

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THE NEW SOUND OF SOUL THE VOICE

SAM SMITH PHOTOGRAPHED BY INEZ & VINOODH STYLED BY MEL OTTENBERG

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY INEZ & VINOODH FASHION MEL OTTENBERG SAM SMITH WEARS COAT ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA T-SHIRT RAG & BONE EARRING HIS OWN

I DON’T HAVE MONEY ON MY MIND I DO IT FOR THE LOVE SA M S M IT H , “M O NEY ON MY MIND”

V MAGAZINE 1 6

WELCOME TO V’S THIRD ANNUAL MUSIC ISSUE! It’s been exactly three years since we put our frst Music Issue together at V—an intimidating undertaking, to say the least. When artists like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Yoko Ono, and Metallica came to the table—not to mention the issue’s cover star, Justin Bieber—we realized we had something special on our hands. V had always been at the forefront of championing pop musicians alongside superstars of luxury fashion, but V75 heralded a new era of synchronicity between the two industries, and since then, more musicians have graced our covers than ever before. The Music Issue is now a landmark on our calendar, one that audiophiles and fashion obsessives anticipate in equal force. Pop stars are also seated front-row at fashion week and snatching top campaigns, something senior editor Katharine K. Zarrella tackles in her report “We Belong Together.” Donatella Versace, Riccardo Tisci, Italo Zucchelli and other designers tell Zarrella about turning to music for inspiration, and why the current fashion/music love afair is a two-way street.

One of the pioneering voices of this phenomenon has been V contributing editor and Diesel’s artistic director Nicola Formichetti. Now he is pulling a Diddy and literally making the band, with Japanese contest winners Color-Code. We’re proud to introduce these Day-Glo stars, as they prepare to take J-Pop global. We also shine a spotlight on the next wave of inescapable talents. You’ve heard Tink, Rae Sremmurd, Travis Scott, Chynna, Majid Jordan, and Dej Loaf everywhere, whether you realize it or not. Now get to know this generation of artists determined to bring authenticity back to the world of hip-hop.

Our cover stars, on the other hand, need no introduction. Sam Smith, Tinashe, Jessie Ware, and FKA twigs take center stage as the biggest breakout talents of the last year, beautifully photographed by Inez & Vinoodh and styled by Mel Ottenberg and Karen Clarkson. Interviewed by Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Babyface, and the eminent music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, respectively, these progenitors of pop’s smooth new sound pay homage to their musical heroes and discuss the thrills of making it in the music biz. Inez & Vinoodh continue their musical medley with a portfolio of icons of the past, present, and future—including Boy George, Kiesza, and Nile Rodgers, to name a few.

It wouldn’t be a Music Issue without Hedi Slimane, who met up with the incomparable Joni Mitchell in Los Angeles for a stunning and intimate photo shoot featuring Spring Saint Laurent. In a rare interview with contributing editor T. Cole Rachel, Mitchell emanates a refreshing frankness, revealing why she will be the sole architect of her own legacy. But she isn’t the only legend in our midst. Dolly Parton returns with a revealing look at a few of her favorite costumes, photographed by Dan Forbes. We’ve also got the King himself...sort of. Dive into our latest series, “Beyond Conversation,” in which celebrity psychic Jesse Bravo channels icons of the past for updates from the afterlife. Our frst séance, with Elvis Presley, is one to remember. If you believe in communicating with spirits or think it’s all a bunch of mumbo jumbo, the results still capture his electric energy.

Whether you’re looking for surprises (turn to page 64 for Miley Cyrus’s contribution), tributes (like James Franco’s personal ode to his friend, Lana Del Rey), major models (Binx Walton’s V debut with Kacper Kasprzyk and Mel Ottenberg), pop princesses (Richard Bush and Sarah Richardson’s spotlight on Charli XCX) or full-blown fashion (Harley Weir and Max Pearmain’s exploration into feminine, gothic volumes), this Music Issue has everything…even Bieber! Our original Music Issue cover star returns in a sexy and revealing shoot by Karl Lagerfeld that you have to see to beliebe.

This year’s musical score is epic. So tune in, turn up, and press play! mr. v V MAGAZINE 17

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THE NEW SOUND OF SOUL

THE MUSIC ISSUE

93

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THE VIXEN

TINASHE PHOTOGRAPHED BY INEZ & VINOODH STYLED BY MEL OTTENBERG

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY INEZ & VINOODH FASHION MEL OTTENBERG TINASHE WEARS SKIRT ANTHONY VACCARELLO HAT LYNN BAN RINGS (HER INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS) BULGARI RING (HER RING FINGER) EVA FEHREN NOSE RING AND EARRING TINASHE’S OWN

V MAGAZINE 93 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF / CREATIVE DIRECTOR Stephen Gan EDITOR Patrik Sandberg MANAGING DIRECTOR Steven Chaiken SENIOR EDITORS Natasha Stagg Katharine K. Zarrella ART DIRECTOR Cian Browne PHOTO & BOOKINGS EDITOR Spencer Morgan Taylor DESIGN Alexander McWhirter Alexa Vignoles PRESS / EVENTS Remi Barbier MARKET EDITORS Michael Gleeson Mia Solkin FASHION ASSOCIATE Julian Antetomaso CASTING Samuel Ellis Scheinman EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT / EDITORIAL COORDINATOR William Defebaugh ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT / SPECIAL PROJECTS Wyatt Allgeier CONTRIBUTING FASHION EDITORS Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele Melanie Ward Nicola Formichetti Joe McKenna Jane How Panos Yiapanis Beat Bolliger Sarah Richardson Olivier Rizzo Clare Richardson Jacob K Andrew Richardson Jonathan Kaye Tom Van Dorpe SENIOR FASHION EDITOR Jay Massacret CONTRIBUTING EDITORS / ENTERTAINMENT Greg Krelenstein Guyton Porter / Starworks EDITOR-AT-LARGE Derek Blasberg CONTRIBUTING EDITORS T. Cole Rachel Kevin McGarry Nicole Catanese COPY EDITORS Traci Parks Jeremy Price ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jorge Garcia jgarcia@vmagazine.com ADVERTISING MANAGER Vicky Benites vbenites@vmagazine.com 646.747.4545

ADVERTISING OFFICE, ITALY AND SWITZERLAND Magazine International / Luciano Bernardini de Pace +39.02.76.4581 magazineinternational.it ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE -HƂ *UHLI ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Sacha Breitman COMMUNICATIONS Samantha Kain / Purple PR 212.858.9888 DISTRIBUTION David Renard RESEARCH EDITOR Lela Nargi PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Melissa Scragg FINANCIAL COMPTROLLER Sooraya Pariag ASSISTANT COMPTROLLER Ivana Williams EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Ian David Monroe CONSULTING CREATIVE / DESIGN DIRECTION Greg Foley INTERNS Shayan Asadi Stella Evans Tania Farouki Margaret Farrell Jacob Gianaris Cari Hume Michelle Kandalaft Marisa Karenchak Caroline Newton Amira Rasool Scott Shapiro

V93 Inez & Vinoodh Karl Lagerfeld Hedi Slimane Miley Cyrus James Franco Mel Ottenberg Sasha Frere-Jones Max Pearmain Harley Weir Kacper Kasprzyk Brandon Maxwell Richard Bush Karen Clarkson Cheyne Thomas Charlotte Wales Haley Wollens Dario Catellani Stella Greenspan Dan Forbes Motohiko Hasui Yasuhiro Takehisa Therese Aldgard Junsuke Yamasaki Dana Droppo Marcus Holmlund Ashley Simpson V MAGAZINE 2 6

WHEN I’M LOOKING FOR LOVE I PRETEND IT’S YOU... A LOVE THAT NEVER ENDS T IN ASH E, “ P RETEND”

THE MUSIC ISSUE

93

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THE NEW SOUND OF SOUL THE VIBE

JESSIE WARE PHOTOGRAPHED BY INEZ & VINOODH STYLED BY MEL OTTENBERG

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY INEZ & VINOODH FASHION MEL OTTENBERG JESSIE WARE WEARS JACKET EMPORIO ARMANI EARRINGS STYLIST’S OWN

TABLE OF CONTENTS 40 WE BELONG TOGETHER The big names in fashion and pop tell us why music and design need each other 42 WORK THAT MAGIC A behind-the-scenes look at how pop stars turn to beloved stylists to create each megawatt image 44 V NEWS 7KH EHVW ƃOP OLWHUDWXUH WKHDWHU DUW DQG DFFHVVRULHV RI WKH PRPHQW 46 DRESS YOU UP )URP JUDSKLF SULQWV WR IXOO RQ SV\FKHGHOLD VHH ZKDWŠV WUHQGLQJ this Spring 50 WORLD MUSIC Go around the globe with V to meet our favorite international artists on the rise 51 GET ON UP! 6XUYH\ WKH VHDVRQŠV VN\ KLJK VW\OHV LQ 6SULQJŠV PXVW KDYH the perfect platform 52 V PEOPLE )URP 7UDYLV 6FRWW WR 'HM /RDI PHHW WKH PRVW H[FLWLQJ QHZ QDPHV in music 58 SHADES OF COOL $Q LQWLPDWH JOLPSVH LQWR -DPHV )UDQFRŠV IULHQGVKLS ZLWK Lana Del Rey 62 BLINDED BY RAINBOWS ,QWURGXFLQJ &RORU &RGH WKH QHZ 1LFROD )RUPLFKHWWLŝIRXQGHG girl group 64 A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FWENDS Miley Cyrus shares some provocative Polaroids and an H[WUD VSHFLDO WUHDW 66 SONG TO THE SIREN Hedi Slimane captures Tamaryn and friends as they introduce a seductive new sound 68 MISS WORLD BY RICHARD BUSH &KDUOL ;&; WDONV Ţ%RRP &ODS ţ KHU SXQN LPSXOVHV DQG KHU ORQJ journey to fame V MAGAZINE 3 2

WANT TO FEEL BURNING FLAMES WHEN YOU SAY MY NAME J ESS IE WA R E , “SAY YOU LOVE ME”

THE MUSIC ISSUE

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THE NEW SOUND OF SOUL THE VISION

FKA TWIGS PHOTOGRAPHED BY INEZ & VINOODH STYLED BY KAREN CLARKSON

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHY INEZ & VINOODH FASHION KAREN CLARKSON FKA TWIGS WEARS BRIEFS HER OWN NECKLACE (TOP) BULGARI OTHER NECKLACES, BRACELETS CHANEL EARRING (HER LEFT, FRONT), NOSE RING, RINGS CHRISHABANA ALL OTHER JEWELRY TWIGS’S OWN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I COLLECT MY THOUGHTS AND BREATHE BECAUSE I TAKE YOUR LEAD

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102 A CASE OF YOU BY HEDI SLIMANE 7KH HOXVLYH -RQL 0LWFKHOO RSHQV XS DERXW D QHZ SURMHFW KHU FULWLFV and her legacy 106 ROSES IN THE SNOW BY HARLEY WEIR )RXQG RQ WKH VWUHHWV RI /RQGRQ /RUQD 8OLDQD DQG 'DLV\ PHUJH WRXJK JLUO VSLULW ZLWK IDVKLRQĹ V QHZ URPDQFH

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SPECIAL THANKS The Collective Shift Jae Choi Lauren Pistoia Stephanie Bargas 'LVFR 0HLVFK $HOL 3DUN 0DUF .URRS %ULDQ $QGHUVRQ -HƂ /HSLQH (ULF 3IUXQGHU Katherine Marre OcÊane Sellier Isabelle Ries Kim Pollock Yann Rzepka Art Partner Giovanni Testino Amber Olson Marianne Tesler Deanna Archer &ULVWLDQ %DQNV 7RWDO -XVWLQLDQ .IRXU\ -RUGDQ 6WHUQEHUJ 5(3 /WG George Miscamble Mini Title Jess Porter CLM Deana Spavento 2B Management 6DQGULQH %L]]DUR $UWOLVW 0LFKDHO 4XLQQ 0D[LP $NXD (QQLQIXO -XOLDQ :DWVRQ $JHQF\ Jed Root Rachel King Rachel Pearce Tim Howard Management Ann Gookin Rayna Donatelli D+V Lucy Kay Saint Luke Candice O’Brien Premier Paul Lonergan Streeters London Beverley Streeter Paula Jenner Next Kyle Hagler Trump Models Stereohorse Ludovic d’Hardiville Lutz + Schmitt Love Retouch ROOT Studios 3LHU 6WXGLRV :DGGLQJWRQ 6WXGLRV /RQGRQ &XUWDLQ 5RDG 6WXGLRV /RQGRQ V MAGAZINE 3 6

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report

we belong together

DESIGNERS AND POP STARS ARE MORE OBSESSED WITH EACH OTHER THAN EVER BEFORE, BUT WHAT FUELS THIS ONGOING LOVE AFFAIR? DONATELLA VERSACE, RICCARDO TISCI, ITALO ZUCCHELLI, CHRISTOPHER BAILEY, AND MORE SHED LIGHT ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN FASHION AND MUSIC “Could you imagine a world without fashion? Without music?

Life would be so boring,” says Donatella Versace. It would probably be a snooze without sex and chocolate, too. But the latter duo isn’t inextricably linked (depending on what you’re into, of course). Fashion and music are. And over the past few years, the two industries have become completely infatuated with each other.

There’s something particularly intense about today’s stars and their endless high fashion fnery. Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry—these musicians and more are drenching themselves in designer duds, and making damn sure the world knows about it via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and their song lyrics (Jay Z’s “Tom Ford,” anyone?).

The marriage between fashion and music is nothing new.

What would the ’80s have been without Grace Jones and Azzedine Alaïa’s holy alliance? The violet hooded Alaïa gown V MAGAZINE 4 0

Jones debuted in 1985 still serves as a point of reference, even for Versace, who based her S/S ’14 couture collection around it. Then we have Madonna and Jean Paul Gaultier, who shocked the ’90s with that sateen conical bustier (not to mention Madge’s topless turn on JPG’s runway in 1992).

In her heyday, Cher almost exclusively appeared in her friend Bob Mackie’s outré ensembles. The Notorious B.I.G. was rarely seen without some iteration of Versace’s gilded medusa. The list goes on.

“In the ’70s, music and fashion were hugely intertwined,” ofers Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic at the New York Times. “David Bowie used fashion really efectively. So did the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The music industry has always understood the importance of image and the uses of clothing in that context.” Indeed, but screaming devotees in the audiences of yore didn’t necessarily know that Mick

Courtesy Rahi Rezvani (Lady Gaga and Donatella Versace); © Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy (David Bowie); REX USA/Eugene Adebari (Madonna); REX USA/Sharok Hatami/Rex (Grace Jones); Courtesy Italo Zucchelli (Sam Smith); Courtesy Nicola Formichetti (Brooke Candy)

Lady Gaga (in Atelier Versace) and Donatella Versace backstage at the S/S ’14 Atelier Versace show

Jagger was donning an Ossie Clark jumpsuit, or that Bowie’s outrageous wardrobe was the work of Kansai Yamamoto.

Conversely, you can bet your ass that fans know RiRi was in custom Givenchy, Lanvin, Raf Simons, and Adam Selman during her Diamonds tour, or that Cyrus was twerking in Jeremy Scott throughout her cycle of Bangerz.

“It feels like, in the ’90s for example, there was a more ‘costume design’ approach to fashion collaborations with pop stars,” says Italo Zucchelli, the creative director of Calvin Klein Collection’s menswear range. “Today, I think the approach is more synergistic. Musicians are wearing clothes from designer collections, or things that are adapted and relate more to what fashion houses are presenting on the runways. This makes it more in sync with the designer’s original message, and also translates better into a commercially viable product.” Zucchelli would know, seeing as he garbed Drake for his Would You Like a Tour? performances, and has whipped up custom looks for cover star Sam Smith’s ongoing In the Lonely Hour tour.

