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OCTOBER

everywhere pajamas 276 girl, interrupted spectacular Point OCTOBER view from her dream of An unsettling Reyes peninsula smug marrieds, a Paris apartment report shatters Model Cara delevingne 239 going solo 292 television wears Alexander Wang rogue gadgets, the myth that Embrace the power 260 style ethics PBS premieres and a Balenciaga and her nascent of one this season, youth is a defense bracelet. photographed Twitter feed The Green Carpet against breast the lush new says Lynn Yaeger, Challenge connects Shakespearean by Karim Sadli. with a single- cancer. By nostalgia top fashion houses miniseries The 194 strand necklace Jancee Dunn They were three with sustainable Hollow Crown the hot seat collaborators . . . 240 charmed, indeed resources 288 Ginny Graves on 294 books When Meg Ryan Aurélie Bidermann’s 262 the editor’s eye Donna Tartt’s recorded Delia new collection why sitting is not Sara Moonves always pretty The Goldfinch Ephron’s book, of fine jewelry centers on a the author found quintessential she was flooded 244 whisper campaign New York with memories of beauty teenager and Stefano Pilati’s people her late sister a missing debut at Agnona & health masterpiece was pretty are 264 tory in bloom quiet by fashion talking flash standards, says Tory Burch has Sally Singer, but the made a business about fashion 214 it girls clothes themselves of creating modern Kate Foley, Chelsea do the talking takes on the simple 290 talent & features Leyland, and luxuries she finds Adèle Kyleigh Kuhn 248 house proud indispensable. Exarchopoulos 301 point of view A new site lets Up next: fragrance stars in the Cannes 218 talking fashion you live it, shop and makeup hit Blue Is the 302 the other man Red-carpet denim; it, surf it, buy it Warmest Color Our tribute to contrasting collars 270 doc hollywood Harold Pinter’s (page 222) 252 woman on The man who 290 design Betrayal—soon the verge keeps L.A.’s most Decorator to be revived on 220 tnt Musician Hannah famous faces Paul Renwick Broadway—stars From Rocky Horror Cohen is the coolest glowing packages launches his model Karen Elson in Regensburg girl you’ve never his secrets to go own line of and actors Hugh to otherworldly heard of—until now bespoke textiles Dancy and Michael 272 the art of om artistry in London, Shannon in a 254 sleep no more 292 travel Elisabeth von Thurn A new exhibit boy-meets-girl- Raphaëlla Riboud opens this month A lovely inn meets-boy story und Taxis recaps her designs her wear- at the Smithsonian reopens on the inspired by fall’s summer swan song menswear-centric the 224 flour girls collections Amirah Kassem 314 circus maximus perfect is one of many The mood in trading fashion Montauk is fall for frosting—and festive—a riotous realizing just how happening with wardrobe closely those two daytime pajamas depth of field, p. 362 worlds align and nighttime abandon 228 dispatch continued >94 96 vogue digital 162 up front Now she’s leading Deena Al-Juhani Kerry Diamond President Obama’s Abdulaziz in 102 vogue.com had a busy job in $100 million effort to southern Italy the beauty industry solve the mysteries weekend 104, 106 when her boyfriend, of the human brain 230 book masthead a chef, suggested they Charles update start a joint venture 188 excerpt Churchward’s CirCuS MAxiMuS, p. 314 110 editor’s letter Bridget Jones is affectionate tribute Model Carolyn Murphy 178 lives back! Our favorite to Alexander (in a dries Van Noten coat) 126 talking back Cori Bargmann has hapless heroine Liberman and photographer lincoln pilcher. photographed Letters quietly become one returns after a by Bruce Weber. from readers of the country’s decade-plus hiatus, most respected juggling two kids, 232 the hamish files 148 contributors neuroscientists. potential boyfriends, continued >72 vogue.com

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talking back letters from readers talking back letters from readers Health, July]. I do think, however, bread winner body and soul beauty and that the writer minimized this awful As a Bay Area resident, I can say with- I was absolutely blown away by Execu- the beat katy perry, in a gracing its cover. Bravo disorder—it’s slightly more than just out hesitation that crossing the bridge tive Fashion Editor Phyllis Posnick’s rodarte dress, for capturing the essence cold hands, after all. My mother suf- into San Francisco, searching end- work in the July issue [“Destination De- photographed by annie Leibovitz. of a young, burgeoning fered for years from a case of Ray- lessly for parking, and finally waiting tox,” by Plum Sykes, photographed by woman—she deserves naud’s phenomenon. It’s an ugly in a long line that more often than not Mario Testino]. The article was fasci- every success that has disease, and those that have it struggle stretches down the street is well worth nating, and Karlie Kloss was, as always, come her way. Not only daily. Let’s pray that someday soon it for a lemon tart, a morning bun, or beautiful, but the artistry and expres- did the piece highlight there will be a cure. a slice of quiche from Tartine [“Rising sion in the visuals conveyed an emotion her vibrant personality, N. J. Thomas Star,” by Oliver Strand, photographed far beyond the sum of the parts. it showcased the incred- Astoria, NY by Ralph Mecke, July]. The profile of Barbara Lancor ible city where she grew Chad Robertson was insightful and Cincinnati, OH up. As a Santa Barbara What a surprise to see Raynaud’s men- exciting given his ambitious plans for resident, I couldn’t be tioned in your July issue. My mother the future of the bakery. I loved reading about Plum Sykes’s spa more proud. died from a severe case of the disease, Julio Guzman adventure, but is there a book out there Catherine Gee even after we were promised that her San Francisco, CA for the mere mortals who can’t afford to Santa Barbara, CA symptoms would be uncomfortable but fly to Austria—let alone pay $4,500 for that “they wouldn’t kill her.” While she I was delighted to read the article on the experience—describing an at-home Although Katy Perry experienced the purple-and-white fin- baker Chad Robertson. Tartine is a detox diet? Regardless, I have never looked beautiful in the gers, Raynaud’s also dried up her tear treasure of San Francisco, a jewel of enjoyed an article so much as this one. July issue of Vogue, I ducts and salivary glands, as well as af- the Mission District. With so many Sykes did an extraordinary job describ- thought it took more fected proper blood flow to her heart places to choose from for a quick ing her trip—rich details and a sense than a pretty face to land and lungs. I would encourage all women snack or light meal, Tartine stands of humor to boot! She certainly has a the cover—talent, for in- with these symptoms to have an earnest out. Robertson is embarking on a fan in me. stance, or at least a sense discussion with their physician. revolution. Blandina Reneau of style. Perry? Not so Karen Kreamer Ashley Paul Guilford, CT much. Vogue might be Leawood, KS Los Angeles, CA talking back >146 capturing younger read- ers by placing pop acts rising star chad robertson, on the cover, but you’re photographed losing ones who have by raLph mecke. grown with you through the years. Riley Bardos Manila, Philippines heart on her sleeve I’ve subscribed to Vogue for only a year, but Alysia Abbott’s essay has been the most profound I’ve read in that time [“In- Between Days,” Nostal- gia, July]. Her writing is full of life—I could feel the fabric of her father’s skinny ties, the weight of his leather jacket on her strike a chord obstacle that life throws her way—a les- shoulders. It reminded me once again of Katy Perry has always seemed like the son that is not easy to appreciate in the the potential for fashion, how clothing type of woman who can overcome any- moment of struggle but, as Perry proves, can feel like an extension of the soul. thing, and indeed she has—from getting one that becomes clearer to us with time. Lydia Milano dropped by her record label when she Maggie Driver Philadelphia, PA started out to the more recent dissolu- Tucson, AZ tion of her marriage [“Beauty and the cold comfort Beat,” by Vicki Woods, photographed I picked up the July issue on my way Thank you for Ginny Graves’s thought- by Annie Leibovitz, July]. She has the back home to California after noticing ful piece on Raynaud’s [“Chilled power and drive to push through any Katy Perry, a Santa Barbara native, Out,” Beauty and talking back >142