These days, stars aren’t merely wearing designer clothes— they’re all but taking the place of models. “When I started my career in the 1970s, models were only models and musicians were only musicians,” says Roberto Cavalli, who has dressed megawatt stars like Katy Perry, Janet Jackson, and Beyoncé. “Now, the musicians are the models. They walk in the shows, they are on the covers of magazines, and they are in the advertising campaigns.” (Cyrus for Marc Jacobs, Lady Gaga and now Madonna for Versace, Erykah Badu for Givenchy, Rihanna for Balmain, and Rita Ora for Roberto Cavalli are a few recent examples.)

Sure, in the age of social media and celebrity infatuation, it’s easy to assume that this is all just clever marketing.

And on some level, it is. But on another, it’s fueled by our hyperconnected click-and-thou-shalt-receive world, pop culture’s multidisciplinary evolution, and a genuine union of creative creatures.

“The old 20th-century boundaries disappeared a long time ago,” argues Versace. “Today, creative people don’t limit themselves in what they do. If they’re rock stars, they’re thinking about their image. It’s part of their character, how they express their true selves. For designers like me, the passion and energy of music is always feeding my design process. Why keep isolated and pretend these worlds aren’t completely connected?”

However, those boundaries are still fresh in Diesel artistic director and stylist Nicola Formichetti’s memory. “When I frst dabbled in music, it was with Lady Gaga. My frst music video was ‘Bad Romance,’ and I remember the industry being really anti pop music,” he recalls. “People used to say, ‘Why are you working with a musician? You work in high fashion!’ It was very snobby. In fact, the frst time I worked with Gaga on a fashion shoot for V[61], I had to lie and say I was pulling for a model, because no one would lend me clothes for a musician.”

The late Lee Alexander McQueen was the exception. Lady Gaga actually debuted her “Bad Romance” track at McQueen’s S/S ’10 show, and the designer lent his Atlantis creations (including those divine armadillo shoes) for the song’s music video. “With pop music you had this code—you had to be sexy and commercial,” says Formichetti. “You couldn’t be too edgy or high fashion. But Lady Gaga treated her image like performance art. Now it’s a must. Pop stars have to wear high fashion.” Formichetti no longer runs into lending snafus— brands throw clothes at him and his musical pals, including his latest sartorial protégé, Brooke Candy. “Nicola and I have an amazing creative relationship,” says Candy, who broke into the mainstream after Formichetti transformed her from a racy DIY stripper-turned-rapper into an (equally racy) designer-clad glamazon. “I’ve got 100 personalities and 100 looks to match each and every one of them. He helps me to be a better version of myself, and that is an almost impossible job.”

Lady Gaga broke down barriers, but her very public embrace of high fashion isn’t the only reason the industry now welcomes pop stars into its ivory tower. For starters, it’s no coincidence that Lady Gaga’s haute explosion—and fashion houses’ sudden acceptance of pop stars—hit circa 2009 at the peak of the recession. “Everything was so depressing, and it almost seemed like luxury was going to be over.

But then these pop stars came along and they were able to make people dream big,” says V contributor—and stylist to Rihanna—Mel Ottenberg. Fashion houses would have been crazy not to capitalize on pop stars’ mass appeal, especially during the rise of social media, when musicians and their clothes were more visible than ever before. “[Our society is] celebrity-obsessed,” Ottenberg says. “And people at work aren’t really talking about the new Vogue Italia editorial anymore—they’re talking about what Rihanna was wearing.”

Cavalli asserts that pop star endorsements lead to sales bumps, and are more powerful than ad campaigns. (Not surprising, considering Rihanna or Cyrus followers exceed any major magazine’s subscribers by millions.) “Pop stars have a global presence and powerful infuence over their fans. I think that the vision of a pop star looking beautiful and confdent on a red carpet will always create a bigger impact over a fat advertisement.”

Furthermore, this union has helped catapult fashion— which is often perceived as elitist or closed of—into the limelight, exposing houses like Moschino, Givenchy, Maison Martin Margiela (thank you, Kanye West), and Hood by Air to mass audiences. Never mind what Rihanna and cover girl FKA twigs have done for emerging talents, instantly validating such designers on-the-rise as Adam Selman, Melitta Baumeister, and Marques’Almeida.

“Musicians…usually want to make daring statements with clothes—sometimes in a very overt way and sometimes in a more sophisticated and subtle manner,” says Zucchelli, who has reaped the benefts of mainstream exposure through his collaborations with musicians. “As a designer, it’s very stimulating to be part of this process, and it allows me to David Bowie in a custom Kansai Yamamoto Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier’s conical bustier jumpsuit during his Ziggy Stardust tour in 1973 during her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour connect with an audience that is in tune with youth and popular culture, which is extremely important today.”

But visibility isn’t the only thing brands gain from working with pop stars. Friedman proposes that dressing musicians can change the way a fashion house is percieved, making it seem more current or relevant. “Look at the case of Lanvin menswear,” she says. “So many male rock stars wear Lanvin to the Grammys or on the red carpet. It’s been interesting how that has given the brand an edge it might not otherwise have had. Musicians can make [a label] seem hip or cool. On the other hand, it can also feel a little desperate.”

Some houses go beyond simply swathing stars in their clothes. Burberry invites bands to play at its shows (James Bay was the S/S ’15 headliner), comissions tunes for its fashion flms, and went so far as to launch a platform to support emerging musicians (all of whom are handpicked by chief creative and executive ofcer, Christopher Bailey).

“Music is an integral part of Burberry,” Bailey says. “It touches everything we do, from our runway shows and events to our Burberry Acoustic platform and campaigns.” Similarly, Saint Laurent’s Hedi Slimane constantly champions up-and-coming bands, shoots his musician friends (like Courtney Love, Beck, and Marilyn Manson) for Saint Laurent’s ads, and pulls inspiration from L.A.’s rock-and-roll lifestyle. Chanel, too, fts into this category. Who could forget that time Florence Welch crooned in a seashell during the S/S ’12 show, or when Grace Jones with Azzedine Alaïa in 1985, in one of his hooded gowns Sébastien Tellier performed alongside a 12-piece orchestra at the S/S ’14 couture outing? If only to outdo himself, last December, Karl Lagerfeld tapped Pharrell Williams to compose a song, “CC the World,” for a video teasing Chanel’s 2015 Métiers d’Art collection. Williams sang the track onscreen with Cara Delevingne.

Fashion is a business, and a rapidly evolving one at that.

So the fact that pop stars, who Friedman argues are “more relatable and public than valuable actors,” can potentially improve a brand’s image and expand one’s client base is enticing. But the great thing about fashion is that it’s a creative business, thus designers’ relationships with artists in a diferent feld are not as superfcial as, say, Alicia Keys’s partnership with BlackBerry.

“When I begin to work with a musician regularly, they often become part of my family,” says Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, who has designed for and built long-lasting relationships with Madonna, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Erykah Badu, and many more. “The relationship is primarily a friendship, and, as such, we inspire each other.”

“Sometimes, it’s just a project. Other times, it can turn Nicola Formichetti with his latest pop protégé, Brooke Candy Calvin Klein’s Italo Zucchelli and Sam Smith in New York in October, 2014 into a real friendship,” adds Zucchelli. “Sam [Smith] and I are always sending each other messages from diferent corners of the world. [But these collaborations] only work if there is everyone in the world is going to see it instantly. It’s such a relationship is very symbiotic,” insists Scott. “I feel like I’m real chemistry between the pop star, his tastes and needs, helping [the musicians I dress] do their jobs—helping them rush, and it’s very inspiring.” and the clothes. With Sam, it’s an efortless process. We It’s inspiring for the pop stars, too. Take Cyrus, for be who they’re supposed to be.” Cavalli concurs that both usually keep it simple and unfussy, because that is who he instance, who changed her identity from Disney princess sides are equal partners. “I think [pop stars] rely on designto sexed-up punk-pop queen overnight largely through her ers to create special looks. And designers rely on pop stars’ is, which also works well with our brand aesthetic.”

For stylists and designers alike, the opportunity to craft aesthetic choices. In V83, she discussed the dramatic shift, continuous reinvention for fresh inspiration. Look at the tour an image for these megastars is an appealing one. “What I saying, “I’m going to change, I’m going to be diferent, I’m costumes I created for Katy Perry! She performed her art going to do what I want to do. I chopped my hair and bought using mine. For me, this is the ultimate reward.” love about musicians and why I work so closely with them is because I love creating a world for them,” says designer a pair of Docs and never looked back.” Lady Gaga has said Fashion and music’s ongoing love afair is an intricate Jeremy Scott. “I love pushing their persona further.” He that fashion not only infuences her persona, but her songs one, but it makes perfect sense. After all, at their best, aren’t achieved that with Cyrus, for whom he makes custom tour as well. “Fashion is everything,” she told MTV back in 2008. both mediums a refection of and commentary on the cultural costumes. He even used the singer’s psychedelic jewelry “When I’m writing music, I’m thinking about the clothes I want zeitgeist? “Fashion and music exist because we need them in his S/S ’15 show. to wear onstage. It’s all about everything altogether—perforin our lives,” muses Versace. “We connect with fashion and “I love the size of it. I like the pop-humungous scope,” mance art, pop performance art, fashion.” music in the same way. They touch something we can’t quite Ottenberg says, explaining the stylist/pop star attraction.

Even so, one has to wonder if, like so many relationships, explain inside. I don’t think one can exist without the other.”

“It’s like someone giving you the keys to a huge image. And one party benefts just a little bit more than the other. “The At the very least, they’re better together. KATHARINE K. ZARRELLA

SPOTLIGHT

LADY GAGA

BY BRANDON MAXWELL Ţ8QGHUQHDWK DOO RI WKH fashion is a woman with natural raw talent and H[TXLVLWH EHDXW\ , ORYHG these looks because while they are still very Lady Gaga, they also allow you to see the timeless artist that we all know and love.”

LADY GAGA IN NOIR EARRINGS AND AN ERIC JAVITS HAT

IN COMME DES GARÇONS

IN BRANDON MAXWELL

IN BRANDON MAXWELL

RIHANNA IN CHANEL

IN GIORGIO ARMANI

IN STELLA McCARTNEY

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RIHANNA

BY MEL OTTENBERG Ţ<RX GR LW DOO IRU \RXU JLUOŞ anything to make her feel like a million bucks and to make other bitches jealRXV 7KDWŠV KRZ \RX FUHate a huge red-carpet moment. Here are a few RI P\ IDYRULWH ORRNV ,ŠYH done with my best girl, Rihanna.”

EDITOR WILLIAM DEFEBAUGH

KATY PERRY

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WORK THAT MAGIC

FOUR POP STYLISTS PAY TRIBUTE TO THEIR MUSICAL MUSES

BY SELECTING A FEW OF THEIR FAVORITE FASHION MOMENTS

V NEWS EXTRATERRESTRIAL

If you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait until the new Star Wars Ć&#x192;OP The Force Awakens, hits theaters next December, the Smithsonian, in partnership with the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, might just be able to tide you over. Opening at Seattleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s EMP Museum on January 31 is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rebel, Jedi, Princess, Queen: Star Wars â&#x201E;˘ and the Power of Costume.â&#x20AC;? The show, which will travel through 8 6 FLWLHV DIWHU FORVLQJ DW (03 RQ 2FWREHU H[SORUHV the creation and important role of now iconic costumes, like C-3POâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gilded suit, that racy bikini Princess Leia wore while imprisoned by Jabba the Hutt, and PadmĂŠ Amidalaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intricate, regal garb. Sixty original costumes from George Lucasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s epic IUDQFKLVH ZLOO EH RQ YLHZ DV ZHOO DV GLJLWDO Ć&#x201E;LSERRNV WZR VKRUW Ć&#x192;OPV DQG DQLPDWHG VOLGH VKRZV

SIMPLY THE BEST

WE ASKED THE EXPERTS TO WEIGH IN ON THE BEST NEW READS, THE BOX OFFICEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BIGGEST THRILLS, AND WHAT TO SEE ON THE STAGE IN THE COMING WEEKS

PLAYS

MOVIES

BOOKS

underground fest is a fantastic 12-day event that showcases new theatrical work from around the world. Taylor 0DFĹ VbA 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950sbLV one of this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s many highlights.

from the Wachowskis is as epic and world-building as their last (2012â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cloud Atlas), and it has even more heartthrobs.

Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton, Eddie Redmayne, Doona Bae, and James Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Arcy star in this intergalactic thriller.

luminous eighth novel follows a woman teaching abroad in Athens during a hazy summer. She talks at length to everyone she encountersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and so over ten searching conversations, her portrait emerges, the image of someone who has come to question even the most basic tenets of love and friendship.

BY GREGORY MOSHER, TONY AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL (JANUARY 7-18) The Publicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual

BY GREG KRELENSTEIN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR JUPITER ASCENDING (FEBRUARY 6) The newest mind-bender

in the family is a good comic premise, Larry Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new play, Fish in the Dark bLQ ZKLFK KH DOVR VWDUV bLV IRU \RX Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a lot of information yet, which makes me think Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still writing, so it could be a car crash. But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be there, because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Larry mother-loving David on Broadway.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY (FEBRUARY 13) If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not aware of the perfect Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day date movie starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, you have some catching up to do.

The best-selling novel did a lot for S&M-based trends in DQG WKH VWHDP\ Ć&#x192;OP YHUVLRQ ZLOO VXUHO\ VSXU DQRWKHU wave of blindfold sales.

MAPS TO THE STARS (FEBRUARY 27) In David Cronenbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lat-

job to write the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Great Reportâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;one massive, omniscient document to describe our data-saturated age. Such is the duty of U., the barely sane hero of McCarthyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surreal fourth novel. This comic tour de force includes meditations on everything from parachuting accidents to the nature of truth.

est, we meet Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) after a struggling writer (Robert Pattinson) picks her up in a limo.

His story takes a backseat to the more dramatic lives of Hollywood stereotypesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like the show-stopping Julianne Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Havana Segrandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but incidentally, his is the most autobiographical, according to writer Bruce Wagner.

AGAINST THE COUNTRY, BEN METCALF ($26, RANDOM HOUSE) Set DPLG WKH VDYDJH EHDXW\ RI WKH 9LUJLQLD SLQHV 0HWFDOIĹ V Ć&#x192;UVW novel tells the simple story of a family trying to survive in UXUDO $PHULFD :LWK LWV LGLRV\QFUDWLF YRLFHĹ&#x17E;JUXĆ&#x201A; EXW O\ULcal, brutal but beautifulâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the novel resurrects the tradition of the Southern gothic, full of dirt.

AN OCTOROON (FEBRUARY 14-MARCH 8) In 1859, a melodrama called The Octoroon (a person with one eighth African blood) was a sensation. Last year, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins turned it upside down and shook it, and out came the hilarious An Octoroon. The play is reopening at the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn with the same creative team.

Mosherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Broadway production of Love Letters runs through February 15 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater.

V MAGAZINE 4 4

SATIN ISLAND, TOM McCARTHY ($24, KNOPF) Imagine if it were your

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FISH IN THE DARK (OPENING FEBRUARY 2) If you think a death

BY DAN PIEPENBRING, ONLINE EDITOR AT THE PARIS REVIEW OUTLINE, RACHEL CUSK ($26, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX) Cuskâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

SUNSHINE, LOLLIPOPS, AND RAINBOWS

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trends

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THE SPRING RUNWAYS SOUNDED OFF WITH BOLD NEW RIFFS ON CLASSIC TRENDS. FROM GRAPHIC PRINTS TO FLOWERY PSYCHEDELIA AND CRISP WHITES, CREATE A LOOK THATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MADE FOR YOU PHOTOgRAPHY DARIO CATELLANI FASHION STELLA gREENSPAN

FROM LEFT: CHARLOTTE WEARS CLOTHing BOSS

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On EYES M.A.C COSMETICS EYE SHAdOW in AREnA

Makeup Ralph Siciliano using M.A.C Cosmetics (D+V) Hair Pasquale Ferrante (ArtList) Models Charlotte Lindvig (FORD), Stefy Argelich, Emily Rappe (IMG), Manuela Frey (Society) Manicure Geraldine Holford (The Wall Group) Set design Matthew Betmaleck (De Facto Inc.) Digital technician Andrew Lawrence Graphic designer Anne Vieux Photo assistants Brian Hahn and David Jafe Stylist assistant Arizona Williams Location Neo Studios Catering Ciao for Now

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GUIDE

WORLD MUSIC

ALL MUSIC IS WORLD MUSIC, NOW. JUST ASK THESE EXTRAORDINARY YOUNG MUSICIANS, WHO TAKE INSPIRATION FROM EVERYWHERE, INCLUDING THEIR NATIVE LANDS

SChOnWALD: RAvennA, ITALy THIS MUST bE THE plACE “We live in a small town near the sea, not far from Bologna and Venice, characterized by fog, marshes, and swamps. These places, especially in winter, are rich in gloomy atmospheres, so it’s easy to fnd inspiration for creating our kind of music. For a band like us, it’s not easy living in Italy. We have a different style from what’s popular here. Let’s say, we live in a postcard, but our vision is beyond national boundaries.”

THAT’S AMORE “We fell in love, and then Luca started to play the guitar, and after a while he joined me in my band. Later, we decided to create Schonwald.”

pICTURES OF yOU “We love The Cure, New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, DNA, and Suicide, and in the visual arts, Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramović, Kevin Cummins, and Hedi Slimane.”

LUCA BANDiNi AND ALessANDrA GisMONDi iN PAris, NOveMBer 2014 photography damien laFargue

eRA ISTRefI: PRISTInA, KOSOvO WHEn I GROW Up “I was 9 years old when I sang live [for the frst time] at a festival for kids, in front of 500 people. I started again when I was 17, with “Mani për money,” and my frst video, in September 2013. I came up with the idea. I think that the market scene in it represents my culture.” pApARAzzI “I think people are getting used to me. They want to see me, they don’t like me but they want to see me. My sister [Nora Istref] is, like, famous, but when I walk down the street, people ask for pictures.

I TURn TO yOU “Rihanna is my frst inspiration, and my idol. And I like Lana Del Rey, A$AP Rocky, Vybz Kartel, Mavado, Grimes,

and Parov Stelar. His music has made me fall in love with myself even more.”

HOld On, WE’RE GOInG HOME “I want to portray my country’s tradition in a modern way, because it’s very old. We have some cool clothes—very cool clothes—and some instruments which have not been used before [in popular music], like the Çifteli.”

erA istrefi iN New YOrk CitY, OCtOBer 2014 photography Fadil Berisha

KOKORO: TeL AvIv, ISRAeL

MOLLy nILSSOn: STOCKhOLM, SWeDen

HEROES “I love David Bowie, Björk, Mike Patton, Kate Bush, Hayao Miyazaki, J.R.R. Tolkien, K. Patthabi Jois, Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva Dance Company, Marina Abramović, and Alexander McQueen.”

ARMy dREAMERS “It’s been very difcult [in Israel]. The sad thing is that we Israelis are almost used to this sort of difculty. It is very clear that we are far from any sort of immediate resolution. I can tell you that

SCUM OF THE EARTH “My inspirations are Valerie Solanas and Billy Bragg.”

EvERybOdy WAnTS TO RUlE THE WORld (From “Ugly Girl,” of Nilsson’s 2014 EP, Sex) “If there’s any justice left in the world, in your next life you’ll get what you deserve. If there’s any justice left in the world, in your next life, you’re gonna be an ugly girl…

When you tell me beauty comes from within, that’s the most stupid thing that I ever heard,

v MAGAZiNe 5 0

no Israeli I know wants to be at war, no one.”

GOdS And MOnSTERS “On my forthcoming album, I collaborated with Dan Farber.

The result is something I like to call Melodic EDM. The album is titled Demons and every track is confronting diferent types of demons.”

kOkOrO iN teL Aviv, MAY 2014 photography max morron

’cause let me tell you, you’ll still be an asshole even if you redefne the words…If I ruled the world, I’d make all boys girls.”

MOLLY NiLssON iN BerLiN, NOveMBer 2014 photography Christopher Filippini

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Digital technician Todd Barndollar Prop stylist Lisa Gwilliam (Jed Root) Photo assistants Corinne Weber and Greg Kirkpatrick Location Root Studios

V MAGAZINE 5 1

VPEOPLE PhotograPhy Charlotte Wales Fashion haley Wollens

TRAVIS SCOTT

EVERY NAME IN HIP-HOP IS TRYING TO WRANGLE THE YOuNG PROducER’S BEATS, BuT THIS AIN’T HIS FIRST ROdEO Travis Scott names Kanye West, his part-time coproducer, as one of his closest friends. He calls T.I., who could be credited with discovering him, his mentor. Scott’s most recent collaborators are Tinashe, Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan, Big Sean, Iggy Azalea, and Yung Lean. It’s hard to slice through the hype here, but Scott’s music inarguably stands alone.

Days Before Rodeo was lauded as one of the most gratifying hip-hop albums of 2014. It was, after all, far from his frst go at producing. At 22, Scott’s been doing this for nearly seven years.

“If I wasn’t making music, I’d be an actor. I’d be a lead.

Some Denzel-type motherfucker,” says the musician. Scott’s menacing performance in FKA twigs’s “Video Girls,” along with his encyclopedic knowledge of pulp and horror flms, v MaGaZine 5 2

proves that acting is more than a satellite interest. “He is an actual artist, and I hate that word,” says Grant Singer, the director creating a series of short flms to accompany Days Before Rodeo, in which Scott himself stars. “He is very much in control of his vision, and it goes against the grain of contemporary rap music.”

Growing up in Houston, Texas, Scott (aka Jacques Webster) simply saw rodeos as part of the culture that he came from, but they now serve as his most essential metaphor. “My rodeo is just my life. It’s my experience,” he explains. “It means going big every season of the year. My performances are equal to a Beyoncé concert. My imagination is the carnival. The road to where I want to go is the livestock show.” His sights are now set on the release of

his next studio album, called Rodeo. He credits some of the focus he’s recently found to spending time in Paris with Kanye while Yeezus was still being crafted. “It’s not even about the music with us,” he explains. “I spend my time with ’Ye on the creative idea basis.” Scott’s ability to tease out the generative from the conceptual is the mark of a newfound maturity.

“Riding that bull for eight seconds is the hardest thing ever,” he says, speaking again in metaphor. “So I’m on that bull, on a quest to fnd myself.” Dana DroPPo

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TINK

FROM BASEMENT RECORDING SESSIONS TO A STUDIO IN MIAMI WITH TIMBALAND, THE BUDDING STAR STEPS UP HER GAME “It’s not raw anymore,” says 19-year-old Tink. “Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah—back in the day, female rappers were raw. Now the industry is getting to a point where female rappers are seen for what they look like, not what they’re saying. I’m the opposite. I could care less about my appearance. I’d rather you hear what I’m saying.”

Based in Chicago, the Internet sensation started out making mixtapes in her dad’s basement at the age of 12.

After fellow Chicagoan Chief Keef released “Bionic,” in 2012, Tink put out a remix online. Before long, she was doing collaborations with everyone from Jeremih to Kelela to Sleigh Bells. Timbaland even took her under his wing, producing an album with her due out this year.

And what exactly is the young musician saying? “I think a lot of songs on the radio are fltered. They’re bubblegum.

There’s not a lot of messages being sent out anymore, so I feel like I have to fll that void. Especially for young girls, there’s no one just keeping it real on my side. The male rappers, there’s a big category of artists, but there’s very few females. I want to be the person that ladies really relate to and lean on.”

She’s not wrong, of course. The pool of females in hip-hop has become small over the years. The industry is not only male-dominated, it’s becoming increasingly pop-oriented. “People overlook us or they don’t take us as seriously as male artists,” she says. “And I get it—so many female artists just try to be like Nicki Minaj. I think it’s breaking those layers and showing that there are diferent voices out there.”

That female artists rarely get a chance to collaborate in the mainstream market is another problem that Tink cites as hurting young women like herself. “It’s hard for us to show love to each other as female artists. Everyone has to be number one, the best. There’s not a lot of unity among female rappers. You see mixtapes coming out where Rich Homie and Young Thug come together, or Young Money. The guys can come together and it’s cool.

They do their own thing and still help each other out. But you don’t really see a lot of that with female artists.”

Tink’s ability, at such a young age, to recognize these challenges and rise to meet them speaks to the distance she is poised to go—beginning this year with the release of her new single, “Ratchet Commandments.”

“I want the world to be ready for something diferent. I don’t want people to be afraid to embrace and respect it.

In fact, they’re not going to have a choice. So they better be ready.” William Defebaugh

Dress, shoes, bracelets Chanel

CHYNNA

INSTEAD OF MAKING EASY MONEY, THIS A$AP MOB–ENDORSED RAPPER WANTS TO FLY

“My brother told me that if I graduated high school, he would have $300 waiting for me after I walked the stage,” recalls 20-year-old Chynna Rogers. “When he pulled me aside at the ceremony, he handed me a white bag—$300-worth of crack. I looked at him like, What am I supposed to do with this?” Dealing drugs was evidently even less appealing than completing her high school degree had been, and after signing with Ford, the Philadelphian quickly realized that modeling wasn’t the right ft either. Before releasing her “Chinois” mixtape, Chynna knew she wouldn’t be making money from the jump. “People where I’m from don’t know how to be broke,” she laughs.

Her working relationship with Harlem’s A$AP crew still unofcial, she’s playing the long game, and going it alone.

“I just got dragged into that circle. But when I think about it, there’s no other circle that I would feel comfortable in.”

Her favorite creative minds also happen to be her friends: Flatbush Zombies, A$AP Twelvy, Two-9, World’s Fair, and Ian Connor, who, she notes, has successfully taken on trendsetting. “Kids are actually buying Skechers,” she laughs.

“Skechers have never been cool.” Her tracks, like the Hudson Mohawke–backed “MadeInChynna,” work well because of their juxtaposition of styles. HudMo’s maximalist approach demands attention, while Chynna’s verses are so cool that she sounds indiferent to the presence of an audience. “I had no idea who he was, to be honest,” she says of their session in London. “I Googled him when I got to the studio and was glad I didn’t cancel.”

More than anything, Chynna wants to fy a plane. “Lasik eye surgery will be my frst major purchase.” She almost had it already, when she tried to join the military. They told her to gain 20 pounds and come back, but she couldn’t put on the weight. “I just want to see things,” she says, hardly acknowledging the phrase’s appropriateness. DANA DROPPO

Coat and boots MAx MARA dress EckhAus LAttA rings ELLAGEM

V PEOPLE

RAE SREMMURD

HOW DID mIke WIll’s prOtégés eArN COmIC BOOk sUperpOWers? It’s A lIfestyle

“I fucking love New York,” announces 19-year-old Swae Lee as he makes his entrance to the Ameritania Hotel. He’s got a roll of toilet paper in one hand and a rubber Richard Nixon mask in the other. “I’m throwing this at the crowd tonight,” he tells production virtuoso Mike Will Made It, who nods like a parent would to his excited teenage son. Lee, born Khalif Brown, and his older brother, Aaquil, aka Slim Jimmy, look like they’re having a better time than maybe anyone out there right now.

There’s no denying the viral success of their frst ofcial single, “No Flex Zone,” which Drake reportedly blasts in the studio to hype the rest of the OVO crew. Nicki Minaj has hopped on an ofcial remix, which inspired cartoon renderings of the duo on the cover of a Captain America comic book. Their second release, “No Type,” proved it wasn’t a fuke. A come up like this attracts industry execs hungry for new talent, but Mike Will had frst dibs. After listening to a Myspace DM two years prior, he relocated the pair from

Tupelo, Mississippi, to Atlanta, where he could monitor their progress.

“I think it has to do with how we think and how we live,” explains Lee. “It’s so diferent from the typical approach to the everyday.” Viral hits are spontaneous, but to deem Rae Sremmurd’s success random would be to ignore the raw energy that attracted a producer with no shortage of rising Atlanta talent to nurture. Everything the brothers do is underwritten by a philosophy they call SremmLife, which prioritizes positivity, self-assurance, and a social aspect completely free of judgment or jealousy. It’s new music for a post-Lil B world.

This rose-colored outlook isn’t the result of a charmed life. The Browns grew up in a humble, roving family unit with a single mother. “We had to take care of ourselves,” says Jimmy. It’s not the function of a confict-free circle, either.

During their performance at SOB’s in New York during CMJ, recent OVO signee ILoveMakonnen was violently attacked by a member of the crowd. When asked how they deal with

this type of intrusion into their blissed-out world, Jimmy says, “We try to control the energy. Like, if we’re putting of vibes like we’re mad, everyone’s going to be mad. If we just try to turn up, party, and have a good time, everyone’s gonna have a good time.”

“We always put business frst,” says Lee, looking to his brother for the cosign. “If you’re taking care of yourself, then what can somebody else tell you?” Hip-hop and music in general could probably stand to take a lesson from their language. Still can’t pronounce Rae Sremmurd (Ear Drummers spelled backwards)? Doesn’t matter, as long as you’re open to trying. That’s SremmLife. DANA DROPPO

FROM leFt: SlIM JIMMY WeARS ClOtHING RAf SimONS SHOeS RAf SimONS X ADiDAS SWAe lee WeARS ClOtHING ANd SHOeS YOhji YAmAmOtO HeAdBANd ANd eARRINGS HIS OWN V MAGAZINe 5 5

THANKS TO PRAISE FROM ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT NAMES IN RAP, THIS CANADIAN DUO IS PREPARING FOR THE BIG TIME

Majid Jordan are still in shock, after a very good year. Apart from their widely successful EP, A Place Like This, the Toronto-based producers were responsible for Drake’s “Hold On We’re Going Home,” one of the most notable tracks from Nothing Was the Same. “I started writing to a beat that 1985 made—another producer we work with—and Jordan fipped that beat, combining his drums with my vocals,” says 24-yearold Majid, a Bahrain native. “Then Drake heard it and was like, ‘I want to make something with this.’ We walked into the studio the next day, and he had tracked it.”

Naturally, this high-profle project caught the music industry’s attention. “When we frst came out, there was

this whole investigation into who we were, because nobody knew and then all of a sudden we were on this song that was everywhere,” Jordan, 23, explains. “The whole thing literally happened overnight.”

The pair originally met at a bar in Toronto as college students. With Majid’s vocal and lyrical talents and Jordan’s writing and production skills, they were an instant match. “I showed him some raps of some songs I really liked, and he was completely on the same page,” Majid says. “The next morning he had a track written and I had one recorded, and we made two songs right there in his dorm room.”

Not much has changed, even as the two work on their

frst full-length album. “We’ve kept the same process since the beginning—after-hours, low-key, separate but together,” says Jordan. “But now people are listening.” The musicians feel that, in part, they’ve garnered fans because their contrasting sensibilities refect the changing musical landscape.

“People either listen for the sonic qualities or for the meaning and emotion you get from the song. We try to accomplish both.” WILLIAM DEFEBAUGH

MAJID (LEFT) WEARS CLoThIng AnD ShoES GIvEncHy By RIccARDo TIscI JoRDAn (RIghT) WEARS JACKET, ShIRT, BooTS GIvEncHy By RIccARDo TIscI PAnTS ALEXAnDER WAnG nECKLACE DAvID yURMAn

Makeup (Junglepussy, Dana Wright, Chynna) Ayami Nishimura Makeup & grooming (Tink, Rae Sremmurd, Majid Jordan, Dej Loaf) Sir John (Streeters) Hair Jawara using Oribe (Melbourne Artists Management) Grooming (Travis Scott) Laura de Leon (Joe) Manicure (Junglepussy, Dana Wright, Chynna) Honey (Exposure NY) Manicure (Tink and Dej Loaf) Katherine Hill (Kate Ryan Inc.) Prop stylist Lauren Nikrooz Photo assistants Anna Alek, Austin Kennedy, Paul Strouse, Romek Rasenas, Siggy Bodolai Stylist assistants Patric Decaprio and Angel Jhang Makeup assistant (Junglepussy, Dana Wright, Chynna) Maria Nguyen Prop stylist assistants John Price and Rosie Turnbull Retouching Gloss Studio, NY Location ROOT Studios Catering Monterone

MAJID JORDAN

Dej Loaf

V PEOPLE

With Drake’s stamp of approval, the Diminutive Detroit mc is prepping for a groWth spurt

Big things sometimes come in small packages. Standing at exactly fve feet tall, the 23-year-old Detroit-bred Dej Loaf is coming for the rap game in a giant way. “My name buzzin’… that fame comin’…” she declares on her latest release, “$ell Sole.” Before dropping her frst-ever mixtape only two years ago, the rapper had grown up devouring any and all music she could get her hands on, 2pac being the frst rapper she can remember. “I would sit in my room and write down other artists’ lyrics until I was grown enough to write my own,” she says. Fast-forward to her 2014 runaway hit, “Try Me,” and her lyrics are being recited, remixed, and retweeted by today’s heaviest hitters, including Drake, Kevin Durant, and Kylie Jenner. “I was gonna put out a new track when ‘Try Me’ hit fve thousand views on YouTube, and then all of a sudden it was at six million and I got record labels at my door. I defnitely didn’t expect this,” she says. “I wrote the song when I was shopping in the mall with my friend and people were giving me stares like they were gonna do something to me.