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up front up front FOOD FOR THOUGHT lampredotto. “You don’t want one, do you?” he asked as the It’s fair to say I started feeling panicky at this point. Noth- food-stall proprietor layered the meat on a roll and ladled cook- ing hammers home the finality of a project like handing over he hair-and-makeup test for TABLE TALK The auThor, in ing liquid over it. “Of course I do,” I answered, acting offended. your retirement savings and the title to your home. What had I Victoria Beckham’s runway a marni coaT I ate it and washed it down with a euro’s worth of strong red gotten myself into? But backing out might have meant the end presentation was under way. and a zero + maria cornejo wine, thinking—hoping—the vino rosso would reduce my of our relationship, and that was something I knew I didn’t Such Fashion Week tasks can dress, ouTside her Brooklyn chances of food poisoning. want to risk. In the past, when friends had told me that their be tedious when egos and resTauranT preferences collide, but all seersucker. When I said yes to Rob’s proposal, my yes was a casual one— partners were their best friends, I would mentally roll my eyes, was smooth and easy here— a notch above maybe. More why not than absolutely. Let’s move but now I found that I loved and liked Rob in equal measure; Tfortunately for me, as my job was to oversee to Paris, buy a farm, run the New York City Marathon. “Sure!” what we had felt grown-up and easy. the makeup side on behalf of my employer, a I assumed he meant one day, in the future, when we had gotten The real work began once we found our location. We looked major French beauty brand. to know each other better. But what he meant was right away. at dozens of spaces—some beautiful and heartbreakingly Beckham and the makeup artist Charlotte expensive; some so dirty and infested, I couldn’t bear to cross Tilbury were huddled tête-à-tête like profes- he planning quickly commenced. During the the threshold—until we happened upon the perfect spot. The sional athletes during a playoff. Suddenly my day, while I was at the office, Rob met with rent was high, and the landlord wouldn’t negotiate, despite the phone rang. It was my boyfriend. “Can you go architects, pored over design books, wrote bleak economy. We signed the lease anyway. On the corner was and find five pounds of catfish?” asked Rob. sample menus, and crunched numbers. Being a subway station, and across the street were a weekly farmers’ “Our delivery never showed up.” the chef/owner of a restaurant was a lofty goal market and a lush park filled with young families—all good I looked around to make sure Beckham for him but not an unrealistic one. After gradu- signs. In quick succession, we hired a graphic designer, a law- couldn’t overhear. Catfish is hardly the most ating from culinary school in Vermont, he had yer, an accountant, and a wonderful, enthusiastic manager glamorous of concepts. “There’s no one else Tworked in some of New York’s top kitchens: Le Cirque 2000, who looked like Tom Cruise. We incorporated. We got fin- who can do this?” I asked. Aquavit, and Tabla. From there, he became a private chef, first “No.” for a beloved TV icon, then for a wealthy financier. The job Dating a chef might seem sexy What was so important about catfish? Well, paid handsomely and he was treated well, but it was repetitive

Rob is a chef, and he and I own a 40-seat ssue. and slightly isolating. It was time for him to do his own thing. and fun, but if your partner Southern restaurant where catfish is one of his i

t I, on the other hand, had never worked a day in a restaurant. the best-selling items on the menu. The res- n actually cooks, you are going taurant, Seersucker, was at that point three I liked to go to them, and I can cook—but the ability to buy a months old—and more popular than we had pair of trousers and hem them does not make you Phoebe Philo. to have many lonely nights My friends and family were alternately excited—yes, it’s fun

ever expected. see i etails, Back at the run-through, Tilbury thought to have a chef in one’s inner circle—and worried. I already had gerprinted for our New York State liquor-license application. bright-orange lipstick was the way to go. My THE a demanding job and didn’t need the stress of a second career; We wrote check after check after check. We clashed with our team and I had brought a mountain of make- I had grown up in the Northeast and didn’t know the first contractor. What was supposed to be a four-month renovation up—lipsticks, glosses, pencils, powders, foun- thing about grits, collards, or catfish. And, as they reminded became a seven-month money pit. We were paying rent, utility dations, mascaras, and more—but we didn’t ACCIDENTAL d sobek. cynthia , me, I barely knew Rob—and they barely knew him, either. bills, and salaries for a restaurant that wasn’t yet open. Rob have the one thing she needed. I dispatched They didn’t voice the most obvious concern: Did I really was working on the project full tilt; I pitched in every spare an assistant to nearby Bergdorf Goodman want to mix the personal and the professional once again? My moment. Between work trips to Paris and product launches, I to buy every flame-colored product available. RESTAURATEUR ex-husband and I had worked together in journalism, and over was careful not to let things collide. My boss was patient—he Before she could return, Beckham and Tilbury Kerry Diamond had a busy job in the time it became part of what drove us apart. Too often in our happened to love restaurants—and let me run through my

had moved on to the relative safety of a nude P makeu iving Proof; daily life, I had to be the boss. It wasn’t the role I wanted, but vacation days, but the juggling was intense. lip. The eyes, however, were decorated a vivid beauty industry when her boyfriend, a it was the one I found myself in. Looking back, I realize we were naive about so much. violet, reminiscent of Richard Burton–era chef, suggested they start a joint venture. Rob and I met online. He was divorced, too, and looking Neither of us had owned or operated a business before. En- Elizabeth Taylor. Ah, fashion. for a like-minded partner. He wasn’t an artist, my usual type, trepreneurism did not run in our families. Rob had plenty of Finally, the test wrapped and everyone air- and he had a work ethic to match mine. He had enlisted in former restaurant colleagues, but no real mentors to share a kissed. I dashed outside and jumped in a taxi. What fishmon- So why this double life of food and fashion? the Army after high school and served in the first Gulf War. road map or advise about pitfalls and common mistakes. I had ger would have both catfish and five pounds of it on a Friday As with many things, love was to blame. One afternoon, He loved order, cleanliness, and punctuality—all, as I would some friends in the food world, and they were extraordinarily evening? I headed to Whole Foods. The city zipped by as I dealt while we were in Sanibel Island, Florida, for a friend’s wed- come to learn, excellent attributes in a chef. He is an only child, forthcoming with their advice, connections, and recommen- with my BlackBerry, bursting with work e-mails. The week ding, Rob had a proposal for me. No, he didn’t put a ring on which means he has a tendency to get his way and a conflicting dations. I still marvel at their generosity. Others were not so ahead was a busy one. We were doing the makeup at L’Wren it. He asked if I would like to open a restaurant with him. We Scott’s show, one of my favorites, followed by a magazine shoot had been dating for six months. need for attention and for time alone. I am the oldest of five, helpful. One night, at a magazine event, I said hello to a chef with Daria Werbowy and a launch at a department store across Rob had a concept in mind: a place with great hospitality, used to baby-sitting and accommodating. It was a welcome I had known socially for years. Handsome, famous in Food town with more supermodels, makeup artists, and Argentine celebrating the best of the food he grew up eating. Instead of change to be with someone so driven. Network circles, and good at the game, he was always happy tango dancers. Then I’d be flying to Los Angeles for an adver- being stereotypically Southern—fried and gravy-smothered, Our first obstacle was a financial one. I had never been good to flirt with my table when we visited his restaurants and send tising shoot with our newest spokesmodel, Julia Roberts. with a few hush puppies thrown in for good measure—it at saving money, and Rob was still paying off culinary school over extra appetizers and desserts. He knew what Rob and I I complained about work, as all good New Yorkers do, would celebrate seasonality, technique, and ingredients. loans. Investors were out of the question. We had met with a were up to and asked how it was going. but I loved my job and took great pride in it. As a teenager, In the early days of most relationships, you want to seem few, but nothing came of it. The Great Recession had begun, “Great,” I said. “But hard.” enthralled with magazines and everything contained in their game, cool, up for anything. When we traveled to Florence, and no one was keen to bet on two novices opening, of all I asked how he dealt with having multiple restaurants. He glossy pages, I had never imagined such a career for myself. I I tagged along as Rob went in search of a sandwich made things, a Southern restaurant in Brooklyn. shrugged. still relished the experience 20 years later. with the fourth stomach of a cow, called up front >166 l for tim rogers hair, fellowes; mary sittings editor: sturman. kevin We were directed to a small bank in Queens willing to lend “How do you know when you’re hiring the right people?” I us some of the necessary funds, and only because of Rob’s continued. “That’s the toughest part.” veteran status. My studio apartment in Brooklyn was the He laughed. “Like I’m going to tell you?” he said, as if I 162 vogue ocT ober 2013 vogue.com collateral. We drained our 401(k)’s for the rest of the money. had asked for his most precious trade secret. up front >170