I called my own voice mail and left a message with the hook and sent it to my in-house producer, DDS, who put it to the beat, and the rest is history.”

What initially caught ears as a melodic, singsongy hip-hop fow was actually a street anthem about taking someone out.

“Try Me” remains her breakthrough, but her style is just as current. “I never wanted to look and dress like everybody else. I started wearing loafers in 10th grade and people began calling me Déjà Loaf. The name stuck with me, even if today I wear Jordans, jogging pants, and a bucket hat,” she says. Beginning her musical journey with a high school group named G4, Loaf cultivated her hip-hop prowess writing rhymes as a way to get her feelings out. After dropping out of nursing school, she was able to really focus on music as a career. “I’ve always been shy. Music, for me, is like diary entries. Whatever you hear is genuine, day-to-day life for me,” she says. Now with a major label deal, Loaf plans on releasing her full-length debut at the top of 2015. “I’m still that shy girl, but the music really speaks for me now. I’m ready to cement my name. I’m ready to be legendary.” Marcus HolMlund

Clothing calvin Klein collection Men’s gloves GasPar Gloves BraCelet david YurMan Boots neW World order sunglasses vintage Junior Gaultier from dePuis 1924

With Drake’s stamp of approval anD over 6 million hits on her breakout song, the Diminutive Detroit emcee is prepping for a groWth spurt Big things come in small packages. Standing at exactly fve feet tall, 23-year-old Detroit-bred emcee Dej Loaf, with her miniature-voiced delivery, is coming for the rap game in a giant way. “My name buzzin’… that fame comin’…”, she declares on her latest release, $ell Sole. Having dropped her frst-ever mixtape only two years ago (2012), the rapper grew up devouring any and all music she could get her hands on, Tupac being the frst rapper she can remember. “I would sit in my room and write down other artists’s lyrics until I was grown enough to write my own,” she says. Fast forward to her 2014 fyaway hit, “Try Me”, and her lyrics are being recited, remixed, retweeted and regrammed by today’s heaviest hitters including Drake, Kevin Durant, and Kylie Jenner. “I was gonna put out a new track when ‘Try Me’ hit 5,000 views on YouTube and then all of a sudden it was at 6 million and I

got record labels at my door. I defnitely didn’t expect this,” she says. “I wrote the song when I was shopping in the mall with my friend and people were giving me stares like they were gonna do something to me. I called my own voice mail and left a message with the hook and sent it to my in-house producer, DDS; who the next day put it to the beat and the rest is history.”

What initially caught ears as a melodic, sing-songy hiphop fow, was actually a street anthem about taking someone out. “Try Me” remains her breakthrough, but her style is just as current. “I never wanted to look and dress like everybody else. I started wearing loafers in tenth grade and people began calling me Deja Loaf. The name stuck with me, even if today I wear Jordans, jogging pants, and a bucket hat,” she says. Her aesthetic recalls early-nineties MC Lyte with a

dose of tomboy Aaliyah. Beginning her musical journey with a high-school group named “G4”, Loaf cultivated her hip-hop prowess writing rhymes as a way to get her feelings out as a shy girl. After dropping out of nursing school, she could really focus on music as a career choice. “I’ve always been shy. Music for me, you know, what I write, and what I say, is all like diary entries. Whatever you hear is genuine, day-today life for me,” she says. Now with a major label deal, Loaf plans on releasing her full-length debut at the top of 2015.

“I’m still that shy girl, but the music really speaks for me now.

I’m ready to cement my name. I’m ready to be legendary.”

Marcus HolMlund Clothing calvin Klein collection Boots stylist’s own sunglasses vintage Jean Paul Gaultier Junior from dePuis1924.coM v magaZine 5 7

SHADES OF COOL

JAMES FRANCO PAYS POETIC TRIBUTE TO HIS MUSE ANd FRIENd, LANA dEL REY, “THE MIAMI IdOL QUEEN, GONE TO LONdON ANd BACK FOR A TRIUMPHANT HENdRIX RETURN” ORIGINAL POLAROIDS CHUCK GRANT PHOTOGRAPHy AND TEXT jAmES fRANCO

tribute

There was a story on the Hufngton Post about a Twitter backlash against a new singer who ostensibly bombed on Saturday Night Live. I watched the clip, it wasn’t great. She wasn’t transitioning between the high and low registers of “Video Games” very smoothly, and she didn’t know what to do with her free hand; it awkwardly futtered between her face and her side and she periodically touched her hair or made a deuce sign while singing, “They say the world was meant for two.”

Juliette Lewis tweeted, “Wow watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12-yearold [sic] in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform #signofourtimes” The following week, SNL cast member Kristen Wiig did a spot-on impersonation of Lana on “Weekend Update” as a response—she caught the body carriage, the voice, and even the lip curl: “I thought [I sang two songs] but based on the public’s response to [my performance], I must have clubbed a baby seal while singing the Taliban national anthem.

“I think people thought I was stif, distant, and weird, but there’s a perfectly good explanation for that: I am stif, distant, and weird. It’s my thing.”

It is Lana’s thing. She’s weird. But she never wanted to be a live performer anyway.

If she could have, she would have made her music, and her videos, in her room forever.

This is a poem about Lana Del Rey. This is an essay about Lana Del Rey. Lana has become my friend. She is a musician who is a poet and a video artist.

She grew up on the East Coast but she is an artist of the West Coast.

When I watch her stuf, when I listen to her stuf, I am reminded of everything I love about Los Angeles. I am sucked into a long gallery of Los Angeles cult fgurines, and cult people, up all night like vampires and bikers.

The only diference between Lana and me is her haunting voice. That carries everything.

The voice is the central axle around which the spokes of everything else extend.

My axle, like her voice is for her, is my acting. Out of it, I do everything else.

I don’t like vampires and bikers in my life, but I like them in my art.

Lana lives in her art, and when she comes down to earth for interviews, it gets messy, because she isn’t made for this earth. She is made to live in the world she creates. She is one who has been so disappointed by life, she had to create her own world. Just let her live in it.

I am a performer and she is a performer.

The thing about singers, especially the ones who write their own lyrics, is that everyone reads the person into the songs. An actor is sometimes aligned with his roles, but a singer is asked about her lyrics as if they were direct statements of her true thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes Lana doesn’t know what to say in interviews, so she plays into the idea that her songs are her, and not her creations.

Lana spends a lot of time alone because everyone wants in.

She has this idea for a flm. I want to do it because it’s a little like Sunset Boulevard. A woman is alone in a big house in L.A. She doesn’t want to go out. She starts to go crazy, and becomes paranoid because she feels like people are watching her. Even in her own house. It’s like an awesome B-movie that lives in Lana’s head. It’s about her, and it’s not about her. Just like her music.

I wanted to interview Lana for a book and she said, “Just write around me, it’s better if it’s not my own words. It’s almost better if you don’t get me exactly, but try.”

KLAUS BIESENBACH, LANA DEL REY, AND JAMES FRANCO IN BROOKLYN, SEPTEMBER 2014 FOR MORE IMAgES gO TO vMAgAzINE.COM v MAgAzINE 5 9

DISCOVERY

BLINDED BY RAINBOWS V MAGAZINE 6 2

FROM LEFT: MAKO, NANAMI, AND MARISA WEAR JACKETS DOG DRESSES YOHEI ONUKI GOGGLES H0LES NECKLACES AMBUSH SHOES AND TIGHTS (THROUGHOUT) STYLISTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S OWN

WITH THE HELP OF NICOLA FORMICHETTI, COLOR-CODE IS ELECTRIFYING J-POP PHOTOGRAPHY MOTOHIKO HASUI FASHION NICOLA FORMICHETTI

“Through ThaT repeTiTive process of copying, you can build your own sTyle. experience much, experimenT much.”

—nicola formicheTTi

NANAMI weArs JACKeT DOG GLOVes sOmaRTa HeADPIeCe by kaTsuya kamO

MAKO weArs JACKeT aDRienne LanDau LeOTArD BCaLLa sKIrT Bess HeADPIeCe by kaTsuya kamO NeCKLACe WOnDeR anaTOmie

Makeup and hair Katsuya Kamo Manicure Eichi Matsunaga Photo assistant Takuya Nagata Stylist assistants Kotaro Takahashi, Kei Yasukawa, Naoki Akiyama, Yuko Makabe, Ryo Oshigane, Kanako Lino, Yuji Makino Makeup and hair assistants Yutaka Kodashiro, Keiko Tada, Tomoko Sato, Kanako Yoshida, Haruka Tazaki

MArIsA weArs bODysUIT BCaLLa sCArF Bess HeADPIeCe by kaTsuya kamO

“What will I have to wear if I win?” Nanami Tsujikawa recalls wondering before trying out for Pop Icon Project Tokyo.

Considering the competition to fnd the next Japanese girl group was headed up by Diesel artistic director and stylist Nicola Formichetti, it was a fair concern. “I saw Nicola’s photo on the announcement, which clued me in that this project was based on real fashion. I knew straightaway that I had to apply. I knew about Nicola because of [Lady Gaga’s] famous meat dress.”

Color-Code is made up of the contest’s three winners: Nanami Tsujikawa, Mako Moriyasu, and Marisa Yasukawa. “To be honest, when I frst found out about this audition on social media, I was suspicious,” laughs Moriyasu. “However, as the audition proceeded, I realized that Nicola was truly looking for entertainers. That frmed up my decision to go all out.”

Yasukawa didn’t even know she was in the competition until she’d made it through the frst round. As it turns out, her mother had submitted an application without her knowledge.

“I think I’m headed in the right direction, becoming closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be,” she says. “Everything is so new to me. The outcome of our music video [for debut single “I Like Dat”] is fantastic, and the costumes are unique.”

The group’s members admit that their electric-hued, heavily embellished ensembles (all styled by Formichetti, of course) are like nothing they’ve ever worn on their own.

But the trio’s out-of-this-world looks are a big part of ColorCode’s identity. “I imagined wearing things like studded costumes, revealing lingerie, or a swimsuit,” Yasukawa says. “I was basically ready to wear anything.”

Color-Code was well taken care of on the fashion front

before they even formed, but Formichetti wanted to make sure the group’s musical direction was top-notch, too, so he brought his pal Verbal, an established MC and the chairman of Espionage Records, onboard. “When I heard that Verbal was going to compose our music, I was thrilled,” says Moriyasu. “He instantly brings out each member’s color. He’s a true professional.”

Formichetti, who’s seen the rise of a star or two, ofers sage advice to his hand-picked next wave: “It’s okay to copy whatever you like at frst. Through that repetitive process of copying, you can build your own style. Experience much, experiment much.” The group’s future is a fresh canvas. Do they have a sense of what they want to create, or are they the creation itself? Moriyasu answers without hesitation: “Absolutely both.” junsuke yamasaki

Above and opposite: Bangerz Tour, European leg, London, U.K., May 2014

Above and right: Bangerz Tour rehearsal, Tacoma, WA, February 2014

Far left, left, above: â&#x20AC;&#x153;At home in L.A. on one of very few days of in 2014!â&#x20AC;? Los Angeles, CA, July 2014

with a little help from my fwends

diary

Left and above: Bangerz Tour, European leg, Helsinki, Finland, June 2014

Above and right: New York, NY, September 2014

Opposite, left, above right: “After the last South American Bangerz show, waiting for the 5 am fight home.” Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 2014

FROM LOS ANGELES TO HELSINKI TO ARGENTINA, MILEY CYRUS HAS TAKEN THE PLANET BY STORM WITH HER SOLD-OUT BANGERZ TOUR. HER BEST FRIEND, CHEYNE THOMAS, HAS BEEN WITH HER EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. HERE THEY SHARE PRIVATE POLAROIDS FROM THEIR TRAVELS TOGETHER photography cheyne thomas V MAGAZINE 6 5

PROFILE

SONG TO THE SIREN the torchbearer of shoegaze is back with new collaborators and an adrenalized sound. enter the darker, louder, faster realm of tamaryn

“This is a dance record at times,” New York–based musician Tamaryn says of her forthcoming LP, a departure from the identifable guitar reverb she’s become known for on her previous two albums. “But it’s one where you might potentially end up crying and touching yourself at the same time. That’s ideal music to me.” Few albums manage the trick of sounding fresh while intelligently referencing the past, but Tamaryn’s latest songs pull it of. The singer and songwriter went into the studio with Jorge Elbrecht, formerly of Violens and Lansing-Dreiden, and Shaun Durkan, of Weekend, to evolve her already colossal sound. A collage of 120 Minutes-era shoegaze, Anglophilic New Wave, and ’80s pop, the result is the kind of album that sounds at once blazingly new and hauntingly familiar—a fever dream that represents no small amount of blood, sweat, and deeply melancholic tears.

“I’ve been wanting to make this record for a very long time,” Tamaryn says. “Some of the original demos were written well before the last Tamaryn album. Shaun Durkan and I had become very close in San Francisco while he was making Weekend’s Jinx and I was making Tender New Signs. He did all the design and artwork for that album, and we were writing our own songs together for a potential side project. I’d wanted to work with Jorge Elbrecht since around 2004 and the timing seemed right to ask him to help me with what I saw as my metamorphosis. I wanted to make a pop record that was rooted in the infuences and ideas I’d been playing with all along, but to really push it as far as I could. Anyone who actually knows me will hear this album and not be surprised.”

The as-yet-untitled record references “anything from Art of Noise and Freur to Prefab Sprout, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Madonna, Cocteau Twins, and Nine Inch Nails”—all of which make perfect sense together within Tamaryn’s sonic landscape. More than a simple homage, the new songs take these references and turn them into cross-genre epics—a fantasy both Tamaryn and Durkan had been dreaming about for years.

“I’m most proud of the fact that we didn’t give up trying to bring to life something that we obviously both cared so much about,” says Durkan. “It feels like a bit of a triumph. A terribly sad triumph.”

At a time when so much within the pop milieu embraces mindless happiness, the frankness of a record that relishes pop without wearing a false grin (“The world is full of sufering, but nobody wants to admit that we kind of like it that way” says Tamaryn) is a welcome shot in the arm. It also makes a new Tamaryn record one of the year’s most anticipated releases, among those in the know.

“I want to make many albums in my lifetime,” Tamaryn says. “I always want to create them in the company of brilliant, sensitive people who understand that music is a channel to the source of human nature, whether it be sexual, emotional, visual, or otherwise. Albums are a perfect place to work out these archetypal dramas and have a dialogue with the rest of the world about internal experiences. This is why I hope the whole world hears it.” T. Cole RaChel

Production Yann Rzepka

from left: shaun durkan, tamaryn, jorge elbrecht in new york city, september 2014 PhoTogRaPhy hedi slimane all clothing and accessories their own tamaryn’s as-yet-untitled lp is available this spring from mexican summer v magaZine 6 7

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MISS WORLD

HOW DID A PUNK ROCKER FROM BISHOPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STORTFORD, ENGLAND, CRASH THE GATES OF CORPORATE-CONTROLLED, MARKET-TESTED AMERICAN POP RADIO? GO BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE UNPRECEDENTED RISE OF CHARLI XCX PHOTOGRAPHY RICHARD BUSH V MAGAZINE 6 8

FASHION SARAH RICHARDSON

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DRESS CÃ&#x2030;LINE RESORT 2015 ON LIPS DIOR ROUGE DIOR BRILLIANT IN SOHO #888

Makeup Petros Petrohilos (Streeters London) Hair Martin Cullen (Streeters London) Manicure Imarni (Saint Luke) 3KRWR DVVLVWDQWV 3HWHU &DUWHU 5LFKDUG 5RXQG 7XUQHU -DFN 6WRUHU 6W\OLVW DVVLVWDQW $OLFH /HIRQV +DLU DVVLVWDQW $OĆ&#x192;H 6DFNHWW Retouching Andy Greig (Love Retouch) Location Curtain Road Studios, London

&KDUOL ;&; ZDV ULGLQJ LQ D 1HZ <RUN WD[L WKH Ć&#x192;UVW WLPH she heard her song â&#x20AC;&#x153;Boom Clapâ&#x20AC;? on the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Z100 radio. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I remember feeling like I was Mariah Carey in Glitter at that moment,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I wanted to run out of the car and call my mom from the phone box!â&#x20AC;? The 22-year-old British pop singer and songwriter had already earned her radio stripes with â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fancy,â&#x20AC;? her cerWLĆ&#x192;HG VXPPHU VPDVK ZLWK ,JJ\ $]DOHD DQG ZLWK WKH double-platinum â&#x20AC;&#x153;I Love It,â&#x20AC;? which she wrote and contributed vocals to for the Swedish pop duo Icona Pop, back in 2012. That song had earned cultural immortality in a scene from HBOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Girls, and achieved such ubiquity that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s destined to become a wedding reception staple for the millennial generation in years to come. But with â&#x20AC;&#x153;Boom Clap,â&#x20AC;? the rush belonged to her alone, and was one that came as a particular surprise. â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Boom Clapâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; was a song that was around for a long time,â&#x20AC;? Charli says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I wrote that straight after [my album] True Romance came out, in June 2013. I went to Sweden and was working with Patrik Berger, and we wrote it at a time I had been listening to a lot of yĂŠ-yĂŠ pop from France. I really liked the way that the girls who sing those songs often use onomatopoeic words in the choruses and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re all very nursery rhyme-esque and naĂŻve.â&#x20AC;? Once completed, Charli and Berger decided to RĆ&#x201A;HU WKH VRQJ WR +LODU\ 'XĆ&#x201A; ZKR ZDV DFFHSWLQJ SLWFKHV for a new album. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We sent the song to her people and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think she ever heard it,â&#x20AC;? Charli says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But they were like, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This song isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cool enough for Hilary.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; And we were really sad about that! So I was like, Fuck it.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to sing it.â&#x20AC;?

On April 14, 2014, the song hit SoundCloud, heralding the soundtrack for the upcoming The Fault In Our Stars Ć&#x192;OP EDVHG RQ D EHVW VHOOLQJ \RXQJ DGXOW ERRN The response was favorable, but modest, coming mostly IURP &KDUOLĹ V FRUH IDQ EDVH %XW ZKHQ WKH Ć&#x192;OP RSHQHG in June, the romantic teen drama rapidly emerged as the sleeper hit of the summer, a perfect antidote to the VXSHUKHURHV &*, PRQVWHUV DQG VFLHQFH Ć&#x192;FWLRQ RG\VVH\V SUHYDLOLQJ DW WKH ER[ RĆ&#x2026;FH RYHU WKH SDVW IHZ VHDsons. The $12 million production amassed over $300 PLOOLRQ LQ SURĆ&#x192;WV ZRUOGZLGH VKDWWHULQJ 7RP &UXLVH DQG Angelina Jolieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opening-day totals and earning receipts on par with X-Men. It was astonishing considering the movieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premiseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;two teenagers coming of age in the shadow of terminal illnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and on the heels of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fancyâ&#x20AC;? it amounted to a perfect storm for Charli. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Boom Clapâ&#x20AC;? chimed incessantly over TV and radio spots and EHFDPH DVVRFLDWHG ZLWK WKH Ć&#x192;OP DV DQ DQWKHP IRU WKH underdog besting the big-budget competition. Boom clap indeed. Ţ+LODU\ 'XĆ&#x201A; KHDUG LW DQG VKH WZHHWHG PH Ĺ&#x;+H\ , UHDOO\ like your song! I wish Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d known that I couldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had it,â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

Charli says, with a laugh. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And I was like, Too late, Hilary.

Too late.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;?

Though the song may not have made it to radio initially, Charli has come to see its entry onto the pop charts (where it has since cracked the top 10) as a combination of action and reaction. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never really believed you can preempt that,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even UHDOL]H WKDW WKH\ WHVW VRQJV EHIRUH WKH\ SXW WKHP RQ the radio. They get teenagers to say I think this is great RU , WKLQN WKDWĹ V EDG EDVHG RQ Ć&#x192;YH RU WHQ VHFRQGV RI D song theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never heard before. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s those reactions that get them to decide what goes on the radio.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really fucked up and weird. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think anyone knew the scale of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Boom Clapâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; until it began to get more plays.

Radio is not something thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ever been with me before.â&#x20AC;?

Ed Howard, the director of A&R at Asylum Records who was instrumental in signing Charli, comes across less shocked. â&#x20AC;&#x153;From the very start I saw she had the talent and desire to be a big artist, so her success is not a surprise,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But the way itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening is brilliant and unpredictable, just like Charli.â&#x20AC;?

Born in Cambridge and raised in Bishopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Stortford, in the position that I was in,â&#x20AC;? Charli says of the Justin a conservative market town on the border of Essex, Raisenâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;produced track. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s me being angry and being a bitch on the record, and I really enjoy playing Charlotte Emma Aitchison began to write and selfthat song, because it gives me a sense of satisfaction release songs on Myspace when she was only 14.

Streams of her homespun pop demos led to gigs at every time.â&#x20AC;?

2WKHU VWDQGRXWV LQFOXGH Ţ'RLQJ ,W ĹŁ D UROOHU GLVFR local warehouse raves, where her parents would accompany her for supervision and support. ready dance gem that evokes early Madonna; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Famous,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;I had heard about her through the grapevine, but a rollicking sequel of sorts to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fancyâ&#x20AC;? chorus with hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t met her before I saw her play, very late at night, an amphetamine hook made for reality TV promos; at a pub in East London,â&#x20AC;? Howard says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;At 15 she Ţ%UHDNLQJ 8S ĹŁ D NLVV RĆ&#x201A; KDQG FODSSHU ZLWK D GRR ZRS sheen; and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Need Ur Love,â&#x20AC;? a lovesick sugar rush proalready had incredible songs, had the most energy and front of any performer Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d seen of any age, and a duced with Vampire Weekendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rostam Batmanglij. really forward sense of style and presentation.â&#x20AC;? After Much of it feels like Phil Spector through the prism of â&#x20AC;&#x2122;90s alternative rock. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s even a song written signing with Asylum Records, Charli XCX (she conjured WKH QDPH RXW RI KHU SUHIHUUHG H PDLO VLJQ RĆ&#x201A; EHJDQ WR ZLWK :HH]HUĹ V 5LYHUV &XRPR WKH KDUPRQLF :HVW &RDVW work with producers like Berger, Ariel Rechtshaid, and anthem â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hanging Around.â&#x20AC;?

Todd Rundgren, creating gothy synth jams like â&#x20AC;&#x153;Stay â&#x20AC;&#x153;I did become kind of obsessed with girl groups for a Awayâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nuclear Seasons.â&#x20AC;? Those two songs feaperiod of making this record,â&#x20AC;? Charli says of the Spector tured on her debut LP, True Romance, an album that comparison. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Toward the beginning I was listening to KDG KHU RSHQLQJ IRU &ROGSOD\ DQG HDUQLQJ VROLG EX]] WKH )HPLQLQH &RPSOH[ DQG *LQQ\ $UQHOOĹ V Ĺ&#x;'XPE +HDG Ĺ everywhere from Pitchfork to NME and Rolling Stone. which I play when I walk out onstage. I was really fas'HVSLWH WKH SXQN HQHUJ\ RI KHU VKRZV DQG WKH GDUN cinated by the way they cut their vocals and the way IX]]\ SURGXFWLRQ RI WKH DOEXP &KDUOL YLHZV WKDW SHULRG WKH\ SHUIRUP ĹŁ :KHQ &KDUOL EURXJKW KHU Ć&#x192;UVW KHDGOLQLQJ as a full-frontal foray into pop music. tour to New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Webster Hall, the venue transŢ7KH YHU\ SRS ZD\ WKDW , WKLQN LVQĹ W UHFRJQL]HG VRPHformed into a senior prom complete with streamers, times,â&#x20AC;? she says, annoyed. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think some people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t confetti cannons, and balloons that spelled out â&#x20AC;&#x153;PUSSY POWER.â&#x20AC;? As each previously unheard song unfolded, appreciate the Spice Girls and Britney Spears as great, intelligent pop music. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll always be like, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s you the sold-out crowd would know (and scream) the chocoming from a weird angle. And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m like, No, you just ruses by songâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end. Charli then closed out the night donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get it. I always wanted to be in the pop sphere, with an intimate and laid-back afterparty at the unasbut I wanted to do it on my own terms. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to suming Lower East Side dive bar 169. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Going to fancy parties and shitâ&#x20AC;ŚIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not good at that. follow what anyone else has done before me.â&#x20AC;?

Sucker, Charliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sophomore album, released in Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not my vibe,â&#x20AC;? Charli says. And despite the proclama'HFHPEHU H[SDQGV KHU Ć&#x192;HOG RI YLVLRQ LQWR WKH PRVK WLRQV RQ Ţ)DPRXV ĹŁ &KDUOL SURIHVVHV WR KDYH ]HUR LQWHUSLW :LWK VKRXW DORQJ FKRUXVHV EX]]\ JXLWDU ULĆ&#x201A;V DQG HVW LQ FHOHEULW\ Ţ$V ,Ĺ YH EHHQ LQFUHDVLQJO\ LQ WKLV ]RQH D OLYH VKRZ WKDW ERUURZV IURP WKH 'RQQDVĹ VFHQH LQ WKH ,Ĺ YH VKXW P\VHOI RĆ&#x201A; IURP WKDW NLQG RI LQWHUDFWLRQ ZLWK movie Jawbreaker, the direction is confrontational, at people,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The more successful, or whatever, times angry, and addictive in its refrains.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve become, the more Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve just come into my own brain.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve hung out with my friends and people I trust, and that â&#x20AC;&#x153;With the way Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve performed, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always been a bit messy and more raw and punk,â&#x20AC;? Charli reasons. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But I makes it more fun. I took two of my best friends on tour made a load of actual punk songs with Patrik after the and it was like being on a weird school trip and I like it success of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I Love It,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; because I felt cheated and I felt that way. Having been in the studio with some pretty very alone, and like Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d opened a few doors to the music big artists and people who I was kind of intimidated to industry that I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really want to open. In hindsight Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m be working with at some point, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found that generally glad, because it made me wiser to the way people can the most successful people are 100 percent fucking play you, especially with big pop songs. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a slight nice people. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re genuine and real, and I admire that.â&#x20AC;? on Icona Pop, but the way business was done around that â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t overcomplicate things and she song was kind of messy. I also felt angry about being KDV QDWXUDO ERUQ WDOHQW ĹŁ %HUJHU VD\V LQ DQ HĆ&#x201A;RUW WR asked to rewrite that song over and over again. I felt like I explain what makes Charli work. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Some people just ZDV WXUQLQJ LQWR WKLV FRPSHWLWLYH 'U /XNH HVTXH FUHDWXUH have it. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just the most talented songwriter there who was going into the studio trying to write another hit.

LV ULJKW QRZ ,I \RX DUH DEOH WR ZULWH VWXĆ&#x201A; OLNH WKDW RQFH And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never been my style. So I just got my anger out, WKHQ PD\EH \RX WKLQN LW KDSSHQHG OLNH D Ć&#x201E;DVK LQ WKH DQG WKDW Ć&#x192;OWHUHG WKURXJK WR WKH Ć&#x192;QDO UHFRUG ĹŁ pan. But if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re constantly doing it year after year, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We kind of needed to get it out of our system,â&#x20AC;? proand song after song, then you have it and nobody can ducer Berger says of their sessions for Sucker. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Then really take it away. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to do so much good Charli was like, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;But I want to write big songs.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The chalVWXĆ&#x201A; LQ KHU FDUHHU 7KDW GRHVQĹ W JR DZD\ LWĹ V MXVW WKHUH ĹŁ lenge was to write real big songs, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where it Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in songwriting that Charli XCX will chart her went toward pop rather than a full-on punk record.â&#x20AC;? own success, rather than MTV awards or European â&#x20AC;&#x153;If Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m honest, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not even sure if some of my fans are tours with the likes of Katy Perry (which she is, in fact, going to like it,â&#x20AC;? Charli says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make this music to embarking on as we speak). â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always wanted to be please peopleâ&#x20AC;Śthatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just not why I do it. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the best songwriter,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I have my songs about my audience when I make music. The one thing all over the radioâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not necessarily me singing them, but Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m always thinking about is how I want to constantly other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;then Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll feel like Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made it. I want to be change. Who knows what the fuck is going to happen known as one of the best songwriters and creators of with the radio? Like, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never understood it, so who this time period. I guess I wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be able to tell until, like, knows? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m really proud of this album, and I like it. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s \HDUVĹ WLPH EXW , IHHO OLNH ,Ĺ P RQ WUDFN ĹŁ +HU Ć&#x192;UVW WHVW all I care about, really.â&#x20AC;? is in bringing Sucker to the masses. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m happy for this Album opener â&#x20AC;&#x153;Suckerâ&#x20AC;? sets the tone with bratty record to come out,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be cool. I verses that recall the lipstick-smeared kiss of â&#x20AC;&#x2122;90s godfeel like 15-year-olds need some kick-ass in their lives desses like Shirley Manson and Courtney Love with again, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m ready to bring them that.â&#x20AC;? PATRIK SANDBERG a plastic dose of riot grrrl bubblegum, reminiscent of Shampoo. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a big fuck you to all of the people who CHARLI XCX IN LONDON, NOVEMBER 2014 doubted me as an artist, who doubted me as a songSUCKER IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM ATLANTIC RECORDS/ASYLUM FOR ADDITIONAL IMAGES GO TO VMAGAZINE.COM writer, or who questioned my validity and why I was

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I WANT TO BE KNOWN AS ONE OF THE BEST SONGWRITERS AND CREATORS OF THIS TIME PERIOD.â&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;CHARLI XCX

v spring 2014 preview

SOUND AND VISION fOur faCes representing the future Of sOul anD a pOrtfOliO Of musiC’s present anD future phOtOgrapheD bY inez & vinOODh

plus: when karl met bieber, DOllY partOn’s manY COlOrs, jOni mitChell bY heDi slimane, fashiOn’s new rOmanCe, the white heat Of spring, anD mOre! V MAGAZINE 7 3

PHOTOgRAPHY INEz & VINOOdH

SAM SMITH BY CHAKA KHAN

THE BREAKOUT VOCAL TALENT OF THE YEAR MEETS UP WITH THE QUEEN OF FUNK CHAKA KHAN I feel like I’ve known you for some time.

SAM SMITH No! Me too.

CK We must have known each other some long time ago.

I think at least the frst Earth age.

SS Yes. CK Do you realize how lucky you are?

SS Yes, I do.

CK To make money at something you love to do? You know, I think about people who get up every morning and go to their job that they absolutely hate. That’s like being in hell.

SS And I was there. I had some awful jobs before I did anything else.

CK I’m so happy that you got to where you are and that you’re here.

SS Getting here is one thing, but staying here, that’s hard.

And you must know that.

CK Yes it is. To stay viable and keep people interested. I haven’t tried really hard to do that, but I’ve been very diligent about sticking to my stuf. Certain parts of me just aren’t up for discussion.

SS I’m trying to get used to that, because I give so much of myself away.

CK That’s okay. I do too. Music is to give, share.

SS That’s so true.

CK Do you sing any jazz?