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nostalgia nostalgia sister, sister Leading Lady Meg ryan starred possession, a poster of Love, Loss, and What I Wore, our the lighter, funnier essays, which means not the one about in sleepless in last collaboration, signed by all 120 women who performed my mother and, for sure, not the remembrances of Nora. I seattle and you’ve got Mail, both of the play in New York. And on the desk right behind my am relieved. I need to start with the lighter stuff, too. I settle which delia worked computer, next to a photo of my husband eating a liégeois in next to Laura at the long table, open my manuscript, and on with nora. photographed (sundae) in Paris, is another prized possession: a vintage am immediately sucked into the work. Getting the flow, by wayne Maser, postcard that Nora gave me one Christmas. Sprays of violet the drama, the comedy, the emotion, the overall sense of vogue, 1988. flowers entwined with these words:to my dear sister. The it, and word perfect . . . nailing all that in two days with no word sister is studded with forget-me-nots. rehearsal, it is suddenly clear, will not only be completely oday I am going to the John absorbing but also possibly a bitch. Marshall studios on Ninth Av- ever in my life did I expect to be writing about On a break—and you have to break every hour or so or enue between Forty-fourth and losing Nora. I never expected to spend one your brain will fry—Meg comes out to give me a hug. What Forty-fifth streets to hear Meg day on this earth without her. And I certainly I most associate with Meg—the way I remember her and Ryan record the audiobook never expected to be in a recording studio recognize her when I see her again—is the way she moves. of Sister Mother Husband listening to Meg Ryan Her tomboy walk—her lanky, easy TDog (etc.). I am anxious—anxious because speak those words. physicality so much a part of her co- writing this book was deeply emotional for NOur collaboration—Nora’s, Meg’s, medic gifts. She is playful and loves to me. I am worried that, in that studio, I am and mine—was a threesome. Now laugh. I imagine she wakes up every going to fall to pieces. we were two. morning and thinks, What am I go- I began this collection of essays in the Meg, of course, teamed up with ing to laugh about today? She has months after my sister’s death. Writing is Nora first inWhen Harry Met Sally, a great appreciation for what in this how I understand everything that happens which Nora wrote. I joined their sis- world is nuts. to me, and it became the way I got through terhood on Sleepless in Seattle and Also, she has a glow. Stars do. Did the days, processed my grief I guess you You’ve Got Mail. Then Meg starred they always have it, did they learn it? could say, writing every afternoon about in Hanging Up, a movie based on my And why are they always wearing the Nora and me, about sisters, in my tiny office, autobiographical first novel. Meg best clothes even when they’re not? which has room only for a desk and desk played Eve, my alter ego, a middle These are mysteries. Reed thin, she is chair, one narrow bookshelf, and, in the child dealing with the death of a dif- in a black-and-white striped T-shirt, corner, a small tufted white armchair that ficult parent. My cinematic life, my dungarees, and a wide leather belt. Nora gave me when she no longer needed identity even, has been tangled up Her hair, short, is an adorable mess— it. “I have two tufted armchairs and a love happily with Meg’s. bedheady. She looks fantastic. seat, do you want them?” she had e-mailed. I had been nervous to ask Meg At lunch we talk about random Nora is everywhere in my office. On the to record my memoir, in which I stuff—Meg’s kids, Laura’s daughter, wall above my desk hangs a prop from eventually pondered not only my Anthony Weiner’s catastrophe of a You’ve Got Mail, which we wrote together— life with Nora but with my other life. The day flies by, and at 4:30 we the sign from Meg’s children’s bookstore, major food groups—mother, hus- are all exhausted and only one-third the Shop Around the Corner. On a shelf band, girlfriends, dog. I was ner- done. We are supposed to finish the is a miniature tin school bus encased in a vous because I desperately wanted next day. We agree to meet earlier, at clear plastic cube, a gift from Sean Daniel, her to say yes. No one could do it nine, and work later, until five. the producer of our movie Michael. It com- better. I spent at least a day boring The next morning, in honor of my memorates a mini battle Sean and I waged several close friends with my anxiet- sister and all the meals we’ve eaten to- against Nora. We begged her not to cut a ies about the best way to go about gether, discussed before we ate, while scene early in the movie involving a school it—what words might be exactly we ate, and after we ate, and how well twin set bus and children dressed as Eskimos. We right. In the end I wrote a cautious, tentative e-mail: “Is nora (left), age seven, she always took care of the cast and argued that it was funny and we needed something funny there any possibility that you might consider. . . ?” And she and delia (right), age crew food-wise (we had the best ca- four, in their beverly up front. We won. A triumph. Getting Nora to change her wrote back instantly, “I’m in!” hills backyard. tering), I stop at Bien Cuit, a divine mind was like trying to reverse a very strong current. On the On the ride uptown, I am wired, so fearful of emotions bakery, and buy for Meg, Laura, and Meg, Nora, top shelf is a portrait, by that I mean taken by someone my about to be unleashed that I almost trip over my own um- our wonderful audio engineer Nathan Rosborough two raisin- parents hired to photograph Nora, me, and my sister Hallie. brella getting out of the cab. Then, a shock, I spy West- and-walnut rolls; four chocolate-chip shortbread cookies; four We are eight, five, and one-and-a-half, respectively, and all way, a Greek diner, and realize something that should have small, round, dense chocolate cookies; four malted muesli dressed up, Nora and I in matching black velvet dresses been obvious: This recording studio is one-and-a-half cookies; two strawberry-and-rhubarb Danishes; one brie-and- aNd Me with a white ruffle around the bib collar, Hallie in a crisply short blocks north of the theater where Love, Loss played. I ham croissant; and one chocolate croissant. They were three collaborators . . . ironed white cotton dress with smocking. Being used as a haven’t been here since the play closed in March 2012, three In spite of this bakery detour, I am early. I pick up a paperweight is a framed four-by-six snapshot of Nora, my months before my sister died. We spent more time together takeout menu from Westway. I want to order their tuna- When Meg Ryan recorded sister Amy, and me in the Las Vegas airport when Nora and in this neighborhood than anyplace else, except perhaps fish sandwich for lunch. This was our hangout. The cast of I were shooting This Is My Life, the first movie we wrote our apartments. Love, Loss changed every four weeks, and during the first Delia Ephron’s book, the author together and she directed. Nora and Amy look fabulous, Meg has already begun recording when I arrive. She is in six months, Nora and I attended most of the rehearsals. At found she was flooded with and I have the worst haircut of my life, which is why this the “isolation booth” and leans sideway to give me a wave lunch all of us, the cast and our director, Karen Carpenter, photo is lying flat (and not standing up so I can see it). On through the thick glass. Laura Grafton, the director from went to Westway and crammed ourselves into one too-

memories of her late sister. the wall next to the door is a most prized nostalgia >196 archive trunk Brilliance Audio books, tells me that Meg asked to start with small booth. nostalgia >198 ephron delia of courtesy