SS My frst singing lessons were “Come Fly With Me” by Frank Sinatra. I’m going to a jazz concert tonight, actually.

CK Wonderful. Jazz is like the highest form of music, to me, besides opera. You can’t fake jazz if you don’t get the notes. I’m told I do a good job at it, but I don’t think so yet.

SS Jazz scares me. I’ve witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.

CK You should do “Goldfnger.”

SS I’m doing “My Funny Valentine” at Madison Square Garden.

CK Fabulous. That’s a song I’ve covered as well. Do you still like Frank Sinatra?

SS Frank Sinatra, I love. I love Amy Winehouse. I was 11 when her frst album came out.

CK I love her. That girl, she was an angel.

SS Did you get to meet her?

CK Yes, I did. She sat on my lap. She ran up to me and sat on my lap like a little girl. Just the sweetest thing.

SS That’s amazing.

CK Yes, adorable. I told her bodyguard, Okay, take her home now. It’s time to go home. [laughs] SS [laughs] I grew up listening to Amy, Whitney, and you.

CK All the right people.

SS Joni Mitchell, too.

CK Joni! I’m her biggest, biggest fan. I want to do a Joni Mitchell tribute album. Would you like to get on a couple

of cuts of that with me?

SS Yes. Yes. One thousand million percent. My whole record, In the Lonely Hour, was inspired by the artwork for Both Sides Now. CK She’s no joke. I want to grow up to be just like her.

SS Me too. And I listened to Etta James a lot. What I loved about her, which I try to do more of, is the rawness. She didn’t care if her voice went a bit fucked up here and there.

CK She didn’t care. She didn’t care.

SS Yeah, and people are so bothered at the moment about everything sounding perfect.

CK Especially in this age, everything is a machine. You can tune a person.

SS Even when you meet them. I won’t name names, but some of these pop stars are just awful. And they have not even had half the success that you’ve had and yet you’re so humble and kind.

CK Well, it’s people skills. Talking to a screen all day long takes the human experience out. Luckily I grew up in a time when we only had a telephone at home. You’re not home? Oh, well. God, I can’t wait until we do something together. You know what’d be cute? We could do “I Know You, I Live You.” You know Rufus and I also did a Bobby Womack song, “Stop On By.” SS Yeah, oh my gosh, that would be incredible. We did “Love Me Still.”

CK I wrote that.

SS That’s my favorite song of yours ever.

CK We are defnitely going to write a song together.

SS Hundred percent, I’m in. I was actually thinking me, you, and Mary [J. Blige] would do something.

CK That’d be hot. She’s a good writer.

SS My mom always used to joke around with her friends, when I was, like, 12 years old—“It’s all good. Sam’s just got to get Chaka Khan to sing with him when I’m in my 50s.” I rang her this morning and she was like, “I can’t believe you.”

CK We might have to call her.

SS Call my mum. That’d be amazing.

CK A couple years ago, you were playing your frst show in New York at the Mercury Lounge and now you’re coming back to play a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.

Do you feel like you’re the same person you were then?

SS I’m just more aware than I was back then. My eyes are wider open, but I’m enjoying myself. I’m happier, much happier. That’s the big thing.

CK Absolutely. You stay right there.

sam smith in new york City, september 2014 fashion mel ottenberg sam wears Coat ermenegilDo Zegna t-shirt rag & bone earrinGs his own in the lonely hour is available now from Capitol reCords v maGaZine 7 5

tinashe BY Patti LaBeLLe

R&B’S NEWEST SENSATION TAKES ADVICE FROM THE ORIGINAL LADY MARMALADE PATTI LABELLE Hi Tinashe, it’s Patti LaBelle.

TINASHE It’s such an honor to talk to you. I’m excited.

PL Oh that’s sweet. How old are you, baby girl?

T Twenty-one.

PL Twenty-one! [laughs] I’m so happy for your success.

T Thank you so much, that means a lot to me.

PL When did you frst discover your musical talent?

T When I was three years old, singing with my family. My dad’s family is from Zimbabwe, so there was a lot of music and harmonizing in the house.

PL What about your writing?

T I started when I was six years old. I wrote my frst ofcial song and then performed it at one of my piano recitals. I think I have a videotape of it, and I was missing my two front teeth! I actually sampled that song and put a clip of it as an interlude on my album Aquarius.

PL Oh! That’s great. You know, I was with a group years ago called Labelle, and you were also part of a group called the Stunners. Do you miss being part of a group?

T In a group, there’s a sense of companionship. That’s something you don’t get by yourself. And as a solo artist there’s a lot more pressure on you because you don’t have anyone else to fall back on. But at the same time, when an accomplishment comes your way, being a solo artist can be a little more fulflling.

PL I’ve experienced the same thing. I fnd that I blame myself if something goes wrong. It’s all about me. You’re also interested in acting, like I am.

T Acting has always been a big part of my life just because I’ve always enjoyed performing and entertaining…putting on a show. My dad was a theater actor, so he encouraged me to be a professional at a really young age. I think that helped me learn a lot about the industry in general. But I took a step back from acting when I was about 15 years old because I wanted to focus on music and make sure people were taking me seriously as a musical artist. I hope that I can get back into acting sometime in the future.

PL Oh I know that! [laughs] You will. You know, you have been named in the press as the best voice of female R&B since Beyoncé. You got it going on, girl! How does it feel to hear those things?

T Any time somebody compares you to an icon or someone you respect on a talent level, that’s amazing. It’s a great feeling. I defnitely take it as a huge, huge compliment.

Obviously, I would like to be known as myself, and sometimes comparisons can put you into a box. I don’t want to

feel like I have to compete with other female artists either.

[Beyoncé] can be the icon that she is, and I can become who I am as well.

PL You sure can. There’s room for all of us! Who are some of your biggest musical infuences from the past and present?

T When I was growing up my parents played a lot of ’90s R&B, so that was initially where I got my love for R&B music, by listening to a lot of Janet Jackson, Sade, Keith Sweat, and Tony! Toni! Toné! I guess that was when I fell in love with music, but I continued to explore diferent genres as I got older. I got into a lot of indie and alternative.

PL I think that’s great. I’m so happy for you! And you know that now that you’ve released your album it’s ofcially a critical success. What’s your next big ambition? What is your ultimate dream?

T Well frst of all, thank you so much. My next focus is to promote, to be able to tour, and go around the world and play my music for people, meet new people, and have new experiences. In the long term, I hope to inspire others.

PL And that’s so great, to inspire. I believe that’s our job if we’re blessed with the mic, as I like to say, and blessed with success and recording and all things are looking good for us. We have to turn to the other kids coming up and say, If I can do it, you can do it.

T Absolutely, right. That is amazing.

PL We have to! And who taught you to dance, baby girl?

T [laughs] Well, like I said, my family is from Zimbabwe so there was always a lot of music and dance in the house and I was always encouraged to move around. I started taking dance classes when I was about four years old. My parents got me involved in ballet and tap from a really young age. It’s so connected to music and expressing yourself, that’s why I love it.

PL Well I hope I get to see it one day!

T Oh my goodness, that would be crazy.

PL And continue with your success!

T I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Patti.

PL Alright, baby girl.

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jessie ware BY BaBYFaCe

THE SOULFUL POP CROONER CONNECTS WITH THE SMOOTHEST MAN IN THE BUSINESS JESSIE WARE Thank you very much for doing this.

BABYFACE Well I’m honored. I love your voice.

JW That’s a massive compliment coming from you. You’ve made some of my favorite tunes. “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” that’s one of my favorite Whitney songs. And [Madonna’s] “Take A Bow,” oh, and “You’re Makin’ Me High.” That’s the song my friends and I go to after we’ve had a night out. It can either start a party or it can be at the end of a party, it’s so versatile.

B Thank you. Toni [Braxton] came to me with that track.

Bryce Wilson had done it for her. She played it for me and the melody just hit me. I wrote it right there on the spot.

JW Oh, shit! What’s so clever about it is it has that build within the verse that creeps up, and then by the chorus it does this cascading thing that kind of moves up there, and it never climaxes until “you’re making me high.” It’s got such a sweet spot where it builds in the verse and it feels like this temptation, and then this subtle crescendo.

It’s fucking brilliant.

B Thank you. You don’t sound like I thought you would.

JW I know. It’s such a disappointment when you meet me and I have a potty mouth. Everyone thinks I look like an absolute bitch in my videos because I look quite cold and shy, and then you chat with me. Whenever anyone meets me they think I’m just somebody that works for the label, or I’m someone’s assistant, which is quite hysterical, quite fun actually.

B I’m not surprised by that at all. You can’t really judge somebody by the way they sing. The only part you can judge is, when someone has a voice like yours, usually somewhere in there, there’s been some pain. When I work with an artist, mostly female artists, I try to dig deep to fnd out what makes them tick, what causes their pain, because that’s what I like to use.

JW Really? How many artists have you made cry?

B Almost all of them.

JW I’m never working with you!

B We go to that space, but it’s nice to go to that space just to talk about our lives and talk about not just musically what inspires us but what inspires us in terms of what happened personally in our lives and those things that you don’t necessarily want to talk about.

JW It’s funny because on my frst record, I did it with this amazing man, Dave Okumu. He knew how funny I am in recording studios, because we had written all the songs in his living room in South London. He tried to recreate his room in the booth, so he was like, Come on, bring some vinyl that you really love. We had Grace Jones, Sonic Youth, Prince, and everything in his living room, but the two vinyls I brought into the studio were Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand. When in doubt, I would be like, What would Whitney do? What would Barbra do? And you’ve worked with both of them.

B Yeah, those are two great ones.

JW I’ve only got two records, and I feel very, very, new, but with this record, I made the majority of it with these two guys called Benny Blanco and Two Inch Punch. Together they make this duo called BenZel. We fought so much. It wasn’t in a bad way. They just tested me. Essentially, we’re friends. It’s these incredibly intense situations which kind of happen in short pockets of time, but you either create beautiful relationships or disintegrate things.

B Exactly. It can go the opposite way sometimes. You never know. Sometimes you think that you found the perfect person and it makes all the sense in the world. But it doesn’t.

JW I get that. I mean there was one session, at the beginning of writing my second album, I managed to work with this person and I put myself under so much pressure to make it work because I worshiped this writer, and when I actually worked with him, I choked in the studio because I kind of worked myself up so much, I kind of sabotaged it.

B You’ve got to give yourself a chance to fail frst. Get it wrong a couple times.

JW Three songs ended up on that second record that I wrote when I wasn’t even supposed to be writing. It was supposed to just be a trip to New York to escape touring for a bit. The essence of this record came from when we weren’t overthinking it. And there’s such an optimism in America. I was just in the States last week. I love the American audience, they seem to kind of get more of the R&B soul sensibilities of the music that I do. I used to do a Bobby Caldwell cover, “What You Won’t Do for Love.” You’d have someone shout out, “Nothin’ wrong with you, girl!” like that. You wouldn’t have that with a British audience.

B That’s amazing. I think normally we think the opposite.

The European crowd is a little more passionate. But we’re not family. And you’re not family when you’re here. You know, there’s been a British invasion for years now, in America, where artists from the U.K. come here doing soul music and R&B. And the younger kids today don’t really mess with that over here. You’re appreciated by an audience here because they don’t get it new here.

JW It’s been really wonderful. People really enjoy my references. Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, TLC. I do feel a resurgence of it.

B Well I would defnitely like to see one of your shows next time you’re here.

JW Yeah absolutely! You’d be so welcome!

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THE PHENOMENON aNd visiONary TOUCHEs BasE WiTH MUsiC’s MOsT rEsPECTEd CriTiC SASHA FRERE-JONES You were in a choir when you were young. Did that factor into your music?

FKA TWIGS I went to St. Edward’s, in Gloucestershire, and I was in choirs. When it was cold and raining, we’d go to rehearsal and learn about harmonies and dynamics. I’ve never been into the typical R&B voice, with runs and bluesy sounding words. That doesn’t suit me. As a ballet dancer, I grew up with classical music. I’m not a classical musician, but I like the way the music pays attention to dynamics.

SFJ What you gravitate toward has little to do with mainstream R&B, or whatever alternative R&B is.

FKA If I say “alternative red” to you, it’s not red, is it?

“Alternative R&B” is patronizing to R&B. R&B is R&B—it doesn’t need an alternative. There are plenty of artists now experimenting with electronic music, manipulating sounds.

We can make a train into a synth. We can make drips into hi-hats. I can record sounds on my phone and make a song out of a city. I don’t know what that has to do with R&B. SFJ In some of your songs, it’s not apparent where the downbeat is.

FKA A famous artist said something to me about dancing.

When you look at people dancing, it looks like some of them have no rhythm. But how can that be? When people dance around the beat, they might have a higher understanding of rhythm, the way dogs hear sounds that we can’t.

SFJ At your Webster Hall show, I saw fragments of New York ballroom dancing in your movement. Do you choreograph that or just freestyle?

FKA I spent my early years as a backup dancer, doing moves that didn’t resonate. So I don’t choreograph now.

There are moments in the set where I have go-to moves, but everything else is improvised.

SFJ I’m curious about the Google Glass video. The frst time I saw it, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.

FKA Google asked me to make something with Google Glass, as an ad. When I used it, a video appeared in front of me. I thought, “OK, this is a great way to learn moves.”

You can’t do anything crazy, because the glasses will fall of, but it’s helpful for learning choreography. The idea for the video was that every time I Googled something, it would appear. I’d Google “vogue,” and a girl appeared, voguing, better than me. But that person was me, so it was a glimpse into the future. I was using technology to improve my art.

SFJ You’ve talked about the London underground and

wanting to return to it. Are there other places with scenes that matter to you?

FKA For the past two years, in New York, I’ve been voguing and learning more about the movement. I go to kiki balls and reach out to dancers. I’m not even that good, but I’m getting there. We need to be careful not to take something just because it’s cool. You have to do it wholeheartedly, not just for attention. Watch, sit, practice, and let someone tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Get embarrassed. Have someone tell you your hands are horrifc, or that you’ve been dipping wrong for the last six months.

SFJ That’s not usually the way artists incorporate ideas into their work.

FKA I wrote a song, a month ago. I can’t remember the lyrics. It was something like “boys growing boys growing girls into women.” I’ve felt more like a woman since I’ve met these men so in touch with their femininity. They teach me how to be a woman, how to feel, how to have class and poise, and how to feel good about myself. I’ll dance for them and I’ll dance for myself, as thanks.

SFJ Is there other art around you that helps?

FKA I’m reading more now. I have to, or I’m not going to expand. I’ve soaked up so much through dancing, but I also have to be still. I want to be silent and read, to shut up and take time to respect the vision someone put into a book.

SFJ Reading can get one voice out of your head and let another one in.

FKA Exactly. When you’re reading, you have to be quiet and respect what someone else is saying.

SFJ What are you reading?

FKA I’m going through the short stories of J.G. Ballard. It’s scientifc, and that’s not how my brain works, but that’s good. I just read Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus, which I loved.

My bandmate gave me a Gertrude Stein book. I’m looking forward to getting into that.

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unchained melody

music is the universal language, which this diverse cast of icons, newcomers, and power players prove. in 2015, the spotlight is on a medley of talents ready to reset the record photography inez & vinoodh

boy george

pop’s cult superstar

When Boy George and I plop into an empty café near Gramercy Park on a sunny New York afternoon, the frst thing I think is that there’s not much left that is boyish about him. “That’s good,” the 53-year-old says, squinting. “The only people who still call me Boy George are Americans anyway.”

The man born George Alan O’Dowd, in Kent, England, is jet-lagged, in dire need of a cup of tea, and the creases around those famous, glacial-blue eyes fold into the face tattoos—a peace sign, a crucifx—around his hairline when he smiles. “Work, work, work,” he sighs. He’s not kidding.

This morning, he met with a new makeup girl who will do him up for a series of appearances here. “I used to always do my own makeup, but there came a point about four years ago where I was traveling so much that one day I looked in the mirror and it looked like someone beat me up.” Now he’s having tea with me, then he has an afternoon photo shoot followed by an interview, and fnally a late-night rehearsal with Culture Club, the legendary ’80s band that catapulted George to international fame.

In October, the band’s original four members—George on vocals, Mikey Craig on bass guitar, Roy Hay on keyboard, and Jon Moss on drums—performed together for the frst time in 14 years. The reunion had some false starts (Moss didn’t make a tour in Australia in 2012 and the band has performed a few times without George, who spent the last 25 years touring the world as a DJ), but at London’s Heaven nightclub last fall, the stars aligned. The band played original hits like “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” and “Karma Chameleon” as well as material from their new record Tribes, and—much to their surprise—the critics were impressed. “Six good reviews? That’s, like, unheard of,” George says with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve had six good reviews [at once] in the entire span of my career.”

Tribes is Culture Club’s frst studio album since 1999.

“What I know about myself at this point in the game is that I am a very emotional artist,” George says, rolling his eyes, when asked why it has taken so long for the band to get back together. “We all needed to feel it was the right time to do it, because as soon as someone tells me I have to do something, I will do the opposite.” Martin Glover, a producer who goes by the name Youth and has worked with bands like the Verve and Erasure, put together many of the tracks, including the hit single “More Than Silence.”

The band announced an international tour through 2015, but it was canceled in November when George discovered a polyp in his throat that could require surgery.

Americans got their frst dose of a dragged-up Boy George exactly three decades ago when Joan Rivers V MAgAZine 8 2

presented the Grammy rules with the band via satellite in 1984. When they won the award for Best New Artist that same evening, George’s acceptance speech was succinct: “Thanks America. You’ve got taste, style, and you know a good drag queen when you see one.” That quote dominated the press the next day, placing him in pop culture’s pantheon somewhere between David Bowie and Divine.

Today, George says the comment was blasé and made on the fy, “but I can remember our press agent literally fell of her chair in horror when I said it.”

The subsequent years for Boy George were a series of highs and lows. There were the best-selling records—he’s sold more than 150 million worldwide both with Culture Club and solo projects—and then the police records. In the mid-’80s, he was arrested on various drug charges; in the aughts there were arrests for drugs and an incident involving a male escort. He later performed community service in New York.

George knows that when a famous person goes through a tough time, he or she is supposed to provide a concise, digestible moment of enlightenment to the press. “But life isn’t a headline or a sound bite. I’d never left England before I started Culture Club. I didn’t have a passport, I had never had a bank account, I didn’t even know what a credit card was. I don’t even know how I crossed the road back then.”

He doesn’t make excuses for his behavior, and even now that he’s made it to the other side he says he doesn’t look back with gratitude on how far he’s come. “I look forward with gratitude, never backward.”

Four years ago, George began chanting. In the ’80s, he explored Buddhism, “but it was probably more cosmetic back then,” and returned to the spiritual practice when he says he felt like something else was missing in his life. “It’s about focusing on what you want and changing your environment. I wanted a new career—and part of me thinks I even chanted a new manager into my life.” The best thing about a new album, though, is letting people know that life has gone on. “I’ve done so much stuf since our last album,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve been sitting around my house putting on makeup and listening to ‘Karma Chameleon.’ People can get into the habit of wanting you to be what you once were. But I wasn’t that even back then.” Derek BlasBerg

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KIESZA

NEW DANCE-FLOOR DIVA

The force behind last year’s breakout hit “Hideaway” will not be contained. The 25-year-old Kiesza’s aesthetic (suspenders, strapless bras, sneakers, and a signature red pompadour) is part function, part throwback. As her music videos and TV performances suggest, she’d rather not let anything get in the way of a synchronized dance in any given alleyway. On top of her moves, Canadian-born Kiesza (pronounced KIE-zah) has a powerful voice that can serve as a dance-foor anthem (“No Enemiesz”), a ballad for the brokenhearted (“Losin’ My Mind”), or both (“Giant In My Heart”).

Her sound refects her roundabout journey to music— one that frst took her from beauty pageants in her native Calgary to the Naval Reserve of the Royal Canadian Navy, where she served as a top-level sharpshooter. It was out at sea where she honed her guitar skills, and set her sights on her next venture.

“I had no idea I was going to be a musician in those days,” says Kiesza. “Music was a very important aspect in my life, but it wasn’t until I started songwriting, when I was about 17, that I found my aesthetic connect to music and I was able to reach other people through it. And when I felt that connection, it felt like I had a sense of purpose.”

She met a producer, Rami, while in school in Boston, and her artistic career began to take root. After Rami introduced her to the commercial music scene in New York, the two went on to create Kiesza’s frst album, over the course of a year—fall’s Sound of a Woman, a record that was deeply personal, and which she describes as a “regurgitated love story that I had suppressed inside of me.”

“It was everything from falling in love”—like in “Hideaway,” which was “the very beginning of just being in love, just

being in this fantasy world with this person where you don’t see anything wrong with them”—to “Having to break my own heart to end the relationship. I had kept it all inside, and I noticed as I wrote that I was getting pieces out from this giant puzzle that were stored inside of me. Every song on the album relates to a moment that I went through.”

Kiesza believes that this is why so many people have connected to her music. There is a particular hunger now for authenticity.

“When you walk outside, nobody is showing their emotions. You see happy people, happy couples, and you think you’re alone. But music brings people together. When people tell me they hear my songs and think, Wait, I’m not the only person who went through this. That not only makes them feel better, but it makes me feel better. That’s the amazing connection that music can bring. But for it to happen, you have to be real. You have to be honest and vulnerable to get the full efect, the full magic. You have to tell the story the way it was.”

With nonstop shows and appearances, plans for a new album, forays into fne art (she creates both Photoshop originals and oil paintings), and a collaboration with an NYC-based fashion brand being launched this February, it seems the story of Kiesza is just beginning to unfold.

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IAN MELLENCAMP

AMERICAN ROCK ROYALTY

Model and musician Ian Mellencamp (yes, the nephew of John Cougar) never necessarily planned on leaving the Midwest. “I kind of always wanted to come to New York or California,” he says over the phone, after a gig in Pittsburgh.

“I knew that if one of those opportunities came up I was going to take it.” Until it did, he was content in Ohio, working at an electric company, but, in 2010, that opportunity came in a big way. The Columbus-native received a Calvin Klein contract for the brand’s sexed-up S/S ’11 CK One relaunch and a fight from Cincinnati to New York, where Steven Meisel photographed him alongside Lara Stone, Fei Fei Sun, and Sky Ferreira. Before he knew it, Mellencamp was 30 feet tall on Houston Street, staring his new city down as Stone undressed him. “That defnitely brought me to New York,” he recalls. “It wasn’t too shabby.”

One job quickly became many—campaigns for GAP, Ralph Lauren, and Tom Ford, among others—and some four years later, Mellencamp is here to “ride the wave for as long as it fucking goes.” His move to the city brought him more than modeling jobs. “I guess I started playing music beginning in school bands, back in, like, elementary school,” Mellencamp recalls. “I played the tuba. And now there are some really sick brass bands with sick tuba players. I’m like, damn, I shoulda kept playing that!” He had been in a band in Cincinnati up until about six years ago— “I was very serious about it”—but eventually got burnt out on music industry politics and gave public performance a rest. “I was still playing, just not playing shows or trying to record,” he says. “I was just kind of doing it for myself.”

He says moving to New York brought music back into his life, frst with Isadora, an atmospheric, hazy art-rock band based in Williamsburg, and then, with his own personal project under his own name.

“Mine is a little more experimental,” says Mellencamp. “I don’t have any set form of writing, for better or worse. It could be like fnding a new sound on my computer or a

new guitar chord or hearing a news story and writing lyrics or a chord progression or a piano chord. I’m kind of open to anything, just as long as I feel passionate about it.” His infuences—the Mars Volta, ’60s psych-rock, and “Bob Dylan, of course”—vary widely, as does his lyrical focus.

Case in point: Mellencamp’s new EP, In the Land of the Midnight Sun, is a tripped-out, James Blake-meets-David Bowie electronic-based mélange of songs about love and politics, all bathed in geological imagery. He sings about a desert on fre, the cycle of the sun, and losing a sense of time. “I fnd myself up at three or four in the morning and it feels like I should probably be sleeping, but I’m feeling productive and I’m working,” he says. “It kind of goes with being an artist or a musician—you kind of work whenever you feel like it and your sense of time is pretty relative. I’ve defnitely teetered on the edge of it.”

It’s a busy life. In between tour dates from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, on his own and with the band (“I feel a little like Jack White,” he jokes), Mellencamp takes acting classes and still makes time for the occasional photo shoot.

The act of engaging with an audience draws everything together. “I don’t know if I would enjoy it so much if I was just a songwriter,” he says. “There’s something about creating something and being able to expose that and show it to people.” The budding musician loves to improvise and also plans to step into a range of costumes and personas as he develops his live act, including but not limited to: kimonos, a “full-on tie-dye onesy, androgynous drag stuf,” and a kilt that he says his girlfriend is particularly eager for him to break out. “I do feel sort of like a girl—like, I have this dress and nowhere to wear it. I haven’t gone too far yet, but I defnitely want to.” ashley simpson

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nile rodgers

LEGENDARY HITMAKER

As a founding member of Chic, Nile Rodgers has made music that came to defne the disco era, crafting some of the most inefable and heavily sampled pop songs of all time.

While other musicians might have coasted after having written songs as successful as “Le Freak,” “Everybody Dance,” and “Good Times,” Rodgers, with his musical dexterity as a writer, producer, composer, and guitarist, instead went on to shape some of the most iconic albums of our time. Artists like Duran Duran, Diana Ross, INXS, The B-52s, and David Bowie owe some of their biggest songs to Rodgers’s deft touch, and he continues to churn out sonic gold. In 2012, Daft Punk tapped Rodgers to add some of his trademark funk to Random Access Memories, and one of the resulting tracks, the inescapable “Get Lucky,” turned out to be one of the biggest hits of either of their respective careers.

“I was very surprised,” says Rodgers of the song’s success. “Daft Punk wanted to make a record that paid respect to the music they grew up with, and the music that they’d built a career on sampling. They wanted to make this very organic-sounding record, but none of us knew how it would be received. It’s amazing, you know?

I’ve made a lot of records. When it’s a hit, you should just enjoy it. If I make a record and it’s a fop, I don’t blame it on the public, I blame it on me.”

Spending time with Rodgers, it’s impossible not to get drawn into his bottomless well of stories, whether they be about his time spent as a Black Panther in New York City, shooting fashion ads for Issey Miyake with Miles Davis, or how Diana Ross’s iconic “I’m Coming Out” was actually inspired by watching drag queens impersonating the legendary diva at a club in Hell’s Kitchen. This colorful past, as well as 40 years worth of behind-the-scenes music industry drama, are detailed in Rodgers’s autobiography, Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny.

It’s a hair-raising account of the insane highs and desperate lows of his unprecedented career.

Rodgers’s wildest days might be behind him, but the now 62-year-old musician is in higher demand than ever.

In addition to doing production work on a new record with his old friends in Duran Duran, contributing guitars to Bryan

Ferry’s latest solo efort, and making dance music with the likes of Avicii and Disclosure, Rodgers is putting together a new Chic album comprised of recently discovered demos found sitting in the Warner Brothers vaults. As the only surviving member of the original Chic lineup, Rodgers feels that giving life to these previously lost recordings—which feature all the band’s original members as well as Luther Vandross—is a sweet, full-circle moment.

“It’s essentially just fnishing up songs that we started working on 35 years ago,” says Rodgers. “And it always makes me a wee bit melancholy when I’m with someone like Stevie Nicks and hear them talk about going back on the road. I can’t go out and have my Fleetwood Mac moment now because all the other original members of Chic have passed away. But I can take this existing music and bring it out to the world.”

The record will drop on March 20, 2015, which, Rodgers explains, is the vernal equinox. “It’s when day and night are of equal length. I’m releasing it in Greenwich, England, directly on the meridian. It will be the frst time that there will be a total solar eclipse on the vernal equinox since the early 1700s. I’m gonna call the record It’s About Time… because it is.”

In addition to the new album, this year brings another milestone of sorts for Chic: the band has earned a recordsetting tenth nomination to join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Considering Chic’s rock pedigree and its bafing number of hits, it’s curious that the group hasn’t already been inducted. But Rodgers doesn’t seem to mind. “I think it’s fantastic, are you kidding me?” he laughs. “I hope they nominate us every year, like, forever. You know, after all the original board members have passed away years and years from now, they’ll still be nominating Chic. It’s almost more interesting than actually being inducted.” T. Cole RaChel

nile rodgers in new york city, november 2014 Fashion BRanDon MaXWell t-sHirt T BY aleXanDeR WanG JAcket, PAnts, HAt, glAsses, Jewelry, wAtcH nile’s own it’s About time is AvAilAble mArcH 20 from rHino records

Makeup and grooMing (Boy george and kiesza) Lisa ButLer Makeup and grooMing (asia Chow and niLe rodgers) wendy rowe for BurBerry (tiM howard) hair (Boy george and kiesza) didier MaLige hair (asia Chow and niLe rodgers) JaMes peCis (d+V) hair (ian MeLLenCaMp) JiMMy pauL grooMing (ian MeLLenCaMp) diCk page for shiseido (Jed root) Manicure Deborah LippMann (Magnet) Manicure (asia chow) Daria harDeMan creative MoveMent Director stephen gaLLoway (thecoLLectiveshift) Lighting Director JoDokus Driessen DigitaL technician brian anDerson stuDio Manager Marc kroop photo assistant Joseph huMe vLM proDucer Jeff Lepine styList assistants (boy george anD kiesza) aLexa Lanza anD charLotte fetriDge styList assistants (asia chow anD niLe roDgers) sanDra aMaDor anD coco caMpbeLL Makeup anD grooMing assistant (boy george anD kiesza) racheL singer cLark Makeup anD grooMing assistant (asia chow anD niLe roDgers) aLiana Lopez hair assistant (boy george anD kiesza) takashi yusa hair assistant (asia chow anD niLe roDgers) hoLLy MiLLs proDuction stephanie bargas, Lauren pistoia, Disco Meisch (thecoLLectiveshift) proDuction assistants tucker birbiLis, DanieL aLexanDre, eva frances harte retouching stereohorse Location root stuDios

asia chow

SOLOIST ON THE RISE

Parents of Columbia University students are usually less than thrilled when their child announces that they intend to pursue music. Luckily, that wasn’t the case with Asia Chow, the 20-year-old daughter of fashion designer Eva Chun Chow and famed restaurateur and art collector Michael Chow. “There’s a certain level of understanding,” says Chow of her high-profle parents. “I’m just really happy that they support me.”

Chow, who recently moved from her family home in L.A. to New York City, where she studies music and English, not only has her family’s support, but comes from a long line of musical prodigies. “My mother’s aunt is a singer in Korea, and my [paternal] grandfather was a Beijing opera actor. He’s actually a national treasure in China.” Couple that with the fact that Chow’s childhood was peppered with rock legends and it was all but inevitable that she’d follow a musical path. She and Mick Jagger once chatted about the contemporary music scene at a dinner party at her parents’ house, and when she was in high school, her father introduced her to guitarist Jef Beck, one of her idols, after a concert. “He was like, ‘Oh, I used to hang out with Jef in the ’60s,’ and I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’”

As is so often the case, it was the Beatles who frst opened Chow’s eyes to the music realm. “When I was about six and we were in China, my mom came back with the Beatles [compilation] CD 1. She gave it to me and I would say from the age of six to eleven I literally didn’t listen to anything else.”

Naturally, Chow’s taste in music has evolved since her formative days. Rock music has a special place in her heart (she cops to having an “unhealthy obsession” with Leonard Cohen), but she’s also intrigued by funk (“I’ve been listening to the Ohio Players and Sly & The Family Stone”) and classical, specifcally the work of legendary pianist Glenn Gould. “Right now, he’s a hero of mine. He’s one of the greatest pianists ever. He passed away in the ’80s, but he was known for playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and he had these interpretations that don’t really go with what you would think of as Bach. He was a complete innovator.”

Chow plays guitar, sings, and writes her own songs.