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FLASH FLASH Zilberman iced a sheet cake like a brick wall and encouraged guests to tag it using spray bottles of frosting. “Baking doesn’t have to be a powder­puff, froufrou retro thing,” she continues. “I want to make it more modern.” FLOuramIR giraH kassem Is oneLS of many This new crop of clothing­and­confection obsessives has less in common with Susie Homemaker than it does with Martha TRadInG fasHIon foR fRosTInG— Stewart. Kassem has a vision to expand Flour Shop’s inven­ and ReaLIzInG jusT How cLoseLy tory to include cookie cutters, aprons, and designer collabora­ THose Two woRLds aLIGn. tions, while Zilberman is developing a Food Network–style show and a WaveCake­branded line of kitchenware. Sweet n a lark last summer,a mirah Kassem started Jewels’ Julie lê—who specializes in chocolate­ and coconut­ selling the cake balls she had been making covered red­velvet cake balls when she’s not working as the for fun at Café Integral, her friend’s SoHo librarian at the Met’s Costume Institute—has no plans to leave coffee shop. The fact that the artisanal her day job, but she can imagine a future where food plays a roaster was just down the street from the larger role in her career. “There are so many bakeries out there,” BLK DNM store where Kassem worked she says. “I’d love to do something that’s more of an experi­ as general manager was convenient—and ence—something Willy Wonka–esque.” stressful. “People would come in to BLK DNM and be like, Regardless of how seriously these women treat their baking

‘Are you the cake girl?’ ” Kassem recalls of her days leading a ventures, at the end of the day their newfound passion is mostly cake walk O double life. “I was like, ‘Shh—no! Go away!’ ” about unadulterated fun. “It almost feels like it hasn’t hit me stella mccartney’s whimsical patterns Eventually, Kassem’s pastry aspirations won out, and about yet,” says Kassem. “And one day I’m going to wake up and be seem tailor-maDe a year ago, she left the fashion industry to launch a baking like, “Wait—didn’t I used to work in fashion?”—emily holt For layer cakes. business called Flour Shop. Now her connections are her customers: Model Jessica Stam custom­ordered a sailboat­ shaped cake, nail­polish company Essie commissioned a set of life­size bottles made from little more than chocolate and sprinkles, and friends of a Stella McCartney employee asked for a frosted re­creation of one of the designer’s signature deena aL-juHanI abduLazIz souTHeRn ITaLy Falabella bags—though on Kassem’s version, real slices of y family and i explored southern italy and sicily dIspaTcH this summer, starting in puglia, where we stayed citrus fruit stood in for the spring 2011 print. “All ideas are at the beautiful borgo egnazia resort and visited good ideas,” Kassem says. Currently she’s collaborating with nearby alberobello and ostuni. in palermo i the Wu-tang Clan on desserts for their twentieth­anniversary . issue m was drawn to the city’s elegant matrons—though of course

party. (They found her on Instagram.) this i couldn’t help also recalling the godfather. (a few days in

Ghostface Killah the rZa stylist,

If the idea of and requesting fan­ P later, while having lunch at Francis Ford Coppola’s palazzo see ro cy cakes is surprising, consider that an oft­detached, calorie­ , margherita in the picturesque town of bernalda, back on the averse crowd is going nuts for them, too: At a recent dinner mainland, we met Michele russo, a cousin of the director’s— for members­only travel­and­lifestyle site A Small World, he played an assassin in the legendary trilogy—who stopped a cool group including Waris ahluwalia, dree hemingway, in to grab an espresso and offered us a private tour of the , yumi mori; P yumi , atlanta de Cadenet, and olivier theyskens went giddy over nineteenth-century palace turned hotel.) still, when i think of southern italy it is the neorealism of antonioni’s l’avventura the tiny glazed Earths that Kassem had trapped inside clear details argreaves. and visconti’s the leopard that comes to mind—and at balloons. “Everyone had to pop them to get dessert,” she sugar rush the seventeenth-century palazzo Filangeri-cutò in santa kassem, in a kenzo Dress anD h enry

explains. “To see people like that jump around and act like . issue calvin klein collection sanDals, margherita di belice, a museum dedicated to the author insiDe the bowery Diner with children—I think that summed up my company.”

of the leopard, giuseppe tomasi di lampedusa, we were this three oF her conFections. But Kassem’s not the only fashion given yet another private tour, the highlight of which was in

insider selling sweets. A handful of de­ the ivory ball gown worn by Claudia Cardinale in the film. see , signers and other style­focused profes­ on the aeolian island of panarea, we sionals have started baking businesses, had dinner on the hotel raya’s fragrant all under the strict premise that every­ terrace—a magical experience—as thing should be as chic as it is delicious. h and fries: sho P; burger we watched stromboli’s active Maayan Zilberman, volcano erupt with a soft glow in the

who divides her flour distance. it was there that we met of time between codesigning lingerie la­ Claude tilche, whose brother, paolo, bel the Lake & Stars and filling orders and his partner, Myriam Beltrami, for her company WaveCake, recalls a opened the hotel in the late sixties. details (2). nasser f. s. atch: is P : courtesy project she did in 2009 for the David switching back and forth between a d Zwirner gallery—a replica of an in­ renaissance crisp british-accented english and mam . stallation by contemporary artist Dan woman leFt: taking impeccable arabic, claude recalled Flavin, replete with neon lights encased a stroll at his childhood in alexandria, egypt, il pellicano in in food­safe Styrofoam. “It glowed in porto ercole. and the city’s cosmopolitan past— the dark,” she says. “It was awesome.” right: walking an elegant reminder that it truly is

slice of life P makeu martins; rudy hair, neale. kathryn sittings editor: mam. marcus assem: the cobbleD k : marcus kassem chelsea maruskin. bag maruskin. chelsea a small world. a FrosteD hamburger cake anD Fries For a fly girl–themed fete, flash >228 streets oF flash >230 (above); a bakeD stella mccartney lecce with my @ Falabella bag DecorateD with Daughter, maya. buttercream anD real citrus. 228 vogue october 2013 vogue.com SPECIAL FEATURE

VIEW VIEW Stealth Chic

as the gingham of Hawaii. The knits resemble, in their heft and finishings, the V-necks and car- dies one always hopes to find lan- guishing in the wooden cabinetry of some chic provincial ladies’ store in Bologna. There are shoes and bags—both firsts for the company—and the best are luxu- riously minimal: a pointy scarlet wedge that is actually walkable; a caramel slide for Indian-summer gambols. In short, it’s the most brilliant collection never to walk down a runway. Amid the clam- orous world of women’s fashion, Pilati and Agnona decided to turn the volume down. “I didn’t want to think about shows,” says the designer. “I wanted to think about clothes.” This approach is new for Pilati, whose decade as director of YSL (he actually joined the company in 2000, working under Tom Ford) saw some of the most inspiring and controversial catwalk shows of the noughties: His first Rive Whisper Gauche offering for the runway in 2004 reintroduced the tulip skirt, the belted waist, and the platform heel to our closets; in Campaign 2007 he slashed the sleeves off rigorously tailored jackets, added Stefano Pilati’s debut at a sweatshirt as underpinning, and changed the notion of suiting at

Agnona was pretty quiet ue. every price. His final show for the

i SS house, in March 2012, was a flurry by fashion standards, of fetish signatures—lilies, chain

says Sally Singer, but thi S ee in mail, leather, rubber—that man- S ,

S aged to achieve a quiet elegance

the clothes themselves yumi makeup, ilva; amid all those decadent, glamor- do the talking. ous references. It was stunning, in

uite. detail uite. every sense. “I loved the last col- lection,” Pilati says. “It was a great moment for me. I didn’t have one pierre S S