But she’s not ready for you to hear them just yet. “I’m always working on something but the issue is sharing it with people,” Chow laughs. “The things that I do with music

are really personal. When I create something, I get really close to it. And when you’re close to something like that, it’s scary to show it to other people.”

It’s a fear Chow’s trying to conquer before graduation, when she hopes to release her frst album, and even tour.

However she admits that shyness is something she’s struggled with her entire life. “I’ve always been an introverted person, and being born into a certain amount of limelight without asking for it was a little bit difcult for me,” Chow concedes. “I had a hard time making friends when I was younger, and my mom was always like, ‘Don’t worry. You’re just a zucchini in a tomato feld. You’ll fnd other zucchinis.’

I’m glad she told me that.”

Perhaps the fashion world has a heavy zucchini population, then, because at the ripe old age of 16, after Lanvin’s Alber Elbaz spotted a picture of Chow online, she began to dabble in modeling. She walked the Lanvin for H&M show back in 2010, starred in the F/W ’14 Inez & Vinoodh-lensed David Webb ads, and even featured in Riccardo Tisci’s S/S ’14 Givenchy campaign alongside Erykah Badu. “I view modeling as something creative and to work with people I admire is a huge privilege,” she says. But in spite of her mainstream success, Chow hasn’t shaken her reserved nature just yet. “This girl in my dorm at Columbia came up to me one day and was like, ‘You look exactly like this girl on Mert Alas’s Instagram.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ And then she showed me the picture and it was my campaign.

I was kind of shy about it.”

When Chow met me at the Mercer Hotel, she looked like a Prada-clad porcelain doll. With her creamy, white skin, razor-sharp black bangs, and sweet little smile, it was easy to see why the likes of Tisci and Elbaz were drawn to her lovely looks. In fact, one has to wonder why Chow, who has a very real shot at a modeling career, is about to graduate with a degree from one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and could likely do anything she wants with her life, has chosen music. “I’ve always loved it,” she says earnestly. Sometimes, it’s just that simple. Katharine K. Zarrella

asia Chow in new york City, noVeMBer 2014 Fashion BranDon MaXWell t-shirt BlK DnM ring asia’s own

a whiter shade of pale

enter the void in a blank palette that shows off clever construction. supermodel-in-the-making binx walton wears the new starkness that vanquishes darkness photography kacper kasprzyk fashion mel ottenberg V MAGAZINE 9 2

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SHIRT CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION SKIRT VERSACE

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A CASE OF YOU THE NOTORIOUSLY ELUSIVE JONI MITCHELL OPENS UP ABOUT HER INCREDIBLE NEw UNDERTAKING, AND wHY SHEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;LL BE THE ONLY ONE wHO TELLS HER OwN LIFE STORY PHOTOGRAPHY HEDI SLIMANE TEXT T. COLE RACHEL V MAGAZINE 1 0 2

“soon i hope to start working on my memoirs. there are all these stupid books out there about me that are just full of gossip and nonsense.”

—joni mitChell

Before I can dive headlong into a conversation with Joni Mitchell, there are a few things that the 71-year-old icon needs to clear up. “You aren’t going to call me a folksinger, are you?” she asks. “You aren’t going to say that I’m like the female Bob Dylan—or worse—a singer-songwriter, are you?” It’s a jarring way to begin an interview, but in Mitchell’s case a totally understandable one. Although she is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mitchell remains deeply misunderstood. Some will always see her as the sunny-haired, dulcimer-playing folk naïf of “California” and “Both Sides Now” but Mitchell’s body of work—a back catalog 19 albums deep— is unlike any other in popular music. Her sense of harmonics, innovative song structures, and uncanny take on jazz remain totally singular. Given the scope of her infuence, Mitchell has earned the right to be a little thorny when it comes to the subject of her legacy. “I’m liable in interviews to get frustrated and become stupidly boastful,” she says. “I just want things to be acknowledged. It’s like, don’t make me say it.“ The generally press-shy Mitchell is opening up to talk about the release of Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, a Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced—a fourdisc box set that includes 53 songs from the past 40 years of her career.

In addition to the music, the set comes packaged in a book (designed by Mitchell) that also includes six of her paintings and an expansive autobiographical piece of writing in which she goes deep on her own creative process. More than a simple “best of” collection, Love Has Many Faces recontextualizes Mitchell’s work into scores—or acts—each of which has its own distinctive narrative arc. All of the songs included are ruminations on love, which proves to be the binding agent that holds the entire project together. For Mitchell, creating a framework in which all the material can function together as an entirely new work was essential.

“It’s really a new genre,” she says of the project. “The four discs kind of break down into diferent styles. The beginning is about ’50s nostalgia and the origins of rock and roll. The second side is quite eclectic and dark. The narrative is almost like an episode of Law & Order. The third side is jazzier.

The last side involves a lot of classical orchestra. I have my roots—or a root, at least—in each of those camps. That’s why I often feel mislabeled when I’m included in the singer-songwriter category. I was always doing something much more complicated than that.”

Though Mitchell says she prefers the making of albums to the business of talking about them or dealing with critics (“It’s like you give birth to a baby and everyone agrees that it was this lovely experience and then afterwards someone stands up and says, ‘What an ugly baby.’”), assembling the box set provided a way to address her own history while simultaneously framing it in a new light. The work also bridges the perceived divide between her early albums and the jazz-infected work that she later moved into, during the late ’70s.

“You want to clear up any errors, which is what I’m hoping that this will do,” she explains. “I’m hoping that people will see that the music—whether it’s early or late—has a continuity in it. It’s really not so shockingly diferent over time. Also, I’ve got 24-year-old Joni going up against 65-year-old Joni. There will be someone out there I suppose who makes an unfavorable contrast between the younger voice and the older voice, but to me both of those singers are delivering their lines correctly.”

Though many of her most classic songs have been well covered by other artists at this point, her aesthetic remains wonderfully and peculiarly her own. “I never emulated other kinds of music, it just came out of me,” she says. “I didn’t do like most people, who kind of picked a hero and then sat in a room and practiced to sound like that. For me, it just came out.

Everything I admired—from Duke Ellington to Debussy to Chuck Berry to Hank Williams—it was all very eclectic. I just kind of soaked it all up. My approach to music was diferent than a lot of people in my peer group, which was often just a kind of Xerox of something that had come before. I wanted to be like Charlie Parker, I wanted it to come out of the blue.”

Given the descriptions in Love’s liner notes, many of which detail the complicated, serendipitous pleasures of making records, one has to wonder if Mitchell—who herself hasn’t released an album since 2007—misses the recording studio. “No,” she is quick to respond. “I’m painting a lot, and soon I hope to start working on my memoirs. There are all these stupid books out there about me that are just full of gossip and nonsense. The liner notes for this box set were kind of a way for me to get my legs under me and start telling my story. It is something that’s been on my mind for a very long time.”

joni mitchell in los angeles, november 2014 joni wears all clothing saint laurent by hedi slimane ring and earrings her own love has many faces: a quartet, a ballet, waiting to be danced is available now from rhino records

Production Yann rzePka

plucked from the streets of london, lorna, uliana, and daisy represent the new wave of it girls influencing fashion with their adventurous punk spirit. here they fall head over heels for fashionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new romance, in surprising shapes and volumes that evoke a bold, new ethereality photography harley weir fashion max pearmain V MAGAZINE 1 0 6

LORNA WEARS TOP AND RE WALKER SHIRT (UNDERNEATH) VERONIQUE BRANQUINHO PANTS ARCHIVE PHAzE FROM DARKSIDE Of CAMDEN

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PHOTO ASSISTANT RACHEL LAMB STYLIST ASSISTANT NATASHA ARNOLD MAKEUP ASSISTANT HANNAH WILSON HAIR ASSISTANT ALFIE SACKETT PRODUCTION JESS PORTER (MINI TITLE) LOCATION WADDINGTON STUDIOS, LONDON

DAISY WEARS TOP PROENZA SCHOULER PANTS MARGARET HOWELL

u n b e l i e va b l e the biebs is back! justin bieber may have taken a sabbatical last year, but the attention surrounding him has never been more intense. as pop’s number one heartthrob leaves his adolescence—and innocence—behind, he poses for the lens of karl lagerfeld and tells him what’s in store for the year ahead photography karl lagerfeld

KARL LAGERFELD How do you see your career evolving? Do you still have unfulflled ambitions?

JUSTIN BIEBER Of course. I’m still young. I still have so many personal and professional goals I want to achieve. I want to keep creating music for my fans. One day I hope to make strides into movies and fashion as well. I want to share my creativity with the world.

KL How do you imagine yourself at 30?

JB I hope I am still blessed to be performing and making music. I hope to have a family too.

KL I saw you perform onstage and I thought you were great. Do you enjoy performing live?

JB I love performing live. It’s my favorite part of my job.

KL Can you really play the guitar?

JB Yes. KL What is the one thing you would never do in life?

JB Give up on myself, my family, or my fans.

V MAGAZINE 1 1 8

KL Who are your favorite musicians from the past?

JB Michael Jackson.

KL When was the frst time you had the feeling that you had become a success?

JB I performed at a water park in New York at the very beginning of my career and thousands of girls showed up to see me in the rain.

KL Do you imagine what your career would have been like without the Internet?

JB The Internet has been a huge part of my career. I was discovered on YouTube. I use Twitter, Instagram, Shots, and Fahlo to communicate with my fans on a daily basis. Things would be totally diferent without it. I defnitely wouldn’t be able to have the personal relationship I have with my fans without social media.

KL What is the next step in your fabulous career?

JB I’m going to start working on a new album and a tour for 2015. I took the last year of and I’m excited to get back to work.

Jewelry (throughout) Justinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

JEANS (THROUGHOUT) SAINT LAURENT BY HEDI SLIMANE BRIEFS (THROUGHOUT) JUSTINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S OWN

ShoeS Bottega Veneta

“one day i hope to make strides into movies and fashion as well. i want to share my creativity with the world.”

—justin bieber

Image dIrectIon erIc Pfrunder and KatherIne marre Digital technician luDovic D’harDiville Photo assistants Xavier arias, FreDeric DaviD, olivier saillant, Ben sollich retouching luDovic D’harDiville sPecial thanks océane sellier anD isaBelle ries

HELLO DOLLY! V MAGAZINE 1 24

Tag inside of dress by Lucy Adams, 1976

Animal-print minidress worn alongside Pee-Wee Herman on ABC’s Dolly, singing “Hey Good Lookin,” 1987. Dress by Tony Chase

dolly parton stormed nashville in 1964 and the world has never been the same. here, country’s most glamorous icon shares looks from her personal archive for the very first time photography dan forbes

Clockwise, from top left: Pink sequin dress worn on Parton’s Australian tour with Kenny Rogers, 1984-85; Leopard dress worn on the TV variety series, Dolly! while singing “Twelfth of Never,” 1976.

Dress by Lucy Adams; Patriotic suit worn on the cover of the album For God and Country, 2003, in national TV and print promotion, and in the music video for “Welcome Home.”

Suit by Robert Behar; Shoes (hand-studded) by Di Fabrizio

Digital technician toDD BarnDollar ProP stylist lisa gwilliam (JeD root) Photo assistant eric lin location root stuDios sPecial thanks michael scanlon, lauren Prince, aaron kurlanDer

Dripping pearls gown worn on ABC’s Dolly, singing “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” 1987. Dress by Tony Chase

Fifty years after she frst came to Nashville from the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, Dolly Parton celebrated her legacy in typically heartfelt style. This past December, Parton’s Dollywood Foundation joined forces with Chandelier Creative for a rare exhibition of select costumes that Parton wore throughout her colorful career. After sending her most emblematic ensembles to New York, Parton and friends transformed an industrial Chelsea space into a glittering wonderland, and hosted a fundraiser to beneft Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Along with an exhibition of the clothing, the evening featured a silent auction, video

clips from Dolly’s greatest onstage moments, and performances by Rufus Wainwright, Jake Shears, and surprise guest Kylie Minogue. As part of the auction, photographer Dan Forbes was given unprecedented access to the country icon’s archive to shoot her clothing and accessories, shown here. It might, in Parton’s famous words, cost “a lot of money to look this cheap,” but if the money raised for the Library—Parton’s nonproft devoted to providing books for underprivileged Tennessee children—is any indication, the legend’s splurges were well worth it.

BEYOND CONVERSATION PSYCHIC JESSE BRAVO CONJURES THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL FOR AN IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW ABOUT HIS LIFE, DEATH, AND THE STATE OF THE MUSIC BIZ

ELVIS PRESLEY What does Elvis think of music today? He hates machinegenerated tunes, loves Bono, and is set on becoming a computer expert in his next life. “Elvis talks with passion and conviction,” says celebrity psychic Jesse Bravo of his encounter with the King of rock and roll. He also apparently wears blue jeans, a silver shirt, and shiny glasses in the afterlife. “His presence tells me that everything in life must be earned, not given. His demeanor was very positive and he felt like a teacher willing to help those who have lost their way.” We could all learn something from the legendary mover and shaker, which is why V asked to go “beyond conversation” with Elvis Presley.

V What do you think of the music industry today?

ELVIS PRESLEY I feel music today is so much more entertaining, explosive, but defnitely not as genuine because everyone is trying to spin the past forward. I see music now as millions of lasers divided into streams of light, and there’s a little something for everyone. Today, anyone who tries has his fair shake to make it in the business. The new music scene makes me sad and happy at the same time because now, singers can push out their own music that they love and can be themselves. In my day, the record execs had too much control and most of the stuf you did was stuf you didn’t want to do. But if the guys upstairs said sing this way, well, that’s what you sang. What makes me sad about the music industry today is that you never get to make true

lasting relationships. A guy who works one day is gone the next. Back in my time, when you were with the company, chances are you were with them for a long time. Seeing the same people over and over kept you rooted on Earth.

And the direction of music bothers me—too many people. I cheer for the dogs, but there’s too much barking these days.

V Do you still consider yourself the King of rock and roll?

EP Of course I’m the King of rock and roll. I made it all happen and changed everyone. I got this country to wake up and live again!

V Whose music do you enjoy right now? And what can’t you stand?

EP Well, me and Muddy [Waters] were playing the world’s pain. Mmmm good ole soul blues right down to the end.

The real stories of struggle and triumph—the best! I can’t stand music that has mostly machine sounds and people screaming and barking. Music is bad when it moves faster than light, and I don’t get people jumping and falling into each other. NO WAY! V If you were alive today, with whom would you want to collaborate?

EP I would love to sing with Bono. He makes me feel right.

That boy has one foot in the heavens and the other on the Earth. Wish I could have been more like him. His music employs people. Real music, no machines.

V Have you provided divine inspiration for any of today’s stars? Or have you been reincarnated?

EP No, I work with the dogs pushing people from the bottom, letting them know that music and love of life is going to keep them going and striving. Pain and struggle rings in my soul and I help people fnd that light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m not coming back for a while. I’m still in pain thinking that

I was beyond the struggle. I lived too much in the green pastures and got fat and ugly. When I do come back, I’m going to understand these computers that will take us into the next step of evolution.

V Do you fnd Elvis impersonators annoying or amusing?

EP Impersonators are just trying to make a living, and who better to give it to them than the King? I hope to stay in people’s memories and keep a good image. Chris Conner does me the best. But I will say, if you’re going to try to get into the mold of the King, damn it, look your best and be your best because I’ll rub of on ya.

V There are a lot of urban legends surrounding your death.

Can you clear anything up?

EP Hah. My death is so normal that even I laugh. You see, when everyone thinks you live in the stars, even death has to be something more than it is. If it keeps going like this, in 200 years, some people may still think I’m alive. I love it.

Keep it going.

V Why do so many people believe you’re still alive?

EP Hey, the King doesn’t come around all the time. I had divine intervention, so people don’t want to let go. And if my memory helps them hold on to something special in their lives, well, THE KING LIVES ON! V Do you have any regrets?

EP I have many regrets. First one is to my baby doll for not being there for her and missing her life. I also regret not being able to control my desires, not being rooted down-toearth, always living in the clouds both physically and mentally. My mama always said to me, “Keep those feet on the ground because if you don’t and you fall, well we all know what happens.” A painful lesson. And yes, my mama was mostly always right.

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