The firsT sTep S da diego er; hair, n fashion, the question of volume hovers over most en- trousers with a waistband that dips ever from Left: modeL second of sadness or regret.” deavors. It’s something that refers not only to scale but so slightly in the front to elongate the frida Gustavsson And off he went to Berlin. “I Wears aGnona #0 checkered fuTure

also to noise. Take, for example, the case of Agnona, torso without compromising the tush; ue. by stefano PiLati can’t imagine myself to be anywhere else,” he says. Pilati lives in are inherently luxurious without the aGnona #0 by CLothinG (from the bourgeois Italian company that, for more than subtle A-line skirts that hang away from an 1840s building in Charlottenburg (“considered the chicest veneer of trendiness? It’s not about stefano PiLati i SS a half-century, has been synonymous with refined the body just enough to actually narrow $1,250), soCks, and CLothinG ($1,450– sandaLs; seLeCt part of the city,” he says) and travels to Milan once a month basics, but something actually better: $3,395), sCarf, double-face cashmere. In 2012, Agnona (and its parent one’s profile (oh, yeah—the slender- aGnona boutiques. jeWeLry, and the LabeL’s neWLy for fittings for both Agnona and Zegna. He claims to miss “the clothes that enhance one’s own style. handbaG; seLeCt thi S ee in S company, the menswear giant Zegna) brought in Stefa- izer!); all manner of menswear-inspired karen kai S hion editor:

aPPointed Creative , S constant beauty of Paris”—but not the fishbowl of fashion For Pilati, this means keeping it both

aGnona boutiques. S direCtor. no Pilati, who had left his post as the design head of Yves Saint jackets and coats (reefer, bomber, that resides there. His decision to keep himself at a remove Italian (the designer talks of working Laurent nine months prior, as its new creative director. Since crombie, blazer) rescaled with bracelet from it mirrors his intentions for Agnona—namely, “to define “with a pride that I’ve never had before; Italy should be then, as far as Agnona is concerned, there has been silence. sleeves, sinuous shawl collars, and gently rounded shoulders. tian kim. fa tian kim. and establish notions as seasonless, timeless, regionless.” supported”) and personal: “Agnona is really me as a woman, This October, with no fanfare or celebrity dazzle, the first The colors are raspberry, mustard, khaki, navy; the sole print as banal as that sounds,” he says. “There is something anti- eba S Those objectives are also at the heart of a peaceful revolu- tian kim. detail tian kim. S fruits of Mr. Pilati’s tenure will drop into stores: slim, flat-front an oversize check called Palaka, otherwise known view >246 charle the pierre, at photographed mori. tion currently under way in fashion. How many women are conformist in the attitude, yet still very chic.” In other words, eba S now seeking out pieces with longer closet lives—items that clothes to make your own noise in. @ view >248 S 244 vogue october 2013 vogue.com vogue october 2013 for more fashion ne Ws and features, 246 read v o Gue d aiLy on v o Gue.Com silver star Bullock’s powerful appeal resides in that quality so rare in Hollywood: relatability. Prada leather dress. Eddie Borgo cuff. Details, see In This Issue. Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman. liftoffthe beloved—and eminently bankable— sandra bullock soars to new heights in the season’s hotly anticipated outer-space thriller, gravit y. by Jason gay. photographed by peter lindbergh.

n our next lives, let’s all move to Austin, Texas. sandals. In these surroundings, it can be hard to remember I’m serious. The place is heaven, with better that the laid-back proprietor is also one of the most success- breakfast. A capital city, a college town; the liv- ful actresses in the business, an Academy Award winner, still ing is easy, unpretentious, serene. Everything a box-office juggernaut after more than two decades in the moves at just the right speed. Little surprises trade. You know: OMG Sandra Bullock! It’s not always easy happen. You go for coffee, and there may be for Bullock to hide in plain sight as she can in Austin. “Go- a bluegrass band playing at the coffee shop. ing someplace with her can be cuckoo town,” says Melissa Another city, that might drive you slightly McCarthy, her costar in this summer’s bawdy buddy-cop hit bananas. Here, it feels perfect. That’s Austin. The Heat. “People go crazy. They’re just so happy to see her.” This is what brought Sandra Bullock here. Let’s consider that Sandra Bullock for a moment, now She found herself in Austin about fifteen years 49, an actress with a staggering $3.5 billion in accumulated ago, on a road trip, searching for something global box office. Peter Chernin, the former Fox studio chief that wasn’t New York City, which at the time was grinding her whose Chernin Entertainment produced The Heat (and who down, with its concrete and claustrophobia and that person ran Fox in 1994, when Bullock appeared in Speed), refers to on the subway who would not . . . shut . . . up. Bullock stepped her without hesitation as “the biggest female movie star in into the warm Texas air, and it was as if a screen door had the world.” And yet it is something of an imprecise science to Iopened. Grass, green, calm. Austin made it possible to not be divine why audiences love her so. There are Bullock’s acting Sandra Bullock, movie star, celebrity, paparazzi target. Here chops, long underrated, finally receiving their critical due with she could crawl out of that protective exoskeleton she calls her her decorated performance as football-mom dynamo Leigh “armor” and be a human being. “I felt like myself,” Bullock Anne Tuohy in 2009’s The Blind Side. There’s also Bullock’s says. “It was just my safe place. I would get off the plane, smell self-deprecating comedic gift—the homecoming queen who the soil, hear the cicadas. . . .” never quite got the hang of walking in heels. This ability to It is late afternoon, and Bullock is guiding me across the laugh at herself exists in real life: Bullock is the only actress to front counter of Walton’s Fancy and Staple, a local flower show up in person to collect her “Razzie” for Worst Actress business she bought and relocated to Austin’s downtown in (for 2009’s forgotten All About Steve) in the same season she 2009, adding gourmet sandwiches and a bakery with a choco- won the coveted Oscar. “She’s incredibly funny, but the butt late cake that Bullock asks me to order because (a) it’s choco- of almost all her jokes is herself,” says George Clooney, whom late cake, like I need a reason, and (b) she is going to steal some Bullock thanked from the Academy’s stage for throwing her in later. High-ceilinged and airy, with elegant floral arrangements a swimming pool years ago. “That’s just an appealing quality.” sold in the back, Walton’s looks like the kind of establishment But the appreciation of Sandra Bullock always tends to circle Jimmy Stewart might have taken someone on a first date. Bull- back to a single, squishy word: relatability. Consciously or not, ock is deep in its details here, and also at Bess, the law office Bullock tends to remind people of someone they know—a best turned bistro she opened three years prior down the street. She friend, a forgetful roommate, a favorite cousin. Audiences get jokes that her staff rolls its eyes at her suggestions, since the behind her, connect to her, root for her because they recognize boss has expensive taste. Whatever. It makes her happy. “The the person she is. It sounds so simple, and yet it is not. It is a acting thing is so beyond my control,” she says. “Acting isn’t golden quality. Clooney, who costars alongside Bullock in Oc- mine. You’re like a tiny piece in this big, corporate mechanism tober’s 3-D space adventure, Gravity, puts it this way: “There that needs chemistry and divine intervention.” She looks at the has always been a really levelheaded, smart, funny girl you feel tables behind us, full of families meandering on a long summer like you know. As if she was the cool girl next to you in school.” Sunday. “This is mine.” This is something of a policy. Great care is taken at Sandra Bullock takes a seat around the corner from the counter, by Bullock Industries, Inc., to stay grounded, to live as normal the window. She is dressed in a pair of white J Brand cutoff a life as possible. The center of the universe is Bullock’s son, shorts, a matching white top, and Sam Edelman gladiator Louis, adopted in January 2010, now three. There are birthday

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EDITORIAL flying high “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” is how Bullock describes acting in the groundbreaking Gravity—director Alfonso Cuarón’s first film in seven years. Donna Karan Atelier champagne beaded tulle dress. Robert Marc sunglasses. Zana Bayne cuffs. Details, see In This Issue.

EDITORIAL parties and children’s books, and cheetah-print pajamas that Cuarón via an earpiece, guiding her attention to a string of Louis likes his mom to wear. There’s an entourage that’s LED lights meant to represent things like a space station, or not exactly red-carpet: a two-legged pet dog named Ruby, a Clooney’s character, who is also stranded. Obsessive attention three-legged dog named Poppy (“Basically one dog with an was paid to details such as breathing and moving. (“You have extra leg”), a fish named Rave after the Super Bowl champion to speak quickly and move slowly,” says Clooney. “Sounds Baltimore Ravens, and a stray deer that has shown up in the easy, but it’s hard to do.”) Dr. Stone is haunted by a past backyard of Bullock’s Austin house; Louis has named it Gofi tragedy, and Bullock wanted her to resemble a person who for reasons only Louis knows. Back in California, where she had “become a shell,” so she underwent a grueling physical- also has a home, she keeps chickens named for comediennes: training regimen designed to strip away “almost everything Carol Burnett, Wanda Sykes, and a Phyllis Diller, until she was that possibly made her a woman.” A dancer since childhood, revealed to be a rooster and rechristened Phil Diller. “Work Bullock found a pair of Australian dancers who served as her was my life before,” Bullock says. “Now I have no reason to trainers. “They created a way of working out that I could toler- leave home.” ate,” she says. “I don’t want to feel like I’m in a gym.” She reaches across the table and sticks a fork in my dessert, Gravity is Cuarón’s first movie in nearly seven years, and lifting a bite into her mouth. the final product is extraordinary in both its ambition and its “Quality control,” she says. soulfulness. Audiences will be mesmerized by its special effects and attention to detail—great care has been taken to re-create autiously, Bullock has been stepping back a true outer-space environment—but the film also doubles as into her day job. Until The Heat, she had a meditation on loss. “We wanted to do a film that was deeply appeared in only one film since her Oscar, emotional,” says Cuarón, who succinctly describesGravity as a Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, released film about “rebirth.” The director says it wasn’t until shooting in 2011. Now comes Gravity, an intimate was finished and editing commenced that he began to notice epic years in the making, from the acclaimed all the subtle textures of Bullock’s performance, almost all of Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón (Children it done working against a green screen. “It was an amazing of Men, Y Tu Mamá También). exercise of make-believe,” Cuarón says. “Watching in the cut- The story of Bullock and Gravity begins in Austin, spe- ting room, seeing all those beats together . . . her breaths, the Ccifically at the Four Seasons Hotel several blocks away, fear in her face . . . it was incredible.” where Cua rón had flown in to talk to Bullock about this Bullock sees Gravity as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. long-gestating idea he had for a movie about astronauts. He “You check it off and go, ‘If it ends here, I’ve ended up on wanted Bullock to consider the highly sought-after centerpiece top,’ ” she says. “There’s nothing else to do.” part: Dr. Ryan Stone, a NASA medical engineer working for When the film wrapped, an exhausted Bullock wanted the first time aboard the space shuttle when a disaster strikes, something completely different. “I was like, ‘I need my funny,’ stranding Dr. Stone in space, cut off from all contact, running she says. This led her to The Heat, shot last summer in Boston out of oxygen, desperate to find her way back to Earth. with McCarthy, fresh off the breakout smashBridesmaids . Bullock was a massive fan of Cuarón’s—she jokes that she Bullock credits the success of Bridesmaids with helping The would have taken a part in Alfonso Cuarón’sGarfield IV—but Heat happen, since it put to rest the dubious proposition that the role of Dr. Stone gave her a knot in the stomach, especially audiences wouldn’t support a female-driven comedy. Written when the director excitedly explained how the film would repli- by Katie Dippold and directed by Bridesmaids director Paul cate antigravity: by putting Bullock inside a specialized airplane Feig, The Heat has already grossed nearly $200 million world- nicknamed the Vomit Comet, plunging out of the sky to create wide. I saw it in a packed theater not long after it opened, and brief moments of weightlessness. “I’m petrified of flying,” Bull- the anticipation resembled Super Bowl Sunday, as if the audi- ock says. “Plummeting out of the sky was not my idea of how ence couldn’t wait to see the comedic combination—Bullock I wanted to work with Alfonso Cua rón. But at one point I sat playing it straight as a taciturn FBI agent; McCarthy crashing down and said, ‘What is it about this movie that is telling me to through doors as a foulmouthed Boston cop. get off my ass and get over something that has paralyzed me?’ ” The pair’s chemistry was undeniable. “In comedy you just Bullock put her fears aside and signed on, and it wasn’t know right away,” says Bullock. “Melissa’s pure genius, you until shortly before shooting began that she learned the Vomit know? Everyone was just waiting to see what would come out Comet had been mercifully canceled for reasons of logistics (it of that woman’s mouth.” turned out it was possible to film weightlessness inside the plane What was novel about The Heat was seeing Bullock, a only in bursts of 20 seconds, making long takes impossible). In- proven comedian, graciously take a step back and let another stead, Gravity was filmed on an elaborate set in London, using star shine. “If she wanted to, she could have stolen every scene puppeteers from the stage production of War Horse to simu- in that movie,” confesses McCarthy. “She could have easily late astronauts floating through the weightless environment. been like, ‘I’m Sandra Bullock. And you can walk behind Bullock was outfitted in carbon-fiber plates and connected to me.’ Instead, she was like, ‘Come up here. Let’s figure this out a dozen wires, and together the actress and her puppeteers mas- together.’ That was a pretty amazing thing to be part of.” tered the art of floating in a space suit, which basically looks After nearly 40 films (!), Bullock knows when to play it the hot ticket like swimming through pudding. Cuarón says the process was big, and when to close the valves and keep a performance Bullock, famously private, lives in difficult, sometimes painful for Bullock. “But after not having measured. This kind of self-awareness elevated The Blind Austin, Texas, where nobody cares about box office and paparazzi do not to do the Vomit Comet, she was so happy, she didn’t care.” Side, a true story about an affluent white family that took in lurk behind mailboxes. Calvin Klein Bullock’s Dr. Stone spends much of the movie on her own, an African-American teenager who later went on to play pro Collection silver beaded strapless dress. Michael Kors leather belt. Tiffany and the same was true during filmmaking, as Bullock worked football. Bullock was initially hesitant to get involved with the & Co. cuff. Paco Rabanne mirrored long days in a space suit suspended in darkness, listening to inspirational project, fearing it might be too hokey. leather boots. Details, see In This Issue.

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EDITORIAL Right of Way Tough talk and fearless politics have made Senator Rand Paul a leader in the Republican Party. Could he—and his charming, secret- weapon wife, Kelley—win the White House? By Jason Horowitz. Photographed by Jonathan Becker.

n a sunny Saturday in July, Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley Ashby, are taking a long drive across Kentucky horse country. When their white SUV, bearing a stand with rand sticker on the rear windshield, pulls up to a small political rally in rural St. Catharine, the state’s junior senator climbs out with pursed lips, mussed hair, and a generally weary look on his otherwise boyish face. A bluegrass band Ostrikes up a tune, and Paul gets into character, which is to say, he acts exactly the same as when he lumbered out of the car or, for that matter, stopped on the road for pretzels. “Well, hello,” Paul says mildly to one attendee. “I think I’ve been to your house before.” A supporter approaches to congratulate Paul on the “fine job” he did during his block- buster filibuster in March, when he railed against President Obama’s use of drones for nearly thirteen uninterrupted hours on the Senate floor. “My feet hurt for days,” Paul deadpans. Wearing dad jeans, a snail-patterned tie, and cuff links fashioned from gold coins given to him by his mother and father, the former congressman and libertarian folk hero Ron Paul, the senator accepts another compliment on his resistance to government surveillance. “I appreciate it,” says Paul in his Texas drawl. “I’m a strong supporter of the Constitution.” The speech he’ll deliver here is replete with polished laugh lines about wasteful government spending on a “$325,000 robotic squirrel” to study animal behavior, zingers about Washington’s being run by people with “big hearts and small brains,” and red meat such as his refusal to give “one penny more for countries that are burning our flag.” None of this is particularly new. But what has changed since all in the family Paul first shocked the political establishment by winning his Senator Paul with his son Senate seat in 2010 is the air of expectancy around him—one Robert, fourteen—the youngest of three boys in the household—at that becomes palpable as the banjos stop, the crowd hushes, home in Bowling Green, Kentucky. and a local official comes to the podium to introduce Paul as On Senator Paul: Polo Ralph Lauren shirt and Brooks Brothers chinos. Details, see In This Issue. 336 Sittings Editor: Jessica Sailer.

EDITORIAL “our senator, considered by many to be the next president of they win, I think, is adding a little bit of a libertarian infusion, the United States.” a little bit of a constitutional Bill of Rights type of approach The notion of President Rand Paul would once have been to issues and instill that into the Republican Party.” absurd. Three years ago, he was a Kentucky ophthalmologist The project has taken Paul to unexpected places for a po- mounting an outsider campaign for Senate, still very much in tential Republican nominee. Earlier this year he addressed an the shadow of his father. But the younger Paul rode a Tea Party audience of African-American students at Howard University, wave to Washington, and quickly became the movement’s most spoke of a more welcoming stance toward immigration at the intriguing and charismatic spokesperson—an ambassador for Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and stood next to New York libertarian values who takes obvious relish in skewering critics, senator Kirsten Gillibrand in a Washington press conference to regardless of their political affiliation. While his father was call for the removal of the chain of command from determining content to remain a dissenting voice from the margins—or whether military sexual-assault cases should go to trial. from one end of countless presidential-debate stages—Rand “I could see Rand’s sincerity and thoughtfulness in our first clearly wants to win. His stunningly swift rise in the GOP also conversation about this crisis,” Gillibrand says. “And I knew amounts to one of the most fascinating tightrope walks in na- we could work together.” tional politics. On the one side is his raucous Tea Party base. On As with all political success stories, the senator has benefited the other is his courting of donors, establishment Republicans, from his share of serendipity, too.The CIA drone attacks, and traditional Democratic constituencies. the revelation of the National Security Agency’s spying pro- The longer he keeps his balance, the more viable a contender grams, the furor over the IRS’s apparently targeting Tea Party he will be for the White House in 2016. As the election gets into groups—all have provided openings for him to speak out on pri- early, unmistakable gear, everyone is weighing Paul’s chances vacy, reduced government, and a less aggressive foreign policy. against a broad field of Republicans—including Florida sena- “Obviously we don’t control current events, but if you hap- tor Marco Rubio, Texas senator Ted Cruz, and New Jersey pen to be in the right place at the right time . . . ,” the senator governor Chris Christie, with whom Paul has often sparred. No says with satisfaction. “That’s where I am.” less an authority than his own parents suggest that he’s readying a bid. “Ron thinks it’s terribly early to be starting a campaign,” Born in Pittsburgh, Randal Howard Paul moved to Texas as Rand’s mother, Carol, tells me over the phone from her house a young boy and was raised a middle child with two brothers in Texas, referring to her husband, who is at that moment swim- and two sisters in the small town of Lake Jackson. His mother ming laps in the couple’s pool and otherwise keeping busy in re- recalls the way he kept slightly apart from his siblings, happy tirement with the online Ron Paul Channel and other projects. to entertain himself with a set of Lincoln Logs. “He was However, the prospect of a Rand Paul presidential campaign kind of a middle man,” Carol says. He was well behaved, she “feels real,” she adds. “Rand says he won’t declare that he’s remembers, if unafraid of conflict or disagreement. “It wasn’t

going to run until after 2014. . . . Groundwork has to be set.” that he was stubborn; he would listen,” she says. “But if some- true colors “If he announces, he’ll be considered a first-tier candidate,” thing didn’t work your way, he would probably tell you about “She counsels me to count says James Carville, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager, it.” He showed an interest in politics early—accompanying to ten before I say or write anything,” Paul says of who knows a thing or two about winning elections—and his physician-turned-politician father to the 1976 Republican Kelley Ashby, his wife of 23 who adds that he’ll tip his hat to Paul if he can find a way to Convention at thirteen, and devouring the writings of econo- years (in Carolina Herrera). Photographed at their broaden his appeal without losing his Tea Party base. The mists who shaped the elder Paul’s thinking (along with a good favorite local spot, the Red, senator is already catching the eye of elite operatives, includ- dose of Ayn Rand). As an undergraduate at Baylor Univer- White & Blue Cafe. In this story: hair, Laura De Leon; ing Obama’s political guru David Axelrod—currently a news sity he enlisted his brothers and sisters in one of his father’s makeup, Junko Kioka. analyst for NBC. “He’s not your father’s Dr. Paul,” he tells me. congressional campaigns, drew up door-knocking maps, and Produced by Lisa York. studied voting returns and poll data. At every turn, it was his Details, see In This Issue. n a Washington culture of men and women who live father he looked up to. When Paul scored high enough on his to please, Paul is famous for caring little what anyone MCATs to leave Baylor early, he chose, like Ron Paul, to at- should complicate his return to the White House, even as First from charges that his aversion to military conflict translates thinks. That includes, for instance, me. During our tend Duke University School of Medicine. Spouse. “I would say his behavior was predatory, offensive to into a lack of interest in America’s soldiers. interview at the senator’s expansive brick home in It was during his 1989 surgery internship at the Georgia Bap- women,” she tells me. But as important, she draws out her husband’s warmer, more If Paul is an increasingly familiar presence in the news mischievous side. Simply put, Paul is more likable when Kel- Bowling Green, Kentucky, he makes no secret of tist Medical Center in Atlanta that he met Kelley—at a back- media, Kelley remains his secret asset. She collaborates on his ley’s around—and likable still counts in politics. The couple’s his boredom or bemusement, bouncing his knee, yard oyster roast. Her date had left her at the party, which gave speeches and is working with his publisher on an oral history repartee is fun to witness. When she talks about her love of checking his watch, even springing up to the fridge— Paul an opening. “I kind of blew him off a little bit because I of stories from her Irish-immigrant grandmother and other the Swedish filmMy Life as a Dog, he twirls his wraparound looking not entirely unlike a know-it-all college kid home for thought he was about eighteen,” she says, joining our conversa- formidable women (women are a declining demographic for sunglasses and asks her, “What was the one that Bruce Willis summer break. And yet, in the Obama era of the deliberator- tion in the Pauls’ living room. The courtship survived competi- the GOP). She is well aware that her accompanying Paul on was in? The Siege?” When golf comes up, he shakes his head. Iin-chief, there is something compelling about Paul’s certitude. tion from other suitors, and even a me-or-her ultimatum from his recent trip to Iowa added “another element” to his woo- “You know how they pretend to like the things you like before He has a magnetism well suited to the sweep of his ambition. Kelley, which she delivered in a surprise visit to his hospital ing of the Christian right. The couple attend a Methodist you’re married?” Kelley’s ebullient smile and occasional appeals Paul tells me he wants to remake the GOP into an elector- cafeteria. Paul remembers her wearing a “cocktail dress and church, and they recently visited Jerusalem, singing “How for restraint balance her husband’s prickly delivery. ally viable party that looks more like America and less like heels.” She describes it simply as “a really killer outfit.” Great Thou Art” in the Garden of Gethsemane, a trip Paul “He’s very optimistic and thinks anything can happen and says softened his position on cutting foreign aid to Israel. isn’t really afraid to take risks,” she says. “And that’s great and an Elks Lodge meeting. That means luring Democrats and Kelley gives the famously dour senator something more And she recently left the political consulting firm the Strategy exciting when you are in your 20s. But you realize how valu- winning over skeptical minorities and young voters. He’ll than merely a pretty image-softener. The 50-year-old mother Group for Media, where she worked on behalf of Ted Cruz, able that is with all of life’s ups and downs. Things happen; do this by championing issues like privacy rights and civil of three is an impassioned defender of her husband and his one of her husband’s chief rivals for the conservative base. your kids get older, your parents get older; the older you get, liberties—such as his opposition to Guantanamo-style in- ideas. But she’ll also speak her own mind. While her husband Her position on the board of Helping a Hero, a charity that the more challenges you are confronted with. And for me the definite detainment—that he believes will form a new center jokes that his “gut feeling” that Hillary Clinton will not run builds houses for wounded war veterans, helps insulate Paul thing that I have most loved and (continued on page 376) of political gravity, and perhaps a winning coalition in 2016. for president is a good thing since “all the polls show her “I want the Republican Party to grow and to be strong and trouncing any opponents,” Kelley practically cuts him off to 339 for our ideas to win in Washington,” he says. “And the way say that Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky

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EDITORIAL illem de Kooning liked to say, to the annoy- ance of his more bom- bastic fellow artists, that he worked “out of doubt.” Most artists do, whether or not they admit to it, but no con- temporary artist has used self-questioning and self-doubt more productively than Christopher Wool. For more than 25 years, his tough, edgy, mostly black-and-white paintings, drawings, photographs, and Wsilk screens have resisted the comfort of single-minded interpreta- tion. “ ‘Yes, but’ sums it up for me,” Wool says. “I can give you the yes today, but tomorrow is going to be thebut. ” For an artist whose career has developed gradually and without fanfare, this perennial ambiguity has worked pretty well. The Guggenheim Museum is giving him a major retrospective this month (October 25 through January 22, 2014), and one of his early word paintings sold at auction last year for $7.7 million. At the age of 58, Wool continues to challenge himself and his audience. He recently did a series of stained-glass windows for a priory in an eleventh-century church complex in the Loire Valley, designed the sets for a new dance by Benjamin Millepied with music by Nico Muhly, and, he says, in a somewhat embarrassed whisper, “I haven’t told anybody yet, but I’m trying to make sculpture now”—large-scale bronze pieces at a foundry in upstate New York. “Every time he manages to succeed at something, he makes it harder for himself,” his friend the novelist Jim Lewis tells me. “I think he’s very unsatisfied feeling satisfied. Constantly reguessing what he’s trying to do is what he’s trying to do.” I’d been told that Wool hardly ever grants interviews, and he turned me down the first time I asked. Eventually he conceded, though, and here I am in his vast studio space in Manhattan’s East Village. It’s the top two floors of a famous art-world building— I remember going to Pat Hearn’s gallery on the ground floor in the 1980s and interviewing Eric Fischl in the painting studio that’s now Wool’s. He’s a powerful-looking guy in knee-length shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, and he has a gentle manner. Although his close-cropped hair is graying, he looks extremely fit, his muscles toned by rock climbing and basketball. He answers every question and then, seeing another side to it, revises his response. The art world that Wool entered in the 1970s was a hotbed of conflicting trends and honorable poverty. The market for con- temporary art was dead, and so, according to critical theory, was painting. Its place had been usurped by video, installation, body art, performance, and various forms of conceptual practice. “The death of painting had occurred before I started,” says Wool, “but I hadn’t been told about it. I was just young enough that I was able to pick and choose what was important to me. I’m a painter and an image-maker. Conceptual art was never my thing, and I don’t think it’s the best direction art has taken.” PAINT IT BLACK He pauses, gets us each a bottle of water, and continues, some- As personally low-profile as what sheepishly, “I’m not sure the ‘painting is dead’ part was such his paintings are an important issue. My argument has always been that painting sought-after, and the other mediums are not essentially different, and the same Christopher Wool goes for figuration and abstraction. I firmly believe it’s not the in front of a work in progress in his LINE UNLEASHED medium that’s important, it’s what you do with it.” East Village studio. On the eve of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim, Christopher Wool grew up on Chicago’s gritty South Side in Sittings Editor: the 1960s, an era of political and generational turmoil. His father, Phyllis Posnick. Christopher Wool gives a rare interview and describes the powerful pull in his work between meticulous planning and spontaneity. 340 By Dodie Kazanjian. Photographed by Anton Corbijn.

EDITORIAL Ira, who died last year, was a professor of molecular biology at A young painter in New York could live on very little in the University of Chicago; his mother, Glorye, became a child those days, and Wool supported himself in the usual ways— psychoanalyst. Both of them liked the idea of Christopher be- waiting on tables, doing rough carpentry, and helping more ing an artist. (Ira later knew the Swiss artist Dieter Roth and ac- established artists. He worked for Joel Shapiro and learned quired work by Roth and others.) When Christopher’s younger a lot from him. Wool had his first solo show in 1984—seven brother, Jonathan, decided to be a lawyer, Ira’s response was monochrome abstract canvases—at the Cable Gallery down- “What? Really?” Robert Gober, one of Christopher’s earliest town, which had been started earlier that year by Clarissa and closest artist friends, tells me that he “never knew any art- Dalrymple and Nicole Klagsbrun. (None of them sold.) His ists whose parents were so encouraging. Most of the artists I second show, at Cable two years later, was described in Art- know became artists in spite of their backgrounds.” forum as “a cross between a Jackson Pollock and a Formica Wool says that he didn’t decide to be an artist, that “it just countertop.” (Joel Shapiro revised this to “Sid Vicious meets kind of happened.” In high school, he studied photography Morris Louis.”) with a charismatic former Bauhaus artist, Robert Erickson, but His breakthrough came in 1986 after watching a work- switched to a painting class because his girlfriend was in it. He man paint the corridor walls outside his Chinatown studio couldn’t get into art school, he says, because “I didn’t have any with a roller that had a pattern cut into it—an inexpensive skills. CalArts was heating way for slum landlords to up then. They came re- cover up moldy plaster. cruiting at my high school “I’d seen those rollers at and said, basically, anyone Pearl Paint,” he tells me, who wants to come can get “and it dawned on me that in. So I applied and got it could be an interesting rejected.” He laughs. He way to do something.” He went to Sarah Lawrence bought some patterned instead and studied paint- rollers and used them to ing with Richard Pousette- cover six-foot-tall, white Dart but quit after one year painted-aluminum sheets because he’d taken two art with all-over black pat- classes (painting and pho- terns (flowers, clovers, tography) in his first year leaves, vines, abstract ge- and wasn’t allowed to take ometries). The effect was any in his second. In 1973, definitely not decorative. at the age of eighteen, he Dripping paint and other moved to Manhattan and intentional flaws took care spent a year at the New of that and gave the paint- York Studio School, and ings an uningratiating, ur- that was it for formal edu- ban grittiness that would cation. From then on, he become the touchstone of taught himself. On his his future work. twenty-first birthday, in The word paintings 1976, he got his first studio started about a year later. and living space, a dirt- He had seen the words sex

cheap fifth-floor walk-up luv sprayed graffiti-style wool. / © christopher wool christopher of /courtesy in a run-down loft build- on the side of a white de- ing in Chinatown, which livery van, and the image

SAy IT Loud opposite: wool. © christopher wool/ christopher of /courtesy he would keep for 25 years. Apocalypse Now, 1988, one of the artist’s early word paintings. stayed with him. Using

He hung out at Max’s crude stencils, Wool repro- 182.9 c M x 213.4 , Kansas City, the Mudd Club, and CBGB, becoming part of duced the words in a vertical stack, black enamel on white inu M the downtown punk and jazz music scenes and also the very paper; larger word paintings on metal (some of them nine feet lively experimental-film renaissance. “The whole New York tall) soon proliferated. He used phrases from popular sayings, nightlife universe was so intertwined with being an artist,” he jazz, movies, and other sources—helter (from the Manson says. For a couple of years, he tried his hand at filmmaking, but murders), you make me (from a Richard Hell album cover), “I was so young and so insecure about my artistic direction . . . sell the house sell the car sell the kids (a written message and working with other people was not for me. The immediacy in a scene from Apocalypse Now). Unlike the stenciled words of painting was much more suited to my temperament. I could in paintings by Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, and other contem-

do the ‘but’ a week later, instead of three months later.” The porary artists, Wool’s were stark, brutal, larger-than-life, and M alu on and flashe alkyd 1988, built-in contradiction here is that, since the late eighties, he difficult to read, filling the picture plane, with line breaks in 182.9 c M x 274.3 on linen, ink silk-screen 2001, has collaborated on art projects with Gober, Richard Prince, unexpected places. “I wondered if I knew what I was doing ishap, Richard Hell, Cady Noland, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Josh with these,” he tells me. “And I didn’t.” My own reaction when

Smith, all of whom were close friends. His collaboration with I first saw them was a sense of being yelled at. They were of- inor M M now, apocalypse Gober yielded a haunting photograph of a dress (sewn by fensive, funny, and indelible—you had to pay attention.

Gober out of fabric printed by Wool) being “worn” by a tree in Like the roller pictures, the word paintings combined Pop SeeINg red the woods—the first published photograph for both of them. Art and abstraction, and distanced (continued on page 377) Wool’s Minor Mishap, 2001, with vivid color on a white ground.

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